The Devil You Don’t Know
In The Devil You Don’t Know, Lindsay, Cleveland, and their guests discuss personal growth and development by taking chances and getting out of your comfort zone. Topics range from whimsical to serious and everything in between but are always relevant to growth and development.
The Devil You Don’t Know
The Alchemy of Acceptance: The Power of Embracing Your Pain
We explore the concept of emotional acceptance and how confronting rather than avoiding difficult feelings is essential to healing from trauma. Transformation happens when we learn to accept our emotions and reframe our relationship with past pain.
• Understanding why "you've got to feel it to heal it"
• Exploring how trauma physically lives in the body as "issues in the tissues"
• Learning about the destructive impact of shame and negative core beliefs
• Recognizing unhelpful coping mechanisms like distraction and substance use
• Practicing the RAIN method—Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture
• Transforming wounds into superpowers by reframing traumatic experiences
• Creating safety through meditation, movement, journaling, and support systems
• Using somatic awareness to reconnect with physical sensations of emotions
• Breaking family patterns of silence that re-traumatize victims
• Offering kindness to ourselves even in the midst of pain
Check out Cleveland's book "Waiting for White Jesus" available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover formats, and read more of his writings at The Unfinished Life on Substack.
Please email us at Gettoknowthedevil@gmail.com
This is Lindsay and this is Cleveland, and this is another episode of the Devil. You Don't Know, lindsay, what are we going to be talking about today? The alchemy of acceptance. Oh, what is that all about?
Speaker 2:Emotions and emotional pain. You know, it's curious because as long as I've been doing this work and it's been a couple of years now one of the things that I find most troubling is folks that can't accept their emotions and their emotional pain. Why is it can't accept their emotions and their emotional pain? Why is it important to accept your emotions and your emotional pain?
Speaker 1:Well, you've got to feel it to heal it.
Speaker 2:Right, right, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1:I think that people you know, just going off what you were saying people don't like to be uncomfortable, and so that's why they do things that block them from feeling their pain. And then it becomes such a practice to not feel unpleasant things that people don't even know what they feel anymore.
Speaker 2:Right, you know it's true. Right, because when you're hurting, either physically or emotionally, there's always this feeling that something's wrong with us, like we're broken. I remember when I sprained my ankle uh, for the third time, like was it last summer, the summer before, and I was depressed as heck. Um, but pain is important, right, like I. I said to someone that I was working with a few years ago about them saying they don't want to feel pain, and I talked about the importance of pain because pain helps you realize I do not want to be in this situation again. Right, in real life, if you burn yourself, if you stub your toe or you hurt yourself, that pain is necessary because it helps you be like yeah, I don't want to do that again.
Speaker 1:And it tells you something is wrong.
Speaker 2:And it tells you. But does it mean that you're wrong? No, right. And so what we find and you actually put me onto this whole thing from Tara Brock the other day is understanding that the pain we feel does not necessarily mean that we are broken.
Speaker 1:Right right, I was listening to that and I thought that you would find it interesting and something that I tell a lot of my clients. When they say they can't sit to meditate or if something happens they have to distract themselves with something else, I tell them that it's because we are programmed as human beings to not like unpleasant experiences.
Speaker 2:Human beings to not like unpleasant experiences. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's actually the case. You know, one of the things that you learned in CI was about trauma, and I want to start with this first part of what trauma leaves behind. How does, can you explain to our audience, because you're the expert in this in the CI work, and trauma and all of those things Talk to us about how trauma lives in the body.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know if I'm the expert, but I've certainly done a lot of courses.
Speaker 2:In this house. You're the expert on everything.
Speaker 1:That's true, very true. Well, trauma is not the actual event that happened because the event is in the past, so the event is no longer real, it's not valid anymore. But what the trauma is is the lasting impact that the event has on us.
Speaker 2:Right, Right Now. Albert Ellis would call that in the RABT method Albert Ellis used to say it's not the thing, but it's our reaction to the thing. That's that's that's really destroys.
Speaker 1:Right. I tell clients like if you've, for example, been a victim of sexual assault, you might look over your shoulder more, you may not trust the opposite sex or you know whoever it was that kind of violated you and took advantage of you, and you know, and that's, and that's the response right is is the reaction to the event and that's, that's the stuff that's holding us back.
Speaker 2:Right, it's interesting because we went to a barbecue last week with our friend, Lori and Dave Um, and there was some folks there it was a married couple that was. There was two women and one of the wives said that they that they met each other, uh, through a, through a mutual podcast that they listened to about some I think it's some brothers that are healing through their own trauma. And the wife said you know, I don't want to say any names, I don't want to put anybody on blast, but the wife said that that podcast actually helped her realize that not all men are bad, which made me wonder what the hell kind of trauma did she go through that she actually felt that way? Right, Absolutely. And trauma lives. So I want to speak to you a little bit about how trauma lives in the body, because one of the things that you do in your work is the somatic piece.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, we, we take the things that happen to us and we internalize them Right Like. If you read the body, the body keeps the score Right Like. Basically, the gist of that is, the issues are in the tissues. We hold on to this physical symptoms from what we've experienced, and often when an emotion comes up in us, it very much has a somatic experience as well, but most people are disconnected from that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I was going to ask you earlier because I just became familiar with the word somatic myself through the work that we do. But for those of us in the audience who don't understand what somatic is, can you explain what?
Speaker 1:the physical experience that's happening in the body. So one thing I do with my clients is stop them right, Because I have a couple of people who are real chatty, very talkative, and I remind them to like get out of the story and get into themselves. And sometimes they keep talking and I just keep saying can we pause for a moment? And most of the time when you can guide people and make them feel safe, they can find that physical peace within them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I noticed and I've seen great clinicians work is and Dr Mate is somebody who does this, and I want to talk about Dr Mate every week, but he actually is a great clinician One of the things that he does is that he'll ask the person like no, that's a feeling Well that's a perception?
Speaker 1:That's a perception or a belief? Go ahead and correct me. Well, there's a difference between what an actual feeling is and how we perceive or believe about something after something happens. Um, that's something I do with my clients as well, if they say, well, I feel like he's manipulative and I was like no, that's your perception or your belief. That's not a feeling, right? A feeling is an actual emotion anger, sadness, guilt, shame, right? And then all of the associated beliefs that come out of that are our negative core beliefs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, One of the things that has helped me work with clients who are suffering from anxiety and depression due to past traumas is this idea, as I try to help them understand that it's not all in their head right. Unfortunately, especially in communities of color, there's this idea that we, you know that our trauma is part of the experience and many people, especially in communities of color and Americans in general, wear their trauma like a badge of honor. Right but right. But it's understanding that it's not necessarily a badge of honor and it's not necessarily all in your head, but you feel anxiety and tension and maybe have nightmares because of the of the trauma. So go ahead, continue.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, and what I also wanted to say was that something that was said in that podcast that was very interesting is that when we have negative core beliefs about ourself I'm not good enough, you know, no, you know, I'm not lovable, I'm not worthy when we act out of those things, our behavior is typically equal to what you would expect. Someone you know who isn't worthy, who isn't loved, whatever the whatever the core belief is when they act that way, it's actually a reflection of that core belief. So, um, what Tara Brock was saying in that episode that I played for you was that when you like, for example, when you react out of anger right, and you start screaming and you hang up or you slam a door then you very much are behaving like the belief that you have about yourself is actually tied to shame, that that voice in your head and jack canfield talks about that.
Speaker 2:Um, in the success principles. He talks about this idea of your personal inner critic making you feel shamed and that that's actually not constructive criticism so how is shame?
Speaker 1:is a very, very low vibration, emotion, right, right and and it's hard to you really have to build yourself up and reframe your thinking to get away from that.
Speaker 2:And so how does shame like lead to more anxiety? How does feeling shamed about your situation lead to more trauma? Lead to more?
Speaker 1:anxiety lead to more depression. When you don't feel good about yourself and you have, for example, a client, say, that has these spiraling thoughts, they keep telling themselves more and more and more and more right, it's like they don't ever feel good. Yeah, so they're always in that very low vibrations. You know, um, like stage Um, and they're never, they're never getting out of it. So why would you feel good if all you do is sit and talk negatively about yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I actually talked to somebody um a few years ago that actually had a horrible incident happened to them when they were a child in which one of their parents, you know, abused them or you know. The person said they thought their parent was going to murder them and they said the way that that impacted them for the rest of their life. And this is something that happened to them when they were like four or five years old is that they felt shame that they couldn't defend themselves. Will Smith talks about in his book Will that he felt shame that he was not able to defend his mother.
Speaker 1:But part of acceptance Most of us feel shame, right, right, there's. For me, the big ones that came up when I was on my retreat a few years ago were shame and fear and guilt, and I made a vow to only work on those things on that retreat because they were the things that consistently came up for me. By the end of the retreat I was able to turn my head for the first time in years, which shows that you hold on to all the things that have happened to you, and I remember I turned my head both ways and thought, wow, I haven't been able to turn my head and have like full mobility of my neck in years, and all it took was four days with Saraswati, you know, in the Finger Lakes.
Speaker 2:And I think to your point. I think part of the thing about shame is it's okay, you know, acceptance, commitment theory. Is this idea that it's okay to accept these things right? It goes back to the serenity prayer Lord, give me the power to to accept the things that I can change and the power to accept the things that I can't and and know. And let me know what the difference is, this thing that's holding you back because you're ashamed of something that doesn't actually matter. There've been many people out there who've been abused, who've been traumatized, who've been raped, who've been, who've been in awful situations and and you are not unique in it and your shame is actually holding you back and it's making you hold yourself as an other. When all of us have various traumas, it doesn't diminish your trauma, but the shame of your trauma is holding you back from addressing the traumas. The way that I take it, Right.
Speaker 1:And one other thing in the in the lecture that we were listening to, was that we have to learn to accept these things about ourselves, and it's not only shame, there's so many different other, you know guilt, fear, unworthiness. We hold on to these things and we make them wrong about ourselves. But they didn't come from us. They came from the criticisms and the judgments and the experiences that we've had in life. So you know they are not us.
Speaker 2:So, when working with people, I want to ask you a question what are some coping mechanisms that you found that people come up with that often backfire?
Speaker 1:Drinking Right, any kind of substance use. The other things are distractions A lot of my clients when they feel a certain way, if they start to spiral, if then, oh well, I just went out with my friends or I just started to scroll through my phone and nobody, well, not nobody. But most people are not comfortable just sitting and feeling Right, and it leads to the question.
Speaker 2:You're one of them. Yes, but I'm actually getting more into my feelings, but I will tell you what right it leads me to the question that I, that I ask folks is and also leads the question that I primarily ask myself is where do I feel disconnected in my own life? Right, and those spaces where I feel disconnected, like especially during COVID when I was drinking, when everybody was drinking every day um to escape their lives, I ask myself is the video game I'm playing? Is the comic book I'm reading? Is and it's okay to escape every once in a while Is the TV show I'm watching?
Speaker 1:If it's a conscious choice that you're making, but not not to escape because you don't want to feel something or you don't want to heal something.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and I think that's the question that. That a general reflection that everybody needs to do is where do I feel disconnected in my life?
Speaker 1:That's a good question. I don't really feel disconnected in my life.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. I mean, I have purpose. I have a lot of purpose and I'm busy. I'm busy all the time and I'm not busy because I'm making myself busy. I'm busy because I'm productive. In my life, I have a lot of the irons in the fire and I'm moving forward in my life because I've found who, my, what, my purpose is.
Speaker 1:Well, and yesterday I said to you when we were in the car going for coffee in the morning, that the one thing I don't want to do is get to the end of my life and say that I wished I lived a little bit more truly. To who I am Right, and that's something that I will never have to say. Right, right, right.
Speaker 2:So I want to move on to our next part, which is a gentle practice for hard emotions, and this is the idea that Tara talks about RAIN, which is recognize, allow, investigate and nurture.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, this is something that I'm learning in my meditation teacher training right now. Okay, talk about it. But the first two steps are the things that you do and get comfortable with is just recognizing what are you feeling, what's going on, and just really spending time trying to identify an emotion and where it comes from. And then the A is the allow, so it's RAIN, r-a-i N it's recognize, allow, so just allow it to be there. And she said yesterday she did a yes, meditation.
Speaker 1:Do you remember that when she was going on a retreat and she had all these things going on in her life and it was an overwhelming time and she was sad and she was angry, and she went on a retreat and she just said yes to everything that was coming up for her all the grief, the sadness, the anger. And at first it was really a practice and very forced, but over time it just became OK. And very forced, but over time it just became okay. And so it's just allowing all of those things to be there and not make them wrong, but just being with them.
Speaker 2:What is?
Speaker 1:investigating, so exploring, exploring it more deeply. Where does it live in my body? What does it feel like? You know, what can I do to you know, to ease it or to relieve it? And then the N is nurturing. So it's offering yourself kindness, this healing, and you know, it's offering kindness and love and healing to say, even if it's your five-year-old self or your two-year-old self, whoever you were when you started to experience these things for the first time, and just like loving all those parts of yourself, who you were then, who you are now, all the things that happened to you, and just like recognizing that they are why you are where you are today. And why does this work? Well, it only works for people who want it to work. So, um, it's hard for me to say, because I'm such an avid meditator. So maybe you should practice it and tell everybody how it works, because I meditate so much and I love meditation, so I don't have problems sitting with things.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I found when working with people is that this works, because I think naming a feeling calms the brain down and I think being kind and when I show kindness to somebody that I'm working with or kindness to a friend and I tell them, hey, you know what, that thing that's in the back of your mind that you can't tell, especially for my men, right, cause my men, all, most of the men I work with are, as, as my professor in school said, only have two emotions, which are to be happy and angry, and they don't even understand this whole. Like I really have to get an emotion wheel and start working with clients who don't understand their emotions, because naming a feeling actually calms the brain down, because it helps a person understand. Oh, I'm not crazy. This is why I feel that way, right, what do you think about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do, and I think it's also helpful to remind clients when you figure out where it came from. How old were they? Who did they talk to about it? What was the actual he said? She said right in childhood, and then they have a better understanding of oh well, maybe this is why I feel this way.
Speaker 1:Right, we traced it back in a session a client and I a few weeks ago, who has a lot of trouble with confrontation when she has to have serious conversations with people and she doesn't feel confident in herself, and then we backed it up and backed it up, and backed it up and you know, here she was as a child and her brother was really smart and, you know, really academically successful, and she struggled in school and had a learning disability and was always told like, oh, come on, you can do better, you can do better, you can do better. And so what did she say? Well, I'm not good enough. And then she was embarrassed to speak up and ask for help or to say anything to anybody. And so she now, as an adult close to 30, can't speak up and sits in these difficult situations because she's afraid to have a conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think what happens, especially when the trauma the trauma that's my Boston accent when the trauma is something that happened to us as children, as we get caught in this belief that this thing that happened was our fault Right, and I've worked with multiple adults who things that have happened to them as a children three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine years old I worked with somebody many years at GameStop who was being sexually abused by their stepfather until they were the age 14. And he didn't even remember any of their life because the trauma was so great. They said that their first memories of life period were about, were started at age 15 or 16, after the trauma started, that they didn't really have any memories before then. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, people, you know, dissociate from it Right, because I think I say that all the time, that they, because I say like how could you forget that happened? But they do, yeah Right. You forgot that happened, but they do, yeah Right. And then there's some clients who remember it and it almost paralyzes them through life.
Speaker 2:But I think it's important to understand that these things that happen to you are not your fault, right, and it goes back to this idea of shame that people get stuck in the things that they need to work on because, number one, they falsely believe that something is their fault.
Speaker 1:Or people tell them they should do something or should not do something, and so they don't live up to who they are and who they want to be.
Speaker 2:Right, right, a hundred percent. And Albert Ellis would call those masturbations, you know, but I think it's. It's it's it's funny word what Masturbations? Well, it's like I must and I should have, and people spend a lot of time sitting there. It is. It is he, he purposely pundit that way, because, just as masturbation is the singular thing that that is supposed to be and that's not to say that masturbation is a terrible thing, but it's the singular thing that you're supposed to do with somebody else Masturbation isolates you, right. It makes you shamed, it makes you not want to move out because you're saying like, well, I should have, I'm ashamed because I should have did this and I could have done this, and this is what my life was supposed to be, right, and it keeps you paralyzed, right, and so it's. It's. Yes, are there things in your life that are a hundred percent your fault? A hundred percent because you like to say, lindsay, you are the cause and the solution to ninety, nine point nine percent of your problems?
Speaker 1:Hundred percent, absolutely. I say that all the time, I say that to every client, every single client.
Speaker 2:However, there are traumas that have happened to us in our lives that we are totally not responsible for.
Speaker 1:Right. However, I will say this and I'm not saying this from a place of you know, you know, kind of giving any kind of opinion but if you look at that also, which we learned in graduate school, is that even in those horribly traumatic situations take even, for example, say, domestic violence it's that those people who stay in those situations also in some way there's a contribution to what's going on. And you know and I'm not saying it's because you know they did something wrong or anything is their fault. But you know, when different things happen and we don't listen to ourselves and we don't sit with the things that are going on, you know we maybe stay in a situation a little too long, or, you know, whatever it may be, and you know, maybe that's not a great example, because I definitely, you know, do a lot of work in those types of shelters, you know, for work. But it's that we all have to recognize that we play a role in every situation that's happening to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when it talks about shame and I, I, I, I, I want to follow up with what you're saying there. There are a lot of people that I've worked with and been friends with in real life that are in horrible, abusive, toxic, traumatic situations, but they're afraid to get out of it because they're afraid of the shame that it's going to bring to the family.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's also scary it's very scary, I would imagine to have to leave a really horrible, traumatic situation because you fear. You fear for your life or your children or whatever else it may be. And you know, when you don't feel good about yourself and someone treats you a certain way we've talked about this for a long time the you know, when you're criticized and judged and treated poorly by somebody, you start to believe those things and and then it almost keeps you in the situation because, well, this is just what I'm destined for, this is just who I am.
Speaker 2:I'm not lovable, I'm not whatever it is, yeah, and one of the things I've found especially and and we can talk about this, not even from a client's perspective is is we've worked with families and we've worked with and we not work with friends, but we've had conversations with friends and this is, this is the messed up thing about family. When trauma occurs in families right, especially something crazy like sexual molestation, abuse A lot of times the family decides and we, the victim, re-traumatize the victim than to say this horrible thing that happened to you actually happened because we do not want to shame the family and this frequently happens in the case of sexual abuse, where now you, as the abused person, have to continue to eat thanksgiving dinner with that uncle or that aunt or that cousin or somebody in the family who traumatized you, because the family does not want to deal with the trauma. Talk about that for a second.
Speaker 1:Well, that's terrible. But I also. I had a client that was I no longer see her, but she was sexually abused as a child by a relative and her mother and the wife of the relative said oh no, we can't know. You know what, you're just going to tarnish the family name. So she lived her whole life with that Right and then got into a marriage where she wasn't treated well and had to get out of that situation. And you know, and so when we, we do those things, it's, oh, it's, it's, that's a horrible thing. But you know, and so when we, we do those things, it's oh, it's, it's, that's a horrible thing. But you know, you don't feel good about yourself in those situations. And then when somebody doesn't have your back and you don't have anyone to talk to about it, you're forced to really believe those things about yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that brings us to our next segment, which is creating safety. Creating safety. So if you're coming from a place of shame and you're coming from a place that you're trying to pivot away from that shame to heal your trauma, how can you create safety for yourself, or what are some ways that you can think about creating safety for yourself?
Speaker 1:Well, there's a lot of different practices that people use. Some people meditate, some people move right Just to reduce their anxiety, breathing whatever it is Right Just to reduce their anxiety. Breathing whatever it is, you can find something. Some people journal. I have a client who journals a lot of the time when she feels a safe, you know if she feels unsafe or something comes up for her. And also a really important one is having a support system of people and doesn't have to be family, but having a good support system of friends is also very important, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the first part in building a support system and this is what I always this is the at least with me when I'm working with clients is that rapport building is to let you know that I too am not healed yet either. Right that I too have things that have ashamed me, I have things that have embarrassed me, I have things that have hurt me, and I and I will share those things. It's not, and I share those things with clients, not to make the session about me, but to normalize. Hey, this guy that's standing before you, that seems to have it all put together. I've had my fair of crap also.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have and everyone has, and that is a very powerful thing to tell clients is to use appropriate self-disclosure, because they see us, especially when I work with couples and couples laugh. I'm like my husband and I are both therapists and we can still get into it from time to time. We can get into it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. I mean, I'm talking about arguments. I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, I'm talking about arguments, I don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, I'm talking about, like, fighting, yes, but lean into those safer, we don't fight that much, no, no, no, we have very heated debates.
Speaker 1:Well, once in a while we can have a good blowout over here but yeah, well it's, it's always comes back to well, just on a side note Go ahead. There's been like a couple of times recently where none of the children have been home because the queen mom is away for the summer and then both of the boys are out, and it's been like, oh my gosh it's amazing, even the dogs and the cats are getting along when everybody's gone.
Speaker 1:We're just sitting here going. Oh my God, this is so nice. Can you believe we're alone in the house? Anyway?
Speaker 2:Okay. So that's a feeling of joy, that's a huge feeling of joy and safety, yeah, and safety because there's nobody here. And cleanliness and cleanliness there's nobody here to like just randomly blow up our afternoon. So I want to move on to part four, which is healing and growth after trauma. And and I want to start with this, right, because so many of my friends, especially in communities of color, are this thing where they say I just want to get back to normal, and I think, I think trauma leaves you forever changed, and I think it should leave you forever changed, but in a good way, right, and I, and I want to stress that healing isn't about getting back to the normal, it's about growing into something deeper. What is normal, anyway? What is normal? That's why Gabor says it's the myth of normal Right.
Speaker 1:But you're right, it's getting you know. It's kind of growing into something else. It's when you look at your stuff. It's like you become a better version of yourself when you share those things, when you grow from those experiences. You become a better, more authentic version of yourself.
Speaker 2:Right, right In my book Waiting for White Jesus, I have this idea that my wound is my superpower, right, and that's a question is how can you make a wound a superpower I have taken? It's available on Amazon. Folks, I'm doing a quick commercial for my book Waiting for White Jesus. Please buy it. But what I've talked about in that book and Waiting for White Jesus is not waiting for a savior to save you, but taking the trauma and the difficulties and the lessons that you've learned and saving yourself right.
Speaker 2:So what if the very wound and oftentimes I'm working with clients, I like to talk about pop culture and superheroes, but every superhero from Batman uh, of his parents getting killed and Peter's uncle getting killed and Superman's whole planet being destroyed, uh, the flash getting caught in a, in an explosion you know that, that, that that gave him superpowers. Every hero in fiction, just about every hero in fiction, comes from a place of trauma and their superpower is based on, or their origin story is based on, a horrible, traumatic event that happened to them, that made them heroic, right? So that leads me to the question how can you help clients and I don't know if you have anything to add to that how can you help a client see a traumatic event as something, or how can you reshape a traumatic event as something? Or how can you reshape a traumatic event as something that is now your purpose for being?
Speaker 1:It's, I think I mean it just. It really kind of depends on the client, but it's when you can help them kind of get into their body and separate themselves from that experience and really get into the emotions and reframe their thinking around it. That's when you can help them. But it takes a lot of work because I do a lot of the Compassionate Inquiry practice sessions now for the rest of my training until the certification, and when I see people, even though we do the same kinds of stuff over and over, you could see the patterns in people when they don't want to look at, they look away, they laugh, they'll tell you something really horrible about their life and then be laughing while they say it. Right, so they have all these kind of coping strategies or adaptive strategies to not feel. But when you could really get them to be quiet which I remind them, that compassionate inquiry is about getting into the body, not about listening to this whole story, and so I just keep interrupting them to stop and to get into the body. And if they can't find the somatic experience I said, can we just sit with that for a moment? You can close your eyes if you want to, and usually something will come up, yeah, and then that's where the healing happens, because you get them to compassionate inquiries, a look at them, the story that's happening now in their life, and then I'll look back to when was the first time, once you can identify the feeling or the belief. When was the first time that you felt this? Can you remember?
Speaker 1:And for most people it's childhood and then you give them like a fake child of that age and you ask them oh well, do you know a child that's five or whatever? And then you know, and then, when they can see it from outside of themselves as like, well, you know, what do you think this kid needed? What do you think this child you know? How do you think this child would feel about themselves if this happened to them? And often that is what's been very helpful for my clients to look at it and as their child or someone else's child and say, oh, like no, I would never do that or no, that child would believe that, but I would do other, you know, give them whatever they needed, the love, the support, the guidance, the you know, whatever. And and then you translate it back into them and like giving compassion to that you know five-year-old or eight-year-old who really didn't know anything differently growing up, and so it's a whole process and it takes a lot of time because we all have quite a few negative core beliefs, right, right, and one of the ways that I've um worked on those beliefs in myself and when working with others is.
Speaker 2:You know I'm a big fan of science fiction and and fantasy. Um many years ago I was reading the wheel of time series, which was a series on Amazon prime for all of you who are watching. It was recently canceled. I don't, I never watched it because I heard middling things about it, but there's a Robert. It was written by Robert Jordan, who passed away before the series was completed, and this for for all of those who are. Was it George R Martin? I think that that's writing the Lindsay's fading out here.
Speaker 1:Oh no, no, my back is sore from the bike ride this morning. I'm just trying to do a quiet stretch. Oh okay.
Speaker 2:But what I was saying is, um, george R R Martin, who, who wrote the uh, who's writing the Game of Thrones series, which a lot of fans are worried that he's actually going to pass away. This actually did happen to uh to uh, to Robert Jordan. He did pass away before he completed his Wheel of Time series, but it was completed by Brandon Sanderson. And in Brandon Sanderson's version of the Wheel of Time there's a great quote and I think it's from the book the Towers of Midnight that talks about trauma and the importance that trauma plays in development, and when it's a line that says is what mighty sword has not been passed through the fire and beaten by the hammer? Not saying that we should look, that we should be, we should be thankful for trauma, because if I could live a trauma-free life and if I could spare everyone in this audience from from a trauma-free life, I would do my best to do that Right.
Speaker 2:I have somebody that I've worked with in the past who had a very traumatic childhood and they asked that person the miracle question and what that person said to me instead of saying I wish that I never would ever face trauma, that person said to me, if it was my power, I would make it so that no one ever had to face the pain that I had again.
Speaker 2:But for me, I'm good with it, because it made me who I am is what that person said, and I think the important thing about trauma that people fail to take away is yes, this was a horrible event that happened to me, right, and it doesn't diminish that the thing that happened to you. But as I learned many years ago in Brooklyn's Hope program from one of the mental health counselors there is, when she was going through a traumatic period in her life, her professor in college was like said, instead of saying, well, I hope you get better, said to her well, I hope you learn from it. Right, and at first she was offended by that, but then she realized like, no, he's absolutely right, that I should be learning from this place. Like this trauma that I'm going through, this dark time that I'm going through. I shouldn't let it control me. I should control it and this should be the place from which my superpower is born.
Speaker 1:Right, I agree, and most people do say that once they speak up and say something out loud, they feel better.
Speaker 2:Right, right. So in closing, I want to close with this what are some methods and if you know about the RAIN method, you know what's a quick version of RAIN that somebody can do anytime they ground themselves, or what are some meditation techniques or methods that you would recommend for folks that are trying to work through their trauma?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure Tara Brock has a bunch of free meditations on her website if people are interested in listening to one of them, but a lot of times for my clients the ones who have a really hard time they just have a 60-second check-in with themselves to just scan their body quickly.
Speaker 1:You can look for things within your line of sight, you can listen for sounds in your environment, you can connect with whatever you're sitting on, where your feet are, but if you need to just check in with yourself, you can do any of those things. And I want to say something about meditation because I do know that you don't have a successful track in that area is that there's so many different kinds of meditations. There's sleep meditations, lying down meditations, walking meditations, breathing meditations. You can find some type of meditation. But sometimes even the voice in your ear on a guided meditation can be very calming if you do feel very anxious, because it is, yes, a distraction from the anxiety. But also, usually you can find a guided meditation based on what you're experiencing, and that is helpful sometimes, to have that voice talking you through that, letting you sit there, to feel it, breathe with it. You know whatever it guides you to do Okay, cool, cool cool.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things I want to quote from Tara as we close is she says even in the middle of the pain, even in the middle of pain, we can pause and offer kindness to ourselves. I think one of the greatest mistakes that people do is they continue to beat themselves up. When they're in these moments of defeat, when they're in these moments of despair, when they're in these moments of not knowing a way out, is they do something completely unhelpful and they make themselves feel worse. Yeah, now, it's easier said than done.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying, you know, to just snap it's really like a lifelong journey, right, right, we're constantly evolving and what's true to us now might not be true to us 10 years from now. Right, like, if you take me finally to go live in the caribbean which you promised me when the last kid went to college and if you took me there, then maybe I would have my fill and in like three to five years, I would say, okay, this is no longer true to me and I'm ready to come back to America, but you're not keeping your promise.
Speaker 2:Well, if, when Waiting to Jite, white Jesus hits the New York Times bestseller, thanks to everyone in our audience, that will happen and you know what we will offer. Um, we'll do like my all my heroes Jack Canfield, tara, brock, gabor, mate, like Jack actually has a thing where you can come out to his house and do and do a retreat with him. It's only $22,000 a person, but when we live in the Caribbean, you can come out and do a retreat with us after you buy my book Waiting for White Jesus and all these other things. But yes, you're absolutely right. I think it is important to set goals. I think it's important to have things that you want to live for. I think it's important to to to put not put the trauma aside, but use that trauma to fuel yourself.
Speaker 2:Philippians 212 talks about it like this. It says work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Jack Canfield says feel the fear and do it anyway. Mel Robbins says you know, the only way forward is through, which is not just what Mel Robbins saying, but that's kind of the things that she's that they're saying. And every great thinker and you can probably add some quotes in is saying that it takes a lot of work. Yes, this is a painful situation, yes, this is an awful situation, but learn how to be resilient, and resilience doesn't mean sticking with something that's not working for you. Right, resilience is working smartly. But if the trauma is something that you can never get rid of and traumas are things that you can never get rid of, and traumas are things that we can never get rid of then you need to learn how to power that trauma, to power you.
Speaker 1:You have to reframe your thinking in relation to it is really what it is. You have to love and nurture that part of yourself and just accept it. That's what I say to clients a lot. It's like when you come to session you're like, oh, my anxiety is really bad. Oh, my anxiety is so bad this week. It's like, okay, so why is that a problem? Right, If you know you're an anxious person, you should get to know. Right, that's that inquiry part. Right, but get to know that part of yourself and learn to love that part of yourself.
Speaker 2:But to go back and we're getting ready to wrap up, but I want to go back to you is, if you're filled with shame, right, which many people are filled with shame because their parents taught them to be ashamed, right? Well, you know, and the place that I grew up was like, well, we don't want to shame Jehovah. Well, we don't want to shame the congregation, you know many places, yeah, that you grew up is shamed at all. I shamed it, all Right, but we don't want to shame the family, we can't talk about the secret, right. And so people learn shame. Jack Canfield says, like you, learn this inner critic that that, instead of lifting you up, beats you down.
Speaker 1:But also not only disconnects you from your true self, but it also disconnects you from others because you don't have authentic relationships.
Speaker 2:So I think it's instead of and it goes back to this idea of masturbations the only thing that you must do is you must live and you must survive and you must figure out how to do that.
Speaker 1:Right, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But on that note yeah, I just want to say you must not, you must not be ashamed of yourself, right? You must not dwell on your mistakes, right? And you must not, if those are the anything that you must do, continue to work on yourself, continue to accept yourself, continue to forgive yourself, just as you forgive others, and continue to, you know, reframe the bad things that happened to you and reframe them in a way that you can power them to your success. And what were you going to say? And I'll let you wrap up.
Speaker 1:Oh, I was just going to say on that note as we wrap up, I need to go watch the Great British Baking Show.
Speaker 2:The Great British Baking Show. So with that this is. I know we wrapped up kind of abruptly last week. I'm so sorry for that. I thought I had put a button on the end. I obviously didn't, but it worked. This has been Cleveland and Lindsay.
Speaker 2:And this has been another episode of the devil, you don't know. If you want to find out more about my book waiting for white Jesus, you can find it on Amazon. It's in Kindle, it is in paperback, it is in hardcover. You can also read more of my musings and writings at the unfinished life on sub stack. Lindsay's got some projects that she's going to be working on in the future and that's pretty much it. That's a plug for myself, but you know what, until the next time,
