1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:10,600
[Music]

2
00:00:10,600 --> 00:00:13,840
What does it mean to be called crazy in a crazy world?

3
00:00:13,840 --> 00:00:18,040
Listen to Madness Radio, voices and visions from outside mental health.

4
00:00:18,040 --> 00:00:28,280
[Music]

5
00:00:28,280 --> 00:00:31,480
Welcome to Madness Radio, this is your host Will Hall.

6
00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:37,280
And today I'm joined by my co-host, Dina Tyler. Welcome, Dina.

7
00:00:37,280 --> 00:00:38,920
Thanks for having me here.

8
00:00:38,920 --> 00:00:42,600
Yeah, so today our guest is Paris Williams.

9
00:00:42,600 --> 00:00:46,680
Paris Williams is a PhD in clinical psychology

10
00:00:46,680 --> 00:00:51,000
who went through his own experience of extreme states and madness.

11
00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:55,160
Paris works as a therapist with people diagnosed with psychosis,

12
00:00:55,160 --> 00:00:59,640
including from a spiritual emergence and trauma perspective.

13
00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:02,840
So welcome to Madness Radio, Paris Williams.

14
00:01:02,840 --> 00:01:06,600
Thank you, Will, and thank you, Dina, for having me.

15
00:01:06,600 --> 00:01:11,880
Yeah, and I understand that you recently deregistered as a clinical psychologist,

16
00:01:11,880 --> 00:01:15,640
so I want to congratulate you on that.

17
00:01:15,640 --> 00:01:19,320
Yeah, that's right. There's been many years of cognitive dissonance

18
00:01:19,320 --> 00:01:21,880
with that title I have to say.

19
00:01:21,880 --> 00:01:26,680
Wanting to make changes from the inside, but struggling with the conflict and

20
00:01:26,680 --> 00:01:31,240
my own personal and professional ethics and values, and finally,

21
00:01:31,240 --> 00:01:34,280
the dissonance just got too much and yeah, I let it go.

22
00:01:34,280 --> 00:01:36,840
And it's very liberating, I have to say.

23
00:01:36,840 --> 00:01:40,440
So you stepped away from that official licensing position

24
00:01:40,440 --> 00:01:43,720
because you just don't agree with the way the system works?

25
00:01:43,720 --> 00:01:48,760
Yeah, there's just been so much about the lack of commitment to, I mean, actually the

26
00:01:48,760 --> 00:01:53,560
cognitive ethics really isn't that bad, but the commitment to it and especially

27
00:01:53,560 --> 00:01:56,680
especially the issue around forced treatment and

28
00:01:56,680 --> 00:02:00,680
like not really using genuine informed consent and pressure and coercion and

29
00:02:00,680 --> 00:02:03,240
all these kind of power over dynamics and all of that.

30
00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:05,400
And I'm sure you're both very well aware.

31
00:02:05,400 --> 00:02:10,200
Um, treading around that for all these years just refused to be part of that,

32
00:02:10,200 --> 00:02:14,600
but you know, just such a dance, you know, holding the title I hold and yeah,

33
00:02:14,600 --> 00:02:18,680
so finally, I just left. And I'm actually starting another

34
00:02:18,680 --> 00:02:23,160
organization called integrative psychology alliance at the moment to try to

35
00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:26,760
remedy some of those issues just with it with another set of dissidents

36
00:02:26,760 --> 00:02:31,400
psychologists have a number of them have left as well. So we'll see where it goes.

37
00:02:31,400 --> 00:02:36,920
Fantastic. That's great. I mean, that's your exactly describing why I was

38
00:02:36,920 --> 00:02:40,760
in a licensing program and then I just said, no, I'm this is not going to work with

39
00:02:40,760 --> 00:02:43,800
me. I don't want to be part of this. Even though I was in a progressive

40
00:02:43,800 --> 00:02:47,320
spiritual, um, spiritual claiming, let's say,

41
00:02:47,320 --> 00:02:50,440
licensing program, that's also your path as well.

42
00:02:50,440 --> 00:02:53,720
Dean, are you identify as a counselor and coach?

43
00:02:53,720 --> 00:02:57,240
You do therapy with people, but you didn't do the licensing

44
00:02:57,240 --> 00:03:02,120
clinical psychologist pathway? Right. I felt that there was just too many

45
00:03:02,120 --> 00:03:07,320
limitations in the way that I wanted to work in the way that I felt

46
00:03:07,320 --> 00:03:10,840
would be helpful, even, you know, as somebody that had been through it,

47
00:03:10,840 --> 00:03:14,920
I didn't want to work in that way. So I, I took the other route of

48
00:03:14,920 --> 00:03:20,520
just not going for licensing, NFT and being springing what I bring as a

49
00:03:20,520 --> 00:03:23,560
counselor. And one of the things that I was taught

50
00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:29,000
is that you kind of sit behind this shield or this screen.

51
00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:33,000
And the idea that a therapist is going to be talking about

52
00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:37,640
their own personal experience was really frowned upon or if not

53
00:03:37,640 --> 00:03:42,360
prohibited, um, because the idea that it would interfere with

54
00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:50,200
treatment and negatively affect the clients, but actually I think maybe the

55
00:03:50,200 --> 00:03:55,640
three of us believe the opposite that our personal experience going through

56
00:03:55,640 --> 00:03:59,320
what people that we work with have gone through actually enhances and

57
00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:03,160
strengthens our work. Would you say that's true, Paris?

58
00:04:03,160 --> 00:04:08,120
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've all the fields of psychology, the formal fields,

59
00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:12,520
this why I was drawn to more of the humanistic fields, you know, because

60
00:04:12,520 --> 00:04:15,800
especially car Rogers really laid out, you know, this principles of empathy,

61
00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:20,600
genuineness and positive regard and genuineness being a really key aspect of

62
00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:24,200
that. So I think just bringing your genuine humanity into the relationship, I

63
00:04:24,200 --> 00:04:27,560
think, so important. Well, that's what I was thinking we could kind of

64
00:04:27,560 --> 00:04:30,600
dive. There's a lot of things that we can talk about. And I want to

65
00:04:30,600 --> 00:04:34,840
remind people, I mean, I did do an interview with you, Deena.

66
00:04:34,840 --> 00:04:38,680
People want to check out Deena Tyler. I think it's called communicating with psychosis.

67
00:04:38,680 --> 00:04:42,520
Is that on madness radio? So yeah, so definitely check that out.

68
00:04:42,520 --> 00:04:45,400
There's a lot of things that we could talk about, but I really want to spend our

69
00:04:45,400 --> 00:04:50,200
times day talking about like, how do you work with people struggling with

70
00:04:50,200 --> 00:04:55,160
extreme states and madness? I mean, it's a very broad question. And maybe also

71
00:04:55,160 --> 00:04:59,400
what is different about the way that we work and the way that kind of a

72
00:04:59,400 --> 00:05:04,200
clinical psychologist or psychiatrist or maybe traditional mainstream.

73
00:05:04,200 --> 00:05:07,560
And it's a very, very broad question, but I think it's a question a lot of people

74
00:05:07,560 --> 00:05:10,680
have. I mean, there, there even has been a

75
00:05:10,680 --> 00:05:16,840
belief in the feel that you can't, you can't do psychotherapy

76
00:05:16,840 --> 00:05:23,640
with someone who's has a certain experience that's too far out there to

77
00:05:23,640 --> 00:05:26,840
extreme. And now that kind of has been revised that, okay, well, yeah,

78
00:05:26,840 --> 00:05:32,200
counseling is good. It's supportive. It's good to have some kind of like

79
00:05:32,200 --> 00:05:37,800
social psychosocial component, but really it's a compliment and two medications.

80
00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:41,640
The medications are really the bedrock. And then if you kind of want to add

81
00:05:41,640 --> 00:05:44,920
these additional, and I think the three of us would really, because I understand

82
00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:47,400
Paris, you don't take medications, is that right?

83
00:05:47,400 --> 00:05:50,360
Hmm, that's right. And what was your, were you diagnosed with the big

84
00:05:50,360 --> 00:05:53,960
bad schizophrenia label? Or what did you, what was your diagnosis?

85
00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:58,040
No, actually, I managed to avoid the system altogether. So I never got a

86
00:05:58,040 --> 00:06:02,680
formal diagnosis. Well, now having gone through the whole, hitting steeped into the

87
00:06:02,680 --> 00:06:05,160
DSM model and all of that, it probably would have been like,

88
00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:08,920
schizoeffective, because I definitely had the big swings of emotion combined

89
00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:13,320
with a lot of anomalous experiences. Oh, yeah, that's what they do.

90
00:06:13,320 --> 00:06:16,760
It's called me too. Yeah, I said, somewhere between bipolar,

91
00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:20,280
schizophrenia, we'll just call it schizoeffective, something like that.

92
00:06:20,280 --> 00:06:23,080
Something like that. Yeah, I've got, you got everything. Let's just,

93
00:06:23,080 --> 00:06:26,760
that's right. Yeah. And Dina, you were diagnosed with psychosis,

94
00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:31,400
but they gave you the bipolar, maybe bipolar and psychosis,

95
00:06:31,400 --> 00:06:36,200
and OS, meaning not otherwise specified. So I'm kind of psychosis, we can't figure it out,

96
00:06:36,200 --> 00:06:42,600
we'll just throw the psychosis. And they were, they were tossing around schizophrenia and

97
00:06:42,600 --> 00:06:47,320
schizoeffective disorder, but I decided I didn't want another label at that point.

98
00:06:47,320 --> 00:06:51,240
So I stopped telling them things and accident them in all systems.

99
00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:56,520
So Paris, you want to just maybe tell us a bit about your, your experience and what you,

100
00:06:56,520 --> 00:07:01,400
what you went through and how did you of, how did you end up being a psychiatry avoid

101
00:07:01,400 --> 00:07:07,240
or how did you kind of not get into the system? So there was quite, quite extensive trauma

102
00:07:07,240 --> 00:07:12,360
in my childhood that I managed to basically bury quite effectively.

103
00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:18,120
And interestingly enough, I turned to a hanglight, I had a real passion of flying. It was like,

104
00:07:18,120 --> 00:07:22,760
as I was going through that trauma, I had this really tense longing to fly. I lived

105
00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:27,560
really, and was just fascinated by the hawks certainly overhead. And I had myself convinced

106
00:07:27,560 --> 00:07:30,840
I was actually growing wings. Like I was asking my stepbrother, you know, are there

107
00:07:30,840 --> 00:07:35,320
little nubs on my back? Are there wings? And I just had to believe that I still have to be able to fly

108
00:07:35,320 --> 00:07:40,040
out of this hellhole, you know, that I was living in. That never happened. However, I did learn

109
00:07:40,040 --> 00:07:45,880
that in a hanglight and became an instructor at 18. So remind us what hanglighting is basically,

110
00:07:45,880 --> 00:07:50,200
you, you basically have a kite with a bar and you jump off a cliff. Is that basically what hanglighting?

111
00:07:50,200 --> 00:07:54,760
Pretty much. Yeah, you have a triangle shaped bar and a big kite and you hang on, you hook into it

112
00:07:54,760 --> 00:08:01,960
and you watch off a mountain or a cliff and a way to go. And you can, you can fly for many,

113
00:08:01,960 --> 00:08:09,320
many, many hours and many miles now. So, you know, with these newer gliders. But I became an instructor

114
00:08:09,320 --> 00:08:14,200
and became really like, everything to fly and developing, designing hang gliders, doing lots of

115
00:08:14,200 --> 00:08:20,520
competition, aerobatics, cross-country, and a whole thing. And it kept, it sort of was able to help me

116
00:08:20,520 --> 00:08:25,560
keep everything buried. Like, but I would go through these states where I get really depressive. I

117
00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:30,200
didn't fly for like more than a week. I started getting majorly depressed, like suicideily depressed.

118
00:08:30,200 --> 00:08:34,760
So I like, it was my drug, basically. Like, even though it was meeting lots of other needs,

119
00:08:34,760 --> 00:08:39,800
that I think were really, you know, great. There was also kind of a drug element, like I had to,

120
00:08:41,160 --> 00:08:47,720
I had to basically keep the adrenaline going in order to keep the depression and everything buried.

121
00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:52,120
I think a lot of athletes report that that actually they've got to do the running and they've got to

122
00:08:52,120 --> 00:08:57,640
get to the, the gym and then if they don't, then some depression comes. But you don't, you don't think

123
00:08:57,640 --> 00:09:01,800
it was like an addiction to the hot, this is what people say. There's an addiction to the adrenaline.

124
00:09:01,800 --> 00:09:08,280
You think it was all the horror of what was going on in your childhood and family and trauma that

125
00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:14,680
you were really avoiding by using this running away sports adrenaline, hang gliding focus.

126
00:09:14,680 --> 00:09:20,440
Yeah, retro, expectively, I would say that. I mean, at the time, I just, I kind of believed what

127
00:09:20,440 --> 00:09:24,520
I was told from my parents, you know, that I was broken. I was actually diagnosed, I did have a

128
00:09:24,520 --> 00:09:31,480
diagnosis at an early age. I hear it, here it comes. Okay, you didn't completely. I forgot about that.

129
00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:39,960
I forgot about that. Actually, age seven, I was, the family was falling apart and I was deemed,

130
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:47,880
you know, the identified patient, you know, as the problem shop. And I was given an ADHD diagnosis

131
00:09:47,880 --> 00:09:54,600
and you're not, you can't diagnose a seven year old with a personality disorder, but they basically

132
00:09:54,600 --> 00:09:59,560
said I was on the verge of borderline personality disorder. You were on the border of borderline

133
00:09:59,560 --> 00:10:05,320
personality disorder. Yeah, that's right. Borderline borderline borderline. Wow, exactly. That's right.

134
00:10:05,320 --> 00:10:10,280
And then, and then I was sent to a corrective foster home for some years, several years to try

135
00:10:10,280 --> 00:10:17,400
to try to fix me. So I had this belief that I fought it with, you know, very, very strongly, very

136
00:10:17,400 --> 00:10:21,400
passionate against all of that, but I still kind of soaked in that there was something wrong with me.

137
00:10:21,400 --> 00:10:27,240
Here I was thinking that you were, you truly were an evader of psychiatry, but actually, no, you got hit,

138
00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:31,480
you got hit by the system pretty early. It sounds like. Yeah, yeah, that's right. It's right. Yeah.

139
00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:36,120
So I got hit quite quite early. What was going on in the family that was, you described it was,

140
00:10:36,120 --> 00:10:41,400
it was really falling apart and was really traumatic. I was the only child of my mom and dad and they

141
00:10:41,400 --> 00:10:46,920
broke up when I was two, the very short marriage. My mom was starting to have extreme states herself,

142
00:10:46,920 --> 00:10:51,880
actually, and her brother. So there was, there, and her mother. So there's a lot of extreme states

143
00:10:51,880 --> 00:10:56,680
in that whole side of the family, actually. So that's how I already had, in a way, I've already had

144
00:10:56,680 --> 00:11:03,800
the scarlet letter like, I stayed with my dad and moved in with a step family. He married another woman

145
00:11:03,800 --> 00:11:08,760
and she had three kids. These family members had been in the system and gotten diagnosis.

146
00:11:08,760 --> 00:11:14,280
Yeah, her mother and so my mom, my uncle and my grandmother, yes, had been in the system. My

147
00:11:14,280 --> 00:11:19,560
grandmother came in suicide in an extreme state. My grandfather had been in a hospital, I'm sorry,

148
00:11:19,560 --> 00:11:24,920
my grandfather, uncle, uncle in a hospital. And then my mother was a really effective

149
00:11:24,920 --> 00:11:31,240
avoidor, have to say. So I learned a lot from her. So even though I wasn't raised with her, she

150
00:11:31,240 --> 00:11:36,120
kind of gave me these early warnings, you know, like about the system and all of this kind of stuff.

151
00:11:36,120 --> 00:11:42,280
But I was raised with my father and step family from the age of three. And they pretty, because of

152
00:11:42,280 --> 00:11:45,720
that side of my family and all the kind of madness over there, there's already, I sort of,

153
00:11:45,720 --> 00:11:50,840
already had this kind of scarlet letter that it once sort of expected, I would, you know, I would

154
00:11:50,840 --> 00:11:57,560
be mad too. And I was extremely like, I was quite a hyper energetic child. And my step family was like

155
00:11:57,560 --> 00:12:04,120
the exact opposite. They were very shy, very introverted. So I, and I was youngest. But anyway,

156
00:12:04,120 --> 00:12:09,160
fit right in. I just plugged right into the identified patient role perfectly into that family system.

157
00:12:09,160 --> 00:12:15,240
You know, my dad and then step on her kids. And so my time was seven. And it was, yeah, I was the

158
00:12:15,240 --> 00:12:21,320
family wasn't working. And I was definitely the escape goat there. And it was partly because,

159
00:12:21,320 --> 00:12:25,320
you know, I was, I was broke and I could come from the kind of madness in my side of the family,

160
00:12:25,320 --> 00:12:31,640
was the belief. And I did get those diagnoses. And then I got sent to foster, which was actually

161
00:12:31,640 --> 00:12:35,960
very traumatic. That was really intense. It was kind of a combination of being kicked out of the

162
00:12:35,960 --> 00:12:42,360
family as well as going to a foster and it was quite abusive. Well, I sexual and physical abuse.

163
00:12:42,360 --> 00:12:48,680
How old were you when they? I was seven or actually, I was eight. I think I just turned eight. I just

164
00:12:48,680 --> 00:12:55,560
turned eight. I was there until 10. And I was told I would stay there until I was better basically.

165
00:12:55,560 --> 00:13:02,680
And so it was an indefinite assignment in this home. Remind us how old you are now. So what,

166
00:13:02,680 --> 00:13:08,680
what years was this? Yeah, I'm 50 now. 50 years old. So I was eight. I was only there two years.

167
00:13:08,680 --> 00:13:13,480
It was quite interesting. It was a very intense fundamental Christian foster home, extremely disciplinary.

168
00:13:13,480 --> 00:13:20,360
And they were almost all all of them. They're all boys. And they're virtually all orphans. There's

169
00:13:20,360 --> 00:13:24,920
a couple like me who had got sent there from a family, but most of them didn't even have a family.

170
00:13:24,920 --> 00:13:30,040
And it was definitely disciplinary. And so it was all like troubled kids. You know, we were all

171
00:13:30,040 --> 00:13:35,960
considered quite troubled. I remember at first of that, oh, this is cool. You know, I'll be able to

172
00:13:35,960 --> 00:13:41,320
hang out with a bunch of, you know, fellow kids and some fun. I'll be like, can't, but quickly,

173
00:13:41,320 --> 00:13:48,200
yeah, really, there was a lot of abuse and it tense. I mean, they worked us to the bone and

174
00:13:48,200 --> 00:13:53,880
tense discipline. And by the time I was 10, I still had the story. I would be there until I was 18.

175
00:13:53,880 --> 00:14:00,440
And unless I got better, whatever better met, basically better met not being oppositional and

176
00:14:00,440 --> 00:14:04,680
defiant. That was the other diagnosis. That's right. I'll be sure to fly disorder. Yeah, if you

177
00:14:05,800 --> 00:14:13,080
shall I actually kind of proud of that diagnosis, philosophy, but anyway, it is dead. Oh, gosh,

178
00:14:13,080 --> 00:14:17,640
as much as I really don't want to go back to my other family, it's actually better than this place.

179
00:14:17,640 --> 00:14:21,880
So I just, I went ahead and I found, I did everything. Yes, Jesus. Yes, I loved you. I'll do it. I'll

180
00:14:21,880 --> 00:14:28,040
say whatever you want. And I just, yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. And I just like, and they were just

181
00:14:28,040 --> 00:14:33,320
amazed. Like, oh, my God, he found, he found Jesus. He found his heart and he's all better.

182
00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:38,680
And they sent me back. And all I did was learn how to be a good actor, basically. I just put on a really

183
00:14:38,680 --> 00:14:43,720
good act, got out of there. But now I was living under the threat of getting sent back as soon as I

184
00:14:43,720 --> 00:14:51,000
acted up again. So then I just withdrew. I became totally reclusive to my family and actually even

185
00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:54,920
from the world in general, I became really quiet. I went from an extreme extrovert to

186
00:14:54,920 --> 00:15:00,680
extremity for quite a few years there. And then I flew out of that literally on a hang glider,

187
00:15:00,680 --> 00:15:08,040
you know, when I was 17. And then, but I buried all that stuff. And the sky helped me to basically

188
00:15:08,040 --> 00:15:13,880
keep it down. Again, in the moment, I didn't really know 100% what's going on. I just knew I wanted to

189
00:15:13,880 --> 00:15:19,640
fly one to be free and that represented freedom to me. Do you think that this high, high energy

190
00:15:19,640 --> 00:15:24,920
that got called ADHD? Do you think that you kind of channeled some of that energy into the

191
00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:31,000
hang gliding in the sky? Absolutely. Yeah, that's right. I mean, in hindsight, it was kind of a,

192
00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:36,600
I was just passionate. Like, I just loved life. And I was super curious. And, you know, I'd

193
00:15:36,600 --> 00:15:43,640
loved adventure. It was a shame that it got so apologized. Can you just help evoke to us what

194
00:15:43,640 --> 00:15:49,000
it's like the hang glide? Actually, just wet this last weekend. It had an amazing,

195
00:15:49,000 --> 00:15:55,720
an essential atago, which is south over the right over the Alps. So the New Zealand has mountains

196
00:15:55,720 --> 00:16:02,760
are very similar to the Swiss Alps, called the New Zealand Alps. And, kind of to about 8,500 feet

197
00:16:02,760 --> 00:16:09,960
and just flew about 160 miles, but just kind of touring from mountain to mountain, you know, on the Alps.

198
00:16:09,960 --> 00:16:17,480
A few hawks getting right up to cloud base, so circling thermals right up to cumulus clouds,

199
00:16:17,480 --> 00:16:22,680
which are the tops of thermals. It's quite magic. And it's just totally quiet. I live a

200
00:16:22,680 --> 00:16:28,040
little bit of wind. There's no motor. You're just working the currents. So you can't see the thermals.

201
00:16:28,040 --> 00:16:32,920
Say, it's all, I think you feel just like a bird because you feel the thermals through your

202
00:16:32,920 --> 00:16:37,880
fingers. And as you're fine, you go, oh, there's some lift and you turn. And this, some of

203
00:16:37,880 --> 00:16:42,600
the, sometimes they're really tight, powerful little windy. They're, they're basically, it would

204
00:16:42,600 --> 00:16:48,040
look like little tornadoes if you could see them. And so sometimes you got to really hang on, you know,

205
00:16:48,040 --> 00:16:52,760
they're like, you hook into it and on a good day, you can be going up a thousand feet a minute or

206
00:16:52,760 --> 00:17:00,040
even faster. So it's just really intense. Really fun. And then, yeah, I don't, it's really hard to

207
00:17:00,040 --> 00:17:05,880
put anything like that into words, but it's good as I can do. Yeah. That's incredible. It's such a

208
00:17:05,880 --> 00:17:12,360
wonderful antidote to the horrors that you just described going through being kidnapped and put

209
00:17:12,360 --> 00:17:20,280
in that horrible abusive place. And do you think that if you hadn't had that R to escape,

210
00:17:20,280 --> 00:17:24,600
you would never have found hang lighting? Or do you feel like that was just your destiny? And as

211
00:17:24,600 --> 00:17:29,320
soon as you found it, you would have just gone for it. Well, I was heading down. I was already

212
00:17:29,320 --> 00:17:34,680
heading heavily into drug abuse. I'll call abuse at that age already. Like I was drinking really

213
00:17:34,680 --> 00:17:42,200
heavily by the time I was kind of 16, smoking lots of weed. You can let some magic mushrooms,

214
00:17:42,200 --> 00:17:47,880
stuff like that. But I think if I hadn't found flying, I think I would have probably gone down the path

215
00:17:47,880 --> 00:17:52,760
and probably the jail or psych hospital. But it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't a good place at all.

216
00:17:52,760 --> 00:17:59,160
So it really pulled me out of there in so many ways. You found a different way to get high, like literally.

217
00:17:59,160 --> 00:18:03,800
That's right. Literally. That's right. God, what an incredible story. That's wow. I just have this

218
00:18:03,800 --> 00:18:12,360
vision of you spiraling up on these thermals and going out to 8,000 feet and 60 miles above these

219
00:18:12,360 --> 00:18:20,680
Alps mountains. Just incredible. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I was actually got a longest flight,

220
00:18:20,680 --> 00:18:26,920
318 miles of the long flight and been up to even over 19 and a half thousand feet. So high,

221
00:18:26,920 --> 00:18:32,200
so I've been over the Rocky Mountains. So it's just incredible what you can do in this tiny little

222
00:18:32,200 --> 00:18:40,680
kite. I still can't quite get over it. 19,000 miles 19,000 feet up and you went 15 miles as the far

223
00:18:40,680 --> 00:18:48,200
thest you went. That's right. Yeah. So yeah, it's a real, I mean, I still can't, on the physical dimension,

224
00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:53,640
the physical plane, I still can't imagine anything more free. But there's other kinds of freedom,

225
00:18:53,640 --> 00:18:57,720
no doubt that you know, I just heard later. And you're not up there thinking, oh my god, I'm

226
00:18:57,720 --> 00:19:03,000
gonna fall. Oh my god, I'm gonna fall. Oh my god, I'm gonna fall. You really just, you get comfortable

227
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:09,080
up there. You just are. Yeah, mostly, mostly. But occasionally when you get in some really big air,

228
00:19:09,080 --> 00:19:12,360
kind of the equivalent of like, you know, big wave surfing or something, you're gonna really strong,

229
00:19:12,360 --> 00:19:16,120
they're mostly completely little scary. You know, because the glider could potentially tumble and break

230
00:19:16,120 --> 00:19:20,760
and it's rare, but it's pot. So sometimes you're having those thoughts, but we actually have a

231
00:19:20,760 --> 00:19:27,640
repair machine. So this is a debt, this is a debt defying sport you're doing basically. Yeah, especially

232
00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:34,600
the way that I ended up doing it. I, I, because it became again, in hindsight, it was so much about me

233
00:19:34,600 --> 00:19:40,040
managing my trauma, my resolve trauma, I needed that adrenaline fix. It was more than just getting high

234
00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:43,960
in the freedom. That was a big part of it always. But this, this turned into something else like that,

235
00:19:43,960 --> 00:19:49,880
that adrenaline rush became so important. I basically had to keep pushing the bar further and

236
00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:57,000
further and further towards death. Like it was, you know, that expression that you, the closer you

237
00:19:57,000 --> 00:20:01,880
are to death, the more alive you feel. And I was feeling so dead inside, you know, it just, I

238
00:20:01,880 --> 00:20:06,920
become so depressed and I had to keep pushing that bar. So I got into really extreme aerobatics,

239
00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:11,160
doing like loops and rolls and spins and really loaded the ground and it lowered, lowered the ground,

240
00:20:11,160 --> 00:20:16,840
but you know, just really pushing that edge and amazingly survived it. So Paris, explain to us

241
00:20:17,720 --> 00:20:23,080
how this is healing trauma because some people would, because I think that maybe psychiatry would say,

242
00:20:23,080 --> 00:20:26,760
well, this is actually a symptom of trauma. You're actually doing something. You're, these are,

243
00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:32,600
this is danger, danger to self. Like this is dangerous behaviors. Why are you not just reenacting

244
00:20:32,600 --> 00:20:39,720
your trauma? How is it that pushing ourselves, encountering death, taking risks, meeting that fear?

245
00:20:39,720 --> 00:20:45,880
How can that actually be healing trauma? The great question. I absolutely, I absolutely think that it

246
00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:51,080
was my, my salvation. I really, I really believe that even though it certainly could have killed me,

247
00:20:51,080 --> 00:20:56,680
I definitely pushed, pushed it and I had a few close calls. I think there's this organic, like, and

248
00:20:56,680 --> 00:21:03,000
some of the methods, the therapeutic methods I use, we use word, organicity, which means this constant

249
00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:06,680
drive towards health and wholeness, which, you know, surviving and thriving. I think it's always

250
00:21:06,680 --> 00:21:11,560
there no matter how wounded you are. I was pretty wounded. But there's a part of me that really

251
00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:17,800
wanted to live. Like I wanted to enjoy life. I wanted to, and because of all that trauma I was holding,

252
00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:23,000
I felt quite dead. There's a real, you know, part of having significant, unresolved traumas,

253
00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:29,160
you often go into quite a dead and place, you know, you're just surviving. And so this was a way

254
00:21:29,160 --> 00:21:34,040
out of that. It gave me a way to actually thrive, you know, for those moments that I was in the sky.

255
00:21:34,040 --> 00:21:39,320
And so I see that it's a real healthy tool towards the really living. I mean, and let me come in

256
00:21:39,320 --> 00:21:43,800
to kind of bipolar relationship, you know, it's like going from one extreme, you know, to the other

257
00:21:43,800 --> 00:21:48,920
when I was flying, you know, but really happy and excited and alive and was on the ground. I just

258
00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:54,440
felt horrible, you know, so definitely developed that quality. But it gave me, I think it did give me

259
00:21:54,440 --> 00:22:00,200
way out and way through. I'm then eventually open to door to, I think, a deeper experience of

260
00:22:00,200 --> 00:22:05,080
freedom that hanglight and never quite attained. It basically working through that trauma, like,

261
00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:09,800
genuinely rather than just kind of avoiding it because it definitely had an avoided quality. Like,

262
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:14,040
I was avoiding it. I was doing it in a way that was making life worth living, you know, I didn't want

263
00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:18,920
to even, even though I had suicidality, this gave me like reason to get up in the morning and

264
00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:23,400
something to live for and all of that. It's really interesting because I think that often the

265
00:22:23,400 --> 00:22:30,520
solution or the pathway out of suicidal feelings is risk taking. Often people need to try something

266
00:22:30,520 --> 00:22:34,760
different, maybe blow up your life or do something or make a big change. And that can be

267
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:43,320
scary that the two things are really closely related that surviving the desire to die may involve

268
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:50,520
risking actual dangerous things in life or maybe symbolically or psychologically dangerous things.

269
00:22:50,520 --> 00:22:55,720
In the same day and I was just curious, you had since you are, you teach people how to hang

270
00:22:55,720 --> 00:23:01,720
glide and is this part of the way that you help them through healing their trauma to go there as part

271
00:23:01,720 --> 00:23:08,760
of your teaching? Yeah, it's interesting. So I, yeah, I became, that was my profession for quite a

272
00:23:08,760 --> 00:23:15,400
few years teaching and got really well in competition and stuff. And as I was doing that, I,

273
00:23:15,400 --> 00:23:21,320
a big part of that is helping people overcome their fear, of course, right? So many people who came to,

274
00:23:21,320 --> 00:23:26,280
like a lot of times, there were a lot of people like me, they were just like right into it. They didn't

275
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:30,120
really have a huge amount of fear to work through, but then there was a lot of people that were terrified,

276
00:23:30,120 --> 00:23:34,520
especially people who got the gift certificate from somebody to go do a tandem hang glide and fly,

277
00:23:34,520 --> 00:23:39,480
they didn't really want to be there. So I got a lot of practice supporting people and helping them to

278
00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:45,000
relax and settle and work through their fear and, you know, just really have that experience.

279
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:49,720
I've looked, if you're actually able to tame the fear, look at what an amazing experience you can have.

280
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:55,880
And so that did, even though it wasn't formally therapy, it was definitely therapeutic to many people in

281
00:23:55,880 --> 00:24:02,840
the day. Yeah, it's making me think of my, my adventures with rock climbing and even going to the rock

282
00:24:02,840 --> 00:24:09,000
climbing gym, which is, which is terrifying. You've got pads underneath you, but if you're up,

283
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:14,920
you know, 12 feet, 15 feet and you slip and fall back, it's a scary experience. And you slam

284
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:20,520
the pad and you can, you can really get bruising, get really shaken and being able to,

285
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:27,000
there's a word that gets used in trauma therapy, titrate, like the idea that you bite size, you get a

286
00:24:27,000 --> 00:24:32,520
little bit of fear and you get familiar with it, you get a sense of control over it and then you bite

287
00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:38,440
another little bit of fear rather than just having the fear either flood you in this giant overwhelming

288
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:45,080
or you just avoid it with this kind of deadening run running away strategy. Would you say that

289
00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:50,520
that's kind of what you've been doing with with your hang gliding? Yeah, I mean, it was kind of

290
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:55,640
interesting because even going back before the hang gliding, I had this weird relationship with fear

291
00:24:55,640 --> 00:25:01,960
since I was maybe kind of that really early, you know, 89/10 where I was, I kept doing things like,

292
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:10,680
scrambling on edges of cliffs and climbing buildings and like railroad bridges and I just,

293
00:25:10,680 --> 00:25:16,280
I had this, yeah, it's like I wanted to overcome my fear. It was like this intense urgency to do that.

294
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:22,120
Like it was kind of fun but it was more than that and again, I kind of recognized it was like this deeper

295
00:25:22,120 --> 00:25:27,720
fear that I was really trying to master. I was mastering physical fear but it was actually a deeper

296
00:25:27,720 --> 00:25:31,800
existential fear and fear related to being kicked out of my family and all that stuff.

297
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:37,320
Fear of my own, you know, something's wrong with me. So the way I was trying to master my fear of all

298
00:25:37,320 --> 00:25:44,680
of that and hindsight. But it definitely paved the way to do my own genuine healing process,

299
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:48,520
you know, to work through the deeper layers of fear. Starting with the physical and then eventually

300
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:55,160
going, you know, these more working through psychological, spiritual, existential fears, you might say.

301
00:25:55,160 --> 00:26:04,360
Fear is a huge thing that I think comes up around extreme altered madness, psychotic states.

302
00:26:04,360 --> 00:26:10,360
There's the fear that often underlies what the person is going through and then there's the fear

303
00:26:10,360 --> 00:26:15,640
of the consequences like I'm going to get thrown in prison or I'm going to get thrown in the psych

304
00:26:15,640 --> 00:26:19,400
hospital or I'm going to get put on these different meds. But then there's also the fear around

305
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:28,440
the person. Right. And you know, there's the fear that can come in from, you know, being traumatized

306
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:35,480
and sometimes that that leaving your body, that dissociative state of you are just, you know,

307
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:43,720
it's no longer safe here to be present and in your life and in your body. And, you know, I experienced

308
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:50,920
that very much so personally where, you know, life became very, very limited. I wasn't living life

309
00:26:50,920 --> 00:26:59,800
and even catatonic at times because I was just not here. And so it's very interesting to see this,

310
00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:08,360
this other way of like really taking that risk with your physical body and having how that catapult

311
00:27:08,360 --> 00:27:16,600
you to face the fear head on is really, really interesting to me. I haven't quite done anything

312
00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:24,200
like that. You know, it's always been in the like that, that like a little bubble thought bubble

313
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:32,360
of like, oh, what if it's just it's incredible to hear your journey. But actually hearing that makes

314
00:27:32,360 --> 00:27:40,040
me think about you, Deena, because you have spent a lot of time hiding and mute and yet your

315
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:50,280
public work is so vibrant and so out and so expressive and you have such a strong voice. And

316
00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:55,480
people don't see that you go through a lot of fear even doing this interview. It's like, oh, it's

317
00:27:55,480 --> 00:28:02,840
scary. Am I going to co-host? So it sounds like all of us have kind of worked with our own fears

318
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:10,120
and overcome our fears as or overcome some of our fears, let's say, as part of our healing process

319
00:28:10,120 --> 00:28:15,640
around extreme states and madness. And I think that's a big part of what what we do when we help

320
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:20,600
other people. Would you say that that's true? It's maybe it's a big part of how you help people that

321
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:27,720
you work with who are maybe experiencing what what gets called psychosis. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

322
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:32,040
when we go into it, if we look at it from a trauma perspective, let's say, and we go into, we basically

323
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:36,040
kind of falling into a kind of fear state, right? And then we could kind of stop there to some

324
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:43,000
some greater lesser degree and to be able to actually, you know, come out of that to emerge from

325
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:49,960
that fear state. You know, it requires a certain kind of courage. I would say even almost a willingness

326
00:28:49,960 --> 00:28:55,160
to face death. You know, I was trying to do it literally, but there's something deeper. Obviously,

327
00:28:55,160 --> 00:29:00,600
you don't literally have to face death in the way that I was doing, but on some level, you have to be

328
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:06,360
able to face the unknown. Right? You have to hear it. It's like your old way of living and of being

329
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:12,680
is no longer tenable, it's no longer working. And you have to emerge in a really new way of being.

330
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:16,360
And you don't actually know what that's going to be. Right? There's a lot of mystery there.

331
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:21,880
And so, willingness to die to the old in order to trust that you'll be reborn into something new.

332
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:26,840
I think ultimately is what that's how I see the therapy process is supporting, helping people find

333
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:31,480
the resource, the courage and the faith. I think faith is a big part of it that actually that will

334
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:37,640
happen. If you face your fears, your demons, so to speak, that, you know, there's every possibility,

335
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:40,920
you'll come through the other side and much happier and healthier.

336
00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:47,080
So one of the, one of the ways I really like working is somatically with the body because I

337
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:52,360
there's kind of this expression that body is the unconscious mind. You know, we have the conscious

338
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:58,200
mind, you know, our thoughts, etc. But then our body, the postures, the tensions, the gestures,

339
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:04,600
aspect of the body are actually holding a more directly tapped into our unconscious.

340
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:09,480
And so, and so it's usually our, when we're talking about trauma, especially, it's our unconscious.

341
00:30:09,480 --> 00:30:13,800
Most of that stuff gets kind of buried and pulled down into the unconscious, I think it's kind of repressed

342
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:19,720
in some way. But I'm working with a client. So I'll give one example. I was working with a client.

343
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:24,120
She had really horrible traumatic event, you know, man broken to her house,

344
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:33,080
raped her. There's a knife. She was cut badly. It was really bad. And she went into a really dark

345
00:30:33,080 --> 00:30:39,160
shell for a long time. But the time I saw her, uh, it's probably, I think it was like, no, maybe I'm

346
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:43,080
almost a year later. And she'd been through a few therapists without making much progress and

347
00:30:43,080 --> 00:30:49,080
it was pretty, pretty stuck. And it took about a month just to, just to create safety and trust with

348
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:53,880
me, just, you know, building some human relationship and connection. And then, um, I just saw, you know,

349
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,560
she was in this very curled up state, like kind of like a little, almost like a ball with the

350
00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:02,840
shoulders really in and her heart really protected. But then I could see this part of her

351
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:07,640
hands, which start to open and expand like this little moment of expansiveness. And then we'll go

352
00:31:07,640 --> 00:31:13,000
back to the ball again. And, uh, and we had enough trust at this point where I could kind of contact

353
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:17,480
that the body, the body was saying, it's like, oh, you're, you know, I noticed your arms kind of

354
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:22,360
want to, some party wants to expand. But then, you know, that could scare you or something happens

355
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:26,920
and you go back in your balls at right? And she's like, yeah, it's like, well, would it be like to maybe

356
00:31:26,920 --> 00:31:32,600
just try really slowly expanding? And she tried it and it was just too scary. It was just so vulnerable.

357
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:38,120
And so I modeled it. I said, well, I tell you how about you watch me and you direct me. You tell me

358
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:43,480
how to do what you want to do, but feels too scary. And so I got into the curled position myself. And

359
00:31:43,480 --> 00:31:49,880
and I started to open and she just would say, stop, stop, stop there. And I stopped there and she just

360
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:54,920
observing and then she, okay, go ahead and I go a little further. And eventually, you know, I was

361
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:59,720
fully expanded arms outstretched, heart kind of wide. And she just observed me in that position. And

362
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:03,480
then, and then I was able to come back to a neutral position. And then she was able to do it.

363
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:09,160
And so that was kind of like using the word titration that you talked about her bite sizing. But

364
00:32:09,160 --> 00:32:13,880
also in this case, modeling. So like, I was actually able to model something she wanted to do. And

365
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:19,720
that was felt safer at first. But once she actually witnessed it, then she had to encourage to do it.

366
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,760
And that was this huge turning point in her, and her recovery.

367
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:30,680
And what's remarkable about that is using using movements in the moment, which is so missing so much

368
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:36,680
from kind of traditional mainstream analytical thought, thought talking, it's even called talking

369
00:32:36,680 --> 00:32:40,680
therapy or the talking. That's right. And I think that there's a lot of different

370
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:45,800
approaches that are moving in the kind of direction that you're describing. I mean, it sounds like

371
00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:51,960
maybe a somatic experiencing session or maybe a hako mi session or the training that I did in

372
00:32:51,960 --> 00:32:58,200
process work. And then also, I know Dina does breath work where there's a big emphasis on if there are

373
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:03,640
spontaneous movements, you want to see them and support them and allow the person to move

374
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:11,160
through them. Because the idea is that there's energy that's held that's kind of stuck. But it also

375
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:17,960
wants to unwind. It wants to express, but it's protective because when it's tried to express in

376
00:33:17,960 --> 00:33:23,480
the past, it's been too much, it's been overwhelming, it's been dangerous, there's been an ongoing threat.

377
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:27,880
So how do you make it safe for the person in the present? And I loved what you said right at the

378
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:37,160
beginning, Paris about this word, "organicity," the trusting of the, really the ecological or the

379
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:44,360
evolutionary perspective that we are living, growing beings that must have an intrinsic

380
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:54,920
instinctual organism striving to heal that we, that absolutely is true on a psychological level.

381
00:33:54,920 --> 00:34:01,960
And so it's not that you're fixing a computer or you're fixing a car by diagnosing. It's interesting,

382
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:08,840
your auto mechanic uses the same word as a psychiatrist does diagnosing what the problem is, but actually

383
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:15,240
you're with the person, you're creating a safe space, you're witnessing, you're reflecting, you're

384
00:34:15,240 --> 00:34:21,800
mirroring, and then you're noticing where the healing is already trying to happen and then to

385
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:29,720
support it and validate it as a natural emerging. And that means that you can't go into a session

386
00:34:29,720 --> 00:34:38,440
saying, "Okay, I'm going to talk with this client about her fears of opening up in life and we're

387
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:44,200
going to kind of discuss her fears that actually the session takes you in a different direction where

388
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:50,120
she's curled up and you're allowing that to happen because you're trusting, "Oh, there's something

389
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:56,920
in this that's actually much wiser than I am." It's the young, like you said, the unconscious,

390
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:02,280
the body is holding the unconscious, and the unconscious has this intrinsic. So if I'm there and

391
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:09,640
I'm patient, I build the trust if I allow it to happen. "Oh, here's a contracting fear expression

392
00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:15,560
somatically, but there's an expansive, let's explore that." And then you're also what I think is

393
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:23,000
remarkable about your example is you're relying on the person themselves to develop their awareness

394
00:35:23,000 --> 00:35:28,200
of what's happening. You're saying, "Oh, I noticed this and let me show it to you. Okay, you're too

395
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:33,000
afraid. It's too scary for you. Okay, but let me do, let me model it for you. Tell me what you see

396
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:39,640
rather than coming up with an interpretation, giving advice, directing the person in a certain

397
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:46,520
certain pattern or program that you have from your, and I think it's remarkable because I think a

398
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:51,320
number of different, a number of different therapeutic approaches to trauma are taking this kind of

399
00:35:51,320 --> 00:35:56,840
organic perspective. Dean, I know that you and I have talked about this a lot. If someone,

400
00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:04,440
if there's a family and someone in the family is like, "No, I refuse. I won't. Can we see that as a

401
00:36:04,440 --> 00:36:12,680
positive thing? Can we maybe open to that as being part of that organic healing tendency that

402
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:21,720
energy and that push and that drive to change and heal? Maybe coming out as a way of saying,

403
00:36:21,720 --> 00:36:25,800
"No, I don't want to cooperate with the system." I don't want to follow my parents

404
00:36:27,240 --> 00:36:34,120
agenda. In the example that you're describing, it happens on a body level with the unconscious

405
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:39,160
expression of the body that's both curling in, but there's also something happening with the

406
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:44,280
expansion. I think this is a really crucial thing. I know that Stan Groff, who developed

407
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:51,240
breath work, cornerstone of that work is that there's an inner healer. There's an inner teacher

408
00:36:51,240 --> 00:36:56,520
that's always working. There's this innate drive to heal. There's this tremendous wisdom.

409
00:36:56,520 --> 00:37:03,640
In trauma, we sometimes think of trauma as a breaking of the mechanism, but it's not.

410
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:08,760
Trauma is really like at least how I think often it's useful to think of it.

411
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:16,440
His trauma is a held energy that needs to express and it keeps trying to express itself

412
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:22,440
in a resolution direction, but it doesn't quite have the support on the outside. It doesn't

413
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:28,920
quite have the right safety or the right context, but the repetition of the memories, the repetition

414
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:34,680
of the flashbacks and the triggers isn't just like a broken machine that's stuck on feeding you

415
00:37:34,680 --> 00:37:39,720
this tape, but it's actually a knock at the door that keeps coming saying, "Hey, maybe you can heal

416
00:37:39,720 --> 00:37:45,560
this. Hey, maybe it's time to heal this. There's all this energy in your system. Hey, maybe this time

417
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:51,400
it can be expressed safely. Hey, maybe this time you can find somewhere safe to tell this story,

418
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:58,200
to vocalize the words that go along with these memories and images that keep intruding on you."

419
00:37:58,200 --> 00:38:05,480
So I think that's maybe one of the crucial differences from the disease model that seems to fit

420
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:13,880
with what we've experienced has helped us as survivors, evaders, avoiders, ex inmates, or

421
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:22,840
of the psychiatric system. As I hear you speak and really resonating with everything you're saying,

422
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:29,480
I also think about the idea of parts, internal family systems or other Hacomi, other methods,

423
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:34,840
psychosynthesis, quite a few methods really draw on the principle parts that we have different parts

424
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:41,400
inside of us. Sometimes I have a different idea about what to do. So you often end up with these

425
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:48,200
kind of internal stalemates. Every part of me has a good intention. They're all trying to

426
00:38:48,200 --> 00:38:55,160
serve the well-being survival of this being here, Paris in this case, but they often have a different

427
00:38:55,160 --> 00:39:01,240
idea about how to do that. They get a little arguments and stalemates about that. So when you have trauma,

428
00:39:01,240 --> 00:39:06,680
for example, some parts will step up to the plate and be like, "protection, you just have to survive."

429
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:12,520
They get very protective, but it's hard to both be in a strong survival mode and a thriving mode

430
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:18,040
at the same time. So now we kind of end up these protective parts running the show for the most

431
00:39:18,040 --> 00:39:23,800
part and we're basically just surviving, not really thriving so much. So when I'm working with someone

432
00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:30,040
who's coming with significant trauma, that's what I'm seeing is, "Okay, this person is not feeling

433
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:35,880
safe enough to really thrive." So so much of their energy or parts would have term you want to use

434
00:39:35,880 --> 00:39:40,920
there is bound up and just trying to protect themselves. And it's completely understandable. Like, I

435
00:39:40,920 --> 00:39:44,520
agree with you. I don't actually like the word post-traumatic stress disorder because it's not actually

436
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:49,400
a disorder. It's more like an injury, post-traumatic stress injury. The person's been injured some way,

437
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:58,280
I think Peter Levine calls it that, post-traumatic stress injury. And so you end up, this person's

438
00:39:58,280 --> 00:40:02,120
been injured in this particular way. And now there's a lot of energy bound up in protection.

439
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:06,680
And if you try to push someone out of that, the protection, the protectiveness is just going to get

440
00:40:06,680 --> 00:40:11,400
stronger, right? Like, "Okay, this is definitely not safe now." So the only way to help them to,

441
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:15,400
those protectors to start to relax, those protective parts, is to help them feel safe.

442
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:20,040
And you do that by just, you prefer to all bringing your own humanity,

443
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:25,720
your genuineness, being human, empathizing with the person, not pressuring them in any way,

444
00:40:25,720 --> 00:40:31,160
no coercion. The antithesis of mainstream mental health unfortunately.

445
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:39,880
And if you stay with someone, have that kind of patience and trust that underneath the protectiveness,

446
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:43,320
there is a part of wanting to emerge, or more than a part of it, it's actually really their essence,

447
00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:49,640
right? The essence is wanting to emerge, wanting to blossom, wanting to thrive. Then that can happen,

448
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:54,920
but only when they feel safe enough to do that. And so you can't force that. It's like trying to grab a

449
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:58,520
a little carrot seedling and try to force it out of the ground and grow faster. It's like, "No,

450
00:40:58,520 --> 00:41:04,200
you just have to give it love and sunshine and water and it'll grow as fast as it can."

451
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:09,480
That was one of the things that I really resonated about, Young's work, which can be very

452
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:16,680
analytical and theoretical. But if you really study the essence of what Young's approach to the

453
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:23,320
psyche is about, it is about creating a dialogue between these different parts. That if his work with

454
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:29,560
the red book is sort of the heart of how he saw therapy and growth, the first of all he has an idea of

455
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:35,400
the unconscious as fundamentally moving towards healing and providing you something positive.

456
00:41:35,400 --> 00:41:40,040
And secondly, that they, yeah, there are these different parts and they are all in the service of

457
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:47,560
healing, but they may need to be explored and be given a chance to have a conversation and a

458
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:52,360
dialogue just as you gave an example of the person you were working with, you're kind of creating

459
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:57,480
a conversation between the part that wants to come out and expand and the part that feels, "Oh,

460
00:41:57,480 --> 00:42:04,280
no, wait a second. This is not safe. I need to be protecting." And then trusting that if you can

461
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:09,000
create a space for that conversation, that dialogue, and it could be a somatic dialogue, it could be a

462
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:17,480
body-oriented dialogue, that the process will then start to unfold naturally. And this word "safety"

463
00:42:17,480 --> 00:42:22,760
is such a, it's such a tricky word because it's the core, it's the center, it's really the most

464
00:42:22,760 --> 00:42:27,800
crucial thing because that's really how we form relationships. You start to get close with someone

465
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:34,040
because you feel safe with them, you open up, but it's about the mutuality because I can't tell you

466
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:38,760
that you're safe. I can't say, "Okay, you know, we don't have any sharp objects around you,

467
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:43,720
you don't have any shoelaces, you know, you're in a locked ward, no one can get in here,

468
00:42:43,720 --> 00:42:51,720
you're under 24/7 camera, you're safe, nothing bad is, that's not, it's a subjective experience of

469
00:42:51,720 --> 00:42:57,720
safe. It's an experience of safety that isn't used against a person in a domination, but it's actually

470
00:42:57,720 --> 00:43:05,720
arises from their authentic experience of safety, which is again the huge antidote, I think, to trauma,

471
00:43:05,720 --> 00:43:10,840
is really centering on what your experience is and having a sense of what your experience is and

472
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:17,720
having a sense of control and freedom, at least in a small way. So it is safety in a sense is the

473
00:43:17,720 --> 00:43:23,960
heart of what the whole thing is, but it gets such twisted and misused as a mechanism of control in

474
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:31,240
the system. And I would say safety is very close cousin is empowerment, right? Like you think of

475
00:43:31,240 --> 00:43:38,200
definition of trauma is you experience a threat, right? Like an opposite of safety combined with

476
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:44,680
disempowerment and an ability to manage that threat in some way, deal with that threat. And so the only

477
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:48,760
way to be able to feel safe and you know to be able to come through that is to feel both safe,

478
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:53,560
safe enough at least and empowered. You know, like I'm not being pressured, accursed and anything,

479
00:43:53,560 --> 00:44:00,120
like I'm actually able to, you know, make my own choices here. And so if we think about, you know,

480
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:04,280
the example you gave there, okay, you're in a locked ward and there's no sharp objects or shoelaces,

481
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:10,920
okay, yeah, maybe I'm safe, but I'm not empowered like, you know, my agency's gone. And so that,

482
00:44:10,920 --> 00:44:15,480
I think those two, they really have to go together. Yeah, it's not really safety. It's not really

483
00:44:15,480 --> 00:44:20,760
safety. That's why I'm genuine safety because at any time someone could do is anything to me and

484
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:25,640
I can't necessarily stop them, right? Yeah, although on the other side of it, someone might, if it's their

485
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:30,520
choice to go into that kind of setting and they feel experience that they have control, maybe they

486
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:37,720
could find some safety and some kind of empowerment in that context. I have a kind of a short horse story

487
00:44:37,720 --> 00:44:44,520
about that actually went really close friend of mine, another pilot. She, I wasn't around, I was actually

488
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:48,120
another country. I was really sad. I wasn't around to help her, but she had gone through a pretty

489
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:54,680
intense depression, suicidal depression and she was afraid she was going to take her life. So she

490
00:44:54,680 --> 00:44:59,000
had a part of her that wanted to live, but other part of her that didn't, right, it was feeling very

491
00:44:59,000 --> 00:45:08,120
suicidal. She went to a hospital voluntarily and said, look, I just need to be kept safe and monitored

492
00:45:08,120 --> 00:45:13,720
and make sure, I know it'll pass. I've had this before, but don't please no drugs because it just

493
00:45:13,720 --> 00:45:18,600
makes me worse. I know that. Just watch me. What do they do? The first thing they did, they forced

494
00:45:18,600 --> 00:45:24,920
Medicaid and they didn't watch her. She went into the courtyard and she climbed up a tree and she

495
00:45:24,920 --> 00:45:30,680
jumped out and she killed herself. Oh my god. It's just horrible. Like, okay, I mean, talk about

496
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:37,320
total failure. Yeah, I was, yeah, devastated. And just, but it's just highlights, you know, the broken

497
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:41,560
ness of the system, right? So many ways. So many stories. It's not hard. It wouldn't have been hard to

498
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:48,360
actually just provide this woman a basic refuge. She wasn't asking for much, you know, but, so yeah.

499
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:53,400
And just to keep the promise, like she went in saying, hey, this is what I need. Just keep your promise

500
00:45:53,400 --> 00:46:02,040
to her. Don't force it on drugs. And unfortunately, a lot of people have a concept and they're sold

501
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:08,760
that concept on the websites on in the media that the hospital is a place of safe refuge. And it's

502
00:46:08,760 --> 00:46:14,280
it's instinctual. You need you need a place of safe refuge. We're told then that that's the place

503
00:46:14,280 --> 00:46:21,000
to go. But then the huge betrayal. I mean, there's so many ways in which standard psychiatric practice

504
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:27,400
traumatizes people both explicitly and huge ways and subtle ways. It flies completely in the face

505
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:33,160
of what we know actually heals people, empowerment, a sense of control and safety,

506
00:46:33,160 --> 00:46:41,720
regaining a sense of agency in your life. And also a connection not being isolated, not being alone

507
00:46:41,720 --> 00:46:50,200
with your experience. You know, the thing that since we all have experienced, you know,

508
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:57,960
these traumatizing settings that are set up to supposedly help and then have that reverse

509
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:07,640
effect of really hurting us and so much that we then spend the rest of our lives to trying to change

510
00:47:07,640 --> 00:47:15,480
or to trying to offer help in another way. But you know, I'm just curious how you also use your

511
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:24,760
story and opening yourself up with that vulnerability to access a person to help connect further with

512
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:29,160
a person. I come from a kind of humanistic frame of

513
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:34,120
objectiveness. You know, so I'm not like I'm not afraid of, you know, we'll do some cautious

514
00:47:34,120 --> 00:47:40,200
disclosure, but it won't make a session really about me. Right. If there comes a, first of all,

515
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:44,200
there's just the shared humanity. Like I think you know, doing my best to kind of pull myself in this

516
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:49,480
person's shoes and having been through some similar experiences as a lot of my clients is I'm acknowledging,

517
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:53,400
I can't know exactly what their world experiences like, but at least I can kind of get a sense of it.

518
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:59,720
And I can empathize, you know, sympathize and hold compassion for them. So creating that container,

519
00:47:59,720 --> 00:48:06,120
you know, I think in people, I think we sense that, right. If someone's genuinely being empathetic and

520
00:48:06,120 --> 00:48:12,680
compassionate, we feel that. That's hard. I think sometimes therapists might fake that or would not,

521
00:48:12,680 --> 00:48:18,040
but I think you can sense it. And especially those who have been betrayed, we have really strong

522
00:48:18,040 --> 00:48:23,160
radars for picking up on, you know, anything to start authentic. So there's that holding that

523
00:48:23,160 --> 00:48:29,000
container, just having had that lived experience myself. And then occasionally, you know, we'll disclose,

524
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:34,520
especially when it helps to normalize. Like I think so much, this is another sad bit of the work here.

525
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:39,880
Not only do we live in a bit of a mad world where there's, there is a lot of, you know, trauma and

526
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:45,480
confusion and, you know, spiritual suppression and all that goes on in the contemporary world.

527
00:48:45,480 --> 00:48:54,600
But then there's also the additional trauma that's from mainstream metal health fields. So people

528
00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:59,560
come into the field typically with some kinds of traumatic events in their life histories. And now they

529
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:07,240
get, you know, more trauma on top of it. Not only that, but they also get told really horrible,

530
00:49:07,240 --> 00:49:11,160
you know, stories about themselves. You know, you're broken. This is just, you know, you're just

531
00:49:11,160 --> 00:49:14,840
fundamentally flawed or broken in some way. You're going to be like this the rest of your life. You

532
00:49:14,840 --> 00:49:19,640
have to stay on your meds, that and that. And so people come to me not only with the early

533
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:23,080
or layers of whatever trauma they originally holding, but now they've got these horrible

534
00:49:23,080 --> 00:49:28,760
core beliefs that have been like it's still, you know, into them, which just make the whole situation

535
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:34,040
so much worse. So now, not only they have fear towards the external world, they have fear towards

536
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:39,480
the internal world too. So it's like fear in every direction, right? It's just an awful place. So so a lot

537
00:49:39,480 --> 00:49:45,320
of my work has, I kind of use my credentials, like I suppose to want, you know, one of things good for

538
00:49:45,320 --> 00:49:48,920
because people look up to me, oh, you're, you know, authority figure. You have these sort of formal

539
00:49:48,920 --> 00:49:55,320
qualifications that are sort of approved by mainstream society. And so they tend to listen to me a little

540
00:49:55,320 --> 00:50:00,840
better when I, when I really challenge the whole DSM, you know, diagnostic system. And I provide

541
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:06,360
another alternative. Like I'm cautious. Some people are very attached to their, particularly diagnoses.

542
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:10,760
So I don't just, you know, challenge it really hard, but I just invite them to consider another

543
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:15,800
possibility. And maybe it's possible, you know, this, I'm hearing a story of a person who went through all

544
00:50:15,800 --> 00:50:20,520
these experiences and as possible, you develop, I'm hearing you develop some pretty creative strategies

545
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:24,440
for managing that, you know, yeah, you withdrew or you turned to drugs or whatever it is you did,

546
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:28,920
but it makes a lot of sense to me. And so I really normalize what they did. And we look at the wisdom

547
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:35,400
of whatever strategies they chose to try to manage what they're holding. And so shift everything from

548
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:39,800
a broken pathological perspective to a wisdom perspective, you know, you're just doing the best you

549
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:45,800
can with what you're given in life and your own limited resources. And it's very rare that someone,

550
00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:50,680
you know, at first it can be challenging for someone to make that shift, you know, especially it's

551
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:55,960
already been instilled quite deeply. But generally, if you, I think I find, if you approach it in this way,

552
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:02,360
it's because I think it's true. Like I really believe it when I'm saying, I think it shifts. People

553
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:07,800
will shift and they start to look differently themselves as shame, the shame dissipates. The fear

554
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:13,160
of themselves starts to dissipate. And then there's a sense of possibility that opens up like, oh, right.

555
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:16,920
Actually, there's some real gift here. There's some resilience that I have, some strengths I have.

556
00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:22,200
And then NAC can eventually become the catalyst towards, you know, their own healing and growth.

557
00:51:25,400 --> 00:51:31,160
Yeah, and I think the key to that is, is like you said, the genuineness, you've got to really see it

558
00:51:31,160 --> 00:51:36,280
and you've got to really believe it. And you've got to really be connected with the person. You can't

559
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:43,400
just be following the script from a Carl Rogers textbook from the school you went to just to sort of,

560
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:48,920
this is what, you know, unconditional positive regard looks like. You have to actually really feel that

561
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:54,280
and create that with the person and having been through it yourself and knowing that that's what

562
00:51:54,280 --> 00:52:01,080
nourishes you allows you to be honest when you bring that because you're not overwhelmed by fear.

563
00:52:01,080 --> 00:52:05,640
You're not, oh gosh, what if this person really is broken? Oh gosh, what if this person is just not,

564
00:52:05,640 --> 00:52:12,520
no, you, you, you've gone through some of those fears in yourself. And so the other person can feel

565
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:18,680
that you've actually overcome something. And then that strengthens the connection that you have in

566
00:52:18,680 --> 00:52:26,680
it. It provides a basis for them to start listening to us maybe in a different way than someone who's

567
00:52:26,680 --> 00:52:32,760
just a train in a traditional kind of way who's coming out from an outsider or separate distant

568
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:41,240
perspective. They would have a harder time listening to. So I want to, and also Paris, a big part of

569
00:52:41,240 --> 00:52:47,160
your work is spiritual emergence because we're still talking in the framework of, okay, there's an

570
00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:57,320
injury that happened. There is a healing process that's natural that goes on that engages with the

571
00:52:57,320 --> 00:53:02,280
injury and we want to support the healing hearing and we want to support the healing process. But

572
00:53:02,280 --> 00:53:07,640
where does the spiritual emergence piece come in? Because I know that there's this very mysterious

573
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:16,120
relationship between trauma and initiation or trauma and maybe we could call a destiny or fate or

574
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:23,080
you have a certain kind of, this is why I was asking you about the hang lighting and the ADHD and maybe

575
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:30,360
you were kind of guided to your path through hanglight, through hang lighting from some of these

576
00:53:30,360 --> 00:53:37,000
traumas and some and from some of these fears. Is there a way in which, and it's a very tricky thing

577
00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:42,760
because I would never tell somebody, oh, your trauma is actually a gift. But is, is there a way in which

578
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:50,840
all this sort of relates in a larger spiritual frame of initiation? We could also talk about the

579
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:56,840
initiation to be healer, or be a shaman, or be someone who's connected with spirit and able to offer it

580
00:53:56,840 --> 00:54:02,120
to the community and other people. And I know, Deena, you've thought about this quite a lot. This is a

581
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:10,280
big part of your process and the people that you work with as well. Right. Right. And just the,

582
00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:20,360
that mindset that, you know, there was deep meaning and ultimately led to the purpose through all

583
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:25,720
that I had been through, all the, you know, people that I work with have been through that does kind

584
00:54:25,720 --> 00:54:33,880
of it shifts your past, shifts your perspective, shifts who you are, maybe as a human being, to become

585
00:54:33,880 --> 00:54:42,520
more connected, more empathetic, more understanding of, you know, the connection to spirit and to

586
00:54:42,520 --> 00:54:45,560
the deep humanity of suffering with all humans.

587
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:53,000
Yeah, Leonard Cohen, I can't remember the exact words, but he says, the cracks are where the light

588
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:59,720
comes through basically. Right. I think as a couple of layers here, one, you know, I believe that

589
00:54:59,720 --> 00:55:04,440
contemporary society itself is quite mad, right. It's quite quite dysfunctional in so many ways. And

590
00:55:04,440 --> 00:55:09,880
particularly, I, like I also come from a very ecological perspective where I think so much of

591
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:16,280
our dysfunction comes from disconnection to the natural world. I mean, as you know, my essential

592
00:55:16,280 --> 00:55:22,680
self is, you know, a natural manifestation of this earth, right. And my cousin, you know, feeling

593
00:55:22,680 --> 00:55:27,640
that sense of kinship with the fellow earthlings and earthen and so much of contemporary society is

594
00:55:27,640 --> 00:55:32,520
really, you know, taken as far away from that connection. And I think that alone is created a huge

595
00:55:32,520 --> 00:55:41,160
amount of dysfunction and stress on so many levels. So if you grow up in a relatively, I don't know,

596
00:55:41,160 --> 00:55:47,000
so-called functional family and you get indoctrinated into the status quo of contemporary society and,

597
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:51,560
you know, you don't have a lot of significant trauma. I don't think in many ways, I mean, I'm not,

598
00:55:51,560 --> 00:55:56,280
that's great, so if they have that life, but in many ways, you don't have that incentives

599
00:55:56,280 --> 00:56:01,480
or wrong work, but you don't have that push outside of the status quo. You kind of can kind of end up

600
00:56:01,480 --> 00:56:07,960
in a kind of almost cookie-cutter contemporary life. But if you've gotten really battered, you know,

601
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:13,400
you've gotten really not and you lose your faith, you know, and your family and, you know, the values

602
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:19,560
of contemporary society and essentially experiencing significant trauma, a couple of things are going to

603
00:56:19,560 --> 00:56:23,640
happen. One, you know, you're going to kind of feel grounded. It's like, oh gosh, who am I? And what,

604
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:28,120
you know, what are my values and what do I believe in? And you'd be more likely to start to question

605
00:56:28,120 --> 00:56:33,640
things, question everything. And so that right there is one push in the direction of, I think,

606
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:39,720
possibility, certainly not a guarantee of having a different experience of actually

607
00:56:39,720 --> 00:56:43,400
turning towards something else. So me with everything I was going through, I turned to the

608
00:56:43,400 --> 00:56:48,840
national world. That was quite fortunate and I live in this beautiful part of a kind of a Northern

609
00:56:48,840 --> 00:56:54,680
Sierra, Northern California Sierra mountains and there's a lot of wildlife and open space. And I just

610
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:59,080
spent a lot of time just wandering around out there, you know, in the sagebrush and the chiantopers

611
00:56:59,080 --> 00:57:06,120
of the badgers and the porcupines and the kites and the hawks and and that became a real spiritual

612
00:57:06,120 --> 00:57:10,200
experience for me. I turned to that because I didn't really have just, I didn't, I didn't have any

613
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:15,480
other support. And so in a way that already started to connect me to a more spiritual connection to

614
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:20,120
the world. I think, you know, so that's one aspect of where trauma can potentially turn you.

615
00:57:20,120 --> 00:57:25,560
And I know many people have a similar story. So it's one, I think, connection between trauma and

616
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:31,640
possibility of a kind of spiritual emergence, emerging from the spiritual stifling nature,

617
00:57:31,640 --> 00:57:35,640
you know, contemporary society might say. And then there's the other piece where especially,

618
00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:40,600
I think, early trauma, if you've had significant trauma in the early and your whole sense of self

619
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:46,520
is a little bit unstable, you know, you don't get a really solid sort of sense of self right from the

620
00:57:46,520 --> 00:57:52,040
early days. And then there's naturally this kind of instability that develops and, you know, the sense of,

621
00:57:52,040 --> 00:57:56,360
you know, deep existential kind of foundation that a lot of people take for granted that security

622
00:57:56,360 --> 00:58:02,680
is a bit wobbly. And so then, you know, a certain knock in life, maybe an experience of some mind

623
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:06,440
altering drug or some trauma or something like that can really rip the carpet out from under your

624
00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:11,720
feet, right? And suddenly it's like your whole sense of self, it's kind of, I really feel like it

625
00:58:11,720 --> 00:58:17,560
disintegrates. And it blasts you into kind of spiritual experience, so speak, you know,

626
00:58:17,560 --> 00:58:24,040
essentially it's like, wow, this existential core existential dilemmas, you might say, if you know,

627
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:30,040
who am I and what security and what is God and what is life can really show up. So in a way,

628
00:58:30,040 --> 00:58:34,280
that early trauma can open the doorway. And that's typically what we end up calling psychosis

629
00:58:34,280 --> 00:58:38,680
or extreme states, right? When that happens in a fairly severe form, then you say, okay,

630
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:43,240
a person is entered into a kind of psychotic process or madness process. And then there's that whole

631
00:58:43,240 --> 00:58:48,680
struggle with trying to reclaim some kind of deep fundamental sense of security and how that can

632
00:58:48,680 --> 00:58:53,400
be really, you know, Florida psychosis often, you know, you can see the person sort of rasping at

633
00:58:53,400 --> 00:58:59,720
this belief system, that system and trying to find some ground to hold onto. But as they're grasping,

634
00:58:59,720 --> 00:59:05,240
they're also kind of swimming, you might say, what's that expression of the mad person is swimming in

635
00:59:05,240 --> 00:59:10,040
the same ocean in which the mystic is swimming. You know, they're in that real fundamental deep spiritual

636
00:59:10,040 --> 00:59:14,280
existential territory, you might want to say. And so that's the other way I think the mad person is

637
00:59:14,280 --> 00:59:19,800
drowning in the in that same ocean. Yeah. In the same ocean in which the mystic is swimming with the

638
00:59:19,800 --> 00:59:24,760
light, I think is how the whole saying goes. And how the bad person is not probably experiencing

639
00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:31,240
much delight. I know what I was there is experiencing a huge amount of terror, mostly. So the few moments of

640
00:59:31,240 --> 00:59:38,360
euphoria were great, but it was mostly terror. But so that like if I look at my story and having had

641
00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:43,960
that kind of real profound spiritual experience, in many ways it was the earlier traumas that I had

642
00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:48,280
that kind of paved the door. It's not like I would wish that on anybody, but in a way it set the

643
00:59:48,280 --> 00:59:54,120
stage to make that kind of experience more likely to happen. And I think you find that with, you know,

644
00:59:54,120 --> 01:00:00,520
if you look at the research on psychosis, right, there's a very very very high correlation of

645
01:00:00,520 --> 01:00:05,720
especially earlier childhood trauma and, you know, eventual onset of psychosis. It's something like

646
01:00:05,720 --> 01:00:09,400
like, like, if you look at the average child experience survey, something like if someone's had

647
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:14,760
five different kinds of average childhood experiences, there are 192 times more likely to develop

648
01:00:14,760 --> 01:00:20,760
psychosis than the average person. And then once you're in there, you're drowning in the same state

649
01:00:20,760 --> 01:00:28,120
in which the mystic is swimming, so to speak. That can open the door to a profound spiritual kind of

650
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:34,760
transformation, spiritual emergency, hopefully coming into, you know, a new emergence into a more

651
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:39,000
healthy wholesome way to be, but a person could also get lost there indefinitely, right? They can get

652
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:45,400
really stuck in that state. And I think that's where the other way that our system really, you know,

653
01:00:45,400 --> 01:00:51,720
goes so wrong. One, it adds more trauma into the mix, but two, it tries to hold you back, right? So

654
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:58,120
here's someone going into a, you know, the way I see it is the sort of deepest part of my essence in

655
01:00:58,120 --> 01:01:02,520
this case is actually trying to die and be reborn. It's like, oh, can't it stop working? The old

656
01:01:02,520 --> 01:01:07,720
way of working lets, you know, break it down back to the roots and let's come through and it's

657
01:01:07,720 --> 01:01:13,000
something different. And if that can be supported properly, think of the cocoon. If you can create a

658
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:17,240
loving cocoon around this person for the metamorphosis, you know, to go from caterpillar butterfly,

659
01:01:17,720 --> 01:01:23,800
it's incredible what could happen. But if you refuse to let it, if you just hold that person back with

660
01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:27,880
really heavy drugs and lots of really scary beliefs about brain disease and all this stuff,

661
01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:33,480
the person can end up just stuck in that kind of partially metamorphous state of the caterpillar

662
01:01:33,480 --> 01:01:38,520
that is dissolved into that goo and they don't get any further, you know. And we call that Florida

663
01:01:38,520 --> 01:01:45,800
psychosis. This, the shift that I was just like, like, call what we're doing, like teaching people to

664
01:01:45,800 --> 01:01:55,960
swim, you know, just swim classes. But that shift that we're, we are bringing in our, in our work with

665
01:01:55,960 --> 01:02:04,440
people to provide that space for them to have this transformation. Those moments when you are

666
01:02:04,440 --> 01:02:14,200
shifting someone that has been really just inundated with the messaging, you know. And can you just

667
01:02:14,200 --> 01:02:20,280
describe any experiences that you have had with like shifting somebody out of that to holding

668
01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:25,160
a broader perspective of what their possibility is?

669
01:02:25,160 --> 01:02:30,680
Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a couple layers as I know, both you are aware of, there's also the

670
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:34,680
issue, we'll leave aside, but, you know, there's substance dependency, right? They've, you know,

671
01:02:34,680 --> 01:02:38,120
they've probably been on several medications and there's a dependency and that has to be tended

672
01:02:38,120 --> 01:02:43,080
to as well, you know, keep that aside, but that's also something that has to be kind of education

673
01:02:43,080 --> 01:02:48,840
around that. Like, I'm providing an alternative narrative where, you know, I don't believe that you

674
01:02:48,840 --> 01:02:53,240
have, you know, biochemical balance and that you have to have these meds to correct it. However,

675
01:02:53,240 --> 01:02:57,960
there is a dependency here that doesn't need to be, you know, worked with carefully and skillfully

676
01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:06,200
and all that. And then to leave in that aside, it's really just coming back to, I guess, I'm holding

677
01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:11,720
the faith and I'm holding the sense of like the light and this, I was just amazing being in front of

678
01:03:11,720 --> 01:03:15,800
me and looking at, you know, they've survived all this stuff. That's incredible. You know, what are the

679
01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:21,240
gifts that have gotten them through that? And ultimately, what's the gift they have for this troubled

680
01:03:21,240 --> 01:03:26,760
world? And so, wait, I'm actually holding that. And so our conversation and the empathy naturally

681
01:03:26,760 --> 01:03:31,800
starts to kind of go in that direction. So early on, I start, you know, I get curious about what are the

682
01:03:31,800 --> 01:03:35,960
things you actually enjoy or like or what have you been drawn to or what you found you so passionate

683
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:40,680
about or even if you're so distressed, you can't even think about that, right? Now, what, you know,

684
01:03:40,680 --> 01:03:45,240
what have you at some point in your life, find yourself pulled towards it? What do you imagine you might,

685
01:03:45,240 --> 01:03:51,240
you know, your aspirations? Start trying to blow on the ember, the embers of their, their soul,

686
01:03:51,240 --> 01:03:57,240
you know, their passion. There's that expression, where does your, what is your soul's passion

687
01:03:57,240 --> 01:04:03,000
meet the world's needs? So it's like in a way where I had a conversation about that. So what,

688
01:04:03,000 --> 01:04:07,800
you know, what is your passion if you could really light your soul up and it could just go anywhere,

689
01:04:07,800 --> 01:04:12,920
what's that be? What did you imagine that would look like? And then I believe that it would naturally

690
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:19,960
head into what the world needs, you know, I'm holding that as well. And it's people, you know, again,

691
01:04:19,960 --> 01:04:25,480
because I have such strong faith in that and because I think it's true, it works. You know, people

692
01:04:25,480 --> 01:04:30,280
start, they feel it. I can feel it themselves like, oh, somebody's actually holding me with like this

693
01:04:30,280 --> 01:04:35,240
loving presence and and they seem to believe in man, you know, I don't really believe myself yet,

694
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:40,120
at least somebody else does and that, you know, it's often the first stepping stone to them

695
01:04:40,120 --> 01:04:44,440
actually believing in themselves and starting to realize, oh, I can have a nourishing connection

696
01:04:44,440 --> 01:04:49,400
with my own aliveness and that's actually not so scary. I'm not just going to find like horrible

697
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:53,880
demons in there. There's actually a lot of goodness in there too. So making sure it's been plenty of

698
01:04:53,880 --> 01:05:01,720
time on the goodness, not just the trauma. Yeah, it can take a while for someone to really get that,

699
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:07,800
oh, this isn't like the psychiatrists I've interacted with. This isn't like the case managers and therapists.

700
01:05:07,800 --> 01:05:13,640
This is someone who's coming to me with a very different view. And even when I encounter someone

701
01:05:13,640 --> 01:05:20,440
who is, I'll say, well, what brings you here? Let's talk about what is that you would want to get

702
01:05:20,440 --> 01:05:27,480
out of our meeting. And even somebody who has this reflexive automatic use of clinical language,

703
01:05:27,480 --> 01:05:35,240
well, I have bipolar, I have psychosis, my symptoms start acting up. I have an episode and I go

704
01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:41,640
into the hospital. Can you help me with that? Well, part of me is saying I've learned nothing

705
01:05:41,640 --> 01:05:46,120
about you. All I've heard is just a repetition of something that someone has told you

706
01:05:46,120 --> 01:05:53,160
about about yourself. And I find that actually if I can be curious about, okay, so this person

707
01:05:53,160 --> 01:05:59,720
is presenting something that's not giving me information. Really, I often will say, well, what kind

708
01:05:59,720 --> 01:06:06,760
of episode or tell me the story of the episode. And that's the piece that's so missing from the

709
01:06:06,760 --> 01:06:13,160
clinical encounter. There's such a rush, which I understand. If I go to the ER and my arm is broken,

710
01:06:13,160 --> 01:06:17,720
I don't want them to mess around with well, exactly what were you doing when you were climbing

711
01:06:17,720 --> 01:06:22,920
the tree? And well, tell me how did you feel about the tree or what was, why were you even with

712
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:28,040
this tree to begin with or have you often been a climber or trees? No, I want them to just very quickly

713
01:06:28,040 --> 01:06:35,800
assess the brokenness of the arm and very quickly get to what's going to help me not be in pain and

714
01:06:35,800 --> 01:06:43,000
start to heal. But the absolute opposite mindset is needed when you're dealing with this fundamentally

715
01:06:43,000 --> 01:06:51,560
different realm of human healing and psychology and experience and the heart and building a trusting

716
01:06:51,560 --> 01:06:56,200
relationship. If I'm getting my arm fixed, I don't really need a trusting relationship. In fact,

717
01:06:56,200 --> 01:07:01,000
just hit me with some tranquilizers and knock me out and then just send me into the into the operating

718
01:07:01,000 --> 01:07:04,920
room and do whatever you want to with my arm because I can't fix it myself and you guys are the

719
01:07:04,920 --> 01:07:11,560
experts and okay, let's just let's just go. But if I need to develop a trusting relationship with

720
01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:18,120
them as part of the actual healing process, then the actual opposite kind of framing is need to

721
01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:23,720
step back from the urgency. You need to be curious because I can also, I'm very easily

722
01:07:23,720 --> 01:07:29,720
impose a lot of my own assumptions like, oh, I'm assuming that you're going to find meaning out of

723
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:35,080
your trauma. Well, actually, maybe they may not find meaning. Who am I to say that everyone should

724
01:07:35,080 --> 01:07:39,320
find meaning out of their trauma? Who am I to say? I mean, I work with people who are

725
01:07:39,320 --> 01:07:46,200
who are of many different religious faiths and very interesting for me to sort of notice like,

726
01:07:46,200 --> 01:07:51,640
oh, someone identifies themselves as this and I have all these expectations and actually that's not

727
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:57,480
what, oh, someone says they're this, I'm not going to be able to relate to them. Wow, I really can

728
01:07:57,480 --> 01:08:01,720
relate to them. It's just like putting it through a translator. I just translate some of the words

729
01:08:01,720 --> 01:08:07,720
we're on the same wavelength, but even someone who doesn't have any kind of spiritual views, very

730
01:08:07,720 --> 01:08:14,200
strongly atheist or very strongly identifies like, oh, that injured me or I got really harmed by

731
01:08:14,200 --> 01:08:21,720
religion. I'm not interested in that. How can I bring the same kind of deep feeling attitude,

732
01:08:21,720 --> 01:08:27,880
even if I have to set aside a lot of my intellectual analytical therapeutic frameworks? I think,

733
01:08:27,880 --> 01:08:32,200
because I think listening to you, Paris, and talking with you, Dina, what I'm really getting is that

734
01:08:32,200 --> 01:08:38,600
there's something, and it's in this word organic, it's in this word empowerment. There's something on

735
01:08:38,600 --> 01:08:46,040
almost like an energetic level that is before words, it's before ideology, it's before methodology. You

736
01:08:46,040 --> 01:08:51,800
can't really capture it in language. You can't really market it as a technique or as a, but it's

737
01:08:51,800 --> 01:08:57,000
almost like a, I want to say spirit or energy or something, but I want to kind of just summarize it

738
01:08:57,000 --> 01:09:04,760
as like love that we're really putting love into, into action. And for me, that means no matter who

739
01:09:05,640 --> 01:09:12,200
we meet, no matter what framework that they have, that I'm still meeting another human being, and

740
01:09:12,200 --> 01:09:17,560
the idea of a humanistic, I love this idea of humanism and that it's just like it's really

741
01:09:17,560 --> 01:09:22,680
as an encounter between two people on a deep, deep existential level and then trusting and having faith

742
01:09:22,680 --> 01:09:28,440
that that essence of the work is what's going to be healing to the person, even if I'm totally in

743
01:09:28,440 --> 01:09:34,120
an unknown and everything I've tried, everything I know and everything I think I know about techniques

744
01:09:34,120 --> 01:09:39,320
and approaches and methods and tools, doesn't seem that there's something about the human connection

745
01:09:39,320 --> 01:09:47,320
that is ultimately redemptive and ultimately healing. One of the myths, our stories missed that I

746
01:09:47,320 --> 01:09:51,880
like to use, I'm sure you're both aware of the myth of Icarus, so I often use this with my clients.

747
01:09:51,880 --> 01:09:57,800
I'm well, very well familiar with that in the myth of Icarus. Yeah. I'm not sure how great it was to

748
01:09:57,800 --> 01:10:03,880
name an organization because Icarus does fall into the ocean of drought, but then there's a

749
01:10:03,880 --> 01:10:09,880
transformation that happened and Icarus did have a transformation into a new organizational form.

750
01:10:09,880 --> 01:10:13,640
So yeah, I'm very familiar with that. I'm very familiar with what we used to sometimes joke about,

751
01:10:13,640 --> 01:10:18,520
like, well, what, what, okay, so Icarus, the Icarus myth has this terrible ending. How can we write a

752
01:10:18,520 --> 01:10:25,560
new ending and some of some say, well, actually Icarus goes falls, goes too close to the sun and the wax

753
01:10:25,560 --> 01:10:33,320
melts and Icarus can't fly anymore and falls down into the ocean and starts to drown. But then

754
01:10:33,320 --> 01:10:39,560
something magical happens because Icarus is transformed into a mermaid and then there's this mermaid that

755
01:10:39,560 --> 01:10:46,280
has the next phase of the story. So anyway, but yeah, I'm familiar with the myth of Icarus. Yeah.

756
01:10:46,280 --> 01:10:51,720
So I think if you back off from the ending and just the council from the father, right?

757
01:10:51,720 --> 01:10:56,040
The lesson. Yeah. The lesson of the sun was don't fly too high. You're close to the sun.

758
01:10:56,040 --> 01:11:01,800
The wings were melt, which you close to the water. They gave wet and so just supporting and away,

759
01:11:01,800 --> 01:11:05,800
supporting people with that self-connection. You know, like, where am I right now, you know,

760
01:11:05,800 --> 01:11:10,840
with my general state? Am I getting a bit close to the sun? Am I starting to, you know, lose touch

761
01:11:10,840 --> 01:11:16,760
with the sense of ground and kind of flying away here, floating away? Or am I getting too close to

762
01:11:16,760 --> 01:11:21,880
the water? Am I too in the mundane? Am I too down? Exactly. Down in the dumps? Am I too

763
01:11:21,880 --> 01:11:27,320
suppressing my excitement? Am I too avoiding risks? There's danger in both directions. We often

764
01:11:27,320 --> 01:11:34,040
just think about going too high. That's right. And considering the the risk of I'm too close to the

765
01:11:34,040 --> 01:11:39,400
sun, I've lost my earth. What are some grounding practices I can do? So what can I do? That can help

766
01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:43,960
me really feel earth and connect it to the earth and you know, obviously I can look different ways

767
01:11:43,960 --> 01:11:48,280
for different people, but you know, just even connecting literally to earth can be very helpful

768
01:11:48,280 --> 01:11:54,200
connecting to body, right? Sensations and be very grounding for us. And then if you're right, if you're

769
01:11:54,200 --> 01:11:59,320
too down, like getting too close to the water and feeling really contracted and you know, often

770
01:11:59,320 --> 01:12:03,000
might even feel like a bit of hopelessness or despair or something like that. It's kind of contraction

771
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:09,080
happens. What can I do to lift me up? What are some practices of resources I can turn to?

772
01:12:09,080 --> 01:12:12,760
Lift me up. So having that conversation with people so they actually have a bit of a spectrum of

773
01:12:12,760 --> 01:12:18,040
resources that they can turn to, they kind of go onto that map. I mean, you can kind of get into

774
01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:22,200
polyvagal theory and you know, the different and the nervous system and you can have the same map.

775
01:12:22,200 --> 01:12:26,520
That's the way it just depends on the person and what they prefer, how they prefer to talk about it.

776
01:12:26,520 --> 01:12:29,960
But I think that's a really helpful way for working with people with extreme states to

777
01:12:29,960 --> 01:12:36,120
build that self-connection, develop that arsenal of resources that they can use to kind of navigate

778
01:12:36,120 --> 01:12:42,920
that between two high and two low, so to speak. So that's another thing that I bring into my work a lot.

779
01:12:42,920 --> 01:12:47,320
Yeah, it's extraordinary how studying these myths and um,

780
01:12:47,320 --> 01:12:52,280
oak tails and dreams deeply can have so much wisdom because I'm also thinking about the myth. The

781
01:12:52,280 --> 01:12:57,800
father, it's crucial that the father does warn Icarus and then he disregards the father. So then you

782
01:12:57,800 --> 01:13:03,240
could say, well, actually, you need to be in dialogue. You're the part of you that wants to soar

783
01:13:03,240 --> 01:13:10,280
and wants to embrace the wildness and the freedom. Yes, say yes to that part, but also don't forget

784
01:13:10,280 --> 01:13:15,720
about the other part, the part of caution and the part of caretaking and the part of wisdom and

785
01:13:15,720 --> 01:13:22,760
tradition and create a relationship between those those parts. Again, it's a story of a dialogue

786
01:13:22,760 --> 01:13:28,760
that maybe didn't happen that needed to happen. Yeah, that dance between earth and sky, right? We

787
01:13:28,760 --> 01:13:33,720
don't want to neglect either one in each honor and listen to both. And not doing it on our own,

788
01:13:33,720 --> 01:13:39,880
not just crashing ahead. Sometimes we need to, but also or the idea that there's an inner

789
01:13:39,880 --> 01:13:45,080
healer, that there's an inner wise figure. Of course, it's ureac mythology, so it's patriarchal and

790
01:13:45,080 --> 01:13:51,800
et cetera, et cetera. But there's an inner wise voice of caution and protection that needs to also

791
01:13:51,800 --> 01:14:00,360
be balanced in the whole decision making and pathway. Well, you know, just thinking how it is. Yeah,

792
01:14:00,360 --> 01:14:08,120
it's it's not about, you know, just flying in the middle, you know, we know like from your your

793
01:14:08,120 --> 01:14:15,640
story, Paris, that, you know, having that risk and having that like ability to, you know, push yourself

794
01:14:15,640 --> 01:14:24,040
to face some of the fears. And so, you know, when I'm working with people, it's it's about creating

795
01:14:24,040 --> 01:14:32,840
your sustainability. So there are some, you know, some of the the high the energy, the creative force

796
01:14:32,840 --> 01:14:40,760
that is flowing through somebody. And you just don't push it over the edge, you know, you know,

797
01:14:40,760 --> 01:14:46,120
know how you start to learn about yourself and how you can pull yourself back before it goes

798
01:14:46,120 --> 01:14:50,600
over the edge and you're no longer than able to pull yourself back. So it's not about just

799
01:14:50,600 --> 01:14:56,920
remaining completely in the middle, but bringing that into who you are and at your understanding

800
01:14:56,920 --> 01:15:03,400
that you are then sustainable and your ability to have your your high and your low. Yeah, I like that

801
01:15:03,400 --> 01:15:09,240
idea that it's not just in the middle. I mean, life would be quite boring if we never took risks

802
01:15:09,240 --> 01:15:14,680
and our mood was always sort of which is kind of the psych psychiatric disease model. You want to be

803
01:15:14,680 --> 01:15:20,840
completely symptom free and then any kind of difficult emotional state is seen as a symptom. So now

804
01:15:20,840 --> 01:15:25,720
you're expected to just not really have strong emotions at all. And then you're just sort of flat

805
01:15:25,720 --> 01:15:33,960
lines and a numbs tranquilizing state. And it's important to remember that the word balance like

806
01:15:33,960 --> 01:15:39,800
balance being about nature, the nature is in balance. Well, nature is in balance, but nature

807
01:15:39,800 --> 01:15:45,880
is a dynamism of swings and different energies going on all kinds of different directions. It has

808
01:15:45,880 --> 01:15:52,440
always has a balancing side to it. It always has a balancing tendency. It comes back. But it isn't

809
01:15:52,440 --> 01:16:00,120
just still or more stuck or stagnant nature has wildness to it. But after the wildness comes the

810
01:16:00,120 --> 01:16:06,360
the contraction after the wildness comes the the piece. So understanding that the balance is not a

811
01:16:06,360 --> 01:16:11,640
state that we're trying to just be calm all the time or we're sort of have we're supposed to have

812
01:16:11,640 --> 01:16:18,760
this sort of yoga class idea of we're just chill and equanimity and just we're unruffled. But

813
01:16:18,760 --> 01:16:24,760
actually when you are when you do go off that you also have the other side that comes in I spend a

814
01:16:24,760 --> 01:16:32,440
long time managing my sleep. And so okay, I got to get there's a window between 1015 and 1045. And

815
01:16:32,440 --> 01:16:38,360
if I'm not in bed that's and it does it creates problems if I don't, but that also becomes too much

816
01:16:38,360 --> 01:16:43,400
control and too much balance. There are times what I want to stay up all night because I'm just on

817
01:16:43,400 --> 01:16:50,120
a tear with my creativity or wow I'm out with people or I just feel inspired. But then I also know that okay

818
01:16:50,120 --> 01:16:57,000
the next few days there's also space that I want to create for the balancing of going to the nurturing

819
01:16:57,000 --> 01:17:03,560
and the contraction and the stillness. And then it just becomes a question of the art of the art of

820
01:17:03,560 --> 01:17:09,480
living. Each of us have to really figure out what kind of risks that we want to take and what kind

821
01:17:09,480 --> 01:17:15,720
of life we want to have whether we want to keep hang gliding whether we want to keep pushing ourselves

822
01:17:15,720 --> 01:17:20,840
what we want to what we want to do. And I also think that I like what you said Paris about the idea

823
01:17:20,840 --> 01:17:26,040
of the identified patient. I think we make a mistake sometimes thinking that it's just the person

824
01:17:26,040 --> 01:17:33,400
with a diagnosis that needs help. It's often all the people around them and it can be the family

825
01:17:33,400 --> 01:17:40,200
members or the people around the providers the professionals who are afraid of the risks. They're the

826
01:17:40,200 --> 01:17:45,880
ones we have to work with their fear as well. And we've done this terrible thing where we've given

827
01:17:45,880 --> 01:17:52,200
it's like we put people into a kind of a guardian status that once you're mentally ill so called

828
01:17:52,200 --> 01:17:58,280
that the people around you are going to have to be the ones who are responsible for keeping you safe.

829
01:17:58,280 --> 01:18:01,960
And if they don't there's going to be a lawsuit or there's going to be complaints or they're going

830
01:18:01,960 --> 01:18:08,120
to get into trouble or they're going to blame. Well actually risk is part of life. It's part of what

831
01:18:08,120 --> 01:18:15,000
we are as human beings encountering that mystery is part of who we are as human beings. And we all

832
01:18:15,000 --> 01:18:21,880
even people who are diagnosed have to discover and learn for ourselves how we want to live. What

833
01:18:21,880 --> 01:18:26,760
kind of life that we want to have. And if we want to learn and grow in certain kinds of directions

834
01:18:26,760 --> 01:18:34,840
yeah it's going to mean taking some risks making some failures. I mean my first school program I was

835
01:18:34,840 --> 01:18:41,000
trying to get licensed in a traditional it was a relatively spiritual and alternative but it was

836
01:18:41,000 --> 01:18:49,080
still a it was still a state licensing and you know I I flunked out of it I crashed and and burned

837
01:18:49,080 --> 01:18:54,200
and at the same time that was you know the choice that I made and that was something that I'm glad

838
01:18:55,240 --> 01:19:00,920
that I did and it wasn't the end of the story. It took me many years afterwards but eventually I did

839
01:19:00,920 --> 01:19:08,920
get my master's degree. My career was delayed in a huge way but that's part of my process that was

840
01:19:08,920 --> 01:19:16,520
part of my story. I didn't I didn't have it would not have been helpful if someone or something inside

841
01:19:16,520 --> 01:19:22,120
in me was saying you have to do it a certain way and you can't take these kinds of risks and you

842
01:19:22,120 --> 01:19:27,720
can't do it this way. Actually a lot of the problem I think with families is that it's just getting

843
01:19:27,720 --> 01:19:34,040
to know the young person. The young you know you have three children they became a doctor, a lawyer

844
01:19:34,040 --> 01:19:40,840
and a successful business person and actually your fourth kid isn't on that path. They're on their

845
01:19:40,840 --> 01:19:45,240
own path. Maybe it's going to take them a little bit longer. Maybe they need to just do a simple day

846
01:19:45,960 --> 01:19:52,520
job. Maybe they have a totally different perspective. My family is all artists. My father's a writer,

847
01:19:52,520 --> 01:19:58,360
my mom's an actor, my brother's a sculptor and a musician and I did not choose the path of being

848
01:19:58,360 --> 01:20:04,680
an artist. I choose the I was the black sheep and the rebel because I went into healing arts and

849
01:20:04,680 --> 01:20:12,200
teaching and something very different and so I'm loving the conversation that we're having

850
01:20:12,840 --> 01:20:18,440
about fear and about risks and about how we approach that because I do think it's the heart of what

851
01:20:18,440 --> 01:20:25,400
it is that we're doing. Yeah just a few thoughts came to me there. One is the idea of home

852
01:20:25,400 --> 01:20:30,360
you dynamic versus homeostatic, like living systems and living beings are not homeostatic or home

853
01:20:30,360 --> 01:20:36,360
you dynamic, right? There's a lot of dynamism like you say and there's also I think the issue of

854
01:20:36,360 --> 01:20:43,080
like genuine, genuine, we talk about well-being and health. I really disagree with the psychiatric

855
01:20:43,080 --> 01:20:50,040
model of that sort of flat, you know that very narrow window of okay acceptable emotions and

856
01:20:50,040 --> 01:20:57,080
experiences and then everything else is like mentally ill. I think well-being like genuine

857
01:20:57,080 --> 01:21:00,680
well-being is being able to have a very wide window of tolerance, you know like a really wide

858
01:21:00,680 --> 01:21:09,000
window of experience that I can I can up into I can even enjoy I can have and yet not lose

859
01:21:09,000 --> 01:21:16,040
you know not lose that sense of ground so to speak not you know still maintain that connection

860
01:21:16,040 --> 01:21:22,520
between earth and sky but be able to be all the way up to you know 18, 19,000 feet to the clouds

861
01:21:22,520 --> 01:21:27,080
and all the terrain of the ground and be able to enjoy the entire range. So I think that's what we're

862
01:21:27,080 --> 01:21:32,120
working towards I think all of us but yeah as I think in my work as a therapist that's what I'm supporting

863
01:21:32,120 --> 01:21:38,040
people to try to be able to do you know to be able to to have that comfort you know within a very

864
01:21:38,040 --> 01:21:46,360
broad range of life. Beautiful. Harris do you want to leave us with one more story from your

865
01:21:46,360 --> 01:21:54,360
hang gliding adventures that it's such an incredible evocative space you created up in the sky with

866
01:21:54,360 --> 01:22:02,040
the birds and the thermals and the quiet. Do you want to uh so should be a peaceful story?

867
01:22:02,040 --> 01:22:11,400
Or whatever you want to leave on us man. Gosh so many probably my favorite place

868
01:22:11,400 --> 01:22:15,640
flinch so many places around the world but probably my favorite place still of this day as far as

869
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:20,840
just absolute beauty is tell your right Colorado the center of Colorado where you've got like 13

870
01:22:20,840 --> 01:22:27,640
and 14,000 feet peaks all around you and I was doing canyons there for quite a while taking people off

871
01:22:27,640 --> 01:22:36,280
the top and something about just the incredible joy of just getting surrounded by these massive

872
01:22:36,280 --> 01:22:43,960
mountains and there's glacial lakes and you can just see so far and and and the US especially we

873
01:22:43,960 --> 01:22:49,400
have some birds here but we in the US you have so many different kinds of like eagles, hawks and

874
01:22:49,400 --> 01:22:54,120
fultures that join you and they show you where the lift is so if you're looking closely you can see

875
01:22:54,120 --> 01:23:01,640
the other birds circling and you join them and circle together and up you go this I had one particular

876
01:23:01,640 --> 01:23:07,560
flight where I was getting so I was I did a bit of anicris I was getting higher and higher and uh and

877
01:23:07,560 --> 01:23:12,280
I knew I shouldn't go any higher because I was actually getting hypoxic I was getting so high

878
01:23:12,280 --> 01:23:17,640
I was starting to get really giddy and dizzy you you actually get really happy at first when you

879
01:23:17,640 --> 01:23:24,120
start running out of oxygen and I got all the way to that's when I got to 19,000 five or feet and uh

880
01:23:24,120 --> 01:23:28,200
and I was like oh wow this is so fun I'm like wait a minute I'm a little too happy

881
01:23:28,200 --> 01:23:36,440
and the world started to tunnel vision on me like oh shit oh it was so beautiful and amazing but

882
01:23:36,440 --> 01:23:43,160
then I was like okay this is an icrus experience for sure and so yeah I quickly left and found some

883
01:23:43,160 --> 01:23:49,880
sinking air and started circling and next thing I knew I was on landing I was I must have been half an

884
01:23:49,880 --> 01:23:56,200
hour later I was down in the valley on approach to land I I couldn't remember any I lost memory I

885
01:23:56,200 --> 01:24:03,400
obviously didn't fully black out because I I managed to fly to the landing zone and but yeah I kind

886
01:24:03,400 --> 01:24:08,600
of like came to on landing approach and had a nice landing and and so it was quite yeah so that was

887
01:24:08,600 --> 01:24:14,280
my icrus experience I found ground again but I got the taste both extremes in that flight and

888
01:24:14,280 --> 01:24:19,960
and somehow survived the whole thing how did you survive that how did you how did you actually

889
01:24:19,960 --> 01:24:24,760
navigate the glider while you were I don't know I went into some kind of I've I've spent some kind of

890
01:24:24,760 --> 01:24:31,000
I'm just barely hanging in there with consciousness where I was you know still flying I was

891
01:24:31,000 --> 01:24:37,880
kind of literally on autopilot but I I wasn't able I guess I didn't have enough cognitive capacity to

892
01:24:37,880 --> 01:24:43,000
form essentially memory you know I didn't have any recall of that 20 minutes or whatever it was

893
01:24:43,000 --> 01:24:47,800
so yeah that was a bit lucky there was another story there's so many did the same thing and

894
01:24:47,800 --> 01:24:54,840
the glider and the breaking and tumbling and he completely passed out and he woke up luckily he

895
01:24:54,840 --> 01:24:57,880
woke up before he hit the ground and was able to throw his parachute you know he got as he got

896
01:24:57,880 --> 01:25:03,720
lower he was able to breathe you know get more oxygen through the parachute and and was okay but

897
01:25:03,720 --> 01:25:08,440
yeah luckily that didn't happen to me then so that was an example of like really riding the edges of

898
01:25:08,440 --> 01:25:15,480
my tolerance my window of tolerance for sure so it's still quite an amazing experience but yeah

899
01:25:15,480 --> 01:25:24,840
that's definitely pushing the edge of it incredible Harris do you want to give us information about

900
01:25:24,840 --> 01:25:32,360
how people can contact you and remind us about your your book yep rethinking madness calm

901
01:25:33,480 --> 01:25:38,840
is a good way to um you could actually actually have a free PDF version on the homepage so you can

902
01:25:38,840 --> 01:25:43,880
download the book for free right there or if you want a hard ebook or hard cover version or soft cover

903
01:25:43,880 --> 01:25:50,360
version there's links to that as well and there's a really extensive resource directory on that same

904
01:25:50,360 --> 01:26:01,160
website so that people might find that interesting and my other website is Paris Williams PhD.com

905
01:26:01,160 --> 01:26:06,280
so that's my kind of therapy website so you can learn a little bit more about my work what I was

906
01:26:06,280 --> 01:26:11,480
going to say on that rethinking madness.com I have an articles page and there's a couple of web

907
01:26:11,480 --> 01:26:15,400
and arts there you can watch for free and there's a if you're interested more in the kind of spiritual

908
01:26:15,400 --> 01:26:20,360
emergency side of things I have a little guidebook there what do I call it guidebook

909
01:26:20,360 --> 01:26:27,480
working through spiritual and existential crisis is what the guidebook is called and I go through

910
01:26:27,480 --> 01:26:33,080
my own managed journey in a lot more detail in that book you kind of use it as a bag and forth between

911
01:26:33,080 --> 01:26:38,600
my experience and supporting someone through a kind of spiritual or existential crisis that's

912
01:26:38,600 --> 01:26:44,680
another resource people might enjoy. Paris Williams thank you so much for joining us on madness

913
01:26:44,680 --> 01:26:50,920
radio. Thank you Will thank you Dana very lovely to connect to both. And Dean Attila thank you for

914
01:26:50,920 --> 01:26:57,080
co-hosting today on madness radio. Oh thank you so much for having me here it was such an honor to talk

915
01:26:57,080 --> 01:27:03,000
with you Paris thank you likewise. You've been listening to an interview with Paris Williams.

916
01:27:03,000 --> 01:27:09,720
Paris Williams is a PhD in clinical psychology who went through his own experience of extreme

917
01:27:09,720 --> 01:27:15,880
states and madness and now works as a therapist with people diagnosed with psychosis including

918
01:27:15,880 --> 01:27:21,560
from a spiritual emergence and trauma perspective his book is called rethinking madness that's all the

919
01:27:21,560 --> 01:27:37,880
time we have on madness radio thanks a lot for tuning in. What does it mean to be called crazy

920
01:27:37,880 --> 01:27:52,680
in a crazy world? Listen to madness radio voices and visions from outside mental health.