201. You Spend Your Whole Life Chasing Something… Then What? The Psychology of High Performers | Casey Stevens, MS, LMFT

Welcome to Medicine Redefined. I'm Dr. Ultima Sharaja and I'm Dr. Darsha. Let's put the help back in the healthcare. Today we're joined by Casey Stevens, a trauma-informed therapist, speaker, and founder of Shrink Bigger, whose work explores the intersection of emotional healing, nervous system regulation, high performance, and human connection. Casey works with high achieving individuals, executives, self-proneers, and seekers who outwardly appear successful but internally feel disconnected, stuck, or unfulfilled. Her philosophy centers around a powerful idea that many of the very strategies we use to succeed in life can also become the things that separate us from ourselves. In this episode, we explore trauma, vulnerability, nervous system regulation, somatic healing, and the psychology of high performers. We discuss why some people channel pain into growth while others remain trapped by it, the tension between ambition and peace, and whether true healing comes not from outthinking or emotions, but from learning to fully experience them. We also dive into concepts like post-traumatic growth, identity, resilience, and what it actually means to live in alignment with your values rather than simply chasing external success. Let's get to it. If you're a high performer who wants a clear plan for longevity, performance, and staying active with fewer setbacks, I'm now seeing patients through my telemedicine practice refining health and performance. I'm opening a limited number of founding members spot and refining healthrx.com. All right, let's jump in. Hey, Casey, thanks so much for coming on to Medicine Redefined. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be with both of you. Yeah, no, I'm glad you connect with me on Instagram, going through your profile. I think there is just a lot of profound quotes that you put out there that make the viewer think and have a lot of introspective thoughts. So I think this episode would be awesome if we can go through some of those quotes and we'll just have discussion about this. So to start off, you wrote, you don't look fine piece by becoming untouchable. You find it by letting like touch you deeply and staying open anyway. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, I think it sort of touches on vulnerability and getting to what I call like the juicy fruit in life, right? It's not about the anything. It's not about perfection. It's not about all the compensatory strategies that we can do to create barriers to our authentic and most raw experience, but it's really about peeling those away so that we can really get to the most rich layer of our being and really experience life from that kind of heart opening, heart centered place and connecting with people there. I don't know about you guys, but that feels that's where I want to live from and meet people and know others. Yeah. And so that's my work. That is to me, the aim, the desire, the goal in all relationships. Yeah, I think a lot of that for me comes down to all of what I call seeking the truth. And this term mysticism has come up. And actually the first time I heard it was on a YouTube blogger's video saying that she believes in mysticism. I mean, at first listen, I was like, what does that mean? That's just whatever. But then when you actually look into the definition of it, I'll let you have played to when mysticism is, I started to realize that I found myself aligning more with that and with my spiritual journey. So if you don't mind just telling a list, it's a little bit about what is mysticism. I think it's the great mystery, right? But it's this quality and how do we connect with it? And so this is not at all an official definition, but if I just speak from what it is to me, right? It's, how do we palpate with our real human physical selves? And how do we palpate the mystery, the great mystery in life and what is unknown and have an intersection of those two? And I think of that as being the ephemeral, right? And how palpable and real that world is if we allow ourselves to engage with it and be curious, right? Because if we limit ourselves, I think about limitation even just our human experience, our minds, whatever layers of our being, that would be. And always wanting, I'm always wanting to push the limits and understand what's next with beyond that. What don't I already know? What is in the unknown? How do I build a relationship with that rather than certainty, which makes so many of us comfortable? But truly, it's, that familiar has a ceiling to it. It's limited and it confines us. And, and so I think of mysticism really as our ability to have a relationship with that unknown, with the mystery, with whatever lives beyond that in our faith and our truth. And what that is for each and every one of us is going to be a personal journey. But developing that relationship is, I think, one of the greatest things we can do for ourselves to expand our consciousness, expand our experience and live in a more expanded way. How about for you? What's been your experience? I'll get to that in a second, but I actually want to explore this word vulnerable a little bit more. You're talking about curiosity, you're talking about connecting. And you led the, at least the first part of the question that Darshan asked you, you led with the world with the word vulnerable. And I'm wondering why that's important. Why, why did you start there? I think, you know, it's, it's again, you know, we're so conditioned, unconsciously, subconsciously, what we do to protect ourselves is we build up compensatory strategies to not really be our true selves and to not really feel the pain of the world, whatever that pain is. We build up strategies to avoid that connection with ourself. It's like, okay, well, I only have a certain experience that I want to allow in and having those can only be positive ones. They can't be painful ones. And so it's a subconscious thing that the mind, the nervous system does to protect us from feeling pain essentially. But what we need to do is peel back all that that is and really get to these vulnerable spots. So for me vulnerability is like, am I willing to look at all of it? It's not just the good parts, it's not just the fun clards, it's not just pleasant parts, it's not just the ones that feel good or, or make me comfortable. But it's the breadth of the entire experience, right? And so we have to be really vulnerable to dare to do that because it's going to be inherently uncomfortable to push ourselves to that next level, to experience it all. And frankly, that's what healing is. Really, it's allowing in what we rejected or blocked or avoided so that we can really understand and meet whatever that pain point is in a way that would actually be truly serving to whatever the pain point is. And so whether that's physical, whether that's mental, whether that's emotional, whether that's spiritual, the truth is the same, right? We have to go into it in order to really transcend this. Wow, a lot to follow up on that. Let me start with this. You're mentioning compensatory strategies. And I'm first wondering if that's necessarily a bad thing. But let me tell you a quote from Tim Ferris actually comes to mind where he was talking about the, I guess the optimizer's curse or maybe even the problem solver's curse that if you're constantly being rewarded for problem solving your life, you eventually start, start finding problems, even problems don't exist because you're so good at that, right? You're rewarded. And I imagine that this is the case for a lot of high performing folks, right? So Darshan, I've been talking a lot about high performers, we're talking to Jade Wu about high performing sleep and that's like an internal reward that you get when you're constantly looking for a problem, you're solving it, you get that dopamine that you're looking for for the next one, externally you're rewarded as well. For instance, somebody who's a workaholic is constantly being rewarded by getting a raise at work, getting promotions. And that's looked at something to be, it's admirable, right? They're grinding. I know that we've been having this conversation for the last five to 10 years in terms of, hey, maybe it's not always go. Sometimes you just got to get in cruise control or maybe even just park the car. Yet there are still lots of people who will say, you've got to, you just got to keep grinding. For instance, this is something that I struggle with reconciling so much. So I think about, I've used Kobe Bryant over and over again, Kobe Bryant, Alex from Rosie, these folks who say that you three practices aren't enough, you got to the fourth practice, you got to do the hundred presentation before you're ready for your final presentation. And then it's the opposite of that is what you're talking about is learning to sit with ourselves gently, right? And with curiosity instead of control, you mentioned once and then you begin to shift. You start finding peace rather than chasing peace, you start cultivating peace you talked about. And I'm just wondering is for somebody who's constantly internally and externally rewarded for their entire life, how can that person even be, how can that person even begin to think about sitting and quietly being vulnerable with themselves? Because it's painful, it's so painful. Why not just keep chasing those, the busyness and it's anesthetic just deal something from Chris Williamson? Because you're going to be rewarded, you're going to be successful outwardly. And then the second part of that question was like, where's the balance? Like how do you, how does somebody find the balance? I keep going back and forth and I'm not really sure where to land on this one. I know there's a lot there. Yeah, there is a lot there. And really the question is, is anyone's drive and success and accomplishment because I work with typically also highly driven, highly successful individuals as well? Is a problem? Like really that question, whether it's addiction or anything else that we could look at and work holism can be an addiction, is it creating a problem in your life? And that's really the threshold in which you can gauge and understand, okay, is this problematic or is my life fine? Is it am I really successful at making money, but I have barriers to relationships or there's some part of my life that's not balanced, what will fill in some way? And if the answer to that is no, there's not a problem and it's not disrupting my life in some way, it's not disrupting some arena of my life in some way, then carry on. Who is to say that's a broken system and that it's not working for you? But what I tend to find is people who have been highly successful in many arenas of their life specifically, professionally and financially, but there's some part of their life that there is unfulfilled, that's generally relationships or maybe it's their spiritual self or there's something that is unfulfilled for them. And so whatever that is, it doesn't matter, but if you can look at it and say, everything's pretty good except for this one thing where I still have a longing over here, but I don't know how to fix that. Then sometimes those compensatory strategies, we have to look at them and say, yes, this has been highly adapted for me and I've been rewarded internally and externally for this strategy, but is it become maladaptive in some arena in my life? And so I think that's the question. And if it's become maladaptive in some arena in my life, if you keep pushing in that trajectory, then you'll probably just when you do what you did, you'll get what you got, right? You'll get more of the same, probably same success, but again, our other things starting to falter and fill. And so I think we are also biopsycho individual and we have to consider that and we have to really listen and ask not questions that are generalized icing because what applies to either one of you or me or Alex Ramose or Tim Ferriss or anyone who might give that direction to just do one more add to the routine and be disciplined and keep focused and do the next thing that may work for a lot of people as long as there's not a destruction that it's causing in some arena of your life. And so I think that's the thing you really want to ask yourself is am I really can I be and live fully fulfilled here or is there a longing or an arena of my life that I'm ignoring that I'm avoiding that's untouched that's not that's out of balance essentially to use your word. And if it is, then people usually come to me when they've been highly successful with many things, but they are missing something that they're a barrier, meaning the compensatory strategy that they've adapted is not serving them in this way. They cannot apply that strategy. So they have to and maybe it's being sitting and being quiet with themselves and being vulnerable with themselves. Maybe it's doing it with a therapist or a guide or somebody. I don't know what that would be. We would have to unpeel that and understand what's in the way because of the strategy that's highly serving you and other arena of your life is not serving you in this one arena. Then we probably need to go in and figure out what the barrier is that might be a subconscious one that might not the application of that particular strategy or solution simply won't work. And so they'll keep running up against a wall. And so we might need to kill it back and go inside of it and allow ourselves to feel a pain point or whatever originally was or whatever it became along the way to understand it so that we can have more balance in peace in our life. Does that answer your question? It does. I want to just because we're talking about contemplating. I want to push back a little bit. And just I'm also wondering if that maladaptive thing that you're talking about with respect to just maybe one facet of your life, if that's almost a necessary cost to pay for being great for being legendary. So I know Darce you don't know a lot about his sleep habits, but Musk is in tourists for his like in terms of family, right? I don't think that anybody would look and be like, okay, that's admirable. And I listened to some of these podcast shows. I listened to a lot to Stephen Bartlett who talks about all these billionaires he knows and millionaires he knows and they're quote unquote not happy because they don't they've sacrificed time with their kids and this and that. And I'm thinking about a LinkedIn post by a physician colleague who posted maybe a couple like a month ago where somebody he was calling out some other physicians post where the physician had written something about if you get sick, your employer is going to find another person. Your patients are going to find another doctor and so on and forth. We've all heard these things, but you know who's not going to be able to move on is going to be your kids and your wife and your parents and and this colleague who had reposted it was saying that maybe that's not necessarily all true. Like he was actually saying that he does have to sacrifice his kids. He does have to sacrifice family because being a physician is a calling. Now Darce and I typically I don't like I agree with that but I also don't I think that medicine today is different right but those are my personal thoughts but also got me thinking actually responded to him said hey that post isn't for you. It's for maybe a 20 of the people but you are not that person you're the exception of the rule. It's it's when people are making these decisions sacrifices on things that actually matter to them. They say that they're their priorities their families of priority their fitness their health is a priority yet their actions say otherwise. Those are the people that that's talking to it's not necessarily you because your priorities are aligned. So all that to say is when I think about these people who've changed the world they've been impactful to a degree where their work has touched millions of lives for the better. I almost wonder if it's a cost that has to be paid and I don't know because I don't I don't know the other side of the coin on that and I'm also not one of those people but since you you do see a lot of folks at that level I'm wondering do you know a lot of people who are at that success level and have made that type of difference and are also have it all figured out so to speak. Yeah great question so I'll do my best to answer it but I love to push back in the challenge that's what makes good conversation so I'm grateful for your question. I think of it you actually already touched the heart of really what I would say about that which is for me get it making people super conscious of what their value systems are is really important we can't separate those two and and when we're not conscious and aligned to use your word which is exactly the word that I would use but when we're not congruent with those with our conscious ideal value systems then we will not see ourselves clearly we will not make decisions that bring us into alignment and so again that is so bio psycho spiritual lead individual to each person that each of our value systems none of us are going to have exactly the same and I don't know two people on the planet that will have exactly the same alignment in value systems because when needs compete when two values are on the same wrong meaning I almost see them in a ladder and a hierarchy and truly each and every one of us has a system that is our ideal system and we're aligned and congruent with that system when we envision our highest self we are reality with lineup and being perfectly congruent with that that's what health and well-being and really enlightenment is when those two things line up most people don't have them that line up and it's also then this other question of okay so if somebody has a high that and so when our reality is incongruent with that ideal system that's when people are coming to therapy that's when people are and well physically that's when people really need to move to bring those things into alignment and frankly what I love about coaching people around that is it's a lot of it is very low hanging frame sometimes we just didn't know how in contrast to ourselves how contrary we worked our own value systems because we hadn't gotten super conscious about what they were and the particular hierarchy of those systems so all of that to then circle back that's some of the most important work you can do from the get go when you start doing this work especially at a high level because most people are pretty aligned or else they wouldn't be as highly successful as they come to be however there may again be these elements that are not and so we explore what barriers to that success might be and why they're not able to get congruent with those systems then to answer your question if somebody is doing something in a super great influencing million making a difference in the world having this higher calling I would agree with you it probably is exactly but inside again are they congruent or would they decide that this is the hierarchy and this is the sacrifice that I'm willing to make they may resoundingly and I hear that's all the time with successful people usually for them business is not the one and and it always has been and so there is a call especially if that really aligns with a deeper purpose right because it's not just business and success and money hey we could like those things but when you align success with true purpose that's a whole other ballgame which is more like a calling if more like a mission in life and nothing will disrupt you from that and so whether that's relationships or kids or marriages or family or any of those things that might be more of these relational framework pieces typically have to fall under that and by the way then it's also interesting because our negotiation of our value systems and people who are close to us in proximity and are personally say somebody like that had a spouse they would have to have a spouse that could align with their could also prioritize and see them being in that otherwise inherently there's going to be disruption in their life it's going to cause a fissure in that relationship and so lots of variables have to come into play to make that work I think consciousness around our value assistance is one of them do you align it with do a purpose and a drive to both of those things and hierarchy around alignment or so that is is a deeper purpose that's going to almost differentiate and distinct and create a distinction where that that purpose would offset everything else underneath it which again is really common when you're successful and but again this kind of question does it emerge what I notice happens is people think that they're okay with it and then they reach a certain level of success it's usually an extraordinary success and then they're looking around and saying what did I do all this for and yes are you changing the world are you making a huge difference yes it's that inherently will be gratifying but there is less personal gratification because what I find is they reach a certain threshold where they take on more consciousness it might have been a focus for a period of time but when they reach a certain level of success then they're not as rewarded by those external factors and they're wanting to they're not feeling close to anybody who do I get to celebrate this with and it's such that isolation that I see that really exceptional people achieve is they really feel lonely and they feel like no one's at their level to really understand the work they're doing or what they're going through or what they've accomplished they really don't relate to anybody because they've outgrown everybody and by the way they probably neglected their relationships along the way and so what I find is it there's usually a period of time that they're in ignorant bliss about it because they're so focused on the mission but once they've reached a certain threshold I hope this is answering your question once they've reached a certain threshold then what I find is they are longing for more that's when they start questioning and it's maybe it's because they've lost everything and maybe it's because they feel so unrelatable to anyone that they're looking for somebody who can really understand their experience but also help them feel they might be surrounded by people but they feel alone and so that's a profound loneliness that a lot of leaders executives high performing individuals that I work with and wrestling with at some point it may not even be tell later when they're alive or reaching a certain threshold I mean it's usually after they reach a certain threshold of success and then they look around and it's what is the purpose of what's where's my gratification in all of this and sometimes they find that there's that's missing yeah all from what we would call that be lowly chapter and I think a lot of times people go through multiple ultimately I wonder if you have a follow-up on that or any pushback in regards to the lowly chapter yeah yeah sure no so yeah in case I got some thoughts so I very much agree with everything you're talking about from the vulnerability standpoint I think from me the way I think about that comes down to breaking down social constructs I think when we grow up we're bought into a system and that's where those maladaptive behaviors rise from I believe but when you look at people like Elon Musk Steve Jobs and you talk about them being at their higher selves these are people that don't believe in constructs at all Steve Jobs was known to have the reality distortion field where he would go to somebody and tell them they're able to do something that they absolutely helps it possible I put those people like in the top point 1% yes people who are absolutely changing the world and trying to save humanity etc but when you look at high performers they'd say 90% of us they I think a lot of us think our ego is try to head in that direction that we are going to do something magnificent and there's different levels to that right for me example sure I want to touch the lives of many patients I want to change the way medicine might be done we have a podcast here for a reason but I know that at the same time there's going to be a point where I want to enjoy life I want to what I call libelful life live with zest build rage and really enjoyed that external reward plus the internal reward of family relationships learning new things having great purpose at work and funny because I've just wrote a sub stack article on this about five days ago called the monster you create right and what I've started to realize is everyone had 20 to 30 years all I'm 33 so luckily I've gone perspective on this to believe think about it but a lot of high performers want to work hard make money to what end to eventually enjoy their life and I think what Chris Williams and talk about is if all you know for 20 years is working hard to get to that point once you get to that point it's going to be hard to retire it's going to be hard to let go of that monster you just created and so when I look at Elon and Steve Jobs for example I think they're happy with those trade offs to not be the best parent because they are trying to reach them higher selves whereas if you look at Kobe Bryant or maybe someone else as long as these people are aware of that monster that they're trading and they're okay with that I think that a lot of people just don't do that self-reflection I find but I don't know really yeah yeah yeah I think you're touching there is this kind of rare high percentage of rare and there are almost idiots of odds and their calling is so channeled in a particular they couldn't not be that and there are sacrifices that they would probably gladly make and the disparity between those two levels and their hierarchy and their personal reward is that actually maybe the reward and so who are we to say that only they can decide that for themselves and I'm sure that many of those trade-offs right I think Elon Musk is a brilliant example of that as he is the city at spawns and I think he's absolutely aligned with his purpose and feels like he has some other rewards and balances and personal things in his life but there's a huge gap between those things and what he's generating in the world and yeah I think it is sort of seeing that distinction and then when does our you can feel the differentiation if somebody was great and extraordinary and the top of their field but it may not reach quite that level and so they have to look at some point and I think it's really just asking yourself any question again if we go back to the values this time and if you were to tell me that I want to be the greatest in my field I want to influence people to what end I would really ask any high performer any leader any executive any creator of whatever sort that they are doing what do you imagine okay let's great let's we can entertain all of that but what do you imagine you're going to experience when you accomplish that what do you imagine that's going to give you and I think it's a really great question to understand what's truly the drive and sometimes we're not conscious of what our true motivation to drive is and we think that it's going to give something and it might be the ego that we're satisfying and sometimes we don't actually need to go about accomplishing the certain things it's oh I recognize once I do this thought exploration about what I imagined it would be it could be anything it could be a financial reward here I want to go on a retreat center in Bali and serve all of the highest or I want to who knows what I mean just anything you could dream or imagine you don't have to actually accomplish it you can put yourself there and really then explore this option of understanding what you imagine you were going to have on the other side of that and that can sometimes give you a lot of redirection and insight into why do I want all the money why do I want all the success why do I want the fame why do I want the you fill in the blank whenever anyone's chasing and is it really going to end up giving you congruence with the true values that you know or do those need to be reorganized in some way because perhaps you weren't as insightful about your value system as you thought you were this is funny if any of my friends or my wife are listening they're just going to be laughing because it's almost like a live therapy session that I'm having here I'm thinking about as you guys are talking right so two two separate thoughts I'm the first one that came to mind was Jim Kerry I think maybe it was that the Golden Globes or something where he gets up there and he says this joking you got you guys seen this where he's like I'm Jim Kerry three time or four time Golden Globe winner something and tonight I'll go to sleep I'll I'll dream I'll dream about winning my fifth Golden Globe and that's when I'm going to be enough in the point that he's making kind of like what you're talking about right like what happens when you get to that the the peak of the map is it going to be enough what's your what are you going to feel like and then Darshan your point about Steve Jobs Musk right versus the other 99.9% of people who are still like at least the high performers and the 99.9% the problem is nobody's reading their biographies and correct me from wrong like you've read jobs you've read Musk right I don't read these biographies but I'm also almost wondering if it's when when we read these stories if it's better to just read them as almost a fictional thing as opposed to look at it like inspiring and oh I can do this because that's what most people are trying to be like okay this is these are the lessons that I can extract and apply to my life and I'll be one step closer whereas you're arguing that that's like you shouldn't even approach the world in terms of your framework the same way am I kind of understand that yeah so the beauty of Walter Isaacson right the author of those biographies is that's exactly how he writes on he doesn't write them to motivate you he writes it as hey this is a realistic picture of how these guys have gotten to their level and these are the tradeoffs that they had to do these are the opportunity costs and so it really just gives you a full spectrum picture of like you know like wow Elon Musk super inspirational but do I want to be that type of person do I want to make the sacrifices that he has to lit his type of life right and I think Casey as you said it comes down to understanding your value system right and I talked about it as knowing the game you're playing I mean I talked to a lot of new resident grads and if all that understanding like what are you trying to chase is it to be a master is it that you won't find it for freedom do you want more like style balance and constantly having a conversation with yourself helps you with that next decision you know that elite the lives more with your goals and I would keep following that down even okay I want financial freedom but why it's like we haven't reached the end of is this thing giving me what I imagine it's giving me and many times what we'll find is what we think something is doing for us it's not really doing that for us it's not going to really deliver us where we want to go and so I think I have not read those autobiographies myself but I I think of it as this concept really of if anyone is a mirror or a reflection to me if I'm reading an autobiography about this person or I'm meeting this person in life rather than evaluating myself against that is really what does he devote in me when I hear about what they're experiencing what they had to go through what does that evoke inside of me what does that tell me ultimately about myself and how does that help me to be more cautious about my own values not as a judgment of them or not as an aspiration to be like them if it doesn't align it's what's really true for me how do I learn to listen to what anybody any mirror any reflection could tell me is evoking inside me and then do I take that honest wisdom and really do what the best I could with that to understand myself better and I really think by living in a line with ourselves and knowing ourselves deeply and moving in the direction of that alignment consistently with devotion to nothing else is the greatest gift that we can get to the world and we might just derive in some pretty amazing places and do some pretty amazing things so let's talk about cultivating peace then right how do we become someone who rather than chasing peace or running away from something running towards something and just running being busy I'm thinking about Mac shank talking about the what's the badge of burnout you call a certificate of suffering badge of burnout rather than those who keep earning those badges how do we become somebody who's actually cultivating peace rather than choosing it I think we feel peace when we align with our values so it's going to seem like it comes back around to that but when we've really learned I just I know it to be true I think what we do in our value system when we are in congruent when we are unconscious and we're not living in alignment our reality doesn't match our ideals is we are chasing impulse and so we're driven by an impulsive thought we want to give ourselves relief or fill some void in some way and so we do it and it might get us closer but we end up feeling empty or we end up still longing we're still in this I guess void of unmet needs and so we're in pursuit of those but we're not really doing it and so I think of this as being the difference between impulses and desires and what I think we are meant to do is really chase our desires which is where pleasure and joy and kind of these higher elevated emotions live and to somebody who's exceptional or somebody who is moving in alignment with their values systems and making those congruents sometimes that's really hard work there is sacrifice it's not to achieve this ultimate pleasure it's like a simple analogy sometimes that I'll use with people just started grass roots one is it by said that I wanted to be physically fit but I was had chase the impulse of eating a plant device cream every night it's those that's incongruence it's a silly example right but I might feel this instant gratification that I would get from eating this food but I'm totally actually taking myself completely out of alignment so these things on a polarity scale are couldn't be more oppositional right like desire and impulse are completely oppositional and so if I were to say hey I'm gonna actually work out and eat clean and eat whatever I might eat right in order to actually feel vital and healthy and strong and be the shape in my body that I want to be I would that would be the harder path to do but ultimately I would be more I would have get more intrinsic pleasure from following that path that might be the more challenging path that might be the more disciplined that might be the more sacrificial path but I'm gonna get the pleasure that I would extrapolate from that versus the pleasure from eating the food there there's no comparison right and most people don't have the devotion or discipline again it's a silly example of that but how do you apply that to absolutely anything and so I think the distinction is differentiating between impulse and pleasure impulse and desire and really understanding that our pursuits our devotion to ourselves and to our purpose and to our higher calling and life really has to be a pursuit of desire and sometimes that means sacrifice along the way whereas impulse is always gonna give you something what's gonna give you the dopamine being hit but it's not really gonna lead to anything sustainable so not giving interior impulses can be painful so on that note I want to talk about pain and trauma okay something that short and sweet that I got from you where you talk about pain teaches us what belongs to us and what does not say more about that one yeah I think it really is opening up this intimacy with self and understanding again our kind of biopsycho individual experience and I think of trauma really is it's not what happens to us but it's how we make meaning of ourselves when it happens to us and it's how we're held in the space of that right so if I'm just thinking about that psychologically there's all kinds of pain right but really I think of it as a language a communication of deepening into relationship with ourselves and how do I again remove the barriers of whatever would prevent me from knowing myself more deeply and aligned with that version of myself that would lead me to fulfillment and satisfaction and true true happiness or peace in life whatever it is that you're seeking and so I think this understanding to be able to differentiate to meet your own pain in that way where you understand why did this hurt what happened here how was I not met why did this feel traumatic why is this pain even sugar even looking at physical pain why is it showing up in my body what's it trying to communicate to me if there's some I think disease and pain and disorder and all of those things that show up I'd be curious to hear what your opinions are of that but I think they're not separate right from our mental emotional states from our traumas right they're also interwoven that there is a message in that and so it's really how do I understand what of it is mine and what of it I've inherited and what of it I've absorbed that I don't necessarily believe in or understand who am I and what do I believe about this if I really got the opportunity to explore and examine that in a way that was true to me and if I really listened to the cues and the unique bio individuality of my own body my own mind my own spirit what would it have me know and am I moving am I making space to really understand myself so deeply that I can let go of anything that doesn't belong to me isn't mine isn't what I would consciously subscribe to if I could see the difference does that make sense it does I want to could you how do you define trauma for people that's a word that I feel has been perverted a lot and so how do you use that word in in the general sense and then also maybe in the pathological sense well I think of you know I mean it's again if so how do you internalize the trauma and so trauma is big trauma little trauma there is a spectrum of trauma of ways that we can experience that and we absorb the pains and the hurts and so I think of it as whatever that is for you is true and real but are you over identified with that I think so often we can get over identified and get locked into a victim consciousness and victim consciousness is just going to create barriers to our exceptional life right so it doesn't mean that we weren't it valid and being traumatized by whatever that could be again is it a physical trauma is it a motion trauma is it a sexual trauma is you name what is the trauma and if it feels traumatic to you meaning you're unresolved it's staying with you your response to life and anything that then lives inside your nervous system is giving off this neuroception that okay well I'm locked in this time I am I'm time traveling back to this place and I can't escape it and my world is colored by it I can't free myself from the traumatic experience that I lived here and so to me I would say that then you have downloaded this as trauma and now unconsciously you're moving through the world and seeing the world and experiencing it even in your nervous system which is some horrible of course in a way that is not allowing you to be free to meet those things that are meet life and circumstances and people in a regulated way because there's a distortion that that has been laid on to the surface of that and so I think it's our job to remove that distortion but then the lens through which we see the world is tainted the lens through which we see the world is we're not free and so we're going into every single and so our sense of reality is fragmented our sense of reality is distorted and these traumas then stifle us from living more vitally more presently more in our center and more consciously frankly because it cuts us unconsciousness and so I think it just allows us from really having some of those experience that we were on their eyes have I hope that kind of answers that that question but so it's going back and sometimes those very subconscious traumas we need to greet them and be held in such a way and that's what we can't just keep driving out of it right it's like we're actually going to re-traumatize our nervous system which is again some cortical and so we don't have a choice around this right it if you keep pushing beyond a point that you've had a trauma it you're actually just re-traumatizing yourself and you're re-entraining your nervous system to keep you in that traumatized state and in that nervous system dysregulation whatever that state of dysregulation is for you we see the world through the state that we're in and if we don't repair the state that we're in and come back to present state all the time and remove those barriers then we're going to struggle we're going to find some way that our life is not that there's dysfunction going on in our life some part of us that is not optimal some aspect of our life that to circle back to the earlier conversation that is is not in harmony and so that's our work to do could you give an example of an instance where somebody would be pushing through that trauma and just re-traumatizing themselves yeah it could be yeah I'm trying to think of a very specific or just an inventive example but it's if you I'm trying to think of something really specific but it would be in any way that your nervous system is telling you let's say that your nervous system is going into fight or flight and that's the pattern you go into so every time whatever the trauma was drives you into fight or flight and so then you tell yourself okay if I go back and experience something similar maybe it was I had this injury a lot of it it's so mental guys it's like amazing how mental this can be because we can tell ourselves just push forward go do that thing but the more that we do that we're going to reach a ceiling and we'll keep going into that state where we're going into fight or flight every single time and we can't escape it again because it's some cortical the nervous system clicks on this is automatic we don't have control or governance over it it's not governed by the part of our breathe we found a cortex that's gonna allow us to decide consciously just to do it better now can we in some and this is why even we would call it exposure therapy it's like maybe you had a trauma a silly example like you were terrified of rattlesnakes or something and we said hey here's exposure therapy let's just keep exposing you to rattlesnakes all that's gonna really do deeply maybe there's a threshold which some people can overcome that and say oh they're friendly now and I don't I'm not bothered by that but usually what happens is we'll just reimprint the fear deeper but we'll actually get ourselves even more shut down in our nervous system so yes I might be able to I might have shifted from fight or flight and now I can sit here and look like I'm calm but I'm actually in a free state right and so I'm recycling these patterns that it might look on the surface like I've been a become okay with rattlesnakes but actually I've just become dissociated and gone into a free state so that I can tolerate staying here so I pushed myself without actually understanding if I were just to sit and really understand what about that was terrifying for me and what about that is that bringing up so if you slow down a little bit right it doesn't mean I'm not about claddling anyone or babying or anything like that but what do we need to do in order to tend to the nervous system so that it's not just flocking around from different states and am I becoming am I settling into a more dysregulated state that on the surface might look colmer than when I was in fire flight but but internally what's actually happening to the nervous system am I really at peace with this I'm sure there are some people right that that can work for but generally if you really understand the nervous system which speaking of the fire it's just going to shift you into a frankly a more dysregulated state around that might on the surface look one way but internally what's really happening in your neuroception right I don't know that is shifted that easily without truly repairing it in a meaningful way just pushing through does that mean would you agree with that I don't know I think so I think so I'm also interested in what's happening between two people who at an earlier point in life could be exposed to the same little T trauma yet maybe 10 20 years down the road at some point let's just say through their childhood and then later through their adult life have completely different phenotypes for instance you were to use the word resilience earlier and I can tie back to your conversation with somebody who's really highly ambitious driven performer etc the same issue whether it's maybe they grew up in a household where parents had an issue actually a classic recent conversation with Brunei Brown and Stephen Bartlett them talking about both the similar households shouting behind the walls etc and so on and so forth and now like they're in in some way in the sitting on top of the pinnacle what is it that will make somebody take that experience that little T trauma the same type and matriculated into something so meaningful use that as obstacle as inspiration and be better quote unquote for at least outwardly and then another person who is going to be completely dysfunctional and not being not get beyond that cement right yeah I mean I think I love the word phenotype because I think there's so much of it goes back to the adaptive strategies like what did we experience how did we adapt to it and I think I don't know there's something that is again ephemeral in our essence that comes through that some of us just have a deeper sense of resiliency I think some people are kind of like if you think about them is is a glass like a you know that you could you know some are more crystal and fragile and some are you know more solid and sturdy and can endure more and same traumas right could and frankly somebody who is more sturdy could have gone through a lot more and so how is that built and constructed along the way and then what are the compensatory strategies that I develop but also in all of those variables are so complex and multidimensional that allow us to take on and it's funny because I work with a lot it is frankly more interesting than anything rather than somebody who's had very you know silver spoon kind of life and then becomes really extraordinary what I'm far more interested in is when that journey has been more complex and multidimensional and I see it all the time with really exceptional people it wasn't necessarily that they had everything that was easy right but they had all of these challenges that that you know in our world we call it post-traumatic growth rather than post-traumatic stress it's like somebody can get locked into that and I think it's also our unconscious our ego's identity it's like the things that we identify with some people really over-identify with their victimhood and with their challenges and with staying and and so there is kind of exploration of what do you identify with and why and is that really serving you or not and I think sometimes people don't have a choice and then again there's so many variables that it's fascinating for me to dive into that and really see what drives somebody to become in my world I mean what this is what I had to learn about myself is I was just I didn't know it until I was inside of it and I really had to discover like wow I'm like really a seeker I really when there's a challenge I didn't because my life was smooth until it wasn't right and so I had that opportunity I saw that opportunity that's like well a lot of stuff is happening and what do I do with that and I to be honest I didn't know that that's what I would make of it until I was inside that space right but I think that's one of the most fascinating qualities and frankly it's no coincidence that those are the people that are drawn to me and my work or people who are very similar is they tend to want to dig in do whatever it takes figure it out get to the bottom and keep going right it's like just keep seeking no matter what their growth minded in life they are seekers they're not complacent in life they are not wanting to be comfortable it's always striving to be more and I learned that at a certain juncture when I had my own challenges and what I find is that people who are similarly wired tend to come and work with me because otherwise it probably won't be a great fit because it's so much of the ethos and the deep unconscious value system that now of course is conscious for me I flew I am and so I want people who are not going to be over identified with their victimhood but are going to do whatever it takes to kind of overcome that and figure out what the heck is going on so that you can pass it and I just think there are so many variables to that some of them frankly again I think are almost mystical some of them are part of our design that two people could have the same experience but their phenotype is going to drive them to walk in this way where they're seeking and others are going to be over identified and again you always have to ask there's always a secondary gain or reward in the mind for whatever choice they're making it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best choice for them but there is a secondary gain that they're getting and so being over identified with being if I'm a martyr or if I'm helpless or if I'm wounded or if I'm weak in some way and I want somebody to how am I utilizing that as a tool if I've over identified with my victimhood how am I utilizing that as a tool that might be working right again like they it there is some gratification in that for them it's not really ever going to reach them to their aligned value system or their most enlightened self or probably their greatness it will keep them separate from that for all space and time until they change that until they make a new decision around what they truly desire but but many people it's no confusion about the fact that most I would say most people choose that they get stuck at a certain level of that and don't transcend does that answer your question what do you guys think about that yeah good old no I do agree I think it gets to be really difficult I the analogy that you use with respect or the metaphor rather for the different types of glass I this is that nature nurture thing some of it is I think it's hardwiring for sure is genetic I think a lot of it also there is some part of resilience where I use the word coddling earlier and as somebody who has a child and takes parenting very seriously this concept of I don't know where I heard it but the way that I was raised as an immigrant coming from South East Asian household versus how I'm raising my kid is very different and you try to I promise I'm going to connect this you try to learn about what gentle parenting quote-unquote means and there's a I think a very fine but very clear line between gentle parenting and permissive parenting because the reality is I don't know that you can go too far by not trying to quote-unquote pass on these generational traumas and I'm skipping topics here but I do think that a lot of times parents and just people in general who have suppressed them for a long time like you're talking about maybe you think that you become resilient maybe these are obstacles and hurdles and we were this badge or certificate of suffering as I was saying earlier and then you are quote-unquote retraumatized later on when you're exposed to a little person who responsible for you like oh shit okay this is where I'm like where's that coming from I like why am I why am I so triggered by this specific situation and then maybe you sit right you think through what's actually happening and you figure out deeper lever oh okay it's coming back to me now but then you got to be really careful because now you can't because the initial instinct as a parent is to oh I don't want to pass this on I don't want it to be the same I want to be better and you could go to the other extreme right and now you won't build resilience you won't build something called frustration tolerance that I take from Dr. Becky Kennedy and I think that's really important too again I might have been from Becky Kennedy where I heard her she was like talking about how sometimes building resilience in kids is important for instance I think she might have said that she wants to put her a kid in a martial arts thing or something like that when there's nobody to save them and then if another person comes punches in the face and then look at you to be like hey save me and you're like no go figure it out sometimes that's good for you now say that a little bit tongue and cheek but I think there are some merit to that like where you can help carve resilience in people by exposing like exposure therapy right stress tolerance and distress tolerance they're really they're very real thing I think that if it if that amount of stress is overwhelming and it's more than you have capacitor deal with it can traumatize you and leave you incapacitated for a long time and so as somebody who is in a role who can potentially dose his stress and things come up where you can facilitate the process of your child by okay let me do this for you let me do that for you let me give this to you let me do that for you you don't build that resilience you don't build that distress it's tough hi and I think maybe that's why we spent so much time talking about this and but this is something that like it bothers me a lot I suppose because there's really no right answers to it and and there are multiple points of view so yeah those are my thoughts yeah a great one I mean I love just the fact that you're so deeply contemplating and exploring all of that it already tells me that as a parent right you're probably right on the right track and there is going to be some just deep contemplation that you're exploring and it's not really it's it's not about the destination it really is the journey of that I believe and in the way that you can be vital and present with that and everything we've talked about you know so far really allows us to do that in a way when we become parents even if we haven't you know reconciled or rectified all of zones traumas or if we're consciously trying to choose to do something differently uh we're more available when we do this in ourselves and inherently having a child and rearing them and having them go through some of these developmental milestones that probably are living inside our own nervous system and memory sealed right unconsciously or consciously right is going to allow you to see how to and I think it's just that relationship it's like how do you meet it along the way and know so you don't get into a pattern of over-functioning under-functioning or success and atrophy and some of these dynamics right it's like I think again we're so bio psychosocial spiritual individual that you have to meet that soul that child and really understand what do they need to your point and I'm glad actually that you brought up genetics because I think epigenetics can influence so much our trauma response and what we carry and there's so much more science now to understand that we can inherit generations of anxiety or stress or depression that live in the people that we inherited our genes from and so that's important piece to know too but it's also okay how do I attune to you as this unique child and this is where really I believe we can you can have multiple children even I don't know how many children you have all but in you can have and they can all have a different experience and that's because they are bringing their own unique epigenetics and and then their own unique just essence right that how is that shape informed and how do I attune that to this child versus this child that may be different even though they have the same two parents and the same two circumstances it's like in actuality they don't and how do I attune to each individual and this is why I'm so big on emphasizing this bio individuality it's like you can see that your child just comes out and they already have an essence personality is formed and there's things that we can do to shape and help them to become more resilient without pushing them too far because if we push them too far if we just throw them out hate without guidance it's I think that's what really great parenting is we create a container so that they can become the best version of themselves and if that never happened for us then how do we really truly understand what a container looks like that allows them to reach the edges and push out and become who they are meant to be versus who I meet them to be for me and all of those things and it's like how do I actually help them just become who they are and the best version of themselves and some of these qualities and traits that yes I value but also how do I work with that so that they can harness that that leading edge and develop more resiliency and I think there are ways that we can do that effectively without being too harsh or pushing too hard or leaving them out to do without any guidance at all without any sense. Casey do you find people at a certain age where they're able to start building that resilience or at least start breaking down their trauma because the reason I ask if we're talking about this contrast between people who are very resilient and become successful which will work through it versus those who quote unquote become dysfunctional I almost think that you need enough life experience to even understand the trauma that you had and for example me grown up I had a lot of trauma a lot of anxiety grown up I developed a stutter sixth grade all the way up to age 2223 we'll tag this in with the body keeps the score right I'm sure that's what happened but I got to a point where I was 2324 where I developed a lot of confidence in myself I realized what I could offer the world and I developed a theme right and I knew the game all is playing essentially and so through that confidence I was able to make sense of whatever that trauma was right I was able to tame it in a way and say okay this is why this is generational or this is why my parents at XYZ or my friends did this and I was able to just understand it so going back to that initial question is there really a time frame where you're seeing the people that come to you being able to understand that you need enough life experience to understand what's going on. I'll say this I typically work with people who are adults rather than but I have had a few kind of very gifted teenagers that I work with that have followed me because people will also stay with me once they begin so I certainly walk that path with some younger people and I do think kids and teenagers there's almost a this day and age even compared and I'm probably older than both of you but they are I don't just wiser older souls just from the get go right so I think sometimes there's a space for them to learn those things faster or be tapped into a greater wisdom sooner and I also think there's a lot of division and all of that too but I don't think I do think there is something with aging wisdom that comes along right and I think of it in the way that I would conceptualize it is like we all come with our own perspective and which is built up from our traumas our experience our history our view of the world our nervous system everything informs our perception of the world and we all have a unique perception and oftentimes our perception is usually not as wise as when we get perspective and what we ultimately want to get is perspective right which is really in my mind when you understand I can understand to your point about your parents is for your where this came from or why this developed you can get a greater wisdom and whatever allows that I'd be fascinated to hear what that was for you that allows you to garner that greater wisdom and that greater perspective which allows you to not just see the world as you are but as but is from that person's eyes where this higher what would be the purpose and all of that and can I hold this kind of emotional intelligence of all the thing not just my perception of the world and my perception is going to stifle me because it will it's inherently limited I only know as much as I believe and understand and and limited to those beliefs but we I think it inherently like these two things go hand in hand right wisdom and age and so it's harder to get that but it's not to say that someone couldn't have that as a younger soul right as a teenage great I admire that you even got it when you were in your early 20s right because that I think something is earlier than a lot of people get it I have people who start this work in their 60s I have people that start this work in their 80s I have people that start this work and feel like it's too late it's never too late it's really when you can click into a higher and you understand that life isn't just my perception of it and my perception is actually limiting me to having a greater experience in life and so I would like to get more perspective which is true wisdom right it's yeah I might know if you say my knowledge is a wisdom and so whatever age we get that I think again and inherently those are intrinsically linked between age and wisdom but I think it can happen at any time and it's what my what in your life can arise that would evoke that experience to happen for you and I would imagine there was a catalyst right they'll allow you to get that perspective and I know there was for me usually that's what I see is like something and sometimes it's really challenged sometimes it's really I mean I'm glad to hear it sounds like for you there a lot of it was confidence and developing but you but a lot of people do it through adversity like they are having a challenge like is not going as they want and they finally have to say something about this is not working for me and so how do I optimize how do I really re-examine everything to get to where I want to be yeah absolutely so that leads me into a book that is on my list that I haven't read yet but it's called The Body Keeps The Score right yeah you got to go on it yeah so you've got a quote here that says you can't outthink your trouble pulse right yeah I mean simply put we I think it's also the difference between you know intelligence and wisdom like you can't outtalk it you can't because that just re-imprints like so often and what a lot of traditional psychotherapy does or therapy right is they'll just kind of talk and what they're doing is they're re-imprinting the victim consciousness it or trauma lives in our body and all levels and which is again some protocol the nervous system it communicates we get these deep imprints that live inside of us around our trauma and so if we just keep talking about it I think bear we can actually do a lot of damage by imprinting it deeper into our nervous system and frankly over it it's this identification with our victimhood that we can't just intellectualize these problems and be solved it's really about the embodiment and we're not free unless we're a free on all levels of our being and so if you're nervous system in this neuroception that's happening as you're perceiving the world because you've had a threat or a trauma in the past doesn't allow you to perceive the world differently again we see the world through the state that we are in and if you're in a dysregulated state which is some protocol we don't have control over it so I could be fine and then something could happen I had a client who was just talking about this the other day she is staying at home with her parents at this time something happened where you know they were moving some furniture a door she perceived was slammed and because of her trauma from the past and you know I'm in a family session where everyone's there and the parents are there and we're talking about it right and she went into an absolute like mental like breakdown because this door was slammed in her perception of the world and so but then as everyone's debating the semantics of what happened it's like you know the parent is saying I the door wasn't slammed and it's like none of this is the point for perception of the world is telling her and at what it did is it's broke her a perfectly regulated person before that moment but she hears that and because of her trauma it puts her into a state that she didn't choose she didn't want to be there she you know hated being there but she didn't know how to get past it right and so how do we really understand that there are so many of these variables and in life and in our world where exposed to so many variables that are out of our control in our circumstance that are going to evoke that same trauma response is going to come up and I always say really or imagine it doesn't matter your perception is telling you this thing that's putting you into an altered state that's not allowing you to perceive the world clearly and so you're going to perceive the world as a as a dangerous threatening place and you're going to experience things that Mary may not actually be happening the way that you're perceiving them accurately and we can't help that until we kind of slow down and really tend to those parts and so if we just talk about it I always say awareness is the first step so if somebody's not aware of that then I would walk them through all of that I would explain you know the different states of the brain and how this is how it travels up you're having this neuroception that's traveling up to the brainstem and eventually reaching here but if it's getting cut off at the place that's telling me you're in danger then I can't reach the part of my brain that's rationalizing and saying oh yeah well maybe he didn't really start the slammer door or maybe like again and it's a silly example but it's you know a real one I was just talking about so it's like okay so I need to provide the psycho education so that you understand even how the nervous system on the brain works that's valuable but we're gonna get locked there if we just you know you keep having those experiences or you're receiving threat now we need to understand how do we tend to that floor that's perceiving the threat that's not even reaching the prefrontal cortex and the reasoning center of the brain in the first place so we the psycho education and intellectualization of like well why did that happen and did it really happen and was it really a door slam or was it really like that can only take us so far and then we really have to examine what is it that happens that I am so thrown off that my state could go from perfectly regulated and receptive to the world to completely dysregulated and frankly having what her words were was like a mental breakdown and so how do we go from those two things well we have to tend to that because she's not choosing to have a mental breakdown right she's not choosing to feel that way and dysregulated about that for as long as she was and stuck in that and perceiving her dad as a threat who isn't really actually a threat but this thing is all does this make sense so I think it's important to you know have awareness and which is just what the kind of intellectualization would be hey I need to explain if you didn't understand all of this already well this is how it works and then what would we do in order to tend to that so that we can get you back to a receptive state because we see the world through this state we're in and if you're in a dysregulated state then your perception of everything is going to remain tainted you will never get perspective you will never get a bug where I can actually see like oh yeah maybe he didn't slam the door or oh yeah maybe that was an accident or maybe he you know like that wasn't really a threat or that wasn't I'm never going to get to that place where I have true perspective if I don't get regulated again yeah absolutely so then take us into somatic bodywork and so I don't necessarily want to see people doing like my own factor for lease there's breath work yeah take us through a little bit about quantum healing does that also go ahead and hand with this too I think does because I just really think about quantum healing to me is like we are time traveling and we are indifferent like when just as an example to go back to this gal it's okay when the door slams she's not in the present time and space anymore she's travel and so she's time traveled back to when she experienced that threat or that danger that probably was audible one prefer in that time and space and so for me I just really think there's all this entanglement that's happening and again it really depends on the state that you're in and a lot of it can be in her child where there's so many ways to go about I don't think there's one way that works for everybody and I don't think there's one right way to do it but it's really getting back it's connecting when we're doing healing it's connecting the body with whatever this experience or this imprint is and how do we find out where it lives and I always just call it tracking the energy so the way I do it which isn't necessarily a way that is some specific training of how to do it but I think how do you go inward how do you connect with where this trauma is living in your body when you experienced it and then we can gather data about it and then really I think the things that we're looking for in that moment when we're tracking the energy which maybe it may be anxiety it may be a pit in my stomach it may be a my hands are sweating it may be that I got a splitting headache whatever that is for you we're just gonna track it and follow it when it happened and it's that combination of things that I think you'll find even as you reflect in your own kind of history with that or your own work that that combination is when real disorder disease dysfunction takes root and so when that hasn't been done well then that's what needs to happen and so it's just taking a little bit of space and sometimes it's a moment sometimes it's just it's literally I'm just the best word for it is attention how do we attune and put attention on it until it can pass and sometimes that's all it needs and it's brief and it's not it doesn't have to be this big saga and doesn't have to be this big crazy healing thing but we're going back and we're tending to the version of you that got stuck in that place and that's what we're doing right that's what it would look like and then if we track the energy and I do that let's say there was some anxiety that you were feeling in your heart and then we do that and whatever comes up maybe it's a memory field maybe it's the tunement that we just need to sit and put attention on on the anxiety itself in the heart maybe you know a thought comes up or a memory or it's like our my job when I'm tracking people through that is just to be present with whatever comes up I'm not in control of it I'm just creating a container so that whatever is meant to unfold in that particular part of the body because that's the somatic experience of it we want to stay there as long as we need to until that feels like it shifts and how we know it shifts is it probably goes to another part of the body now and so this isn't usually just a one time okay well the anxiety and the heart and that's it it's like what you're gonna notice I guess I can only speak from experience what I notice is that now it shifts and now I notice I have a tingling in my fingers or now I notice that my leg is numb or now I notice and it just keeps moving and every stage we don't rush it but we just stay exactly with what that is until it shifts and it goes to another place and we just keep doing that until we get to the bottom and then what we also notice is each place in our body is probably holding a different experience it's probably holding a different trauma or it's probably holding a different story or narrative or pattern right and so if you stay with those then you start to notice like for me I get I have suffered with my green headaches for a lot of my life and so it took a long time for me to decipher what the meaning of that was and exactly like when that happens and I can feel that coming on sometimes there could be a few different sources of that for me but now I know exactly it's like this is the message it's coming through that's exactly true and specific to me somebody else might have migraine headaches and they would have a different message or a different truth but for me I've been able to track that so that it doesn't mean I will never have another migraine in my life but it does mean that I can number one stave it off and I have a lot less of them than I've ever had you know there's significant even finish but it also means that I know when that happens what is trying to be communicated to me on all levels of my being that's what I do in short in essence is I kind of hold people with that and and you know we really can collapse time and space and really that's what quantum is that's what any somatic healing is is we can erase any of that and bring it all into the present moment because I can be time traveling over there in the past I can be in the future I can be in any place and really how do I synthesize that into the present moment so that I can carry that through and I'm not living in the past anymore and I'm not living in the future but I can be in the present and I can be fully vital and alive in my body without all of these things that are distracting me or pulling me out of my center or not allowing me to feel full and whole and healthy and and healed does that make sense yeah yeah I love that no and I appreciate you answering my question because that's exactly where I wanted to go I wanted to learn about how somebody would embody that right rather than just fight it constantly you use the appropriate term intellectualize and I just call it mental masturbation because that's what I think it ends up being for a lot of people and to steal two concepts from Chris Williams and he talks about I guess he says something to the two and similar to what you said you can't outthink a feeling problem and for people particularly who are more above the neck oriented there's this highly intellectual cerebral left hemisphere type folks which is also a compulsory strategy by the way yeah yeah exactly right like you're constantly trying to problem solve like what I was talking about with the Tim Farris quote earlier and and it worked it served you well in so many other areas of life so we're coming back full circle I found it sometimes just like exactly maybe not necessarily paying attention to different facets but just bringing it back inside for instance there's time that I remember going through a period of grief of having lost someone or a relationship ending and just thinking about man this really sucks just sit in there and just really sucks just repeating it until I could feel and where I was on the border line of crying and that that's hard because it almost feels like you're wasting time right somebody who's just going to go is okay let's how do I become productive how do I make lemonade out of this situation so to speak yeah so that brings me to this this last concept that I want to get your thoughts on and maybe it'll relate to the beginning part with the with that insecure over achiever again another concept from Chris Williamson like that high performer where you are given circumstances maybe it's those early life traumas that have shaped you they're they've been repressed emotion at this point and you are trying to change your circumstances for the better right versus and that might even include changing yourself we talked about we use the word wisdom a couple of times and with age wisdom experience and you recognize that okay maybe these things aren't serving me and you want to change yourself that's like anything else this is sorry guys I said I would hope so yeah that's that's it no fun I think bus like anything also this is also something that could be taken too far so if you are perseverating over reading self-help books all the time and constantly changing constantly fixing yourself constantly being a therapy over and over again and you're like I got to fix me I got to fix me that's another that could be taken too far and so I think that the concept of acceptance in some regards is really important to somebody once taught me the the term radical acceptance as well and how to apply that in some sense so how do you think about those the tension between those through things where the appropriate change which is what we've been talking about a lot versus also accepting that hey maybe some of this is okay maybe this is me and I'm okay with being this version of me yeah I mean it's a great question and again it's going to be so I think it's I mean it's really hard I think it's feeling into I think a so often what we're looking for in therapy and healing and whatever words you want to put around this is a felt sense right it's not the destination necessarily but I the language I use around it is a felt sense and so sometimes again it's it's mystical it's intangible but there is a feeling of okay am I am I shifted am I content am I discontent do I need more am I just seeking to seek right am I have I made my my healing journey compensatory strategy and I'm never really arriving but I'm just using it as a distraction to not actually feel or not actually accept some circumstance in my life I think it's really so personal and what we are looking for what I'm looking for typically is this kind of a similar intangible quality of a felt sense or can you shift into a felt sense of whatever it is that that is that you're trying to cultivate is it peace is it happiness is it joy is it acceptance what is the consciousness of that single loan and can I really ask myself an honestly answer have I acquired that or is there war to do is there something that's not allowing me to arrive in that place or to come back to that place and be feel home in that often enough and can I accept this circumstance or and I think we are really not victims of circumstance where victims of our own mind and so of our own belief of our own perspectives and so have I moved and I have and I think that it goes back even the way that I would just create a distinction is am I still stuck in my perspective about anything where I can look down at myself I can acknowledge that this happened this trauma happened I can't change this circumstance and is my belief about it or is the way that I've conceptualized it preventing me from really and so does that put me into a striving or a constantly saking or never ending like okay well pursue this now I'll pursue this I think it's a great question and really the felt sense is is I think when we arrive when we're seeing the world not through our own perception but from our perspective there's an inherent peace that comes with that because we can accept why something happened or where it came from or somebody else's perception and perspective like we can we can as a work all of that and then we can move past it in a way that we're not stuck it's not stifling us and so I think that though is a really a felt sense yeah I think that's the beauty of this right I think it's the beauty of these conversations is that whether you work in the field lost three do in the medical and health care field or we're seeking our own journeys the answer is unknown and so I think it's a constant move it doing the work doing the semantic bodywork doing the reflection that we all try to just understand what this world is about and how we fit in with it with that case you just want to say thank you so much for being generous with your time I think our listeners will love this conversation if they want to learn more about you or they want to get in contact with you where can they go yeah you can just find me on social media my website at shrinkfigure.com and or at shrinkfigure or Casey's defense it'll probably come up there too awesome and we'll put those in the show notes for easy access and then the last question Casey that we ask everyone is how do we put the health back into health care well I think really by just my greatest belief is the greatest activism that we can do is heal ourselves and if we really take that on you know with a devotion to ourselves then I think we heal it's just we change everything we change our relationships we change our lives we change the world by really doing that and so how do you really think about question you know what what is health for you are you living in alignment with that and how then would you move to organize those things that aren't in alignment with that and I think by doing that for ourselves we do it we inspire other minutes it's such a ripple effect and that's how we change the world love it thank you yeah I hope that will be useful for your audience you guys are great so I really appreciate chatting with you