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THE UNSHAMING WAY with DAVID BEDRICK · The Karen Kenney Show

• 0:02
  Karen Kenney: Hey you guys. Welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I am so super duper excited, like you guys have no idea I have been David and I have been talking about
• 0:13
  this for a long time and trying to get him on the show. And now is the perfect time, because, as I said, He is the author of four books, and what we're going to be talking
• 0:21
  about today, amongst many other things, is his new book, The unshaming way you can see, I've been diving deep into this sucker, and I have so many thoughts, and I just adore
• 0:31
  David, as I said in the intro, he is one of my teachers. He is one of somebody that I consider like a long distance mentor. And I just love so many things about David, but I
• 0:45
  think one of the things that I really adore about you, so just receive, receive, this is you kind of whenever you're teaching or leading something that I've been involved
• 0:56
  in. So I did like a six week course with you, and then I've taken a bunch of other trainings and things that you've done all around shame and the unshaming process and
• 1:06
  all this stuff, but you have this beautiful way about you where you tend to like go first. And what I mean by that is you really model vulnerability and transparency and a
• 1:21
  kind of innocence that I really love. And I was just kind of telling you how I wore my unicorn sweater just because I was talking to you, and the little kid in me feel safe
• 1:29
  in your presence. So I love that. And like even there are times when we'll be on a call or something, and before you start, you'll start to voice out loud what's happening
• 1:41
  within you, and so you're already kind of showing us, I don't even know if you do it intentionally, but you're already kind of showing us an unshaming way with yourself
• 1:52
  that just allows my whole nervous system to just kind of start to calm down because I'm seeing somebody voice out loud. But I think a lot of us feel in new situations, or when,
• 2:04
  even if we love to lead and teach, you know you have that moment where you're like, oh my god, the attention is on me, and your nervous system gets a little scared, and you
• 2:12
  do these little things where you'll say, okay, like, how am I feeling? And you talk out loud, and it's just something I love about you. So I wanted to say that I have
• 2:20
  plenty of more things to say, but first of all, just welcome to the show. David Bedrick,
• 2:26
  Unknown: thank you. Thank you. If people are seeing me, they're seeing this is not a message to anybody. Well, it was a message to me, a garage door and my finger had a
• 2:38
  conflict. Yeah, the garage door didn't seem to be impacted by my side of the conflict. Oh, my God. It made a pretty good impression on me.
• 2:49
  Karen Kenney: Well, yeah, so just thank you so much for taking the time to be here. And I want to talk about a lot of different things, but do you have anything to say
• 2:57
  about that, that process that you do, or that thing that you do where you're when you talk out loud about that, what is, what do you? What would you? What do you call that?
• 3:05
  Or is that just something you do to make yourself feel better? Can you tell us a little about that?
• 3:10
  Unknown: It's a process of arriving. There's something nobody's ever asked me about that that's really touching. Karen, I'm I notice I'm shy to talk about it, because I've not
• 3:20
  that I'm unwilling to and just that no one's ever asked me about it. It's part of a spiritual practice and discipline of mine, and that practice is about what people might
• 3:32
  call arriving in the moment. For me, arriving means I'm connected to other things. I call that the spirit or earth, but that means something else is here, and if
• 3:44
  I'm in a more intimate communion with that, then I trust the flow of what's about to happen more than my skills or my preparation. I'm never confident about my
• 3:56
  own skills and preparation, not because they're not good. It's just I don't get confidence from my abilities, but I get confidence from feeling like I'm connected
• 4:04
  to something that is part of the flow that I have total more than confidence in David,
• 4:11
  Karen Kenney: you are speaking my language. I know a lot about you. I don't know what you know about me, but I am a spiritual mentor. That is what I do in my day to day
• 4:18
  life. And so my whole show is about spirituality and storytelling and kind of bringing the humanity kind of into that deeper connection to whatever you happen to
• 4:28
  call it, whether it's God, source, love, spirit, universe. So I too have my own little call them rituals, or just things that I do as well before I land to talk to
• 4:39
  somebody. So thank you so much for sharing that I love, that you just shared that. And one of the other things too is that I don't have a lot of guests on my show, so I really
• 4:50
  am, I don't mean necessarily picky, but there has to be somebody that I love, I adore. I'm wicked curious about. I think they're doing really good work in the world,
• 5:01
  and I want to tell more people about them. And so when I do have people on my show, though, they're usually people who are pretty either well accomplished or they're
• 5:12
  doing cool things. And when we read a bio at the beginning of an episode, right, people get to hear all about who you are now as an adult, and what you've accomplished in the
• 5:22
  work that you do, and we will get there. But what I love to ask people is a series of questions that are kind of like this, like, what were you like as a little kid, and what
• 5:34
  was your childhood like? And do you feel like your childhood informs or influences or inspires, the work that you do now. Is there a connective thread there? Somehow,
• 5:45
  Unknown: definitely, definitely my childhood? Well, it's a different things to say that are important to my story. One, the abuse and trauma story. I grew up in a
• 5:59
  Jewish home with a father who was post holocaust. That's important, because he had a lot of shit they didn't know what to do with did do something with it. He used his
• 6:10
  fists and belts to express his rage, which means he was violent abuse of dramatizing. Those words are appropriate, scary. So my childhood meant mostly being frightened
• 6:25
  almost all the time, because it was a scary place to live. And then I had a mother who was disempowered, and that meant specifically she was in vast denial about
• 6:38
  that violence, even when it happened right in front of her. It wasn't like what happened. She would see it and but sort of had to say, I don't know what's happening.
• 6:48
  David, why are you upset about things and things like that? So I internalized the violence, meaning I could sometimes treat myself the way my father did, hurt myself,
• 6:59
  criticize myself in a like a thrashing belt, only it's not a literal belt. And then I internalize my mother, which means I can be in denial about what I'm going through in my
• 7:10
  own suffering and my own hurt. So and for many years, I would have said I was really shy as a kid, this is really interesting in terms of shame, because I wasn't shy as a
• 7:26
  kid. I was scared. If you say that kid, that's a shy kid, you think, oh, so what? So he they should she he should go slow or or learn to overcome some of that shyness. But
• 7:39
  shyness is like a personality. Being scared is not a personality. Being scared is an environment, right? I wasn't shy. I was just frightened. If I'm not frightened, I'm
• 7:49
  actually quite talkative, quite open to playing. And then I had certain gifts. I was precocious in certain ways, and poetic in certain ways, and and I saw what was
• 8:03
  happening in my family, very, very young. So something to me, you could call that a like a wounded healer, something in me said, I know what's going on. I'll help the whole
• 8:12
  family, not that I was only able to or should have had that job as a child. But some children have a gift, a healing gift, and then the gift starts to emerge in a sick
• 8:25
  system. And then people say that's bad. You shouldn't have had to be that role as a child, which is true, but that doesn't it. That shouldn't dismiss the fact that that
• 8:35
  person has a healing gift and needs to learn to use it. Yeah, that's a lot to see.
• 8:40
  Karen Kenney: Yeah, it's no, it's the perfect amount to say. And I still think that you're precocious and poetic.
• 8:45
  Unknown: Yeah, that's, that's my that's nature, that's my nature. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:50
  Karen Kenney: And I, and I love that, and I've heard, you know, I've heard parts of your story before, and I want to come back to what you kind of talked about your
• 8:59
  mother, because I want to come back to that idea of a witness and how important that is. And you know, for folks who you know don't really know your work, like one of the
• 9:10
  things that you mentioned was shame. And I think it's so fascinating what you just said, because nobody I relate to you in, like, so many ways. I too, I would tell the
• 9:20
  story that I was wicked shy as a kid, but it's come to my attention, and partially through the work that I've done with you or learning from you, is that like you like
• 9:29
  I've been a student. I don't know if you know what A Course in Miracles is, but I've been a student. Yeah, I've been a student, of course, miracles for like, 30 years. And
• 9:37
  one of the main tenants is that, right, we have these ideas of, like, love and fear. And I said, only a kid like, I'm like, one of the reasons why I was so fascinated by
• 9:47
  this is this, this concept of a like, a thought system of love versus a thought system of fear and fear has been a really big thing in my life. And I realized, like,
• 9:55
  I was terrified most of my fucking childhood. I'm like, that's what it was. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know so much that I was like you said, I was shy in some
• 10:03
  ways, but I was really afraid to use my voice, because when you spoke up like you got in trouble, you know what I mean. So thank you for thank you for even saying that
• 10:11
  out loud, because I know somebody out there is listening to this, and they just had a moment of enlightenment and awareness, perhaps, about themselves. So just thank
• 10:20
  conclusions
• 10:21
  Unknown: about themselves, which are invariably wrong. I'm not meaning to criticize people, meaning we come to the conclusion of those who told us how we were,
• 10:30
  like, Oh, he's a shy kid. Always this, always not good at math. Or, I used to teach a statistics class in university, yeah, for political science people and all the
• 10:40
  students would come in saying, I'm not good at math, I'm not good at math. I'm not good at math. They know what the truth is. Most of them had lousy math teachers. Yeah. I
• 10:49
  mean, like they were, they were unfeeling. They didn't have to teach math as a as a feeling issue, which it is, and we got to talk about that, but and connect math to the
• 10:58
  intimacy and the experiences of their lives. So they made it a cold thing, and people were like, disconnected from it. So then people walk around thinking, I'm just not
• 11:06
  good at something that's not they're just not good at learning the way a system taught it.
• 11:12
  Karen Kenney: Oh my god, isn't that they have
• 11:14
  Unknown: a conclusion about themselves. I'm this way. I'm that way. I'm at this kind of person. I'm a shy person, I'm this kind of person. And invariably, it's not true. Oh,
• 11:23
  Karen Kenney: my God, David, I so agree with you. I'm I'm also, I'm a writer, and I'm also a gateless writing instructor. And in gateless, the methodology of gateless, the
• 11:34
  approach really is, is that when we write and then when we give feedback, we only speak to what, like we loved about the piece, what was strong about the piece, what
• 11:45
  we what stayed with us, right? And because, you know, the inner critic can get really loud, but as a as a teacher and as as a writer, when I have so many people who have
• 11:56
  come to my, my, you know, yoga and writing classes, or my whatever, by gateless salon, and they've said like that they're not writers, or they're not good, or they're
• 12:07
  terrified to speak because of that teacher in fourth grade with the red pen who told them something about themselves and that they then made it like gospel truth, you
• 12:17
  know what I mean. And so it's so true that sometimes it's not the kids at all. It's that the teachers either don't know how to deal or teach somebody who maybe needs
• 12:32
  something different. So that's a really wonderful thing. And I want to, I want to come back to this, because I think what we're talking about too, is a lot of people
• 12:39
  can feel like shamed out of their gifts in a way, like they don't think that it's available to them, or that wouldn't even occur to them that they had a gift or
• 12:49
  something. And before we get into that, will you just share a little bit like, like, what is shame? And I have a bunch of quotes just from things you've said over time that I've
• 12:59
  written down and you said one time, you know, shame isn't a feeling. Shame is a viewpoint. It's a way of looking at ourselves. And I would love if you would
• 13:09
  share a little bit like what you consider shame and how you would define it. Yeah,
• 13:13
  Unknown: that's really an important thing, because if you read literature or listen to stories about shame. People tell stories about an agonizing feeling experience. I
• 13:26
  came to the podcast and I didn't realize, I don't know that my pants were ripped and on you pointed it out on the podcast, and there I have a big hole in whatever, and people
• 13:36
  are seeing aspects of my body, and I'm like, and I want to hide, right? Yeah, yeah, humiliating, painful experience. Very little bit of shame is like that, the stories
• 13:49
  people tell to explain it, and then we go and go, oh yeah, oh yeah. I've had painful experiences. Most shame is totally unconscious, not known and not seen. Like
• 13:59
  you could be ashamed of your beauty and not know it. You could just think I'm really not very attractive. You don't have any negative feeling or or you could be. I'm just
• 14:12
  thinking of examples. I'm not sure that. I'm hesitating to say, but you could be changing your skin color and think I look much better this way lightning my skin. There are
• 14:22
  countries where 50 to 60% of the people lighten their skin, wow. And that person looks in the mirror and is not feeling pain, they're feeling more beautiful. Where's the
• 14:32
  shame? The shame says you, as who you are, are not beautiful. Something is wrong with you and it should be fixed. Okay? Caveat, if you want to change your skin color, that's
• 14:46
  you're free to do that, and I don't think that person should or shouldn't do that, but I'm saying the culture that's like that, so shame is a viewpoint, and it looks at who
• 14:56
  you are and says something is wrong with you. That needs to be changed, fixed or healed, that almost always happens as soon as you're bothered by something about
• 15:08
  yourself. So I wake up a lot at night and they don't sleep enough hours. I would like to sleep more. It would be good for me. I would enjoy it. But I wake up at night and
• 15:18
  then I think, what should I do? Chamomile tea, exercise more take an Ambien. Maybe I should do acupuncture, not don't have coffee during the day. Maybe, etc. And other
• 15:29
  people, if I wrote on social media, would give me a whole host of examples. Here's what people will never ask almost never. What's it like when you wake up at night.
• 15:43
  What do you feel like? What's it like in your body and experience? Are you nervous? Are you happy? Everybody's quiet? Is the moon out and glowing? And is it beautiful?
• 15:53
  Do you read poems and you don't read them during the day? How come are you playing for the first time? Are you scrolling the internet because you weren't allowed to get
• 16:01
  too much work to do. The obvious question, what are you actually doing? Is left out instead, I call that pathologizing. Something's wrong. It's a sickness, that's
• 16:15
  what I mean by pathologizing. Let's correct it so there's no inquiry into what I am, what I'm doing. Is there any I call it intelligence. Is my system moved by
• 16:27
  something like I love I don't like being tired, but I love being up in the middle of the night. I can tell you, it's quiet. And here's the secret to my up at night, I'm not
• 16:38
  responsible to or for anything. Ooh, that's pretty lovely. You mean, you could just nobody's there. You could do anything you want. You can't get caught, because
• 16:49
  everybody's so to speak, okay, live more like that during the day, that would be great. But still, my psyche says I'm gonna find a little hole in the world where I can
• 17:00
  do and be and feel like, explore my inner world. I could feel the terrors that I'm not allowed to feel during the day. There's a certain beauty to that, but we pathologize
• 17:09
  that, and everybody, we live in a allopathic system almost everywhere. That means what bothers you? Well, I'm that, okay, here's what to do. Well, I'm depressed. Okay,
• 17:21
  here's what to do. Well, I'm anxious. Okay, here's what to do. Well, I have an addictive pattern. Okay, here's what to do, etc. And almost no one says, Oh, you're an addictive
• 17:31
  pattern. What do you do? I drink alcohol. How much do you drink? I drink five drinks. Then I start to black out. Let's imagine you're blacking out. What happens for you?
• 17:42
  I'm anxious. What's it like to be anxious? Can you show me anxiousness? Well, I'm a fawning person from trauma. Can you show me what it's like to fawn? Oh, can I I'll do
• 17:51
  anything. You say, Oh, please, like me. Please, like me. Show me what who you are, so I can actually meet you, and then I might be able to understand what your system is,
• 18:00
  quote, unquote, intelligently trying to do, and I can help you do that, maybe more consciously and better, but otherwise, anyway, but then we have to get over the
• 18:10
  quick. How do I change you instead? I have to think maybe you're doing something that's part of your nature that I could reveal, unfold flower into your intelligence, that
• 18:21
  would be unshaming. Yeah, oh my
• 18:24
  Karen Kenney: gosh. Okay, so this is wonderful, because one of the things I was going to say was, can you please share a little bit about your UN process, because
• 18:33
  you've been developing this over 30 years, and I know you had some wonderful mentors yourself, wonderful teachers too, in particular, who you often talk about that
• 18:41
  kind of saw your gifts and kind of, I think, brought that that forward. But I one of the things I wrote down here was, you know, can you share how your unshaming approach or
• 18:52
  process differs from traditional therapy? But I made a couple of notes to myself, and I want to make sure I said traditionally healing sounds like we got to fix it. We got
• 19:00
  to heal it. We got to make it go away, right? We gotta make it something different. And then I wrote this so I wouldn't forget. I said, my experience is that your unshaming
• 19:08
  work encourages deep, experiential engagement with our emotions, and it invites us to hear, feel and express the intelligent messages from our body. And in highlighted,
• 19:20
  I wrote these three things. It says that these are things that you've said, you know, I was on the calls, but to our group, you said, genuine inquiry and curiosity. What's
• 19:30
  it like to be you? And then you said, I want to know what it's like before we try to get rid of it. And then you said, people's experience is sacred more than my knowledge.
• 19:42
  It's more sacred than my own knowledge. And that's really powerful, like nobody has ever and I think this is one of the things in why I continue to, you know, listen when you
• 19:55
  whenever I get a chance, like listen to teach or speak or whatever. Um. Um, I tune in, because nobody before, and I mean this, you must hear this all the time, and if you
• 20:06
  don't, I would be amazed. But nobody before has ever asked that question. Normally, it's like, oh, I have IBS. I've had IBS symptoms since I was 15, you know, after, you know,
• 20:18
  my mother was murdered when I was 12, and, yeah, it was very violent and all this stuff. And so I would grew up in a in Massachusetts. It's like, suck it up and
• 20:28
  stuff it down. We don't talk about it. Nobody talked about it. It was like, the sun, the sun, like my mother was, like the sun in my universe. She was like, she was
• 20:37
  the light of my world. And so when she disappeared, like, my whole like, where I was in the world my whole life, like, blew a pot, and nobody ever talked about it. It was
• 20:49
  literally, like she disappeared overnight. So for me, a lot of what was coming up, I sucked it up and stuffed it down. That's what I talk about, yeah, yeah. But at no
• 20:58
  point, all the people I've seen over the years, right? Whether it was a traditional doctor, somebody trying to give me a hypnotist, what? Not one person, until I met
• 21:10
  you, ever said, Well, what's it like to be you like, Tell me more. Like, what's happening inside of you, and instead of trying to fix it or make it wrong, tell me
• 21:22
  more. And that was like, I gotta that was like, mind blowing to me. First of all, that I'd never heard it before. But like, this process, I know I'm saying a lot of things,
• 21:33
  but this process, did it come naturally to you? Like, did somebody, did somebody ask you those questions first, like, how did you know to ask that question that nobody else
• 21:45
  asked? It's
• 21:46
  Unknown: a great it's a great question. It was natural for me to have that kind not just of a curiosity, but I believed it's a weird I was gonna say I believed in people,
• 22:00
  but it's not but in this particular way, I believe that what people were experiencing and felt was sacred. I didn't think of it that way, but even as a young child, I
• 22:13
  thought something amazing was happening with people who are having a really difficult time. And I it was not a thought. It just was like, I was compelled. I had a violent
• 22:24
  brother who did awful things to me, which I won't describe, because it's not necessary. At the moment, not afraid to it just not necessary. But I was fascinated by him also.
• 22:38
  I was like, What is he doing? And again, I needed to learn to to not to not say this is okay and stop and stop it all that, and not thinking it's good to let somebody hurt you
• 22:46
  and things like that. I'm not advocating for that. But I also was more than curious. I kind of thought i i It edged out to say it. I loved him so much that I thought he was
• 22:59
  trying to do something that he didn't know how to do any other way. Again, I'm not make, don't make excuses for abusers, right? Like he should have been fucking stopped. I
• 23:08
  cut off my relationship with him because he was violent. I had huge fights with my father. I'm not saying, don't try to say to someone, I will cut you out of my fucking
• 23:16
  life. I'm not thinking, don't do that. But my something in the whatever reason was naturally drawn that. And then later in life, I met a teacher, Arnie Mindell, who
• 23:27
  died four or five months, six months ago, something like that, who treated people that way. And I thought, oh, there it is. That's the thing that I know. But he, he also, he
• 23:39
  had a different way of framing that. Anyway, he was working with physical symptoms and physical health and asking people about their experiences and showing finding
• 23:52
  intelligence in that. I was blown away by that. Yeah. Anyway, so that happened. I'm thinking of a story that's not from Arnie, because, like, the stories would take too
• 24:05
  long, but I worked with a woman who was had a stutter, right? So she so if she would say Karen, she would say Karen. I'm not trying to mimic her, by the way, I understand. I'm
• 24:21
  just showing what she was like, and she went to different people to try to help speech pathologists, etc. And what did they try to do? Not unsurprisingly, calm down, learn
• 24:34
  certain methods to be more regulated, so that you're not nervous and then you'll stutter a little bit or a lot less, and that helped some of the time, but certain times
• 24:44
  it didn't help. And I asked her so she thinks something's wrong with me. I have to get rid of this. If somebody can help, great. I'm not against that, but what is it?
• 24:55
  What is the start of reading thing? We don't exactly know. We just think it's an illness to be. Really, and if it got away, if it went away, she'd be better. And I said to
• 25:04
  her, let's stutter together, like, she's like, like women looking at me like, I'm crazy, because why would you do that? I'm like, because I don't exactly know what
• 25:17
  she's doing yet. I know it's a word called stutter. I know it breaks up words. It doesn't complete a word. I know that, but I want to know the experience, so we stutter
• 25:28
  together. So I would say her name, let's make up. Her name is Karen. So I go, cut, cut. Karen. She go, David, right. But now we're doing it. I said, do it more. David,
• 25:39
  you know, I like that. Yeah, he's going for it, and first of all, we're both laughing and hysterically glowing. Why are we glowing? Everybody can have their own answer
• 25:50
  to that, but that's already magical to me, like she's free to be her, and we're enjoying her as she is. I like that world already. I like a world where you have IBS
• 26:04
  and you say, oh my gosh, I'm nauseous. I haven't three days, but then I shit for four days diarrhea. I'm like, Oh, wow. Let me tell you about my stuff. You know, here's my
• 26:13
  finger. I gotta cut this. And we normalize the world a little bit. It's like a diversity model, yes, model. So that begins to happen. But then let's examine stuttering
• 26:24
  for just a second. So here's if you slow down stuttering. It's like this. If I'm going to stutter with the word David, it's like David. So can you see the stopping?
• 26:37
  It's, I can't get out. And then it then it bursts it goes, and then it bursts out. So there's an energy that can't get out easily. The again, I'm not mimicking anybody. Please
• 26:49
  just be I'm just trying to show you what's happening. I'm not it's not a theory. It's not an idea. It's the actual what's happening. And then it goes, David, and it
• 26:58
  burst out. So she's got a big energy that wants to burst out, but can't quite get out, prevents it from coming out, and then it bursts out. So I said, let's stay with that
• 27:09
  big energy. David, David, keep on feeling that. Said, put a word to that energy. And guess what word she uses. Bucha is like a great word. You can use it for all kinds.
• 27:22
  You can do it for love, for hate, for exclamation. So she goes, fuck. I said, keep going with the word fuck, with all the energy, and pretty soon she's going, fuck.
• 27:32
  No stutter, no stutter. She's just, but she's but all that energy is out. She's not like on maybe I shouldn't say that word. It's a bad word, but it's okay. She's like
• 27:43
  singing it out why? There's something in her that's a little bit forbidden, stop it. But when it's free, it's a big expression, a song, a strong, expressive song. Why isn't
• 28:00
  she singing that song all the time? There's something against her, saying things like fuck and being as expressive as she is. So she manifests that uniquely to her, because
• 28:10
  she has a certain voice issue that lets that happen. So in one way, we could say, relax, etc, but if we unshame and say, let's do it even more, we find that there's a big energy
• 28:20
  in her, and then we can hear stories, maybe, like you had, of I shouldn't sit at the dinner table and scream about my family violence. I should whatever. So I have all
• 28:28
  this reason, suppression, the stopper and a big voice. So her long term healing is not just to stop the stuttering, which will get helped as she expresses more, but to let her
• 28:43
  be her, ah. Want her to be a calm, reasonable person who doesn't stutter. We want her to have a big voice. She wanted to be a poet, by the way, and do online poetry,
• 28:53
  and they were strong expressions. So what she needs to learn is to be out where with a really big, expressive voice. For how long will she need to do that, till she gets
• 29:03
  better? I don't know, three generations. Hmm. I'm saying it that way, facetiously. As long as that process took, how long did it take for that suppression and violence to
• 29:12
  get there? More than one generation, I can tell you. It's a life. It's not a sickness. It's the unfolding of who she is. Will she have difficulties at times? Yes, will she
• 29:22
  stutter at times? Probably. Will some people make it hard for her to be a stutterer because they're embarrassed or trying to fix her? Yes, that's what it looks like to be
• 29:30
  her. That's what it looks like to be an authentic person. Not everyone will like you. You'll come out more and more uniquely as you, as you, look more and more uniquely
• 29:39
  as you. Some people will not like you. Some people will like you. Some people will hate you and want to marginalize you. Some people will fall in love with you and think you're
• 29:47
  great. That's what it looks like. They start looking more like yourself. It's a real life. I can't get her outside of the real life without compromising the person she is.
• 29:57
  Back to her, the gifts, gifts she has, which. To Do With expressiveness in her voice. Not everyone would would do it that way. Some people would get IBS. Some people
• 30:06
  would get shy and want to be activists. Some people would become very tender. We don't know, but for her, the voice is the place where the gift is. So the voice meets the
• 30:16
  suppressive environment and goes, I have it right here. Every time I started, you can know my person held back with a big, bad message. Every second I talk. I'm telling
• 30:26
  you that about myself. Take five minutes and you'll find that out.
• 30:31
  Karen Kenney: Oh my gosh. You and you have so many incredible stories, like I can think of several off the top of my head, and so much of what I'm hearing in that it's like,
• 30:43
  how do I say this? It's almost like, it's not that you're giving people permission. They don't need your permission, but, but you are, in a way, saying be more. You don't
• 30:53
  be more. You be even more. You and You know, when you were talking about, you know, stutter in voice, in sound. Can you tell people a little bit about radical Soma?
• 31:07
  Because it's a part of your if you're if you're comfortable sharing, because I know it's also, you know, you talk about something like, you know, the role of
• 31:15
  feeling and movement and sound in the soma, in the body. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because that's also something that I'm not going to say. It's totally unique to
• 31:27
  you, but you do seem to do it in a very unique way. I have never seen anybody who guides people through being more of themselves using radical Soma. Can you talk
• 31:38
  about that? Yeah,
• 31:39
  Unknown: because if I said, if you said, I'm scared today, or I'm angry today, or I'm depressed today, and I said, be more of yourself. You might not know what that means
• 31:49
  or how to do it. It requires certain skills that not have to be graduate level skills they can be, but they could be a skills that a child learns, but we don't, because people
• 32:02
  aren't inquiring, if I'm sick with a headache, somebody says, doesn't say, what's your headache like? Is it pounding? Is it sharp? Is it like a pressure? Is it on one
• 32:11
  side? Does it make you dizzy, like a migraine? Like, what's this headache? Is it behind your eyes? So because people aren't asking those questions, usually sometimes
• 32:19
  medical people, but sometimes not. They'll just say, here's a Tylenol. You got a headache. So they might not ask anything. So because they're not asking, they're not
• 32:28
  educating me about how to enter my experience and communicate it, about it. So then I walk around saying I got a headache today. I don't say I have like, a knife in
• 32:37
  my piercing here. Well, I have heads like in a vice today, or my sinuses are so filled up. I just got over COVID that it puts this pressure inside. So it's like this fist
• 32:46
  inside that's trying to get out of my head. And you can imagine what that's like having a skull that doesn't move. So those are descriptions that I'm I'm not asked to make.
• 32:55
  So we need people need help. They need to learn those fundamental skills and the easiest and most direct way for most people, not everybody, is to start feeling in the
• 33:07
  body. We call that Soma somatic. The Soma means body. So when somebody says, I'm nervous, where is it in your body? Oh, it's in my solar plexus. What's it like in there?
• 33:16
  Is it shaking? Is it kind of butterflying? Is it pressure in there? Is it getting warm? Is something starting to move in there? May give you a little bit of acid. So those we
• 33:26
  wanted to inquire about the body feeling experience. And most people talk about somatic experience. They mean feeling experienced. Some people call that
• 33:34
  interoceptive, proprioceptive. It's the feeling, the sensation, level of feeling not like I'm said, the heavyness, and it's kind of watery and Misty, and it's kind of like
• 33:46
  weighing me down, you see my body go. So that's a really big, helpful beginning, but it's usually not enough, because feelings don't want to only be felt. They want to be
• 33:59
  expressed. If I'm angry with you, I don't want to kind of go, Okay, I'm going inside. I want to actually show you some of my anger within the context of the relationship and
• 34:07
  safety. I want to be able to express that in the world through my stuttering poetry, through my telling you back offer this is the boundary, only telling you a great I
• 34:15
  love you. I want to express those feelings. So then people need other body expressions other than the feeling body, and another part of the feeling body is movement. So if
• 34:27
  I was angry, I might kind of go Karen, and you can see my fist or Oh, and you can see my face and my eyes and my jaw. So my body is also expressing, yes, naturally, it's not
• 34:37
  just inside, it's outside. And then I can get in touch with that, and you could add now voice, voices, body, it's larynx, it's breath, its tongue, its teeth, its the vocal
• 34:51
  box. So it's like you're really so now you have sound, and if you add movement and. Sound you now have an expressive human being. So I can say, Oh, you're so touching
• 35:05
  me so much. And my hands are going like this, and my eyes are moving forward, and my voice is getting tender and sweet, and my lips are getting pursed, or I could be
• 35:12
  nervous going and now I'm shaking a little bit, and my eyes are getting different. Voices coming out. Movement is coming out. I'm feeling it. I'm congruent. I'm connected
• 35:22
  to myself and expressing an authentic moment with you. And when we add those channels of experience, Arnie Mindell called those feeling movement, voice through other
• 35:33
  channels, facial expression, then the person learns to be more like who they are in the world. And that's the healing thing, not to make it go away, but to live who I am, to be
• 35:46
  this person, scared, person, angry, person, brilliant, person, out of touch, person, etc.
• 35:53
  Karen Kenney: You just said that's the healing thing. Is to be who I am. Yeah, what a beautiful like, I just don't want the people listening to like, Miss on that.
• 36:04
  Like, that's the healing thing. Because so often in our culture, we're taught that the healing thing is to change. It, is to fix it, is to suppress it, is to make it go
• 36:15
  away. Is to stop it, is to transform it. Is it like all these other things. And this is what I'm saying, like, you almost, in a way, are saying, let's amplify it. Let's really
• 36:25
  see it. And you tell that story about one of your clients who was it frappuccinos cappuccino. She didn't want to, like, give it up. And you were, oh, yeah, yeah. And
• 36:37
  like, you know, you were saying, well, like, you know, and you were saying to her, like, imagine that. Like, I'm trying to take that away from you, yeah. Then she really started
• 36:44
  to fight you, and you just told her, like, make it bigger. Make it bigger. And then what did she say at the end? Do you remember what her words were? Yeah, I remember
• 36:51
  Unknown: she was she was had body shame. That means that she hated her body. 97% of women have violent voices in their heads about their bodies every single day. That's
• 37:02
  not just one piece of research. That's like anybody who studies that will know violent, not like, hey, this I don't look good in this shirt, meaning, I'm ugly, I'm
• 37:10
  unattractive. No one will love me. Like, oh, that's pretty intense, right? No one will ever love me. That's a pretty intense thing to makes me get paused because it's so
• 37:19
  strong, so makes me weep too, because it's so painful that that's, it's, I shouldn't pass it over because it's, I normalize it by kind of going, Yeah, but it's like, think
• 37:31
  about that, believing no one will love you, holy shit, that's gonna be not an easy life. That's a pretty painful life to live. You could try to compensate and make people love
• 37:40
  you, so to speak, but what a painful feeling to have. Okay, so she had that, and she connected that to her size and wanted to be smaller. And she said, the reason why I'm
• 37:53
  not smaller losing weight dieting successfully, is because I go out and have these coffee drinks maybe it was a Starbucks or something, and I get whatever, all these
• 38:03
  extra goodies, you know, whole milk and the item or caramel, whatever it wasn't, it was some huge amount of calories, 800 calories. I'm making it up. I can't remember, a huge
• 38:13
  number of calories in this. And sometimes she does it twice a day, and she drives 20 minutes each way to get it. Now before we think, Oh yeah, that's bad, let's stop her
• 38:23
  from doing that. She's gonna that's not gonna be good for her health. It's too much sugar that. Before we do that, listen to how big that motivation is. Something that says
• 38:32
  you're disgusting, You're terrible. Don't do it. And she still does it. That's a pretty big force, right? If I say, Karen, I will punish you. Make you feel as worse as I can,
• 38:42
  to stop you from doing something and you continue to do it. That's a pretty big motivation. I might be interested in the power behind that. I mean, no matter how bad
• 38:51
  I make you feel, you will still persist. You could call that stupidity, but I call that power. Grow up. What do we want to do with it? I'm not saying she should drink those
• 38:59
  drinks, but that alone is interesting, so I think she must really want those damn things, right? And then the question is, what does she want? Well, she wants that
• 39:10
  coffee drink, but what's the experience? She wants? A feeling, right? She wants to drink. Why? Because it gives her an experience to have it. What's the experience? And that's a
• 39:23
  body experience. So I said, here's a cup. I think I had a big water bottle. I said, let's make believe this is your proper chino. Can you feel how much you want it?
• 39:35
  You'll drive 40 minutes, 20 minutes, back and forth, even against the self hatred, to get it. It's that's not a small energy, and you can feel it, I can tell, you know, and
• 39:43
  you'll still do it. Yeah, okay. He grabbed I said, I want you to put that much energy into the bottle. She grabs the bottle, and I'm gonna try to take the bottle away and
• 39:50
  say, that's bad. It's bad for you. You should stop doing it. It's making you ugly. It's making you fat, etc. I'm gonna that also lives in her, right? That's her
• 39:57
  experience. I want it. You shouldn't have it. Let's make, create the experience. So I pulling on it, and she's pulling on it, like, you can have it. And she pulls a
• 40:05
  little bit. I'm like, come on, you got you you're driving. You got a lot of power. So she is grabbing now we're fighting back and forth, and we're laughing. And then pretty
• 40:14
  soon it gets more serious, because, like, she really wants this thing. You can't have it. She says, I need it.
• 40:21
  I said, What do you need? And she says, My happiness.
• 40:27
  Oh, happiness. Somebody else say to say, well, of course, but it could have been different. He could have said, I want peace. She could have said I want freedom. She
• 40:36
  could have said I wanted my power, my energy, I feel with the drink. She could have said, I want the excitement. She could have said lot of things that were, aren't
• 40:43
  happiness. So people think it's all about happiness. It's not people are different. So she says, It's my happiness. And then the questions are, what's your life like? How
• 40:53
  come it's not happy? Well, I wanted to do certain things in my life that I'm not doing those things for her that meant to go back to graduate school that she gave up to be a
• 41:03
  good, quote, unquote, a good mother, wife, thing creature, that I should give that up. You really want those things. Let's help you grab hold of that career that you want.
• 41:17
  That's your happiness. Oh, I don't know if I can do that. That's not going to be easy. You have to go against norms. You have to renegotiate your relationship with your
• 41:25
  husband. You have to renegotiate your relationship with the kids, because you're going to be busy. You have to create a life that looks like it's your happiness. We
• 41:32
  can't just say stop doing it then and start going for the schooling. She has to work something out. That's why it's manifesting in a place outside of the awareness, in this
• 41:43
  strange thing that we don't understand. So now she may need a year or two she did to figure out how to negotiate that. What are the inner norms, internalized sexism that
• 41:52
  says that she should be this kind of a mother? How she can negotiate her relationship with her husband? Will the relationship last? How's she gonna stop
• 41:59
  making boundaries with her children, she has to learn a new way of being that's good. All of those things are part of her empowerment. And then eventually she did actually go to
• 42:08
  law school, and she was much happier, and the drinks drop out, not because she's fighting herself, but because she's grabbing something with that same intensity. Oh yeah,
• 42:25
  Karen Kenney: David, it's so brilliant, and it's so beautiful. And I feel like I want everybody. Can you just buy the Achieving way? Can you just go buy this book, please?
• 42:36
  It's so fantastic, because I know you can't serve everyone. I mean, this is why you do this. You know, 10 month training that you have coming up in February to start to train
• 42:46
  other people to be able to do that. And you're kind of picky. You keep the group small and stuff like that, because there's only one of you. And the world needs way
• 42:55
  more of the 100
• 42:56
  Unknown: people. I've trained the 100 people to do unshaming work, and 40 more will go through a the year long pretend one program this year, and they're in, many of them are
• 43:06
  in continuing education mentorship, so they get supervision with me.
• 43:10
  Karen Kenney: It's so incredible. And of course, I'm going to tell everybody how to like find that, because it doesn't start till February, and this is going to air in
• 43:16
  January. So people maybe, I don't know if it's full or not yet, but
• 43:19
  Unknown: we got, we got four spots left.
• 43:22
  Karen Kenney: I wish I could have one of them. Oh my gosh. Come, come Gosh. Karen, you'll hate it. No, I think at some point, at some point, because I'm trying to finish
• 43:36
  the first draft of my book this year. I'm trying to finish What's the book? It's a memoir, and it's a, it's about, basically, my mom's murder and my experience, you know,
• 43:46
  my own journey, like, after that. And it's, yeah, it's a, really, it's a, it's a, it's, it's part of my life's work. Like, it's just one of the things that I say, like, I don't
• 43:57
  want to regret not writing it, and so I, I'm really want to focus
• 44:01
  Unknown: if you had various symptoms, like IBS or whatever it is, yeah, and somebody says, I could cure your IBS, whatever. Well, that's David's method, whatever. And what
• 44:10
  they mean by that is those those digestive symptoms would change if we forget that you as a more healed woman, write memoirs, not just relief from symptoms, but also write
• 44:28
  you're a writer. If you're a writer, we want you if you're a bird and we heal you. We hope that you can fly right if you're a fish. We hope you could swim if you're a
• 44:35
  bat. We don't think, how do you open your eyes? We think, make sure your sonar radar system is working. If you're a person, people forget like when you're healed. What
• 44:44
  does Karen look like? Well, she doesn't have IBS, and what does she look like? Well, I don't know if she doesn't have IBS, that's not sufficient for me. That's agonizing for
• 44:55
  me. Then I think she is a writer person and a healer person and a podcast person with. Certain voice. So when the healing has to think, how does she become more like that?
• 45:05
  So writing your memoir that can't be that's not like separate from your healing. That's not you have to heal so that you can do that. That's part of it. If I'm working with
• 45:14
  you, I'm thinking, How do I support your memoir writing? Well, I want help with my IBS. I am helping with your IBS.
• 45:21
  Karen Kenney: You're making me cry.
• 45:23
  Unknown: And by the way, when you talked about your mom, I was so struck by, well, the murder, which is such a violent it's an ending to this in the son of your life, the
• 45:34
  flight of your life, but it's a violent end. So that's very important. I would never miss that part. And then, and then, because she's a light, because she's a son, there's the
• 45:52
  violence of that, the trauma, the trauma and traumatizing violence, the horror of being 12. Did you say, Yeah, being that young and having any mother, but this case, your
• 46:05
  mother and a specific mother, and it's not a mother who's an asshole, but a mother who's white, that whole experience, the feelings, the horror, the trauma, the emptiness, the
• 46:15
  griefs, all those things, and then over time, and then over time, your relationship with a certain kind of thing called Sun and light, that relationship cannot end. You'll
• 46:35
  have to suffer the loss of it. You'll have to find it. You'll have to be it. Yeah, over time, I'm not saying, take a 12 year old and saying no, the sun's inside of you like even
• 46:46
  though there's a truth to that that we don't want to dismiss the the agony and experience and the trauma you go through. But over time, we have to remember what your real,
• 46:57
  your relationship, what happens with a relationship with a son when it blots out, what is that person going to become? Then they have a forever relationship with a sun
• 47:08
  and a potentiality of a sun, and a relationship with a light which may or may not be there. That's a profound life that you'll have to get lived through, and then
• 47:20
  over time, manifesting that light, not always. Sometimes you'll feel dark or in the dark. I'm using those words metaphorically, whether that's depression or I don't know
• 47:29
  where I am or in pain or in shadow, but the light that's in you and what it does, because she hands that off to you, that's part of the beauty. I'm not making it again.
• 47:42
  I'm not saying to everybody, let's make that not a bad thing. Isn't that one? No, no, that's not a bypass thing. It's a living thing that happens parents, hand off
• 47:52
  cultures, hand off to people, certain things, and then hopefully we take on what's ours, throw away what's not ours to take on, but pick up what is ours and make the most
• 48:06
  beauty that we can make out of it. Not only the hell I have to suffer through a difficult is what make the most beauty out of it. So that sunshine, and I see the
• 48:15
  sunshine in you because your energy and your kindness and your joy and the way your passion comes out. Oh, David, you're you're bright, not just bright intellectually, you
• 48:24
  clearly have that, because I hear your articulation, but there's a brightness in your excitement. You're full of that. So I think that's the that's the mother, that's
• 48:35
  you and her, and your relationship with her, you can't stop it.
• 48:42
  Karen Kenney: I agree.
• 48:48
  Unknown: Edit that out. That's okay, whatever. If you've never edited,
• 48:52
  Karen Kenney: I would never edit it out. It's so beautiful. And what's so funny is, first of all, I'm obsessed with the sun. I'm obsessed with the sun. If you ask me where,
• 49:00
  if you can be anywhere, I say I want to be on a beach bake like, I just want to be in the on the beach with the water and the sun hitting my body. But, like, with a book like
• 49:08
  that is my happiest Well, in animals, it has to be, like, there has to be animals too. But like, yeah, the sun is one of my, my greatest things in my people always tell me
• 49:19
  that I look exactly like my mother. And it can be a little shocking for people who haven't seen me since I was a kid, when I come in and they just literally stop in
• 49:28
  their tracks. You can see it on their face, and they say, Oh, my God, you look exactly like your mom. And so just thank you so much for everything that you just said that was
• 49:36
  totally unexpected and just beautiful. And, you know, it's fascinating when I just want to back up two steps, and I know we gotta go, go in a little bit. But when you were
• 49:47
  talking about that curiosity about the violence that lived in your brother, yeah, my curiosity about the violence that lived in the man who killed her is one of the
• 49:58
  reasons why I do the work that I do. Because. Because I really believe that I was so curious about, like, how does a person kill somebody with their hands and their
• 50:07
  feet? Like, how does somebody kick and punch somebody to death? And, like, how does what, like, what was going on with that person? And it was through my own curiosity that you
• 50:19
  know, he her murderer ended up hanging himself in prison. It's a whole long story, but the short of it is, is that that Act gave me great, deep compassion for his
• 50:34
  children and his family, and that was the crack of light. That was the light you know, that Leonard Cohen, it's like, you know, the cracks is where the light gets in. It was
• 50:42
  that little crack of light of me thinking of him, not so much just as like a monster. And you know, all the the rage that I had and anger and everything that I had, but to to
• 50:54
  see him as whatever word we want to use, deeply flawed, like a violet. And I was then it was like, Well, what had to happen to him and his childhood that would allow that kind
• 51:04
  of thing, that like that rage that must have lived in Him, to be able to do that. And it made me think about one of the questions that I had written down for you about trauma
• 51:17
  in childhood, and I said because I'll just quote something that you said once I read the question, but it says, How is shame often internalized after traumatic
• 51:25
  experiences in childhood? And can you talk about the importance of the witness? And you once said to me, you know, we need someone to witness us in a non judgmental, loving
• 51:36
  and compassionate way, and you've talked about that lack of witness in your own childhood. But can you talk about the how we internalize shame after trauma in our own
• 51:45
  childhood?
• 51:46
  Unknown: Yeah, the most important part of the injury of trauma, the most important part of that is the perpetrator, not I'm not talking about you would as I heard, the most
• 52:01
  important part of that story is this violent guy, that parent with the belt, that person who assaulted somebody on the street, or that teacher or priest or whoever, right? So
• 52:14
  that's important to the abuse story and the traumatizing story. But the most important part for the healing of that story is how it was witnessed, not the perpetrator. The
• 52:26
  healing you need to know it was witnessed. That means who saw, who didn't see? Who would you never tell because you know they you would not get what you need from that.
• 52:37
  Those are really important. So, so a woman I work with, I think I tell her story in my in my third book, she was sexually violated by a clergy. That's why I mentioned the priest
• 52:54
  and but it wouldn't only have to be the Catholic Church, everybody New Age, spiritual communities, other spiritual communities, other organizations, IBM's,
• 53:02
  it's it's pervasive, but they're getting caught and should be so dismissed that so she was sexually violated as a young person, 1213, and by the way, I'm allowed to tell
• 53:18
  these stories and and then she went to family and to clergy, and they suggested that this wasn't as bad as she thinks, and that she needs to learn to forgive, to not
• 53:34
  be angry At these people. Okay. Now, what happens when she goes when she has problems later in her life? Maybe her body is contracting. Maybe sex is painful for her.
• 53:48
  Wouldn't be shocking. Her body would kind of be doing things. Maybe she even has tumors that could happen. Not all tumors are that, but people develop things like that. Maybe
• 53:58
  she's scared. Maybe she just fawns all the time and is not really able to say, This is what's good for me. This is not whatever develops there when she has a problem later,
• 54:08
  well, I have a problem. I'm scared all the time, and someone helped her. May help her with her fear, but when she comes to a therapist, she doesn't say, I need help. I
• 54:19
  have a sexually violating history and story. She comes to a therapist saying, help me learn to forgive. I'm such an unforgiving person that credible. And if, and if a boy
• 54:31
  was hurt and he got very angry as a kid, and people said, You got to calm down, you're too dramatic, then he goes to a therapist and says, I got anger issues, and I drink
• 54:40
  and I get angry, and I have alcohol issues and anger issues. I'm trying to think of a guy who told me that, and somebody said somebody was told when they had an early
• 54:50
  traumatic story. I don't know that that's true. Are you sure they would never do that? And that person kinds of things comes and says, I doubt myself all the time. I have no
• 54:59
  self confidence. I'm not sure what's true. I'm making things up. Can you help me with that? My lack of confidence, none of them tell an abuse story, and what they story
• 55:07
  they tell is the story that they internalized. You make things up somebody, you're angry, somebody, you're unforgiving, somebody, and that person then believes
• 55:17
  those parts, that's their understanding of what happened to them, and then they go, try to be more forgiving or less angry, or not make things up, or less self doubting, and
• 55:26
  the whole story and the injury and the experience becomes wrapped in a viewpoint, and that viewpoint is the viewpoint of those that they told or those that already are
• 55:36
  there, or a culture, or a whole culture that says that doesn't happen so much. Come on, give me a break. That doesn't happen. So if the whole culture does that, the whole
• 55:45
  culture acts as a witness. So then people internalize that. So then people walk around thinking, why am I like this? Why do I have IBS? I got and I should work. I should get
• 55:54
  IBS help. I should get depression help. I should get anger help. I should get forgiveness help. I forgiveness is a great thing, isn't it? And people walk around
• 56:01
  doing that, and the story, the trauma, the energies, the need for that anger, then the intelligence of that self doubt, questioning everything. I should question everything.
• 56:12
  Maybe all of that goes away, and people just start mimicking the viewpoint of the witness that they've now internalized they don't trust them. You say something nasty to me,
• 56:24
  and that really hurts my feelings on a podcast, in public, that's something to be public. And I think, why am I I'm so dramatic, I can't believe I'm so sensitive
• 56:32
  that got hurt because I had a mother who doubted all my pain, so I don't kind of go, Karen, that's kind of intense. Can you edit that out? Actually, that's not okay with me.
• 56:44
  If you don't apologize, I'm leaving. I don't do that. I kind of go, Gosh, David, you're seven years old, one next year, and you've been a therapist for all these years, and
• 56:53
  you're that sensitive. Can't you get over that? That's shame talking, right? Why didn't I say I don't care. I'm sensitive. We're not sensitive. I didn't like what
• 57:00
  happened. I didn't really do anything. Yeah, you're right. I make things up. I have a problem. I'm a screwed up person sometimes. No, why not just say that doesn't feel good.
• 57:10
  Yeah, so we need some unshaming around trauma. People internalize that, and we know it's so enormous, you know that I write in the book. And this is a big story about the
• 57:24
  gymnastics. Harry Nasser, United States gymnastics, women's gymnastics team physician, yes, chicken state was, I think, was at Michigan State University, also
• 57:40
  doctor there and then he took all these girls, women. Some of them were older, 1819, but a lot of them were young. Called them girls. Mean they could have been 1213, years
• 57:52
  old, and under the guise of medical help, violated these women, yeah, and eventually, some years ago, I can't remember now, how many years ago now, five, six years ago,
• 58:06
  brought to trial and convicted. One, did people start reporting? There's a question I ask, When did because I'm interested in I'm not just interested in him. He's a bad dude.
• 58:19
  It's good. I'm glad they stopped him. He's in prison, etc. Great. Stop him. Perpetrator, abuser, no, bypass. What's the story of these women? When did he start
• 58:32
  getting reported 20 and if you look it up, 20 years before that, people started reporting events about him. What happened when they went to the DA to the university
• 58:42
  presidents, to other people in the gym, accessor, to their mothers, to their fathers, to the FBI, all those people were told to other people in the university. What
• 58:53
  happened? Yeah, he's a doctor. I'm sure he, he's a doctor. I know what that means. That means nothing happened. I'm sure he, I'm sure he wouldn't do that. So the denial
• 59:04
  happens like that. And then you get 20 years of history of that, until 160 women came forward. 160
• 59:15
  Karen Kenney: which is fucking unbelievable, that it takes that many people, it's like, and
• 59:21
  Unknown: then a woman da, right, what's going on is a whole culture. This makes me want to scream, uh, Marvin Gaye would say that 20 years went on, and what's happening
• 59:39
  in all that time, he's continuing to abuse. But we have a whole culture, parents, doctors, physicians, FBI, das, police, who are saying, I don't really believe that you
• 59:52
  are violated, and something should be done to stop that from happening. I take you fucking seriously. That is in the culture. So. Of a whole that's not just to those 160
• 1:00:02
  women that's happening all over the place. That's why we need me to movements to say and then here's an interesting part of that story that that's really important to me. So
• 1:00:12
  the judge in that case, woman judge, which is not unimportant. It's part of the story. Not surprisingly, she says, Any woman who wants to come forward and make a victim
• 1:00:23
  statement to the court? Can come. You can make a public statement, right? I don't care if that takes days, part of the sentencing, but I'm going to give you a public forum.
• 1:00:33
  You don't have to come, but you can speak publicly. And many great gymnasts that people would recognize and other people came forward. When you listen to those wisdom
• 1:00:43
  statement, victim statements, what are the statements? Very little about what Larry Nassar did. Almost only their stories are about who they told who didn't believe him,
• 1:00:55
  who they told parents, parents who were suicidal after they realized what happened to their precious daughters. Breaks my heart about those parents, because they just
• 1:01:05
  didn't know better. They're like they believed the culture story after story, but the the stories they're telling is who they told, who they didn't tell, who listened to
• 1:01:16
  them, how people responded. And people are kind of going, Yeah, Larry Nassar, Larry Nassar, he's a bad dude. He should be. We should put him up and sent front and center.
• 1:01:25
  But what should we really be front and center is the witnesses like in the church. We should find those priests who are molesting children, mostly boys, and stop
• 1:01:36
  them, arrest them, send them out of the clergy, etc. But the bigger part of the story is the system the religious. In that case, the Catholic system called not saying
• 1:01:48
  Catholicism is bad or good, no saying the system. And the system that says, let's move that priest from here to there. Maybe it's not happening. Let's guard them and protect
• 1:01:57
  them. Let's tell children that they're making things up. That system is more dangerous than the priest. The system should be on trial. It can't be on trial in a
• 1:02:08
  court, because we can't take the system to trial in that way, but in the court of the public. And as long as the public says, those priests, those priests, those priests,
• 1:02:17
  the story doesn't come out. The full story is, who are the people who told and what is the mentality that that system has in it that says we should deny, dismiss gaslight.
• 1:02:32
  Those are the basic things. Deny dismissing gaslight, those stories. That's the system that we as a culture need to put on trial, meaning to see through, to critique and see
• 1:02:43
  through and make sure we're not complicit by me gas lining and denying and dismissing people's traumatic stories.
• 1:02:50
  Karen Kenney: It's so true and it's so powerful, and it's so necessary, and I love that you're bringing this up because it's leading to one of my I literally I could
• 1:02:59
  talk to you all day long. That was great conversation, but you were one of the things I wanted to ask you was like, How does violence and social violence, like things
• 1:03:07
  like systemic racism, things like microaggressions, internalized oppression, those kinds of things, how do they exacerbate shame, like these things in the
• 1:03:16
  culture that kind of do get glossed over or ignored, or these larger things when we see it with, you know, I mean, you've written several books your first one about, like,
• 1:03:29
  talking back to because I think you actually do hold feet to the fire about these systems, like when I look at all of your books, talking back to Dr Phil, alternatives
• 1:03:38
  to mainstream psychology. So already knowing something different. We need something different, revisioning activism, bringing depth, dialog and diversity to individual
• 1:03:46
  and social change. And then you can't judge a body by its cover. 17 women's stories of hunger, body shame and redemption. So you are aware of these larger things in, you
• 1:03:58
  know, in the so the individuals who are listening to this and are a part of these systems, can you maybe help them understand how, how being a part of these systems might
• 1:04:07
  exacerbate their own shame? Yeah.
• 1:04:10
  Unknown: I mean, so when somebody hurts another person hurting another person, could be seeing you if I see you as a woman, and therefore I don't have to respect you the
• 1:04:20
  same way. I hate to even say that you as a woman and think, Well, you're not a man. I can disrespect you. I don't have to think you're intelligent, right? Etc. I could
• 1:04:30
  violate your boundaries. That's painful. I don't even want to say those words. They're gross. That I can even think of those so easily, you know?
• 1:04:40
  Karen Kenney: I understand. I could
• 1:04:41
  Unknown: think of those so I could they're like, I grew up with those, right? And more, right? Oh, I could just literally, and this is what I think of you. This is how
• 1:04:48
  attractive you are. I could, like, I could go on to this whole, whole litany of objectifications, right? Yeah, so, so those are assaults. Those are not shame. Then I
• 1:04:58
  can say I'm not. Let me. Not saying about you, then if there's a woman over here, I say, Ah, you're not as smart as I want to listen. You're not an authority. Men are
• 1:05:05
  authorities. Men are doctors and presidents and whatever. So if I, if I'm looking at that person, that's an assault, that's a that's an abusive viewpoint that will injure
• 1:05:15
  that person. That's not shame. It's just nasty assault. Shame is that when you go to somebody and say, I had this interview with David, and I just felt treated
• 1:05:29
  disrespectfully, it was kind of hurtful. I had things to say, and he acted like I wasn't talking, and that person says, David would not have been done that a great guy.
• 1:05:40
  Are you sure maybe you're just getting triggered? I think that's really your issue, right? Um, they're a witness. They're denying and gaslighting your experience you
• 1:05:52
  had. I assaulted you by treating you a certain way. That's an assault. It hurt, meaning assault, meaning it injures you. My attitude comes out, it injures you. And then
• 1:06:01
  I your husband's there, and I talk to him, and I look at him and I ignore you. That means that's a message to you. That's it. It's an assault I'm treating a certain way,
• 1:06:10
  and it hurts. It'll hurt your system. And then you go to someone say, no, no, no, whatever. Are you making it up? Or you're being dramatic, or that's really your shit,
• 1:06:18
  or you should work on that. That's your therapy. Oh, my God, right. So is so the witness itself in that scene. If you believe that, then you go to therapy thinking I'm
• 1:06:30
  overly sensitive. Can you help with my
• 1:06:32
  Karen Kenney: sensitivity? I've been called too sensitive my whole life. Yeah, you don't
• 1:06:35
  Unknown: go to therapy thinking sexism is fucking rampant. It's fury hitting me. Maybe I should write three more books about how disgusting it is. The way people treat
• 1:06:43
  women. You don't think of doing that. So the way the culture catches those things is it? So the denial and dismissal. So if there's a culture that says racism is over, we have a
• 1:06:56
  black president. Had a black president, this doesn't exist anymore. We don't need affirmative action. Maybe affirmative action is good or bad. We can argue about that, but
• 1:07:06
  we don't need it. Is a different thing, right? Is it the best solution? We can argue about that to the problem. But anything that says this assault doesn't exist, racism,
• 1:07:16
  meaning an assault on a person based on the color of their skin, treating them less valuable, dehumanizing way. If something says that's not really happening, that's
• 1:07:26
  really you. Maybe you deserve it. Maybe people of color really are these terrible things. Once that happens, shame enters and the person no longer has a natural response
• 1:07:37
  to the racial violence that's happening. They think, what's wrong with me. I'm a screwed up person, and the culture looks at them that way. Culture looks at them as a
• 1:07:44
  defective human being. So the whole culture is responsible, like with the Larry Nassar, to not only be anti racist, that's good, but to see it when it's happening. So it's my
• 1:07:58
  responsibility. I didn't treat you in a sexist way, I hope. But if it happens and I didn't do it, I didn't treat you that way, it's my responsibility to kind of go That's
• 1:08:08
  gross. You were treated that way as a woman. I saw that. I noticed that, of course, you're pissed off. Give me a break. They would never have done that to me as a man.
• 1:08:18
  Now I'm witnessing those things, and that doesn't enter. I want to say one thing about internalized depression, because once that enters, so now you treat me like a certain
• 1:08:28
  way as a Jewish person, let's say, Oh yeah, Jews, they're uptight, greedy, money grabbing people. Lots of people have a vision of Jews like that, and we want to run
• 1:08:37
  the world and take over the banks and take over the industries, because we want to, we're power and money hungry. That's a stereotype of Jews. That's in the culture.
• 1:08:46
  People you know, even in Disney, portray us carry counting money with like, big noses and coupe hats, right? So it's not like a rare thing, it's a viewpoint. So, so now we
• 1:09:00
  need a now that goes in so and now, when I go to charge a person a fee for my training, I think, Whoa, that's a lot of money. Oh, I should maybe I'm being too this. Maybe I'm
• 1:09:13
  being too greedy. Maybe I shouldn't ask for so much that internalization. Right now, I've internalized anti semitism. I'm so greedy, that's so money hungry, that's not
• 1:09:27
  fair. I should never do that. Why can't I just make things more cheap and more free for people? Maybe I should do that, but I'm not doing it because I have a value in
• 1:09:33
  ethics about caring for people. I'm doing it because I think I'm a bad, disgusting, greedy, money grabbing Jew. Sorry, weird people, but that's inside of me, sure,
• 1:09:43
  right? So that's that lives inside of me. That's the big thing. Now, when that goes on and I don't know about that, I don't know about internalized anti semitism, you don't
• 1:09:52
  know about internalized sexism, I'm taking up too much space. I should be quiet. I should listen to men. I shouldn't interrupt them. I should be smaller. Do right? If you
• 1:10:01
  don't know about that, nobody's going to witness it and it just goes on as an inner abuse scene. So internalized oppression. Let me see if I can say it clearly, internalized
• 1:10:11
  oppression. I shouldn't act this way. I'm too angry as a black person, I'm taking too much space as a woman. I'm too greedy as a Jewish person, those ideas when they're not
• 1:10:20
  witnessed. They just keep going on by themselves. I think what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with me. I feel so bad. I feel so depressed. The
• 1:10:31
  internalized oppression is not seen. At least if I say, as a woman, you should take up very little space. Men should rule the world, at least you can kind of go, you're
• 1:10:39
  an asshole, I agree with you wherever, but at least you can respond to me. But if it's inside, you may not see it, and nobody may see it, and then it's just going on all by
• 1:10:52
  itself, seeing so we very rarely talk about it. I'm not leaving the best dialog about this. I'm sorry about that, but what we need to do is out those voices inside so people
• 1:11:06
  hear them. You should all sit around. You should all women should sit around saying, this is the voices in my head. You're a bee, you're ugly, you're disgusting, you're too
• 1:11:13
  loud, you're too this. We should have those out so we all hear them, because otherwise we're not witnessing them. They're inside and they're inside. We believe it.
• 1:11:23
  Yes, I really am fat, though, aren't I? And I really like not the yes, you may be big, but the way you're talking
• 1:11:32
  about it is not that way. What you're talking about it is a sexist assault on your system. Can I make you? Can clarify that maybe I'm feel like I'm not being as No, no.
• 1:11:44
  Karen Kenney: I mean, I do. I mean, because what the also, the way that my brain interprets that is when it's not said out loud, and sometimes it's not set out loud,
• 1:11:53
  because we don't even know it lives in us. We don't even know it's in there. But if we don't say it out loud, then nobody, nobody can say, tell me more or question it, or,
• 1:12:06
  you know, it gets to just kind of live as a truth, and it doesn't get to be witnessed by somebody who can either say, you know, like something to either refute it or to give a
• 1:12:18
  different point of View. Because if shame is a point of view, then love is a point of view, beautiful.
• 1:12:27
  Unknown: Yeah, I worked with a woman stories in my new book, damn shaming way.
• 1:12:32
  Karen Kenney: Yeah, this, this beautiful book that I love. Thank you.
• 1:12:35
  Unknown: She's a Native American woman, and she said, inside of me. I think bad thoughts about how I look. And I said, Tell me the thoughts. What do you mean? Let's imagine
• 1:12:51
  I'm you, your body, your hair, your nose, your face, etc. Tell me what isn't lives inside of you. Look at me so to speak yourself in the mirror through those eyes. I
• 1:13:03
  don't like your nose, I don't like the texture of your skin. I don't like the way your hair is and it's so straight and it doesn't have waves. Keep going. Why should I
• 1:13:13
  keep going? Let's hear it.
• 1:13:16
  Let's hear what otherwise we
• 1:13:19
  don't know. And then she's like, getting moved because she's saying things out loud she may never even have said before to anybody, and now you're hearing you're kind
• 1:13:28
  of going, Whoa. And then I said to her, after she I learned all those I said, I want you to sit, stay in your body, and I'm going to say some of those things to you. I want
• 1:13:39
  you to feel what it's like to be spoken to like that. Take your time. Relax. Stay in your body. Don't even fight it. Just notice what happens. Notice what it's like to be
• 1:13:51
  treated this way. And I'm like, I don't like your nose. I stop. Can you feel it? What happens is, I want you to feel because otherwise it's like, yeah, of course, I
• 1:14:05
  don't feel like, feel what it's like, because this is you've brought this inside. So now we out that inner. We're witnessing it, right? We're witnessing the words and
• 1:14:17
  what it's like to be treated that way. Now she'll know, whoa. This feels awful. Don't work on your depression. Of course, you're depressed. That's what you're saying. You're
• 1:14:27
  saying you want to shrink and fall away and die when I say those words too Exactly. Yeah, of course, you think maybe I don't want to live. That's how you respond when
• 1:14:36
  somebody talks to you like that on a regular basis. Yeah.
• 1:14:39
  Karen Kenney: And when the calls are coming from inside the house. You don't think you normalize it. Yeah, you know, you normalize it. I mean, even when you were just saying
• 1:14:48
  those things, like, I felt my I felt my whole chest just kind of concave like, Oh my God. And, and I think so many of us do walk around with these things, and it's and this
• 1:14:58
  is why, like, I feel like you're. Work honestly is some of the most important, some of the most important and honest and beautiful and powerful. Like when I did your
• 1:15:12
  speaking of like never saying a thing out loud before, when I did your workshop on death and one of the questions, I immediately reached out to my best friend,
• 1:15:21
  and I was telling her, and I was saying, like, what would most like? A lot of people call me KK instead of Karen, but I was like, Okay, but what would dead KK do? Like, what
• 1:15:30
  would dead Karen like? And I still ask myself this question, like, from your workshop, and I was like, What would dead Karen do? And I remember, you know, it's too
• 1:15:39
  long to talk about here. I would love to have you come back another time, but like, so we can talk some more. But like, I just remember you inviting us and like, and you
• 1:15:49
  were like, let it take a form. And I became like a fire breathing dragon, and you're like, and what would like dead you do? And I was like, and I remember we did a little
• 1:15:59
  back and forth, and I never raised my hand in groups. And I did, I did. And I said, All right, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be vulnerable, I'm gonna be brave. I'm gonna raise my hand.
• 1:16:08
  And I was like, crying and and you're like, what would you do? And I was like, I would burn this motherfucker to the ground. And I said, I would kill you. I would kill you.
• 1:16:19
  And you just like we had like this moment, because so much of my life after that happened to my mother has been about non violence. I became a yoga teacher. The whole
• 1:16:30
  foundation of yoga is Ahimsa, non violence. I've been vegan for 23 years. I don't want to hurt anybody or anything, so. But there's a there's a part of me though, that is very
• 1:16:41
  like, oh, that's like, I will. I will never, I'm not going to kill anybody. But that energy that I probably suppress in some ways until you
• 1:16:51
  Unknown: can, until you know what to do with it, other than kill, literally kill a person, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's part of the story. I mean, part of that story with
• 1:17:01
  your mom that you have to, then you don't have to, but your life, if it wants to unfold past a certain spot flower into the deepest you is going to have to figure out,
• 1:17:13
  what do I do with that violence, making sure I don't hurt certain people the way my mother was hurt Great. Make sure you don't hurt yourself with that great, sure. And
• 1:17:24
  then what will I do with it? You say, Well, I just won't get I'll get rid of it. That's not going to be a sustainable solution. That's not a sustainable peace. A
• 1:17:33
  sustainable peace has to make peace with the violence. That means not let it just do it with things. But has to find that. How do I have a relationship. If I want to have non
• 1:17:42
  violence with violence, can't say I have non violence except for violence I want to kill and destroy. That's not a complete non violence. Complete non violence has to say,
• 1:17:52
  how do I be non violent towards violence? That doesn't mean say it's okay. I have to figure out how to that's not not about saying, go ahead and do it. I'm not saying
• 1:18:00
  that. What kind of relationship do I have with violence that's not about killing it, or is it about finding the killer in me? What do I have to do with this energy?
• 1:18:11
  Otherwise it goes free and we have a violent planet. And then when some people say, I don't want to be violent at all, and say, it's great, but, but some people need to
• 1:18:20
  say, I'm going to take some of that on and do something with it, other than make violation. I'm going to stand up for people. I'm going to protect my people. I'm going to
• 1:18:31
  finish a book, and nothing's going to stop me. I don't know what it is, but you may need it for something. Yeah, yeah, we're violent towards the violence again, I'm not
• 1:18:40
  being new agey. Be nice to it. Everyone's loving. I'm not, no, I'm not naive like that. But you have to figure out, what do you do with that? Yeah,
• 1:18:48
  Karen Kenney: and it does. I think I in my own ways, and I nobody's ever asked me that in that particular way. And I think I do in some ways, it is a I don't know. I think it,
• 1:19:01
  it's one of my superpowers that I it fuels me in some ways. You know, I am a voice for the voiceless. I do, like, kind of use it, and I try to use it in a non destructive
• 1:19:12
  way. And sometimes, but sometimes I wonder, like, maybe there's like, this, you know how the IBS is threaded in there. And conference, you know, this is not a call
• 1:19:23
  about me, so we could have a conversation another time, but it's a and this is what I love about you, like the way that you just, the way that your your mind works, and the
• 1:19:32
  way that you see people and pick up on things that other people don't pick up. I think it's one of your superpowers. And, you know, there's a part of me that, you know,
• 1:19:43
  you know, I can't I'm madly in love. I talked about dragons like I'm madly in love with this idea of wizards and magic and like Merlin and all this stuff. And you to me,
• 1:19:55
  have a kind of a magical quality. In that way, I see an alchemist. In you. I see a magician in you. If does that, you that landing what I'm saying, dude, is making
• 1:20:07
  sense, yeah,
• 1:20:07
  Unknown: yeah, yeah. I wouldn't necessarily use those exact words, but I, but I know what you're referring to.
• 1:20:12
  Karen Kenney: Yeah, there's an alchemy. You're an alchemizer. In some ways. It's
• 1:20:15
  Unknown: alchemy. Yeah? Alchemy says there's dross and people shit, right? And that if you cook it, right? Alchemist took a pot and they put stuff that was not valuable, lead,
• 1:20:31
  things that weren't gold, they called it dross, and then they cooked it, they put up lid on it, and they cooked it up, and then they cooked it up, and it turned into gold.
• 1:20:39
  So there's something golden. It was a spiritual process, something golden in the shit. And then we have to do a cooking so what I do is, I say, there's the stutter.
• 1:20:50
  Let's put the stutter in the pot. Let's heat it up so that it stutters more, and let's see if there's gold in there.
• 1:20:57
  Karen Kenney: I i 100 Yes, I 100% agree with you. And I really feel like that too. And it leads me back to I poem, and we'll, we can maybe end on this. Yeah, let's end on, end
• 1:21:10
  on a poetry. I like that, yeah. Well, this is from your book. This is the the Galway kennels, Pong, because I love, I love Saint Francis. He was the patron saint of animals,
• 1:21:20
  which is beloved, and the the blessing of the animals every year is on my birthday. So I love that. And this, I don't think that's a mistake. So this is the poem St Francis in
• 1:21:32
  the in this, in the sow. And I think of you every time I obviously read this. It says, The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower. For
• 1:21:45
  everything flowers from within of self, blessing, though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it
• 1:22:01
  in words and in touch. It is lovely until flowers again from within of self blessing. And then you went on to say, when we unshame, we are re teaching precious,
• 1:22:18
  restored parts of ourselves that they are lovely. When we self bless, we bloom.
• 1:22:27
  Unknown: I wrote that that's pretty good.
• 1:22:28
  Karen Kenney: You wrote that you did your book. Your book is beautiful. And I will put this down there. My last question is, is there anything I didn't ask or bring up that
• 1:22:38
  you wish I did?
• 1:22:39
  Unknown: No, it was that we went places. I didn't know we were going to go and I'm going to I think it's better than I could have designed it as always. So David Piper,
• 1:22:48
  smarter than me, yeah, exactly
• 1:22:50
  Karen Kenney: something, something smarter than us, was leading. Luckily,
• 1:22:52
  Unknown: luckily. I'm a very limited human being, but life has really got a lot of intelligence in it. So
• 1:22:58
  Karen Kenney: it does, so folks. David has an ongoing monthly membership. He also has a relationship membership with his sweetie, Lisa, who is wonderful. You offer some
• 1:23:09
  master classes. You have some free resources on your website. David bedrick.com and you have this 10 month training that's starting in February. You only have four spots left,
• 1:23:19
  and you offer so much to the world. So thank you so much for being you. Thank you for sharing this time with me and my listeners. I appreciate you. I know we've never met,
• 1:23:30
  but I do love you and love you too, and thank you for spending this time with me. Beautiful,
• 1:23:39
  Unknown: Big hugs my finger. Wants to hug you.
• 1:23:44
  Karen Kenney: Alright? So everybody, thank you so much for spending this time with us. As I always say, wherever you go, may you leave yourself in the animals in the place
• 1:23:52
  and the people in the environment better than how you found it wherever you go, may you and your presence and your love be a blessing. Bye.
• 1:24:01
  Unknown: Beautiful. Great job.