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Maija Haavisto: Meditation, Dissociation, and Healing · Attention Copilot with Pranab

• 0:01
  - Hello. I'm with Maija Haavisto,
• 0:02
  - Hello. [unclear]
• 0:04
  writer, therapist, author of two books I really love, Loving Awakening and
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  Shattered White-Out. Loving Awakening is a book on awakening, healing, psychology,
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  emotions. Shattered White-Out is a book about dissociation and a parts view of
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  challenging [unclear] personality disorders. but yeah, I I'm here with Maija
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  to talk about all things meditation, therapy, chronic illness, and some of the
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  challenges of of moving between those communities and more. So hello Maija.
• 0:41
  Hi. And I would also like to point out that Shattered White-Out is especially a
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  book about dissociation in the context of society, which I think is like and
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  obviously there are other books on trauma and dissociation, but I I feel like the
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  perspective is a bit different.
• 1:00
  Awesome. so just to start, I you have a lot of good writing on Twitter, Medium,
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  your books. so this is not going to do with justice, but I'd love to kind of give
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  a cursory overview of your experiences with meditation, non dual experience,
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  therapy and being a therapist and chronic illness, sort of a high level just to kind
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  - Yeah.
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  - of help people get oriented. I know that's challenging.
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  Yeah. Yeah, so I I'd been writing professionally or started writing
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  professionally back in the year two thousand, which was also when I got very
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  ill when I was only in my teens. I got the chronic fatigue syndrome or more
• 1:43
  accurately known as myalgic encephalomyelitis. And since then I've
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  developed a huge number of different health conditions, but that's that's kinda
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  mostly the main one. then nine years ago I I used to write more like medical books
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  and novels focused on chronic illness and disability because of course those were
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  very relevant subjects to me. Then nine years ago I started quite suddenly getting
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  into meditation, which before that I had been like, Wow, it's sound that you know
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  like mindfulness, it's like when people write this.
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  stuff on like sunset pictures and that's very trite and boring and then I got into
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  it and I was like, wow, this meditation stuff is actually quite helpful for me and
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  it's like really, really relevant to me. And that I I practiced this form called
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  TWIM, which is a form of loving kindness meditation using jhanas, which are often
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  They can be called altered states. And this felt like really my type of
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  meditation because it was very focused on positive feelings and feeling love for
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  yourself and other people. And from there, I also started discovering kind of these
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  psychological techniques that are somewhat similar
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  to meditation, but not, or most people would not.
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  Them as meditation, such as internal family
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  systems and somatic work, and many other practices.
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  Nice.
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  I have
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  So in the last few years, let's say last six years, what has led you to write let's
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  start with Loving Awakening as a book?
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  Yeah, I I I I felt like there was just no book that was exactly like mine. And even
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  when I was writing it I had so many conflicting feelings because it's like I I
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  felt like these techniques are highly beneficial, but already back when I was
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  writing it I was already seeing that especially meditation can cause a lot of
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  harm, both physical and psychological harm. So then it was like, okay, how how
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  do I write a book that's kinda like does justice to the way that these techniques
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  can be very beneficial and in some cases they are probably not beneficial and can
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  even be harmful. And this is a subject that I still kinda really struggle to like
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  how to skillfully deal with this.
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  Because many people find meditation incredibly helpful and then if you say
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  like, actually it can also be incredibly harmful and that's often like leads to a
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  lot of conflict and people even saying like
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  no, that's certainly not even possible. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Good into that a bit more, even if we don't have a synthesis, I'm
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  curious to start, how would you describe the benefits of jhana practice, focusing
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  on positive qualities, that sort of TWIM style meditation, or maybe meditation in
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  general? Like what do you see as sort of the the positive vision for meditation and
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  how it's affected your life?
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  Yeah. For for me it was really like the like for me it was very easy to access
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  these positive emotions and it was even kinda like shocking at first. Like why if
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  it's actually super easy for me to access happiness and joy and these feelings and
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  why I'm not just feeling them all the time. And This is not the case for
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  everyone. Many people really struggle to access these feelings at all or can only
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  access them like very slightly because of trauma or other reasons. But for me it
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  felt very easy and it felt like, it's making me much happier and it's really
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  like improving my quality of life. And of course this kinda led me to be like,
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  meditation is so great and of course
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  taking into account that my experience was also very unusual, that literally my first
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  meditation session felt powerful. And for most people it's more like it's definitely
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  not like that. It's more like you meditate a hundred times and then you're like,
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  yeah, my life feels better.
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  Yeah. And what do you make of that? Do you have any sort of sense making around what
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  made it work for you quite early on?
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  I I feel like it was just that it was all very close to me, that I I feel like I'm
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  naturally a very happy person and I was just living through a very hard time in my
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  life related to my chronic illnesses worsening and
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  some other things. So it it was very close already.
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  Yeah. And how do you relate to sort of the range of experience around 'cause it
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  sounds like with with sort of a lot of what you've experienced, there's sort of
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  these sort of I'm not even sure if there's the right way to describe it but high
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  highs and then with the chronic illness lower lows. I imagine that's not with
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  equanimity and other meditation qualities, it's not maybe not experienced that way,
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  but how do you relate to that and how it's how that's changed over the years of sort
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  of the challenges plus the sort of feelings of bliss and all that all
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  together in a say in a given day or given week.
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  Yeah. Yeah. And it it's a bit funny that this like loving kindness meditation is
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  like literally one of the most original Buddhist practices, but still many people
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  feel like, you know, it's like too feel-good focused. You're supposed to like
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  sit still and be calm and like nothing happens and that's what meditation is all
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  about. And if you feel bliss then you just get like addicted to bliss and you focus
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  on the bliss and you miss what meditation is all about. And I feel like there is
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  like some a little truth to it, but mostly mostly it's not like that. But it's yeah,
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  of course it's like it was not just about joy and bliss. It was also that meditating
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  every day was definitely increasing my equanimity. So when
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  bad stuff happened to my health, then it was like less less devastating and and so
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  I I was also reaping the more traditional benefits, you know, of like inner calm or
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  inner peace or whatever you want to call it.
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  Yeah, so I want to get into
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  Yeah,
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  the downsides. before we do, so everything you just said, I would love to understand
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  how you view how that might be perceived both in sort of therapy communities you're
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  in and sort of the chronic illness communities you're in. Cause I can already
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  sort of see triggers or tensions that arise from what you shared there.
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  Yeah. Yeah, the thing is that therapy communities often have a very weird and I
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  feel like very one dimensional view of meditation. It's like you do mindfulness
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  and then you feel like your chronic pain is reduced and you deal with it better and
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  your chronic illnesses get better and and there is some truth to it. Like obviously
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  they didn't just make it all up. And but I I feel like it's really not taking into
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  account that a lot of conditions where people seek therapy, both physical and
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  mental conditions, meditation may not be appropriate in my opinion, or it may might
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  be that like some ways of meditation are
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  appropriate and can be helpful and others might be
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  very harmful. And then the chronic illness community basically sees meditation and
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  mindfulness and spirituality as kind of like these brainless new age
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  holier-than-thou people being like, have you tried yoga? If you just meditate, you
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  will get better and then you we don't have to give you medication and you will just
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  like Think yourself into wellness and that's seen as a very triggering and even
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  abusive framework. And I can definitely see why, because it often is Yeah.
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  Yeah. Going into more detail, what are for the therapy side, what are the techniques
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  that and this might be too specific, but I guess what are some of the techniques that
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  might actually be less helpful and or maybe what's what's sort of a way of
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  seeing that therapists could have to then have a deeper understanding? Go to like h
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  the details of how some techniques can make things worse. the idea that maybe
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  techniques can cure these things, but maybe they actually can't be cured. Like
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  that sort of thing for therapy. And then we'll get into the chronic illness.
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  Yeah. Yeah, I I feel like a lot of mental health professionals are too focused on
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  like EBM, evidence-based medicine. So it's like they read a journal article that
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  finds that in this group of people mindfulness helped people with depression
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  or chronic pain or something. And yeah, maybe thirty percent of people dropped
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  out, but we don't have to consider that because well, who knows what happened to
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  them and some people benefited. But in reality it's like no approach works for
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  everyone and you really like you have to understand what these approaches even are.
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  Because mindfulness is basically Buddhist meditation which was not developed as a
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  treatment for trauma or depression or chronic pain or stress. Most of these
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  concepts didn't even exist back then. It was developed
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  for reaching spiritual enlightenment, which is
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  not which is very different from healing depression or chronic pain.
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  Yeah. And I think what I liked a lot about your book is that it feels very inclusive
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  of all of that, like the entire like a much broader spectrum of the human
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  experience, including deep pain, mental health conditions, trauma, in a way that
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  is sort of worth highlighting as different from, you know, because within Buddhism
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  there is, you know, purifications and you can kind of loosely equate little T
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  traumas with Samskaras and that sort of thing. But I'm kind of curious what harms
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  happen when you don't include these things? And then what are the how does
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  practice change sort of in the way you highlighted in your book when you include
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  the I the these ideas and these frames of of chronic
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  pain, chronic conditions, all that sort of stuff?
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  Yeah. I I feel like one of the main things is that in therapy and in mental health
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  care, it's often seen like for example, if a patient says this medication doesn't
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  work for me or causes a whole lot of side effects, or like I try to do this
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  mindfulness thing that you told me to do and it's making me worse and then it's
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  viewed like, Well, you're either doing it wrong or you're just like You have to push
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  through these side effects and then you will see the light and will be healed. And
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  of course, spiritual communities do a similar thing to some extent. Like if you
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  complain that meditation feels bad, you're very often told that you know sometimes it
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  just feels bad, and that doesn't mean there's nothing there's anything wrong, or
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  you might be told that you're meditating wrong, so you have to do the same.
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  technique that you're already doing and just not do it wrong like you're doing
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  right now. And of course this idea can have some truth to it, like meditation
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  causing you temporarily to have a bad mood doesn't mean that the technique is wrong
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  or that you're doing it wrong. But it also if if the person is for example feeling
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  like that they are approaching a mental breakdown. And they are told to like,
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  Yeah, whatever, you just need to try harder and sit sit with it and sit through
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  it. It's probably not a helpful approach.
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  Yeah. What
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  Yeah, what
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  is a what do you wish you could tell meditators or meditation teachers about a
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  better approach that sort of could be more inclusive and supportive of people who are
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  maybe more prone to or just happen to have closer to sort of the mental breakdown or
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  challenging experiences that sort of
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  Yeah. Yeah, I think the most important thing is to like try to really listen to
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  the person, like what is going on. And it's like it it's not really that if
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  someone has chronic pain they should try this technique and if someone has
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  depression they should try another technique because people are much more
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  like complex than that. So for example, when I started meditating I found body
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  scans helpful for dealing with my chronic illness. And many people with chronic
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  illness say, like, no, this is horrible. This just makes me focus more on my
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  illness and it makes me feel really bad. And then the meditation people will say,
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  like, yeah, that's kinda the goal. It's making you like see reality more clearly.
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  But sometimes there's no point in seeing reality
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  more clearly if your reality is actually very bad.
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  Yeah. And for you, was it the same effect when the body scans helped? Was it seeing
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  the reality more clearly? Or did it do something else that made it more
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  beneficial in that case?
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  I I feel like for me body scans were mostly helpful for helping me relate to my
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  body in a much more neutral way. Because many people with chronic illness, it's
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  like, my body is is a kind of bag of problems that I just have to carry around
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  and when it says something it's like it has a problem and this sucks. And so where
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  when you do body scanning then you can notice that Like hey, there's a lot going
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  on in my body. That's not an alarm signal
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  that's not saying something is wrong. Yeah.
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  Yeah. I think that's what that brings up for me is how and I like that you
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  mentioned, you know, it's it's not that if you have this problem, do this technique,
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  if you have this problem, do that technique. Cause really sort of everyone
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  has different I guess views. So like or different like collection of views within
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  their body mind for one person with one cluster of attributes, one technique might
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  make it worse. For another person with a different cluster of attributes, maybe
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  that technique actually helps them kind of more into more right view. so I sometimes
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  get excited in my mind like, maybe there's sort of a way to map these views out and
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  sort of help assess where someone is and then kind of give a better thing there.
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  But it does seem like the best thing there is just to have a wise
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  teacher [unclear].
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  Yeah, yeah, and of course as a therapist my main goal is to, you know, avoid doing
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  people harm. So if someone is saying like, I'm doing this meditation and I think it's
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  making me worse and I'm like, Okay, I I believe you, this might actually be making
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  you feel worse and that might be a bad thing rather than a sign of something good
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  happening. And generally spiritual teachers, their view is a bit different
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  because it's like we're chasing enlightenment and it's going to be ugly
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  and awful at times, or it might be ugly and awful at times. And both of these are
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  kind of true, but I still feel like avoiding
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  harm is the most important thing. Yeah. [unclear]
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  Yeah, yeah. What that brings up for me, I'm curious how you view what the goal may
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  be or is. And in some ways that might be too modernistic or sort of too limiting.
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  It's like I was really one goal and all that. But if you could kind of maybe a
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  better thing is what is your view of what progress is, generally speaking, in the
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  communities that you're in?
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  Yeah, I think that's a great question and I I feel like many people like my when I
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  started meditating, I'm not sure what my very initial I think my very initial goal
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  was to feel better and then I was using Buddhist methods to feel better and I was
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  like, Well I guess Buddhism is right and Buddhism says that if you keep doing this
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  thing that already makes you feel better, then you can actually be free of
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  suffering. Sounds great, I'll sign up for that. So my goal was to reach
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  enlightenment and be free of suffering. And then at some point people started
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  telling me that this is actually not true. There is something that's called or can be
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  called enlightenment. Many of them don't like the term at all, but it's not
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  actually going to eradicate suffering. And then I
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  was like, Well, damn, I guess it's too late to kinda
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  bail out
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  Yeah. Yeah. So
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  So I I feel like it's it's it's a huge problem if there are a lot of people who
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  are chasing a goal and many people do believe that this goal is realistic and
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  exists. And I don't believe this goal exists. So I see it as a problem to chase
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  it. Like I see it as a religious goal. Kinda like if you like accept Jesus into
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  your heart, you will go to heaven. And of course everyone is anyone is free to
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  believe that they will get to heaven by believing in Jesus. Christ and I don't
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  believe it's true. And of course it really depends like if you live your life as
• 20:36
  before and ha hold this belief, it can still be positive even if it's not true.
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  But if you like if everything in your life is around this goal and then the goal is
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  impossible, then it can be a problem.
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  Yeah. And how do you view I what awakening is good for, I guess. It's like okay,
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  great. It's not going to eliminate suffering in this sort of dogmatic or
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  ideological view and that there are some you've had experiences with that and wrote
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  a book around Loving Awakening. So it seems like there's something it's good
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  for. I'm curious how you view that.
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  Yeah, my view of spirituality is very interpersonal and it's about connection.
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  So spirituality is all about increasing connection and this goes for yourself, so
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  increasing connection and understanding of who you are and increasing connection to
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  other people and f other things, whether that's universe or God or Mother Earth or
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  you know, whatever it feels important for you to connect. And it can also be things
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  like, you know, baseball or dogs or many other things.
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  Awesome. That's also the way I would tend to answer it. I I have other words as
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  well. The connection tends to come up as the thing
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  I [unclear] as sort of one thing to emphasize.
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  Yeah. And of course many Buddhists really don't like this view and they are like,
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  Well, obviously that's not Buddhist. And I'm like, Okay, fine, I think I'm not a
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  Buddhist anyway, anymore, so I don't have to like have a Buddhist idea of what
• 22:23
  spirituality is. But I feel
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  - Mm.
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  - like and and Loving Awakening talks a lot about how how I feel that many
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  Buddhists treat Buddhism as a form of transcendent avoidance. So their goal is
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  to go into a cave, meditate for ten years, then you have no problems, no suffering,
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  everything is chill. And it's like, yeah, sure you can have zero problems if you sit
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  in a cave alone for ten years and try going into
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  the real world and suddenly you do have problems.
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  Yeah. And how does connection
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  Yeah, and how can I
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  help with those problems or change the way you show up to relationships and problems
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  and people and all that?
• 23:11
  Yeah. So of course connection doesn't always solve problems because sometimes
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  connection is what kinda makes you see that avoidance has been helping you avoid
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  a lot of the problems and now with connection you actually have more problems
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  because you're admitting to yourself that this is an issue and this is an issue. But
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  I feel like one of the Buddhist concepts that I do find very helpful is compassion.
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  Which of course I find deeply connects to internal family systems. So I feel like
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  internal family systems is mostly about compassion. And many schools or some
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  schools of Buddhism also really stress compassion and its importance. So they are
• 23:59
  on the same page with this. Yeah, one thing I like a lot about
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  Yeah, one thing I like a lot about the way you describe IFS is it's IFS is sort of a
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  placeholder for just a parts model of the mind. And I if I'm if I'm understanding
• 24:14
  your view correctly, there's less of an emphasis on, you know, firefighter,
• 24:18
  manager, like all the specific sort of dichotomies than it, but really just sort
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  of seeing protectors and then hurt parts as exiles and just sort of the general
• 24:28
  parts model of the mind. am I getting that right?
• 24:32
  Yeah, yeah, it's really that our we are not really one person, which of course is
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  also also very very much in agreement with Buddhism. That many people think that
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  like, I'm this and that and this is my identity and this is my personality and of
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  course it's much more complicated because your personality is wildly different in
• 24:58
  wild wildly different situations and that's completely normal. You are made of
• 25:04
  many different parts and many of them are trauma and when you see it is it's easier
• 25:11
  to have compassion for yourself and for other people and society as a whole.
• 25:18
  Maija, I'd love to understand your view of dissociation and just understanding what
• 25:24
  dissociation is in your view.
• 25:27
  Yeah. I think it's a pretty important question because it seems like everyone
• 25:32
  has a slightly different definition and sometimes people are like deciding that my
• 25:39
  view must be the same as their view or my view must be someone else's view which
• 25:45
  they find bad and then it turns out that my view is actually quite different. And
• 25:51
  my view is mostly fairly like consistent with general dissociation research.
• 25:57
  nothing very controversial there. So the idea is that there are two main types of
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  dissociation. And one is the one that I think many people think of when they hear
• 26:09
  the word, it means that you're kind of zoning out or you feel tired or confused
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  or cannot focus or feel like okay I don't want to go into this topic or cannot
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  remember stuff. So it could be called distraction.
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  And sometimes people are very aware of when this happens, and sometimes people
• 26:31
  experience this basically all the time. And sometimes it just feels like, I'm
• 26:37
  tired and I don't really feel like thinking right now. And it doesn't feel
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  emotional or trauma related or anything at all. And from an IFS perspective, this is
• 26:48
  generally considered to be one part. Of course, a person can have many parts, so
• 26:54
  maybe one part is more but confusion and one part is more about making you tired,
• 26:59
  but these are individual parts that really try to get you away from something trauma
• 27:05
  related or what they perceive as trauma related that's very, very unpleasant or
• 27:11
  that they expect you would be overwhelmed.
• 27:15
  Yeah, to me it it it seems like to reflect it back, things that put you away from the
• 27:19
  present moment in sort of one general sense, but really it's sort of things that
• 27:24
  pull you away from challenging experience or intensity in some sense.
• 27:28
  Yeah. Yeah. And then the other type is in some ways quite different, and this is
• 27:34
  often called structural dissociation. This is kind of the official term, and it can
• 27:40
  also be called something like compartmentalization. And from an IFS
• 27:46
  view, this is not like one dissociation part or two dissociation parts. It kind of
• 27:52
  means that your whole system is like the parts are
• 27:56
  too separate from each other, or many parts are
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  Usually separate from each other and don't really know what's going on. And the
• 28:07
  extreme example is what is known as dissociative identity disorder, formerly
• 28:13
  known as multiple personality disorder. So, and of course, the movie view of that
• 28:19
  is like someone has distinct personalities and they have different names and dress
• 28:25
  differently and and stuff like that. And this is fairly rare, but the whole
• 28:31
  structural dissociation is anything but rare. And people have a milder version of
• 28:37
  this. So they can still have kind of distinct personalities and sometimes they
• 28:43
  do have names and identities and genders, even if the person does not like the
• 28:49
  person may call themselves the same name and wear
• 28:54
  the same the style of clothes all the time. But
• 28:58
  internally they it may feel very different.
• 29:03
  It reminds me of the TV show Severance. in some ways it's sort of a decent modern
• 29:07
  depiction of being the same person, but sort of split or severed or sort of
• 29:11
  disconnected from yourself, or have different parts of yourself that are
• 29:16
  Yeah, and of course this is a very kinda like a fiction trope that has intrigued
• 29:20
  many authors. Like if you think of like Frankenstein's Monster and many many
• 29:25
  different fiction characters have this kinda [unclear] like good and evil or or
• 29:30
  something like that. But yeah. Yeah yeah.
• 29:33
  Doctor Jekyll and Hyde. What are
• 29:37
  That's that's what I meant. But it's really like real life tends to be much
• 29:41
  more complex and nuanced rather than someone
• 29:44
  having a good personality and evil personality.
• 29:48
  Yeah, and I'd love for you to talk about that complexity and how that plays into
• 29:52
  how we think about personality disorders in general. It sounds like this informs a
• 29:57
  lot of how you frame that and why personality
• 30:00
  disorders itself is not a very helpful frame.
• 30:04
  Yeah. Yeah, and I I do want to add one more thing, like that when I use the word
• 30:09
  dissociation, I normally refer to either one of these phenomena. And sometimes
• 30:15
  people are confused because they're like, Well, they are completely different things
• 30:21
  and of course in some ways they are very different, but I feel like they are both
• 30:27
  similar in some ways. Like the goal is to distract you from something, not allow you
• 30:33
  to sa see something. So I I sometimes call dissociation that it's that you're not
• 30:39
  allowed to see something. And of course that's very that's kinda
• 30:44
  you know, that's just a nice term which does not like describe a hundred percent
• 30:49
  instances of dissociation very well, but it describes
• 30:54
  most of the stuff that I'm trying to point out.
• 30:58
  In what is the spectrum of what it looks like between sort of more minor
• 31:02
  dissociation and structural dissociation? Like how can sort of
• 31:07
  I don't know.
• 31:08
  what's a way to sort of map that terrain a bit more?
• 31:13
  yeah, I I feel like that's a very complex question and kinda hard to hard to answer
• 31:19
  in in a limited amount of time. but I I would argue that most people have more
• 31:25
  than a more than mild dissociation. And of course it depends on our definition, what
• 31:31
  is mild, what is medium. Is it about like how strongly you're dissociated? Is it
• 31:37
  about how strongly it impairs your life, or actually maybe it doesn't feel like it
• 31:43
  impairs your life at all. Maybe it feels like it's
• 31:47
  just helping you out, which is certainly possible.
• 31:52
  But I I feel like these can look like so many different things. For example, some
• 31:58
  people who have a very dissociated vibe, they always feel the same. They just come
• 32:04
  off as very distant and like you just can't really connect with them. Then I
• 32:10
  have some friends who come off as very dissociated to me, and their vibe is that
• 32:16
  there's like a different person every day.
• 32:20
  Yeah. And this seems like a good segue into personality disorders
• 32:27
  Yeah, so my view is I'm I'm really not fond of the term for many different
• 32:33
  reasons and one is the it's really it the actual like in a more philosophical sense,
• 32:39
  it feels very violent that you're literally saying that someone's
• 32:45
  personality is disordered. And from an IFS perspective, this is very much not just
• 32:51
  semantics because in IFS we talk a lot about shame and we We talk about exiles.
• 32:58
  So if you say that something is not allowed, you're only pushing that stuff
• 33:04
  deeper and deeper inside where it tends to cause much more problems.
• 33:10
  So of course, in a sense, this this goes deeper than just the term personality
• 33:16
  disorders. It goes into the whole term disorder and psychiatry and the whole idea
• 33:23
  that we have stuff like mental pathology, a term which I don't like at all. The
• 33:30
  personality disorder is kind of like an extreme example.
• 33:35
  Yeah. And what do you wish people knew? Maybe people who experienced things that
• 33:40
  could be described under that label and people who maybe know people who could be
• 33:46
  described under that label.
• 33:49
  Yeah, I I I feel like it's important to really pay attention to the way that these
• 33:56
  are actually all of these are common trauma responses that happen on a
• 34:02
  spectrum. For example, we often talk about narcissism or narcissistic personality
• 34:09
  disorder, and most people have some narcissist traits and parts. These are
• 34:15
  very, very common trauma responses. And then there's the very like to me bizarre
• 34:22
  idea of a narcissist, you know, people say this is a monster, this is barely not this
• 34:30
  is barely even a person, this is like a horror, evil villain, a thingy. And it's
• 34:37
  really like no, these are very traumatized people and
• 34:42
  There is I I feel like if you focus on there that there is a narcissist and then
• 34:48
  there's the others, then it makes you unable to
• 34:51
  see that you also likely have narcissistic parts.
• 34:56
  Yeah. And it sounds like that seeing the common humanity, seeing that shared nature
• 35:03
  can just help with compassion and empathy.
• 35:07
  Yeah, but it's it's r I I'm strongly of the opinion that it's not a coincidence
• 35:12
  that personality disorders serve some roles in our society and in the
• 35:18
  psychiatric system. In the psychiatric system they serve the role of is it's a
• 35:24
  horrible patient I don't like to work with, so they must be bad. And in society
• 35:30
  as a general it serves the role of like, my parent was fundamentally different from
• 35:36
  me, my ex was bad fundamentally different from me and I'm not saying like you know
• 35:42
  horrible abusive relationships happen they are hor horribly abusive parents but still
• 35:48
  casting people into a role of evil and then calling the evil personality
• 35:54
  disorder. I see why it happens but I really don't think it's helping anyone.
• 36:00
  Yeah, it sounds like and to be clear, 'cause you're
• 36:03
  not defending the behavior that happens here. I
• 36:06
  - Yeah.
• 36:07
  - think you've actually often been a vocal, you've been you have been vocal
• 36:11
  about behavior that can be seen as narcissistic and abusive. so
• 36:15
  Yeah, yeah, and I mean I have quite the [unclear] a lot of experience of I I've
• 36:20
  had an abusive parent, I've had abusive friends, I've had an abusive partner. So I
• 36:27
  I've seen a lot of very, very problematic patterns. I've seen physical violence and
• 36:33
  other types of physical abuse. So it's definitely often people think that, you're
• 36:39
  defending them. No, I'm I'm not defending any behaviors that harm others. I just
• 36:45
  feel like this is not helping anyone, so you call them personality disorders.
• 36:51
  And additionally, I also feel like it's very important that I believe that abuse
• 36:57
  is generally a result of dissociation. So for example, in narcissism, the abuse is
• 37:03
  not caused by the narcissistic parts as such, the abuse is caused by dissociation.
• 37:09
  And this is why, for example, what sometimes gets called borderline
• 37:15
  personality disorder, which is an equally horrible term, but their dissociation.
• 37:21
  also plays a huge role and there are many people who would not fit the criteria for
• 37:27
  either one of those and are still abusive or treat their loved ones badly and I
• 37:34
  believe that's always because of dissociation.
• 37:38
  And this is of
• 37:39
  - And
• 37:40
  - course not a very mainstream view, but this is also not only my view, as in my
• 37:46
  book I also cite some, for example, forensic researchers who believe in this
• 37:52
  or have a very similar theory.
• 37:55
  Yeah, and the reason this view is helpful, one, separating the behavior from the
• 37:59
  person, that alone is very useful and freeing. But two, it sort of outlines a
• 38:04
  path for healing for people who experience these challenges or experience these these
• 38:09
  conditions. or you know, conditions is probably not appropriate, but sorry, they
• 38:14
  experience these this these set of characteristics in some ways.
• 38:19
  Yeah, and I mean I I work with people. I work with for example I work with people
• 38:25
  who have got been had problems with domestic violence on both sides. I've had
• 38:31
  worked with people on both sides of sexual assault and things like that. And It's
• 38:37
  actually quite easy for me to be compassionate even though I also have
• 38:43
  these kinds of experiences of these kinds of things committed towards me that I fa
• 38:49
  find it very easy to be compassionate because I see where it's coming from and
• 38:55
  that these people are not monsters or they are not evil. They usually are really
• 39:02
  struggling themselves and they feel
• 39:05
  horrible about having these kinds of parts.
• 39:09
  curious if there's anything else you'd like to
• 39:11
  share around personality disorders or dissociation.
• 39:14
  Yeah, I I think I I said most of most of the stuff that's important. I'm I'm
• 39:19
  working on an article about this topic, but it's really like most of what it will
• 39:25
  be in it is already in my book Shattered White-Out.
• 39:29
  So connection and compassion are clearly really helpful for healing, for having a
• 39:34
  sort of more beautiful, rich life. And as you mentioned, it can kind of surface more
• 39:40
  problems in a way. It can surface more tensions, it can surface the ways that
• 39:46
  avoidance is actually helpful, that trauma is actually helpful. what makes connection
• 39:52
  so triggering, like sort of intrapersonally and interpersonally?
• 39:57
  Yeah, I I feel like most most trauma is heavily related to avoidance. Like
• 40:02
  dissociation is also a form of avoidance. And I posit in my book that the whole
• 40:08
  society is built on dissociation It's founded on dissociation. And of course
• 40:14
  this is a very bold claim that I can't really like fully defend the in short
• 40:19
  length. So anyone who's like, that is completely outrageous, I recommend reading
• 40:25
  my book. It's completely free. So you can read it.
• 40:30
  And then you can decide for yourself whether this makes sense to you or maybe
• 40:34
  it's still outrageous. And in the second case, I would really like to hear from you
• 40:39
  and we can talk about this.
• 40:42
  Yeah. And we'll have a bookmark to how connection compassion relate to chronic
• 40:47
  illness community. And again, bookmark of non-dual awakening and some of the
• 40:52
  problems that it causes. But I'd love to kind of get into some of the stuff with
• 40:57
  Shattered White-Out of the way that sort of once you take this parts model of the
• 41:03
  mind seriously, and the fact that many parts are sort of trauma responses and
• 41:08
  come from trauma, and how that sort of emerges into behavior in society. it's
• 41:13
  it's a pretty compelling argument and I think I want to get into some of that.
• 41:19
  Mainly around What
• 41:22
  All right.
• 41:24
  sort of is the core thing for why dissociation is helpful or sort of how it
• 41:28
  like what allows it to give society structure? Or that's one, yeah, yeah,
• 41:33
  let's go with that. I have another question that just just came up.
• 41:38
  Okay, I actually want to go a bit back and add to the like I I feel like yeah, the
• 41:43
  parts model is very important for understanding yourself and understanding
• 41:49
  how why other people are behaving in ways that may seem like why are people so weird
• 41:55
  or bad or wrong and it's parts. But also it has helped me a lot with like living
• 42:01
  compassionately in the world that I don't see like, there's so much evil and bad and
• 42:07
  I see it as trauma and I feel like I feel a lot of compassion. So I I feel like this
• 42:13
  helps me a lot in in dealing with difficult situations and you know, the
• 42:18
  world is burning and war and climate
• 42:21
  change and we have a lot of stuff going on.
• 42:25
  it helps a lot that I don't like feel crushed by it all or that like my god if
• 42:31
  there's so much evil this is what helps a lot. And then we can
• 42:36
  - Mm.
• 42:36
  - go back to your actual question. Great.
• 42:39
  Great. Thank you. Yeah, that's that's great to emphasize because it gives you
• 42:42
  there's sort of the seeing of it, but there's seeing it can be a lot without the
• 42:46
  sort of compassion and care for yourself and others
• 42:48
  that can kind of balance it out, it sounds like.
• 42:51
  Yeah. Yeah, and as for the society being built on dissociation, I I really feel
• 42:57
  like it's kinda like it it allows traumatized people to live together and
• 43:04
  like the way that the world is burning in so many ways, but mostly it also works. It
• 43:11
  works kind of surprisingly well. Like sure people
• 43:16
  Yeah.
• 43:17
  are dying of preventable causes all the time, but People are also like, we are
• 43:24
  still here. Humankind is still here. E even if dissociation, I I believe
• 43:30
  dissociation has caused almost all of our problems, such as wars and racism and
• 43:37
  stuff like that. But dissociation also helps to like when people are not able to
• 43:45
  invoke enough compassion, dissociation is kind of
• 43:49
  what allows them to live in a world that feels wrong.
• 43:55
  Yeah. It's the thing that both causes it's the root of the world's suffering and it's
• 44:01
  sort of the way that we can kind of push away that or like live in function
• 44:07
  somewhat functionally with all that suffering.
• 44:11
  Yeah. And I
• 44:12
  Yeah.
• 44:13
  also would like to add that I have no idea how it would work out if the dissociation
• 44:19
  was not there. Like there's this like what if our world was a real paradise then and
• 44:26
  there would be no war and we would all be happy and treat each other well. But I o
• 44:32
  also don't know what would happen. Like it's probably for a reason that we live in
• 44:38
  our current iteration of the world. And example, some aspects of society might not
• 44:45
  work when or when like if we had this highly
• 44:48
  hypothetical world with very little dissociation.
• 44:53
  Yeah, yeah. It's like if if you could snap a finger and have everyone not have
• 44:57
  dissociation, it sounds like you probably wouldn't do that because it would just
• 45:02
  lead to too much chaos or too much disruption than what it's potentially it
• 45:07
  almost too much short term disruption that just wouldn't be
• 45:11
  Yeah, I mean if if it were to happen right now it would probably be like a complete
• 45:16
  disaster. But if you ask me like what if we could exist in a world that never had
• 45:21
  dissociation, then I have no idea because I
• 45:24
  have no idea what that world would be like.
• 45:27
  Yeah. It in some ways it feels quite analogous to a person. Like if you could
• 45:30
  snap a finger and there's some person in front of you on the road, you
• 45:33
  Yeah. Yes.
• 45:35
  exactly. It's yeah, could you talk more about that?
• 45:38
  Yeah, yeah, I was actually going to bring it up because I I've I work with many
• 45:43
  people who are frustrated by their dissociation and sometimes they have parts
• 45:48
  that go like, can't we just like fix it now? Like I don't want to dissociate
• 45:52
  anymore, let's just like get it over with. And like, yeah, even if I had some magic
• 45:58
  wand or technique that could do this, it would like to be a very bad idea.
• 46:03
  - Yeah.
• 46:04
  - And I also also think it's what actually happens to some people who meditate and
• 46:10
  experience horrible stuff. For some people, dissociation gets worse, and for
• 46:16
  some people the dissociation suddenly is
• 46:19
  greatly reduced and it's very destabilizing.
• 46:23
  Yeah. And I think I I I'm really interested in that messy middle and sort
• 46:27
  of the problem of healing too fast. I have a couple of friends who've had some really
• 46:32
  big challenges with that. and maybe the better phrase is trying to heal too fast,
• 46:37
  but sort of or like the working on healing. I'm not sure exactly what it is,
• 46:42
  because if it is true healing, it's like, what is true healing? There's there's all
• 46:47
  this sort of stuff there, but some some background. I've I've, you know, been in
• 46:52
  meditation circles for a while. I've worked at a psychedelic therapy company
• 46:56
  that did le that does legal psychedelics work in Oregon in the US. so I had
• 47:01
  experiences with all these healing modalities and sort of there's lots of
• 47:05
  claims of 10 years of therapy and one day and you know just solve the suffering now.
• 47:10
  And of course these things are really great. Like it's it's it is definitely
• 47:15
  much better, I think, to live in a world that has things like MDMA and
• 47:20
  Loving kindness meditation and meditation retreats and IFS practitioners, then a
• 47:25
  world without those things. and I've seen sort of firsthand how those things have
• 47:30
  caused people to go into psychiatric institutions and just feel a lot of pain
• 47:35
  and all this sort of stuff. So I would love to kind of explore what the what
• 47:40
  problems happen when someone tries to heal too fast or sort of loses the ability to
• 47:45
  dissociate for a while and like what that looks like and how they relate to that and
• 47:50
  just your experiences around some of that.
• 47:54
  Yeah, I personally like using the word speedrunning for the
• 47:58
  Mm.
• 47:59
  attempt to do that. And I work with people who have a try to do that and for example
• 48:05
  people who have multiple therapists or try to you know they are like I'm doing IFS
• 48:11
  and next I'm doing Alexander technique and then I'm going on a retreat and then I'm
• 48:17
  doing yoga and I try to remind them that you can't speedrun this and that's not to
• 48:23
  say that it's not helpful to use different techniques but I feel like especially it's
• 48:29
  a male tendency to you know be like I will try
• 48:33
  All my money at this, I will throw all my time at this, and then I will be better
• 48:40
  very soon. my own experience I because the thing is, I had a very traumatic few years
• 48:48
  from 2018 to 2020, and then I had a lot of acute trauma, which was because I was not
• 48:56
  I didn't know how to dissociate. So the trauma was very raw and it was almost like
• 49:03
  ever present. So of course I also had this like, this really sucks and I have
• 49:10
  effective techniques. Let's just get this over with.
• 49:16
  And for me the kinda the there was soon a realization that my chronically ill body
• 49:22
  could not handle this, my mind would have been able to handle this, but I have an
• 49:28
  illness that's heavily tied to the autonomic nervous system. And trauma
• 49:33
  healing is also tied to the autonomic nervous system. So it was like no, I
• 49:39
  cannot actually do even two sessions of IFS per week.
• 49:44
  Yeah. Yeah. I would love to get into that because on one hand, it's clear that
• 49:49
  techniques like IFS like are in a lot of ways more helpful than talk therapy. and
• 49:54
  it sounds like what you're highlighting is that it can be more helpful, but there's
• 49:59
  sort of an inherent limiter that each person may have in a way that too helpful
• 50:04
  can actually be unhelpful. sort of a dose
• 50:08
  Yeah.
• 50:09
  dependency on this stuff. And What are ways that you think people can sort of
• 50:13
  find that sort of speed limit themselves in a way that they don't speedrun it and
• 50:19
  sort of stay within sort of appropriate measures? Because the other side is sort
• 50:24
  of not working on maybe not not sort of attending to oneself in a way that is
• 50:28
  helpful and sort of staying with chronic patterns and dissociation in a way that
• 50:34
  could actually have been healed a bit more. how do you think about sort of
• 50:38
  navigating that and kind of
• 50:41
  Finding a middle way that's appropriate.
• 50:43
  Yeah, I feel like like with a lot of things, for many people a solution is in
• 50:48
  parts because of course even this desire to speedrun things, it comes from a part.
• 50:55
  And like all parts, the part is trying to help you, but it doesn't mean that it's
• 51:01
  actually helpful. So and these parts may also, of course, the goal might just be
• 51:07
  that this part feels like, my god, life sucks. I want my life to not suck. But
• 51:13
  sometimes parts also have like more ego related goals. For example, I'm a person
• 51:19
  who's good at inner work, so I have to like
• 51:22
  finish this all in three months so people see how.
• 51:27
  great I am.
• 51:30
  Yeah. Yeah. I think the challenging thing is like, okay, if it's all parts, what if
• 51:34
  I just do a lot of parts work? But that desire itself comes if it's fueled from a
• 51:38
  thing that's adding more tension or it's coming from dissociation, then sort of the
• 51:43
  parts work is done in a frame that can be more challenging. And this is sort of my
• 51:47
  interpretation. Feel free to push back, but that's kind of how I'm hearing it.
• 51:52
  Yeah, yeah, and very often like even in people who don't have the speedrunning
• 51:58
  tendencies when they attempt to do IFS there's a part that's like, okay, let's do
• 52:04
  IFS, I will do this IFS thing because I'm great at it. And the of course the goal in
• 52:11
  IFS is to not have any part doing it because parts cannot do it. traditionally
• 52:17
  IFS is done from the self, that is outside of any part. And that's a bit of a
• 52:24
  simplified idea, but generally you can't like have a
• 52:28
  Mr. Master Healer part to like just fix everything.
• 52:33
  Yep. And what are some of the remedies there? Cause what's coming up for me is
• 52:37
  seeing how, you know, jhana-like practices or finding bliss, finding ease. you have a
• 52:43
  few free guided hypnosis videos that I think are really helpful useful there. But
• 52:48
  it sounds like that could be one way to sort of support some of this stuff. But
• 52:53
  curious when when someone's in a position like that, what are some remedies or ways
• 52:58
  they could move to something more beneficial?
• 53:02
  Yeah. And of course, I also want to add that it is not just a problem with
• 53:07
  speedrunning, because obviously therapy and meditation, they don't just like work
• 53:13
  like linearly, that if you do an hour of IFS every week, then you heal the same
• 53:19
  amount of every week. Obviously not. Sometimes you can have a breakthrough, no
• 53:25
  matter which technique you're using, and sometimes it actually goes very easily,
• 53:31
  and sometimes it can be very hard, and it can even take months to integrate. So even
• 53:37
  if you're like very chill and not overdo anything, you can still end up in a
• 53:43
  situation where it feels like I healed too much too fast. What now? And I feel like
• 53:49
  two of the main things for integration are social interaction and physical movement.
• 53:56
  And of course with chronical chronically ill people, you can't just like
• 54:01
  necessarily prescribe someone to go to yoga class or dance class or go swimming.
• 54:07
  Because I work with people who I might tell, like, can you roll over in bed
• 54:12
  today? And maybe you can't do that today, maybe you can roll over in bed tomorrow.
• 54:18
  So but any any physical activity can be very helpful. It can kinda help release
• 54:24
  something that is trying to work its way out,
• 54:27
  but it's still kind of stuck in there. And
• 54:31
  - Yeah.
• 54:32
  - social interaction is more for the like, okay, I healed a huge pattern of mine and
• 54:37
  now I'm like who I even who am I right now? And then talk with other people and
• 54:42
  then it's like, yeah, I'm still me. I'm a little different, but still me.
• 54:47
  Yeah, what I'm hearing is just
• 54:48
  Yeah, what I
• 54:49
  I think when there's there's sort of a meta systematicity that's required here.
• 54:53
  Sort of like it's not just, okay, dissociation, clear it. It's like okay.
• 54:57
  And then and then it's like the second system is, too much, then do exercise. but
• 55:01
  if that's too much, then do it, just there's a lot of things to sort of be in
• 55:05
  balance and there's sort of an ecology here. and what I'm hearing as well is sort
• 55:10
  of a a gradualist view can be really helpful. It's like, hey, sometimes
• 55:14
  movement can be as little as rolling over your bed. And sometimes even that can be
• 55:18
  too much, depending on where it is. and sort of this concept of too much and too
• 55:22
  little, it just seems really hard to sort of sort of state is from a top down
• 55:27
  external perspective. It really sort of comes emergently from a person. And
• 55:31
  ideally, if there's a one on one relationship that person has with someone
• 55:35
  that has some view externally, maybe community
• 55:38
  Yeah.
• 55:39
  seems like a way. Like that's that's those are some of the
• 55:41
  - Yeah.
• 55:41
  - things that I'm hearing from that.
• 55:43
  Yeah, but it's also like of course parts who really want to control things are
• 55:48
  taking a lot of notes right now. But healing is also not really a process that
• 55:54
  you can fully control. And like I already mentioned that when I was really like
• 56:00
  working acutely on my acute trauma some years ago, for me it was really like I
• 56:05
  would feel physically exhausted for days after a single IFS session. And of course,
• 56:11
  I tried like, if I do this differently, or if I try that. And then it just turned out
• 56:18
  that this was how it worked for me.
• 56:21
  me because of my physical health and for other people it may or may not work like
• 56:26
  this. But sometimes healing may make life suck
• 56:29
  more and there's nothing you can do about it.
• 56:33
  Yeah. Yeah. And I think especially on Twitter, you sort of have a people with a
• 56:37
  range of systems and body minds describing doing some of the same stuff with sort of
• 56:42
  widely different effects. So someone might genuinely just get a lot from kind of
• 56:46
  going like all the way or very quickly, or sort of like, I I combined these
• 56:51
  psychedelics and did these practices and did these many hours of IFS. And I really
• 56:55
  just feel great. And like that's sort of in some ways an outlier kind of thing. And
• 57:00
  if someone else just looked at that and was like, let me just do all these things
• 57:05
  without sort of seeing however they currently are, that actually could lead to
• 57:09
  a lot of challenge and trauma and or then sort of then say, these techniques are bad
• 57:14
  and these are really horrible for people. And they can be. so it's sort of like a
• 57:18
  cautionary tale of just the the sort of the more the thing to emphasize is sort of
• 57:23
  like where one is and and like you said,
• 57:26
  even this whole discussion could sort of be
• 57:29
  done like seen or perceived in a very managey sort of like control sort of way.
• 57:33
  And that control itself can create more tension. it's quite f some of the paradox
• 57:39
  of of doing all this stuff, it seems like.
• 57:42
  Yeah. So I would kinda distill this message into that healing is complicated
• 57:47
  and messy and unpredictable. And that doesn't mean that we cannot try to apply
• 57:53
  the best practices to make it as safe as possible. And like it doesn't like we're
• 57:58
  not trying to make it more unpleasant than it has to be.
• 58:03
  Yes.
• 58:04
  Sometimes it will be unpleasant. And especially also if meditation practices w
• 58:09
  might present even if you are doing something that's not harming you, which
• 58:15
  can be hard to tell, but there might be a lot
• 58:19
  of unpleasant stuff and that's how it goes.
• 58:23
  What I find interesting about this is that there's so many middle ways here. There's
• 58:27
  sort of like, no, unpleasant but not too unpleasant. Or it's like, and you know,
• 58:32
  fast but not too fast, this and like and with with all any of these, any particular
• 58:36
  person may actually have very similar views, but almost be on the opposite side
• 58:41
  of the middle way, sort so to speak, compared to you or to me or to anyone. and
• 58:45
  that's what can actually make it feel quite complicated because it's it they all
• 58:50
  seem to be there's all these tensions to to work with and to balance and the things
• 58:54
  that certain people emphasize can sort of seem contradictory, even though there's
• 58:59
  sort of a similar territory. that's that's another challenge here.
• 59:03
  Yeah.
• 59:04
  Yeah. And the last thing to get into is the value of somatic work for support in
• 59:09
  this whole area. I think we've often referenced IFS as a a sort of a thing that
• 59:14
  can help and you know, the parts frame, but I think a key distinction is the value
• 59:19
  of a somatic approach to IFS or just parts work in general. and that's sort of more
• 59:25
  of the way you work. It's closer to somatic parts work rather than off the
• 59:30
  shelf IFS or other things like that.
• 59:33
  Yeah. And of course, so somatic work is a bit hard to define, but it generally works
• 59:40
  with the body and bodily experiences. For example, where different emotional
• 59:47
  experiences are located, and it can use components like movement, but it's not
• 59:54
  necessary. So from a somatic perspective, you might see that I have a part that's
• 1:00:02
  located in my shoulder and it feels feels like a tight black rope or something. And
• 1:00:09
  then you can work with part with IFS, you can talk with the part or you can work
• 1:00:16
  with it as if it was real black rope, which is fascinating to me.
• 1:00:23
  And it's of course it's hard to even people who have done this work with me for
• 1:00:28
  a while, they often have parts that are very skeptical because they cannot
• 1:00:34
  understand like why would working on a black rope that doesn't even exist, how
• 1:00:40
  could it possibly be helpful? But the thing about somatic work is that it's
• 1:00:46
  often very helpful for the autonomic nervous system. example, when parts are in
• 1:00:52
  fight or flight, as parts very often are, or when parts dissociate with somatic
• 1:00:58
  work, we can focus on that better than with IFS.
• 1:01:02
  also with IFS sometimes parts get very triggered if we try to approach emotional
• 1:01:09
  topics and with somatic somatic work we can often do things that are very helpful
• 1:01:17
  but they are much less triggering.
• 1:01:21
  Yeah, and they're less triggering because they don't activate sort of the ideas or
• 1:01:24
  concepts of the thing. They actually get a bit more into underlying physiology and
• 1:01:28
  the experience of those things.
• 1:01:30
  Yeah, but I I feel like also somatic work has a lot of a lot in common with dreams.
• 1:01:37
  So if you think this whole description sounds very weird, it's kinda like taking
• 1:01:44
  images that you could also have in dreams and but we're in the awaken life and we
• 1:01:51
  can actually modify these images or modify dreamlike imagery.
• 1:01:57
  Awesome. Yeah. I would be curious about now going into the ways that non-dual
• 1:02:02
  experience and sort of awakenings have kind of caused challenge for you. and we
• 1:02:07
  kind of got into that around the nervous system and how that's related to the
• 1:02:12
  autonomic nervous system as well as how chronic s symptoms are, but would be
• 1:02:18
  - Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  - curious if you could talk about that.
• 1:02:20
  Yeah, so I feel like the most common ways meditation causes harm to people and some
• 1:02:26
  of this is temporary harm and kind of normal and some of this can be much more
• 1:02:32
  dramatic and longer term. Most of the stuff that people get is trauma related
• 1:02:37
  and so called dark nights or dark night of the soul, which are also generally
• 1:02:43
  somewhat related to trauma. And so these are psychological stuff. And I I've had my
• 1:02:49
  share of dark nights, but it never felt like or if it was like overwhelming, then
• 1:02:55
  it was overwhelming for three hours.
• 1:02:59
  So it was not a big deal, but unfortunately it seems like meditation has
• 1:03:04
  interacted with my physical health in a number of very damaging ways. And this
• 1:03:10
  actually originally started back in 2018. But back then I was like because everyone
• 1:03:17
  around me was telling me that meditation might actually heal some of your chronic
• 1:03:23
  illnesses. Meditation is good for you. It's normal if you feel bad. was like,
• 1:03:29
  okay, I guess this is how it is. Now I will
• 1:03:33
  feel bad and in the future I might feel better.
• 1:03:37
  Yeah, and what would you tell the twenty eighteen
• 1:03:38
  my god,
• 1:03:40
  version of yourself now? And how would you relate to some of those experiences now if
• 1:03:44
  you were sort of there w in a coaching or therapist relationship with yourself?
• 1:03:49
  Yeah, so it really started for me there was a weird period of insomnia, which made
• 1:03:55
  no sense because I was literally the least stressed I've ever been in my life. And I
• 1:04:01
  just couldn't sleep. And already back then I figured like okay, this is probably
• 1:04:08
  meditation because I I literally cannot figure out any other reason for this. And
• 1:04:14
  then I started getting a lot of migraines and I had been having chronic fever for
• 1:04:20
  many, many years, and the chronic fever actually disappeared because of
• 1:04:26
  meditation. So this helped me feel like, okay, I'm actually having a lot of
• 1:04:32
  migraines, but this fever went away. So maybe it is true, you know, that this will
• 1:04:38
  heal my body or heal some of my issues.
• 1:04:42
  - Mm.
• 1:04:43
  - that then in twenty twenty two when af a few days after I got into full
• 1:04:49
  non-duality, my autonomic nervous system started acting in really weird ways and
• 1:04:56
  this star started developing into heart symptoms. And this was This was really
• 1:05:02
  scary. And this was not like palpitations or something. This was angina which could
• 1:05:09
  last for more than 24 hours and was very intense. And I was like, okay, this surely
• 1:05:16
  cannot be a good thing. And still people around me were trying to minimize it. They
• 1:05:23
  were like, Well, that's pretty just anxiety. And I'm like, Well, anxiety isn't
• 1:05:30
  not something that physically stops you from walking or standing up.
• 1:05:36
  Hmm. Yeah. So it sounds like it just that sh it's is the it was the like the last
• 1:05:41
  non-dual shift, like the big non-dual shift is what sort of happened to or it
• 1:05:46
  related to that, just the heart conditions emerge after that.
• 1:05:51
  Yeah, but it's it's really like because for example when the migraines started
• 1:05:56
  getting really bad and this is actually a common experience, like I know so many
• 1:06:02
  people who have got well we often call energetic migraines because
• 1:06:07
  - Yeah.
• 1:06:08
  - it it feels they are very heavily connected to energetic stuff. And of
• 1:06:13
  course many people like, well energetic stuff, like if we're we're talking about,
• 1:06:20
  you know, energy body and chakras and kundalini. Many people think, well my
• 1:06:25
  bullshit detector is is really like running high. That's not real. And I
• 1:06:31
  totally understand that because I would have never believed that it was real. I
• 1:06:37
  was a science writer. I was writing textbooks on receptors and molecules and
• 1:06:43
  peer-reviewed studies. So it has been a huge, huge paradigm paradigm shift that I
• 1:06:49
  that I had to like, it was very hard for me that this stuff that I didn't used to
• 1:06:56
  believe even exist is now causing me physical health issues.
• 1:07:01
  Yep. And the challenge too is that we even within the field of energy, a meditation
• 1:07:06
  teacher told me when I asked him about it was there's not really a definitive guide
• 1:07:11
  to matching energy with the body. Like for constipation, is the physical causing the
• 1:07:17
  energy block or is the energy causing the physical block? And it's hard to know and
• 1:07:22
  there's not really a way. I know the teacher Ken McLeod, who I I don't have a
• 1:07:27
  relationship with. I like his books a lot. Has talked about having sort of like
• 1:07:32
  twenty years of sort of physical challenges from energy work first. But
• 1:07:37
  there's sort of this yeah, it sounds like so I think the Tibetan traditions tend to
• 1:07:43
  sort of talk about it a bit more, but there's this sort of
• 1:07:47
  like ignorance that sort of we kind of have as a species around how energy works
• 1:07:50
  with physical stuff. yeah, and it sounds yeah, yeah. Curious if you
• 1:07:54
  Yeah. And yeah, especially also me coming from the chronic illness community, it's
• 1:08:00
  very hard to discuss this because people think that, well, this is absolute
• 1:08:06
  bullshit and like this is way too tied into like Like this sounds like me
• 1:08:12
  effectively saying that if energy can make me sick, then energy can heal all of you.
• 1:08:19
  And I mean I certainly hope that this someday turns out to be true, but at at
• 1:08:25
  least for now, nothing like that really seems to be true.
• 1:08:30
  And it's it's just been so disorienting and bizarre in so many ways. Like
• 1:08:36
  especially a few years ago when it became clear that this stuff is extremely serious
• 1:08:42
  and it can actually kill me. And then last year I developed heart failure. And even
• 1:08:49
  though I kinda had an idea that this could happen, it was obviously it was
• 1:08:55
  devastating and it was so bizarre. And what makes it even more bizarre is that I
• 1:09:02
  have a good friend who also has heart failure and chronic migraines and several
• 1:09:08
  other conditions I have from this. it's really like every single day I think that
• 1:09:15
  you know this cannot be true. This is way too bizarre, this makes no sense. And I
• 1:09:22
  try to there are parts that are like this.
• 1:09:26
  doesn't make sense. It cannot be true. We will somehow fix this, we will figure it
• 1:09:33
  out. Yeah. And of course I've I tried like I've tried a lot of mainstream medications
• 1:09:40
  which you kinda they are kind of unavoidable when you have heart failure,
• 1:09:47
  but I've also tried like You know, people tell me this is a good energy healer, they
• 1:09:54
  did this and that for me, and like whatever, I will have to try something.
• 1:10:00
  And unfortunately, they have not been able to fix this. And I'm sure that after this
• 1:10:08
  episode airs, there will be people telling me their favorite energy healers, and
• 1:10:15
  maybe there is one among them who will be the one to fix this. And maybe not.
• 1:10:22
  Yeah. Sort of There are a lot of reasons why people would want to just block out
• 1:10:29
  the sadness from this because it's sort of just like this lack of control, lack of
• 1:10:37
  predictability. It's just it just feels scary.
• 1:10:42
  Yeah, and I I mean I totally understand everyone who's like telling me that like
• 1:10:49
  you're insane this is physically impossible or you're making stuff up. I
• 1:10:55
  totally get it because yeah, this does not fit any any normal explanation of how
• 1:11:02
  human bodies work. But I honestly my background is in science and medicine and
• 1:11:09
  I would not be saying this stuff Which also has a huge personal cost to me
• 1:11:16
  because people may label me as insane or whatever. I would not be saying this if I
• 1:11:24
  was not certain that it's actually true.
• 1:11:28
  Yeah, because I think sort of even like way earlier in the conversation for
• 1:11:33
  lighter stuff, it's sort of I think a lot of people say it seems like a lot of
• 1:11:39
  people will invalidate your or one's experience when doing so it just feels it
• 1:11:45
  it just keeps them safe. It allows you to sort
• 1:11:49
  Yeah.
• 1:11:50
  of allow someone to sort of stay in that version of reality of, these things are
• 1:11:54
  good, these things are this, this is that. And I think To sort of allow for someone's
• 1:11:59
  experience means sort of letting go of some of
• 1:12:02
  that certainty and knowing Which is all very scary.
• 1:12:06
  Yeah. Yeah, and I mean like one of my biggest issues with the spiritual
• 1:12:11
  community even long before these severe health issues started was that many people
• 1:12:17
  and it was almost all men, there were women too, but mostly men who were just
• 1:12:22
  constantly telling me that I'm meditating wrong. And of course now people are
• 1:12:28
  telling me that, well you did it did this to yourself. If you had not meditated
• 1:12:34
  wrong, this would not have happened, which also means that this other person And who
• 1:12:40
  is not meditating wrong will never have this issue. And this, of course, is called
• 1:12:46
  a just world theory, that everything that we experience is, or everything that other
• 1:12:52
  people experience is something they brought upon themselves. And of course,
• 1:12:57
  it's possible that I did meditate wrong in a
• 1:13:01
  way that allowed me to attain full non-duality.
• 1:13:05
  allowed me to attain a lot of benefits and I still messed up and caused myself a
• 1:13:11
  deadly illness that is possible that the people who are telling me I did this to
• 1:13:17
  myself they also don't have any solutions.
• 1:13:21
  - Yep.
• 1:13:22
  - So if if someone is has a solution that's like you're doing this wrong and I
• 1:13:28
  know what you should be doing, yeah sure I'm I'm interested.
• 1:13:33
  Yeah. I think the challenge to all
• 1:13:34
  Right.
• 1:13:35
  that sort of has a lot of self-view around like should and blame and wrong and right
• 1:13:39
  and as if those were sort of all primitive con like concepts that are actually
• 1:13:44
  underneath all of it. But it seems like just a lot of things happened and there
• 1:13:48
  were some things that many things that are kind of beneficial and other things that
• 1:13:53
  have forever cause and conditions have caused all these challenges, which is just
• 1:13:58
  I think there's just to me the I don't know if this is the word. The more
• 1:14:02
  appropriate response is just sadness and
• 1:14:05
  compassion, versus sort of judgment and yeah.
• 1:14:08
  Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. And one question people ask me very often, especially my
• 1:14:15
  clients who are aware of this, they ask me like, Okay, how can I meditate in a way
• 1:14:22
  that I'm not pr like at risk for these kinds of severe issues. And I say, I don't
• 1:14:29
  know, because my understanding is that these physical issues are energetic. And
• 1:14:36
  all meditation that actually works or is not completely useless does in my
• 1:14:43
  experience and belief activate the energetic body. So I believe that it's not
• 1:14:50
  possible to meditate in a way that's
• 1:14:54
  Risk-free in this sense. Obviously, these are very rare issues. But it's like there
• 1:15:01
  is the thing that I feel like it's important is that I was chronically ill
• 1:15:07
  when I started. And my friend who has these issues was also chronically ill. So
• 1:15:14
  if someone had told me that chronically ill people have a much higher risk of
• 1:15:20
  running into severe physical issues. I probably
• 1:15:25
  would have been. Yeah. Let's not do this.
• 1:15:29
  Yeah. And there's the other side of it too where meditation makes someone accident
• 1:15:33
  prone to non-dual experience. And in some sense, it could have happened. It's likely
• 1:15:38
  that it wouldn't have happened without meditation in practice, but for some
• 1:15:43
  people that is just a thing that happens as
• 1:15:46
  Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So the thing is like my main beliefs about meditation safety
• 1:15:52
  are that if your health is already very poor, if your physical health is already
• 1:15:58
  impaired, it's really like do you really want to do this? Because if I had a choice
• 1:16:05
  again, I would not But then there's the more psychological risk and there I
• 1:16:11
  believe that there is much more like
• 1:16:14
  something that we can do to mitigate the risk.
• 1:16:19
  Yeah. How likely or how possible might it have been to sort of meditate enough that
• 1:16:24
  sort of supports on one level and then sort of stop before it gets deeper sort of
• 1:16:30
  support to the level of maybe helping reduce the fevers, not that you
• 1:16:35
  necessarily even had any in direct influence or control over that, but to
• 1:16:40
  kind of go about it in a way that's sort of sort of just enough dose that it leads
• 1:16:46
  to some benefit, but not too much.
• 1:16:49
  Yeah, I I don't believe it would have been possible for me. Because it definitely
• 1:16:55
  feels like kinda once you open the energetic Pandora's box, it's out there.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah. It sort of
• 1:17:03
  And that's of course of course not to say that someone else someone else might be
• 1:17:08
  able to do it, but I don't think I would have been able to do it. And of course
• 1:17:14
  we're talking about because so many people I've met have been due to meditation and
• 1:17:20
  my literal day job is something I would not have if it wasn't for me starting
• 1:17:25
  meditation. So of course it's impossible to say what my life would be like if I had
• 1:17:31
  never started meditation. It's all speculation. But I am very sure that I
• 1:17:37
  would not have heart failure. Yeah.
• 1:17:40
  Yeah. And in some ways, all we can do is rely on our intuitions. there's really no
• 1:17:45
  and again, any kind of science around this can I think can be helpful. And I think
• 1:17:50
  there will be more good science and data and sort of, you know, the role here is
• 1:17:56
  like a general guideline of if you have chronic illness, be very, very careful
• 1:18:01
  about meditation. Seems really useful. And for any given person, only they can decide
• 1:18:07
  should I do a retreat? Should not do a retreat? How do I do it? Like There's no
• 1:18:12
  top down guidance and it's sort of like the principle might be go slow, start
• 1:18:17
  steadily, work with a work with a community or teacher. but again, balancing
• 1:18:22
  recommendations with fundamental, who knows?
• 1:18:26
  Yeah. Yeah, it's it's complicated and of course therapy also has its risks and it's
• 1:18:33
  possible that therapy can also have these energetic effects and that is something
• 1:18:41
  that kinda troubles me even though it has not been an issue in practice in my work.
• 1:18:49
  But I don't know w what can actually happen like what is possible. Yep.
• 1:18:56
  Yeah, in some ways it reminds me of that I think it might be Chögyam Trungpa or some
• 1:19:00
  another teacher. better not start once started, better finish. which
• 1:19:05
  - Yeah.
• 1:19:06
  - is sort of apocryphal and I'd say I still don't like the phrase, but I in some
• 1:19:10
  ways in this stage of my relationship meditation, I'm really exploring what that
• 1:19:15
  really means and what that's like. Because to me it doesn't feel resolved. It's like
• 1:19:20
  it's sort of a thing that a lot of practitioners hear and sort of like, yeah,
• 1:19:25
  ha ha, but then like. It's like it's actually taking that seriously is actually
• 1:19:30
  quite scary. You're sort of like what implications does that have on meditation,
• 1:19:35
  communication, and teaching and all that sort of stuff. Yeah.
• 1:19:39
  Yeah, I mean I c I kinda have similar feelings about the phrase, but I I kinda
• 1:19:45
  feel like it's true in many ways and also like yeah, if I had stopped when I had
• 1:19:51
  started developing these physical health issues, it was probably way too late for
• 1:19:57
  me and might have led to even more problems.
• 1:20:01
  Of course I have no way of knowing.
• 1:20:05
  Yep. and one thing, so
• 1:20:07
  [unclear]
• 1:20:08
  switching gears a bit, I'm curious which related, I know that you moved to you
• 1:20:12
  mentioned you moved to Bulgaria mainly for spiritual reasons. so I'm curious how
• 1:20:17
  location and has sort of maybe played into some of this stuff for you.
• 1:20:22
  Yeah. Yeah, for one I always b had a kind of like a curious relationship with places
• 1:20:28
  and by places I usually mean like entire countries or large regions rather than
• 1:20:34
  like, my grandma's backyard is a special place. And this in a way started when I
• 1:20:41
  was a child. I got really interested in India and really like, India is super cool
• 1:20:47
  and I want to go there and Indian food is and Indian culture and this and that. I I
• 1:20:53
  still never been to India, so but I've I've had like a similar relationship with
• 1:21:00
  many places. I lived in the Netherlands for a long time and it's a very, very
• 1:21:06
  special place to me as well. And nowadays my special place is the whole Balkans
• 1:21:12
  region. And it actually feels much harder to explain. Like if I if people ask me
• 1:21:18
  like why did she move to Amsterdam?
• 1:21:22
  And it's something I can explain very rationally and like in a way that makes
• 1:21:28
  sense to most people. And when people are like, why are you obsessed with a region
• 1:21:35
  of Europe that has is poor and has a troubled past of wars and dictators and
• 1:21:41
  all kinds of things and it's like, yeah, that's a good question.
• 1:21:47
  Mm. Yeah, what's sort of if that's hard ev even if it's hard to answer, I'm curious,
• 1:21:53
  what's it been like now in ways that you like?
• 1:21:58
  Yeah, I mean obviously this is a very, very different country and it's a very
• 1:22:04
  different culture which is not entirely Western even though it's it's kinda
• 1:22:10
  Western. And when I moved here it was very like, okay, I don't the language is hard.
• 1:22:16
  I don't understand the culture very well. They back then they were not in the Euro,
• 1:22:23
  they were using like, you know, they are not even using the Latin alphabet here. So
• 1:22:29
  it was definitely scary. Like am I doing something completely insane? Like I I'm
• 1:22:35
  doing something that I don't fully understand. And what if it's a terrible
• 1:22:41
  idea? But I also I felt like I was getting so many signs, like that it like in a woo
• 1:22:48
  sense that every every possible signal was saying that like trust your intuition and
• 1:22:55
  So far it has been pretty great. But I I still don't really like if people ask like
• 1:23:01
  what do you mean by spiritual reason? Like then
• 1:23:05
  it's it's very hard to define. Yeah. The only
• 1:23:09
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:23:11
  way that I can really define it that it's it's not really like in a sense it's Sofia
• 1:23:17
  where I live and in a way it's Bulgaria, but
• 1:23:21
  in in in many ways it's their whole region.
• 1:23:25
  Yeah. I'm
• 1:23:26
  And I I also like of course people often ask me, like, do you believe in past
• 1:23:31
  lives? Do you believe that maybe you live there in a past life or or whatever? And I
• 1:23:37
  don't personally believe in past life but past lives, but who knows? I don't really
• 1:23:44
  have a better explanation either.
• 1:23:47
  Yeah. Well, we're about at our time. I'm
• 1:23:48
  Yeah. But we're about time.
• 1:23:53
  curious what other topics or anything else that feels useful to share or things you
• 1:23:58
  want to sort of talk about before we stop the recording.
• 1:24:03
  Yeah, I would just quickly like to add But like since I drifted farther and farther
• 1:24:10
  away from Buddhism, which relates to a whole bunch of different things, both my
• 1:24:16
  issues with actual religion, as it was created thousands of years ago, some of
• 1:24:23
  which relate to the spiritual community around it, some of it relate to my
• 1:24:29
  experiences with meditation, and so my spiritual
• 1:24:34
  practice and spirituality is nowadays very
• 1:24:38
  It really revolves around this region, for example, Balkan music. And people, it's
• 1:24:44
  kind of hard to explain because this is not like a thing. I cannot send them all
• 1:24:51
  into like a Wikipedia page for Balkan music as a spiritual practice that does
• 1:24:57
  not exist. So it's It's it's weird for other people.
• 1:25:01
  It's honestly quite weird for me, but currently
• 1:25:06
  Mm.
• 1:25:07
  it's working out for me. I have no idea what's like what's next or how do I feel
• 1:25:14
  about this later or but I guess I will see. [unclear]
• 1:25:20
  It's interesting how there's a there's sort of a non-conceptual knowing around it
• 1:25:26
  and a following of that intuition that Yeah, it's sort of I'm I'm hearing sort of
• 1:25:33
  a sense of just like following what seems appropriate and who knows what that may
• 1:25:39
  lead to, but that's sort of what's happening.
• 1:25:44
  Yeah, but it's it's certainly it's of course been very complicated and it's
• 1:25:50
  because of my poor health and moving to a different culture when you're in very poor
• 1:25:57
  health is not like just a thing you can do. It's it's certainly been full of
• 1:26:03
  complications, but I'm currently very happy that I did it.
• 1:26:09
  Nice. Awesome. Thank you, Maija. so people can find
• 1:26:12
  you on Twitter. How do you pronounce your handle?
• 1:26:16
  you can pronounce it DiamonDie. It's my old
• 1:26:19
  DiamonDie. That's
• 1:26:20
  IRC nickname from nineteen ninety seven.
• 1:26:25
  Nice. So yeah, Maija's on Twitter at DiamonDie. she has a couple books, Loving
• 1:26:29
  Awakening and Shattered White-Out. both have subtitles that I don't have in front
• 1:26:34
  of me that sort of explain what the books are. They're both free. and you have many
• 1:26:40
  other medium articles that are wonderful about a lot of this stuff and more, other
• 1:26:45
  books you've written in the last 20 years. And yeah,
• 1:26:48
  anything else you'd like to share before we close?
• 1:26:52
  Yep, I also have a lot of other things, like I have a lot of poetry online. Some
• 1:26:57
  of it is actually explicitly about the things like spirituality or Buddhism or
• 1:27:03
  meditation and most of it is not. But I I feel like it also all of it closely
• 1:27:08
  relates to everything we have talked about.
• 1:27:12
  Awesome. and you're also open to new clients.
• 1:27:17
  Yes, I am. All right.
• 1:27:19
  Awesome. All right. Well, thank you, Maija.
• 1:27:22
  Thank you so much. It's been a great conversation.