Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Guest Host: John Clarke

Transcript

Guest Host: John Clarke · The Trauma Therapist

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the special guest host series of The Trauma
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  Speaker 1: Therapist podcast, where I'm going to be handing over the
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  Speaker 1: mic to some incredible guest hosts. In each episode, you'll
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  Speaker 1: hear fresh perspectives and unique insights to inform and inspire
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  Speaker 1: you in all the while keeping the heart of this
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  Speaker 1: podcast alive. So sit back and enjoy. Today, I'm going
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  Speaker 1: to be handing over the mic to John Clark. John's
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  Speaker 1: mission is to ac celebrate recovery from trauma, anxiety, depression,
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  Speaker 1: and addiction so that together, people can create a more
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  Speaker 1: peaceful and connected world. As a trauma therapist, John creates
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  Speaker 1: a custom intricative therapy using a blend of evidence based
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  Speaker 1: therapies including IFS, EMDR, and somatic experiencing. Not only has
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  Speaker 1: he committed his professional life over the past ten years
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  Speaker 1: to helping others, he's personally done the work over the
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  Speaker 1: course of twenty plus years in his own therapy journey
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  Speaker 1: and healing from his own trauma.
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  Speaker 2: My name is John Clark.
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  Speaker 3: I'm a licensed trauma therapist and the host of a
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  Speaker 3: podcast called Going Inside Healing Trauma from the Inside Out. Today,
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  Speaker 3: I'm guest hosting for a guy and I'm hosting one
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  Speaker 3: of my favorite guests from my show, and that's Bob Falconer.
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  Speaker 3: Bob Falconer is the author of the Others within Us,
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  Speaker 3: Internal Family Systems, Porous Mind, and Spirit Possession. He's been
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  Speaker 3: doing this work for over fifty years. Bob has devoted
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  Speaker 3: himself to working on internal family Systems therapy and related
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  Speaker 3: spiritual work. He's attended all levels of the IFS training
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  Speaker 3: is offered. He's been a program assistant more than eighteen times.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm just going to let him fill in the
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  Speaker 3: rest or tell me what else people should know about him.
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  Speaker 4: What else?
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  Speaker 5: I've written quite a few other books. I have one
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  Speaker 5: coming out on Swedenborg, Emmanuel Swedenborg and the relationship between
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  Speaker 5: his work in modern therapy.
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  Speaker 4: Early next year, probably in a bunch of other stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, we could. We'll get more into your professional work
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  Speaker 3: and your writing, Bob, a little more on just kind
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  Speaker 3: of your personal story, if you don't mind, in terms
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  Speaker 3: of your history and how you eventually became a therapist
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  Speaker 3: and then involved are dedicated to trauma therapy and then
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  Speaker 3: IFS and all these realms.
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  Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, I came from one of the real hell
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  Speaker 5: realm families, extreme big tea trauma in a middle class,
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  Speaker 5: church going family. Both my parents were addicts. Dad sexually, physically, emotionally,
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  Speaker 5: spiritually every way abused me, but he was a sadistic
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  Speaker 5: sex offender.
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  Speaker 4: Mom also was a sex offen. Dad often had his.
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  Speaker 5: Companions in crime living in the house with him, so
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  Speaker 5: it was often gang rapes and beatings. It's went on
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  Speaker 5: throughout my childhood. Mom was institutionalized a few times when
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  Speaker 5: I was a kid. My brother committed suicide when we
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  Speaker 5: were teenagers. My father was murdered when I was twenty one,
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  Speaker 5: and you know, by all odds, I should be dead
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  Speaker 5: like my brother, in prison, living in a dumpster, a
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  Speaker 5: junkie something in that department, and actually I have. I
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  Speaker 5: think I'm primarily a joy filled being now and quite creative.
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  Speaker 5: And I worked with a whole lot of people early on,
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  Speaker 5: mainly men with histories like mine.
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  Speaker 4: So that's the real quick version.
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  Speaker 2: How did you survive it?
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  Speaker 4: Well?
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  Speaker 5: I think spirit intervened would be the I'd like to
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  Speaker 5: claim I'm some heroic, great sould being, but I think
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  Speaker 5: one way spirit intervened. One of the things my father
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  Speaker 5: would do. I got so I could become anesthetic and
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  Speaker 5: people who work with severe child abuse. No, a lot
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  Speaker 5: of children can get to numb out almost any pain.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, they could put out cigarettes on me and
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  Speaker 5: I wouldn't flinch. The one thing I never could numb
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  Speaker 5: out was being suffocated unconscious, so that when my father
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  Speaker 5: discovered this, he did it a lot, you know, being
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  Speaker 5: the sadest he was. Quite a few times when I
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  Speaker 5: was suffocated unconscious, I met a merciful female presence and
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  Speaker 5: it was the only merciful, kind presence that I had
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  Speaker 5: ever experienced. And it was, you know, just so wonderful,
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  Speaker 5: unbelievably wonderful. And then I would come too, and I
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  Speaker 5: would be being raped and beaten, and I didn't I didn't.
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  Speaker 4: Want to come to at all.
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  Speaker 5: And I actually came to hate that merciful female presence
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  Speaker 5: who kept sending me back, and I cursed her and
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  Speaker 5: cursed at her and hated her, and she disappeared, but
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  Speaker 5: she had appeared, and it was very powerful and very
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  Speaker 5: real to me. I don't know if those experiences qualify
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  Speaker 5: as near death experiences. And I really don't care what
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  Speaker 5: labels anyone puts on it. They could even call it,
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  Speaker 5: you know, psychotic stupidity if they want it.
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  Speaker 4: Saved my life.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, and then later on, I mean it wasn't a
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  Speaker 5: pretty picture with all that trauma and violence, you know, pervasive.
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  Speaker 5: I was suicidal, never ever attempted suicide, but often was
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  Speaker 5: on the verge of it. And I'm more stubborn than
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  Speaker 5: a mule.
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  Speaker 4: So I tried every form.
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  Speaker 5: Of healing known to humanity, you know, and stumbled through
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  Speaker 5: all these different things. And there were many, many, many
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  Speaker 5: different varieties of parts work that I worked with a
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  Speaker 5: gestalt at Esslin. I live quite near the Esslin Institute
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  Speaker 5: and been down there many many times. And egostate therapy,
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  Speaker 5: Ericsonian hypnotherapy, ego state therapy with the Watkins, psychosynthesis, voice dialogue,
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  Speaker 5: p A melodies, post induction therapy very important and underappreciated,
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  Speaker 5: I think today, underappreciated way of working. And then Dick
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  Speaker 5: Schwartz and IFS, and I think IFS is the most
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  Speaker 5: potent and respectful way of working with parts, and I
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  Speaker 5: think our mind is structure in a parts way.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, keep going on that, Bob, if you will, because
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  Speaker 3: part of how I came to know you is through
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  Speaker 3: your work and your name in the IFS worlds. But
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  Speaker 3: you have a particular kind of corner of ifs that
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  Speaker 3: you have. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
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  Speaker 3: But I'm from the South, so I was yeah, I
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  Speaker 3: wanted you to say it.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, I don't mind. Okay.
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  Speaker 5: We're made up of parts, and I think there's a
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  Speaker 5: theorem in the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics that shows any
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  Speaker 5: system of a sufficient complexity has to be made up
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  Speaker 5: of contained sub routines that are sparsely interlinked. Well, anyway,
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  Speaker 5: whether or not that's mathematically provable, it's two of us.
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  Speaker 5: That's the way we're made up. We have these parts,
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  Speaker 5: typically experienced as wound to children and protectors and all
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  Speaker 5: these other parts, and then, according to Dick, we also
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  Speaker 5: have this self, which is this overarching thing which knows
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  Speaker 5: about all the others and is always calm and can't
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  Speaker 5: be damaged at all. And that was a life changing
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  Speaker 5: message for me and other people with histories like mine,
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  Speaker 5: because we've been told, you know, basically, you're garbage, you're damaged,
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  Speaker 5: you'll never be okay, especially a lot of the attachment
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  Speaker 5: people would say stuff like that. Well, Dick came along
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  Speaker 5: and said, who you really are can't be dirty, let
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  Speaker 5: alone damaged. It's like the sun after a storm, the
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  Speaker 5: chyled's part the sun is totally unaffected. That is who
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  Speaker 5: you are, that son. So that was a very very
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  Speaker 5: important message. But you start going inside, and you spend
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  Speaker 5: enough time doing this, you meet these parts early on.
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  Speaker 5: They're all from your own personal lifetime. They're these encapsulated
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  Speaker 5: horror moments from your childhood and the protectors who formed
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  Speaker 5: around that. And as you undo all that, you start
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  Speaker 5: going in further and you would start meeting things that
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  Speaker 5: young would call archetypal. They're no longer from your lifetime.
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  Speaker 5: Now we know now there's very hard science that there
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  Speaker 5: are things from our legacy, legacy burdens, they call them
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  Speaker 5: an ifs, that affect us as a whole science of epigenetics,
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  Speaker 5: there's hard science on this. You can do it with rats,
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  Speaker 5: and that's the standard of reality in our world today.
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  Speaker 5: If you can do it with rats, it's real. But
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  Speaker 5: you keep going in there and things show up in
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  Speaker 5: people's minds that are not part of their legacy, but
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  Speaker 5: they seem agentic, they seem real. They have huge impacts
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  Speaker 5: on people, for good and for ill, and you get
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  Speaker 5: in there far enough they don't even seem human anymore.
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  Speaker 4: What in the world are these things?
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  Speaker 5: I mean, and even investigating in IFS, they call these
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  Speaker 5: things unattached burdens and guides, and everybody in IFS sort
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  Speaker 5: of knows about it, but they wouldn't even talk about
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  Speaker 5: it except in advanced trainings.
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  Speaker 4: And I, you know, focused on it.
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  Speaker 5: And because I was one of the few people who
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  Speaker 5: would pay any attention to it.
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  Speaker 4: I got a lot of referrals.
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  Speaker 5: So I spent about ten twelve years focused on this
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  Speaker 5: and wrote a book, and I've been semi outcast. Even
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  Speaker 5: though Dick eventually wrote a forward for the book. They
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  Speaker 5: weren't happy that I was talking about this. It was
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  Speaker 5: too weird. And I also have you know, I have
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  Speaker 5: a background anthropology, my undergraduate degree in a little graduate work,
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  Speaker 5: and a spirit possession you know I got I mentioned
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  Speaker 5: I use huphrase imo therapists and they go, oh, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 5: don't talk like that, don't talk like that.
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  Speaker 4: It's amazing the reaction that gets.
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  Speaker 5: Well for anthropologists, it's perfectly respectable to talk about spirit possession.
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  Speaker 5: But what I say to try and make this less
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  Speaker 5: offensive is there is a basic biopsychological dynamic that occurs
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  Speaker 5: in every culture. We have records of through every era
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  Speaker 5: of history. It can have huge effects for good or
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  Speaker 5: for ill. The metaphor most often used to describe this
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  Speaker 5: as spirit possession. Whatever it is, it's worthy of study.
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  Speaker 5: It's ubiquitous, and it's powerful. We should study this. We
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  Speaker 5: shouldn't turn a mind eye. So I've been focused largely
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  Speaker 5: on that area for quite a while.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Bob, this is my third time interviewing you, but
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  Speaker 3: this time in a short format. So I want to
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  Speaker 3: be mindful of that in your book which I've read,
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  Speaker 3: and I've used a lot of the principles from your book. Well,
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  Speaker 3: in IFS, there's a protocol, the unburdening sequence. It's a
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  Speaker 3: pretty specific protocol. These are the steps that you generally
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  Speaker 3: follow to work with a part two unburdened apart, it's
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  Speaker 3: a very potent aspect of the IFS model. In your book,
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  Speaker 3: you have a protocol of sorts for your steps that
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  Speaker 3: you've developed for working with an unattached burden. Can you
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  Speaker 3: talk about how you developed those and especially any fumblings
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  Speaker 3: along the way.
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  Speaker 5: Oh gosh, it's all fumbling. I don't even want it
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  Speaker 5: to be a protocol yet, I want it to be
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  Speaker 5: a note toward maybe because somebody said, I can't remember
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  Speaker 5: who said it. They said, because I'm exploring such new ground,
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  Speaker 5: I know I'll be wrong, but I hope I can
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  Speaker 5: be usefully wrong. Yeah, I can suggest something that other
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  Speaker 5: people can build on to get to something more true.
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  Speaker 4: I know I'm wrong about a lot of this stuff.
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  Speaker 4: It's just such new ground. Of course I'm going to
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  Speaker 4: be wrong, So I don't want. I don't want this
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  Speaker 4: to be taken as a protocol. And I know a
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  Speaker 4: lot of people do, and they go, oh, we're going
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  Speaker 4: to go ABCD, E and F this is what Bob said.
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  Speaker 4: And I'm going, oh my god, no, Please pay attention
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  Speaker 4: to what's in front of you. I think there are
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  Speaker 4: two primary things these.
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  Speaker 5: If there's some kind of negative, like negative voices and schizophrenics.
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  Speaker 5: If there's something like that going on for you, it
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  Speaker 5: only has power inside of you when you're afraid of it.
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  Speaker 5: And they're really really good at scaring you. They know
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  Speaker 5: all the buttons to push, just like your mother. They
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  Speaker 5: know how to push your buttons. So the thing is,
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  Speaker 5: you don't want to bulldoze over all the scared parts
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  Speaker 5: of you. You want to find them and love them
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  Speaker 5: until they're very comfortably connected to self, to who you
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  Speaker 5: really are, and then you can move forward with these things.
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  Speaker 5: So that's the number one principle. These darker energies only
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  Speaker 5: get power by scaring us. Number two is it's probably
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  Speaker 5: a part. Assume it's a part until you know for
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  Speaker 5: certain it's not. That it comes from somewhere outside your
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  Speaker 5: own personal history. And there's a whole bunch of stuff
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  Speaker 5: you can do about that. But it's a big mistake
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  Speaker 5: to try and throw out something that's really part of you.
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  Speaker 5: And a lot of times, things like suicide are parts
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  Speaker 5: who are wanting to protect you. Very often a suicidal
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  Speaker 5: part is saying I'm your last defense. If the pain
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  Speaker 5: is absolutely unbearable, I'll take you out. I'm here at
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  Speaker 5: the very edge of disaster. That's a heroic part. That
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  Speaker 5: is not something you want to try and throw out
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  Speaker 5: or get rid of at all. Another thing I'll say
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  Speaker 5: about these things, most of them are positive. I've focused
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  Speaker 5: on the negative ones because of of the business I'm in.
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  Speaker 4: You know, people don't come to me.
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  Speaker 5: Saying, wow, this is a great experience I new, especially
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  Speaker 5: not more and more and how do I how do
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  Speaker 5: I integrate it?
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  Speaker 4: But if you look.
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  Speaker 5: At psychedelics, many, many, many people, especially with the DMT
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  Speaker 5: containing psychedelics, psilocybin, ayahuasca, DMT itself and n DMT five
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  Speaker 5: meo DMT, at least half of them are meeting conscious
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  Speaker 5: agentic beings. They're meeting intelligent beings they have interactions and
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  Speaker 5: dialogues with. Now this is very uncomfortable.
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  Speaker 4: People don't like this.
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  Speaker 5: Some of the researchers are like completely freaking out because
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  Speaker 5: this so doesn't fit our worldview. That the point about
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  Speaker 5: this the overwhelming They're overwhelmingly positive.
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  Speaker 4: Eighty percent or more.
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  Speaker 5: The descriptors checked in like the Roland Griff John Hopkins questionnaire,
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  Speaker 5: most often used descriptions. Descriptors are guide, benefactor, teacher, stuff
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  Speaker 5: like that. So access to this realm you call it
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  Speaker 5: the art type of realm or the transliminal realm, or
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  Speaker 5: any fancy name you want, is overwhelmingly beneficial. But it
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  Speaker 5: also can be dangerous, and there's nasty stuff out there
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  Speaker 5: that gets into people, especially in psychedelic sessions, because that
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  Speaker 5: seems to open people up to these kind of influences.
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  Speaker 3: Staying along these lines of positive entities in our systems
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  Speaker 3: for people wondering how do I connect with call it
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  Speaker 3: a spirit guide? And or how do I help my
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  Speaker 3: clients connect with the spirit guide? Can you give us
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  Speaker 3: some basics to start with?
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  Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, and your audience won't like this answer, but
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  Speaker 5: I think it's true.
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  Speaker 2: Good thing. It's guys, audience, so I'm okay.
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  Speaker 5: The best way to connect with these kind of energies
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  Speaker 5: is to find all the parts of you who don't
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  Speaker 5: want to connect with it. Who go, this is a
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  Speaker 5: load of whoy, I'm not going to have anything to
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  Speaker 5: do with this, this is ridiculous, and whatever other this
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  Speaker 5: is scary, whatever the negative response is, and gently and
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  Speaker 5: lovingly welcome all those parts in. There is a fancy
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  Speaker 5: name for this in the history of religions. It's called
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  Speaker 5: kenosis or knotic spiritual practice. Basically the idea that the
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  Speaker 5: fastest way to approach the divine is to find all
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  Speaker 5: the parts in you who don't want to. I think
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  Speaker 5: that another name for this is constraint release. You remove
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  Speaker 5: the constraints, and it's sort of it's sort of dirty work.
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  Speaker 5: It's like being a garbage matters, you know. So people
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  Speaker 5: want some more grand answer. There's a beautiful thing out
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  Speaker 5: of Swedenborg and he was he said at one point,
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  Speaker 5: many people think spirit is some exotic bird of paradise.
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  Speaker 5: We have to go all the way around the planet
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  Speaker 5: into some jungle and to pursue this. He said, no, no, no, no, no.
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  Speaker 5: She is right here, and she so wants you to
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  Speaker 5: see her that she's brushing your eyelids with her wingtips.
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  Speaker 5: And it's us. It's us who ain't seeing. There's a
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  Speaker 5: line from meister Eckhart. God's always here. It's us who
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  Speaker 5: went out for a walk. So I think it's like that,
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  Speaker 5: and we have to look at the parts of us
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  Speaker 5: who don't want these experiences.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, Bob, we're only two minutes left. Look, we've spoken
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  Speaker 3: for a few hours on my show over it going inside,
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  Speaker 3: So people can look that up if they're interested in
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: hearing our conversations. For people that want to know more
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  Speaker 3: about you and your current work or how you help people,
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: can you say a bit about that and then I'll
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: wrap us up.
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  Speaker 5: Okay. My website is Robert Falconer Us. There's all sorts
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: of free stuff there. I'm sort of moving out from
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  Speaker 5: under the therapy umbrella. I think therapy, actually, when it's
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: done right, is a subset of spirituality and I want
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  Speaker 5: to make that connection more explicit, and I think especially
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  Speaker 5: for major trauma survivors, the question is what connection could
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  Speaker 5: you have to meaning to a higher power or something
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  Speaker 5: that makes sense in the worst hell realm you've ever
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  Speaker 5: been forced to be in the most intense, humiliating offering
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  Speaker 5: you've ever me been in. What's strong enough and big
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  Speaker 5: enough to be there with you? Then that's to me
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  Speaker 5: spirituality in this.
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  Speaker 3: Kind of framework, beautiful, Bob, thank you so much for
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  Speaker 3: doing this. We are on our best behavior with forty
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  Speaker 3: seconds left, so I we've pulled it off us by
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: all odds and the temptation to go for hours.
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  Speaker 2: So thank you again, Bob for doing this. Thank you to.
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  Speaker 3: Guy and his audience here for letting me be a
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: guest host on the show today.
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  Speaker 2: And for folks interested in.
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  Speaker 3: My work or Bob's work, I'm sure you can find
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  Speaker 3: links or look us up. So thank you again, Bob
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  Speaker 3: for doing this, and I look forward to our next conversation.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, bye bye, Thanks Thanks mailation even
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  Speaker 2: Noman common s