Latest / Surviving-ISH Podcast / Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture: A Conversation with Dr. Don St John

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Healing the Wounds of Childhood and Culture: A Conversation with Dr. Don St John · Surviving-ISH Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I don't understand why it was me.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I'll ever be the same.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Is the same what I want?
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Anyway, you took what I thought I could never get back.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: I've been holding onto the anger and broke down just to begin again.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I'm there.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Dr Don St John, thank you so much for being with us.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's my pleasure, David.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Before we get started, tell us a little bit about you, your background.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, relevant to the topic of this show, I endured a fair amount not a fair amount A lot of abuse and trauma from birth itself.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I almost died at birth and it was very challenging First 16, 17 years on this planet.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: However, the effects of that were so debilitating In the emotional, relational, somatic realm that my choice was to live miserably and miserably or do something about it.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And doing something about it was engaging on a healing journey that the subtitle of my book is an adventure of a lifetime.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And that journey became really an adventure of a lifetime, with rewards that I couldn't even begin back then to imagine.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Sure, there were lots of challenges, lots of obstacles, lots of difficulties along the way, but the rewards were just phenomenal.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: And, as I said earlier, I'm 80 years old.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I'm in a relationship, a marriage that we've been together for, going on for 40 years.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: It's vital, alive, it's intimate.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: There's a sense of freedom and amazing closeness.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I moved for someone who has pretty serious arthritis, I moved fairly well, I danced, so those are some of the rewards of this journey.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: My whole mission is to say, hey, look, folks, I've done it and you can too, and the resources are out there, the knowledge is out there.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: What we need is available.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Go begin or deepen it if you've already started, because it's worth it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I already have so many questions and a total sidebar, but I cannot wait for my listeners to see your picture.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: When you told me you were 80 years old, I was floored.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: I know so many people that you can tell that the trauma, the depression has weighed on them, that they look years past, how old they really are.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: The trauma would have killed me.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I came within millimeters 22 years ago when I had a heart attack, but the fact that I survived it and survived it well, speaks to the work I had done Previous to that.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: And if you want the details, they're in my book, and just that chapter alone is worth looking at, because they had said that part of my heart was gone dead forever.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And three months later the cardiologist said I don't make mistakes like that, that can't be and he actually gave me a second test to confirm that my heart was back to normal.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, after saying that part of it was gone forever.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth the journey.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Before we get into your lot of work and what you've done for yourself and for others to help, can you give us maybe some cliff notes on your history of traumas?
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: We can understand your mindset of where you were coming from.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I wasn't wanted at conception.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: It was in the middle of World War II and my mother found out that she was pregnant About the same time that she found out that my father was about to be shipped overseas.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: So she was very opposed to the idea of being pregnant.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I almost died at birth, she said.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: The cord was wrapped around my neck and it took the skill of an obstetrician, the great skill of an obstetrician, to save my life.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: She started swinging at me when I was 11 months old and pretty much didn't stop until I was big enough, around 15, to physically stop her.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: To complicate that, and she was terrifying.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: She wouldn't get enraged, enraged and she'd pick up anything that was close by Usual to complicate all that.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: We loved each other intensely and my father was hardly in the picture.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: He came and went, he was steady, going to work and back.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: He had his own barbershop.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: We probably didn't speak more than 2,000 words In 15 years and a good percentage of them were put down.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Pretty much.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: That was it.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: My trauma didn't happen until my adult years.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: So when I talk to people who have experienced childhood trauma, it like those were such detrimental years and those fears that you're learning, the PTSD maybe that you're developing.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: That's something that will continue with you Through your relationships, your work, career, and we all have some sort of baggage like that.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: So what are the consequences with the public and trauma mix have you found?
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be as succinct as possible and still speak to the categories of consequences of that type of trauma.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: The organism becomes highly disconnected.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: This and the body, the sense of connectedness, is greatly diminished.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: It's fragmented.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: One sense of self I used to say that I'd have to look up in my self-esteem to see the belly of a snail, that it was that low, with a whole lot of pretence around it to feel good about myself, but underneath it wasn't there.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: The capacity for relationships is one of the biggest areas of consequence.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I went through three marriages in 12 years.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Now I'm in my 48th year.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: So I got it finally, but it takes a whole lot of work.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Health, the state of health of our population, chronic diseases, heart conditions, diabetes so many chronic diseases have their roots in that kind of trauma and it messes with the nervous system, the brain, the endocrine system.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Let's see the violence in society.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: So much of it related to trauma.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Genes, deaths by overdose we're seeing how many there are 100,000 a year related to trauma.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: The stupidity in our politics is related to trauma.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: The craziness in so many religious institutions related to trauma.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Now, if I may, I want to give you a picture of the way I see it, of woundings, so in childhood wounding.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: At the worst end of the continuum, we have these what I call big T traumas, like almost dying in childbirth, like having your mother enraged and swinging with some sort of weapon in her hand.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: These are big T traumas and they can occur anytime in life, like being mugged, being hit by a car, being raped, their overwhelming events.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Then, if we come down a little bit on the continuum, we have what we can call the little T traumas.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Most people, most people, don't even think of these in terms of trauma.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: They think of them as it was the way it was.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: For example, living in a home that has very little positive feeling, very little affection, love, and it's mostly stress and it's mostly conflict.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Or parents who don't like each other but make it through the day.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Or being criticized chronically, constantly put down.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Criticized might not have the same effect as being mugged in the big T, but it's wounding to the organism and has a disorganizing effect on the development of the person.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: Now, as we go even further down, where there isn't much criticism, the parents get along, they like each other.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: At the better end of the continuum, what we have there almost universally in our world is life negating attitudes, life negating beliefs, a life negating vibe like sex is bad one way or another, sex is bad, or being vulnerable and crying is weak.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Get over it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Things like that Don't even classify as little T traumas maybe, but they're certainly life negating and still having a disorganizing effect on the growth and development of the organism, and it affects us at a spiritual level, at a psychological, emotional level, at a physical level, right down to our very selves and tissues.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: That's a different picture than you pretty much get anywhere.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Most experts talk about trauma or not having trauma, and I've presented it on a continuum where almost no one is excluded and it makes sense for all of us to embark on a journey of growth.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: I liked your thought of big tea, little tea, because I don't feel like that's comparing anything to anybody, but it's categorizing those things.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: So what would your response be when, or what is your response when people try to compare traumas?
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I agree with what you said, David.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: You can't compare.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: And one reason you can't compare is that the same exact event now let's say a punch in the jaw can affect one person and just debilitate his life, where the other person will get up off the floor and punch back or walk away and forget about it.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: So the effects are going to be individual, depending on that individual and the effects.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: There's a similarity in effects and that is a compromising of the development towards wholeness.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Think of putting a plant seed in the ground and, when the conditions are all optimal, that plant just blooms to become full and fragrant and rich and succulent in exactly the way it's supposed to be.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: But if one of those qualities is missing, or there's too much of this or not enough of that, then that plant's development, its fullness, is compromised, as is the human being.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And another answer to your question is so much of the wounding human beings don't know about People, for example, I can't tell you how many people come in and say no, my childhood was normal, I'm a psychotherapist.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Some start asking they've come to see me, they're having trouble finding a relationship or having a good one, and they're all.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: My childhood was normal, Dr Don.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me a little bit about it.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: My mother was depressed for two years after I was born and, yeah, my father drank, usually every weekend, and when he drank he'd fly off the handle, lose his temper.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: That person is telling me, without even knowing it themselves, how much they suffered to have a mother incapable, because of her own depression, to provide the rich nutrients that child needed.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, that is wounding.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: To have a father who goes off the handle, that makes for a very unsafe environment.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: And what we do in response to those in different styles, but essentially we start shutting down.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Our capacity for aliveness, for relatability, is diminished ever so slightly, or maybe not so slightly.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that whole.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: What is normal and what kept going through my mind when you were speaking is we, especially at a certain time, and even where we are today, we're making progress in recognizing depression and mental illness, but we're still not where we should be and it's taken us a long time to even get here.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: And when people say, oh, I had a normal life, but my mom was depressed the fact that we have been, what would that be Were we trained by society and cliches to categorize that as just normal?
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a couple reasons for that.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: One is mine was pretty extreme, but I never walked around thinking, damn, I'm being abused here.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: This is crazy.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: It's what it is and I don't have a contrast.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I assume it's pretty much the same for everyone else.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: So that's one factor that answers your question.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I don't have any basis of comparison.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: It's absolutely normal for me.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: The second thing is a fierce loyalty that we have to our parents.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: We don't want to say, eh, we got a C plus here, we got an A there, but that area was, at best, a B minus.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: We don't want to be critical of our parents.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Now, let me say this, because parents, listening to what I'm saying now, will tend to feel guilty, will tend to feel like, oh God, I messed up my kid, I did it badly, and I can understand that.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I really can understand that.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: However, it's important to consider A, you did the best you could and B, you are operating within a field, an environment, a field of knowledge, and in that field, where did you get more education?
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Where did you learn?
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: What did your parents pass down, or your grandparents to your parents?
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: We're all in this together.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: We're all in this together.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: We've all created the political structure that we now have and can look back at and say, my God, that's ridiculous, it's stupid.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: It's stupid.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: You know what I?
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: The way I look at it is the culture hasn't evolved beyond the adolescent level of development, and the adolescent level of development is about furthering yourself, me, my I.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: It's natural for an adolescent, but we're putting adolescents in charge of the world, adolescents in suits, david in charge of the world, and we all have to evolve.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: It's a matter of each and every one of us.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: And the next stage is relationship.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: It's about relationship.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: It's about me and you.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It's about me and us.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: How does trauma and recovery and I know that my trauma was scary to people.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: I was not the only victim of what happened to me and then I know the aftermath of where I was mentally and emotionally still to this day still plays a factor into all that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: So my question is what advice do you have for people who are battling with keeping and participating in a healthy relationship of any status when their trauma is playing such a big factor into it?
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I think the first part of the answer to your question is recognize how trauma does play havoc with relationships.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Trauma intensifies the illusion that we're alone.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: We feel more alone, we feel shame, we feel like maybe it was our fault, we feel unworthy.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It exacerbates any of those feelings that were likely there prior to a traumatic event.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: That's a very important point to understand is that these wounds, these traumas, can become the gold of our lives and, for example, in a relationship let's say a romantic relationship, a partner's relationship, a married relationship it's important to be able to open up and be vulnerable.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: And that can be so hard when there's been a great deal of trauma, or big T trauma or a lot of little T traumas.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: It can be so hard because to open up is unthinkable.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: It's like showing your unworthiness to another human being.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It's the last thing you want to do.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: But if we can realize that, no, wait a minute.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: It takes a great deal of courage, a great deal of strength, a great deal of compassion toward oneself to begin to open up.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Begin to open up and let the other person see you and know you and make space for the other person to do the same, and then you can build something.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: See, people who don't have that incentive, who can but don't or don't much.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: They don't have the same incentive as the person who has a whole lot of trauma and the attempt is really challenging and that incentive can push us forward to actually doing it, and that's been my case.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: My stance in relationships when I was throughout my twenties and into my early thirties was one hand saying please come close, on the other hand, a fist waiting to punch you in the nose if you dare come close.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, so to start, because it was just too terrifying.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: So the same question with the flip side.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: What I found that people reach out to me a lot about is people will reach out and say someone that I love was a victim of something horrific and they're battling with it.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: How can I be an ally, how can I be supportive?
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Because they find themselves struggling with it and I think the answer is you can be there, you can be present, you can listen, you can support.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: That person may need to see a good trauma therapist a therapist who's informed with that kind of trauma and can help the person navigate it.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: There's some good work that can be done with trauma, but in terms of helping a friend, you're listening, you're interest, you're willingness to simply be there, without trying to fix it for them or solve it for them or tell them what they should do or diminish Right Impact or any of that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: If you can merely listen and be there and be affirming and compassionate, supportive, that you can offer and that's extremely valuable, I agree.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: I think we want to fix her.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: We want to fix something.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: We see something as broken or hurt or damaged and we want to put a band-aid or a cast or whatever we can do to make it better.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: And in a lot of cases you can't do that.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: But what you can do is help and love along the way.
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: But I think that people will start to shut down when they find that I don't know how to fix this and so I can't fix this problem.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: So if I just stay away from it, then I'm not failing.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and again it's relationship 101, but it's still not known enough.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: And that is the power of presence, the power of being there.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And another reward on this journey, this adventure that I call it of a lifetime, is an increase in presence, to be there powerfully and even to just be there.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: But you can, over time, increase.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: It's like it's a vibration and you can increase the intensity of the vibe to really be felt by another person.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you talk about the four legs of wholeness.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Here's the problem is philosophical, the separation of mind and body.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: That goes back and spirit.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: There's mind, body, spirit, and it goes back centuries and millennia actually, as humankind has attempted to understand the relationship among mind, body, relationship, spirit.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And I'm suggesting is what I'm suggesting is that all four are united, all four come together to create a whole human being.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: And if you think about it, as we're growing up, we learn to be grounded, we learn to keep our feet on the ground and we're growing vertically.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: So, heaven and earth, okay, in the process of healing, I think it's important, very important, to look at our body and recognize that our connection to our body has been just as affected as our mind, our beliefs, our emotions by all these wounds that we've been talking about.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: And there are disciplines out there designed to help us to improve our connection, our sense of aliveness throughout our body, our feeling, sense of our extremities, of our core, and there's no end to the depth of that connection, it's infinite.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Another way of saying that is we have great potential for elaborating, deepening, enhancing, vitalizing that connection to our body and even the way the structure of our body comes together.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: So if you look at me, you wouldn't picture somebody who was as severely abused as I was and, believe me, in my 20s I did not have this posture.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: One's posture can be improved in a system called structural integration or raw thing, and, by the way, all this is in my book in detail.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: So if you're interested in what I'm saying here and I know I'm covering a lot of territory in a few minutes you can read a lot more about this.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: In case.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: That's the body, and then there's our psychology and our emotions, and we know about that, so I don't have to elaborate on it too much here.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: But to say that to examine the beliefs that function as an operating system in our lives is important to get dominion over our trigger.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: So every time we get triggered it doesn't disorganize our lives and the people around us, that we can get triggered, feel it, release it, return to equilibrium.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: That's the emotional, the psychological, active relationship, a category in and of itself, because it is so important and there's so much to learn.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Learning to speak from our hearts and not just from our heads or our personas.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Learning to go deep inside and speak from there with sincerity.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Learning to let go of the minor frustrations and irritations that inevitably arise in relationship.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: So that's the third, that's the relationship, and the fourth is spiritual Learning.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Some of the more important things there are one, the recognition that we are connected beyond ourselves, beyond this egoic sense of I, that we're connected to nature, we're connected to each other, we're connected to the earth, we're connected to the divine, and I suggest that the appropriate, judicious, wise use of psychedelics will be an important component.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: It's happening, it's an idea whose time has come and I'm seeing it everywhere.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I get emails from everywhere the research that's being done with psychedelics and major universities throughout the country to help us get a sense that we are so much more than we think we are.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: David, that's a quick run through of those four pillars.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: I think a common obstacle that I know of and I know that's been a big one for me is a forgiveness and what that word actually means and the different layers of forgiveness.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: So I would love to hear your thoughts on forgiveness, if you would mind.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: It's such an important topic I've done a whole podcast on that very topic because it's the key to opening the heart.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: It's the key to healing and the doorway to real spiritual growth.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: And the important thing to know about forgiveness is, if I'm harboring rancor, resentment, vengeance, wanting revenge towards a person, I'm the one who's hurting from that.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: It's like drinking poison expecting the other person to die.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: So to know that is important and I mean that in and of itself provides a huge incentive to letting go.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: And If someone has hurt me, if someone has done something unconscious or negative or dishonest, or I can let go of the desire for vengeance, I can let go of the resentment and say I forgive them, which the test of that is, if I can think of that person in that event and not feel the hurt and the anger over again.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: If I can just think of it and okay, that's what they did.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: But for that person, for them to be forgiven, they have to feel the pain that they caused and it's a divinely inspired okay, you're forgiven.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: It's in the Lord's Prayer Forgive us our trespasses or debts or whatever the different versions of that verb in there.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Growing up, I learned it as trespasses or sins.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: So it's super important.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: It's not easy sometimes it's not easy.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: It requires our letting go, requires a certain command of our mental process, a certain firmness in our thoughts, so that we don't keep coming back and reliving the wounds and expressing the vengeance over and over again.
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Throughout my podcast and interviewing and talking with people.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: When the word forgiveness is mentioned, it immediately goes to I've got to forgive the person that did the wrong to me, but I personally, I had the realization that I had forgotten to forgive myself.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: I had forgotten to look at.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: I became a completely different person after my attack.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: I became angry, I became destructive in ways, and then I was told oh, the best medicine is to forgive, forgive.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: And so I thought I had to forgive the person that tried to murder me.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: I thought I had to forgive the person that raped me.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: I forgot that it was okay to forgive myself.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: In the moment that I have the realization that I'm allowed to forgive myself, everything changed.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was going to be my very next topic is forgiving yourself.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: So you're right there, perfect, really, and it's a big one.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: It's huge, it's in terms of the guide that attacked you, the person that attacked you.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: The best you can do in that relationship is to let go and just have it not be affecting you anymore, to the best of your ability.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: For him to be forgiven, he's got to feel the pain that he caused.
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: He hurt you I'm assuming he.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: He hurt you and he needs to feel that and be completely remorseful, and then it's a divine intervention for him to be truly forgiven.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, in that process of you letting go, part of the healing might require you to put his face on a sofa and to beat the living daylights out of that face and to feel that rage until you've released it and then to let it go in that way and to forgive yourself for whatever you're blaming yourself for.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: And that forgiving of ourselves goes deep, because we sometimes, as children, will draw some very wrong conclusions about ourselves.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: The fourth word out of my mouth I saw this baby record my mother kept like mama, dad, you know what the fourth one was Bad boy.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: So I have to forgive myself for believing, for taking that in.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: And then I act on it.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: And then, whenever I had the chance to be bad and I didn't think I'd get caught I'd be bad, hell, I was a bad boy.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Right, right, yeah.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Man, such a great conversation.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: I feel like the last question that I have is going to end on a positive note.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: So a little question that I have before that that I think that you would be very great at assisting with is in the very beginning of our conversation you said the word resources.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: There are an abundance of resources, but here's the thing I did not know that there were resources until I was in the moment and then my mind wasn't thinking of resources.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: So I didn't know there was resources until someone told me and so I'm trying to be a little bit more proactive with that now For instance, where I would, where someone broke in my house and attempted murder, I did not realize there was therapy that I get from the state.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that there was a victim's compensation.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't know all of these things, and until I found out, of course, later on.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: But I want to be resourceful, right, I guess.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: My question is what would you recommend to people on how to educate themselves on resources that their community has?
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, David, I assume that's why you're doing a podcast is to help people and be a resource for people, correct?
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: That's why I'm here in my 80s talking about all this to help resource people.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: My website provides some resources.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: My book provides resources.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Use the internet in search of Google and community resources.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Trauma resource If you're old and not comfortable on the internet, get a niece or nephew or child or grandchild, someone to help you.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Look and see what's available.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: What's needed is relationship.
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: What's needed is community relationship.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: It could be groups that trauma survivor, groups that get together to support each other, good friends that can talk about not so much the traumatic events themselves as how they're being affected now and how they'd like to change or improve the situations that they're in now, and how they can go about doing that.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Your body needs support.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: You can start with yoga.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: It's the most available discipline out there that can help you and get better connected to your body.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: There's a lot more, but you have to look.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Once you start looking, I think you'll see resources everywhere.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm such an advocate for therapy.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: I think therapy is just amazing.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: I hate the stigma that it's not there as much as it used to be, but I hate the stigma that's behind it.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: I might look for an hour.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Someone gets to sit down and listen to me talk.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: They at least act like they want to hear.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: In their head they might be saying shut up the whole time, but I can't tell that.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I want to end on a positive note as well, to say I cataloged some pretty hideous traumas and you've alluded to a very serious trauma but I know in my situation, in my life, that was the stuff that got me on this journey.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: For that I'm forever grateful.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe if it weren't quite so intense, I'd have just hung out where I grew up, got a job at the bank and lived a pretty boring life and probably have died already.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: It's the stuff that we can turn into gold.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Your group is a reward.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: It's rewarding you on a weekly basis.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: You're getting community, You're getting connection, You're getting friendship that you would not have had without that event.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: One hundred.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: And if we can all begin to assume that attitude that's how you expressed it and to recognize we've all been wounded, and if we could be honest about those wounds and heal those wounds instead of just replicating them in our families and you've heard generational trauma it gets passed down and, moreover, it creates the field that I talked about earlier, that field out of which our political system arises, out of which our health system and our health arise.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: If we can, instead of perpetuating that, if we can contribute to its alteration by engaging this journey, let's all go forward together.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, we're in it together.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, Dr Don St John.
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to read the book.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: I can't wait for my listeners to hear this episode.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: You're such an inspiration.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: I really needed this today.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: So thank you for that.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Before we log off, will you tell everybody your book, where we can find it?
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Any information you want to share?
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my book is easily found on Amazon.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: You can order it in probably any bookstore.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: You can go to my website, wwwpatsofconnectioncom.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can get it there too on my website.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoy it.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: And that wraps up another powerful episode of Surviving Abuse.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: I want to extend my deepest gratitude to our incredible guests for sharing their transformative journey with us today.
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Your bravery is an inspiration to us all.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: Before we go, I want to remind you to stay connected with us on our social media platforms.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Follow us on Instagram, twitter, facebook and TikTok, where we will continue the conversation, share resources and provide support for survivors like you.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: However, you're not alone.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: To all of our listeners, thank you for joining us again.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Your resilience and willingness to heal is what makes this community strong.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: As we embark on this journey together, let's remember that there is life.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: After trauma.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: We can rise above it and create a future filled with hope and joy.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Join us next week as we dive into the healing process and share more incredible stories of triumph and resilience.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: Until then, take care of yourself and remember you deserve love, you deserve happiness and, above all, you deserve an abundance of healing.
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: And I'll pray for you.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: I'm done hurting and I'll feel the anger more.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: I should win any longer and we begin again Now.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I'll beg.
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I'll pray for you.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: I'm done hurting.