How To Heal Your Emotional Trauma & Past Wounds w/ Dr Frank Anderson

our wounds are looking for redemption unless they're healed okay you keep going for the same guy or the same girl maybe it's an upgraded version but it's the redemption of our wounds is why there's a 50 divorce rate in the world honestly because we keep looking for you're going to be the father of the mother that i never had you're going to love me in the way that i never was it's the repeating the pattern but looking for redemption instead of healing it and then looking for something that's healthy all right welcome back to the show everybody i'm excited about today based on its timing too uh we're gonna talk about mental health today mental well-being mental fitness happiness bliss overcoming trauma and all that kind of good stuff and especially you know if you're listening to this around the holiday some of you listen to it six months from now but the timing's right too and i'm so excited to have dr frank anderson with me today frank is a harvard trained psychiatrist and psychotherapist so we're talking about an iq gap that is pretty vast between the two of us today as you listen but he's the author of a book called transcending trauma which i was glued to and i'm so excited to share his wisdom with you his work and his insights as we help you with your mental well-being as well so dr anderson thank you for being here brother well thank you so much for having me yet i really appreciate it and please call me frank all right frank you got it you call me ed too so let's i was reading a survey the other day that said about 24 of people report some form of mental illness or strife in their life why do you think such a high percentage of people during such an interesting time in our culture are so unhappy what do you think it is there's so many factors going on really from my perspective i mean clearly one of them is a pandemic i mean it is really got people in a place that they never thought they would be and particularly the ongoing nature of it you know i've been studying the neurobiology of trauma ptsd and dissociation for a really long time but this is an ongoing thing and it's going on and on and on and you know we've been through so many different ways of this so far and people get really burned out it's called adrenal fatigue your systems can't maintain it anymore our cortisol levels cannot sustain up down oh a vaccine oh there's not another variant keep going don't go like it's just too much for our systems so it's it's wearing on everyone and so there's that piece right and then there's the general world pre-pandemic i mean there's a lot of difficulties in the world and people are struggling and you know 20 of the population is depressed at any one time outside of a pandemic this term ptsd so you know i do a lot of reading by the stuff and i had an interesting upbringing when i say interesting there was some trauma there for sure yeah and i think a lot of people listening to this are watching it wonder when i think of ptsd as a layman first thing i think of is soldiers combat right that's the first thing i think most people think of yeah and then i think you know maybe some super dramatic issue that happens in one's childhood but how would you define ptsd how broad is there a spectrum of it and how would you describe it totally yeah that's a great question ed and it is a spectrum i think trauma is the spectrum disorder one of the things i say in my book is everyone has some kind of overwhelming life experience nobody gets away free of that okay so and people don't like this word trauma so much in the general public they don't like the word ptsd oh that's not me right so i do really define trauma on a spectrum so overwhelming life experience and often it has to do with the ex perception of the person experiencing it right you can be bullied on the playground at school and be like whatever no big deal and somebody else you know your friend sitting next to you is bullied on the playground and has a horribly difficult experience with it right so it depends on the nature and the event of what happens and it also depends on how the individual perceives it you know we're talking about single incident car accident death of a loved one being shamed like who in the world hasn't been shamed at one point in their life right uh to ongoing this piece i don't know if you're aware of this bruce perry and oprah winfrey wrote this book recently and it has a lot to do with ongoing relational trauma okay so there's a piece of relational trauma we call that complex ptsd right and that's where most family dysfunction comes in right when you're relationally you know this whether it's drinking yelling screaming neglect there's a lot of stuff that happens in families that is considered dysfunctional and traumatic and it has an effect on people you know which is different than that whole other spectrum where people are kidnapped and beaten and raped that's one extreme so i really do see trauma on a spectrum and nobody's free of it yeah okay that's great i i'm so glad you said it that way because i think a lot of people maybe discount things that have happened these these emotions are installed in our neural chemistry when we're young when certain things happen or when we're older and i have it's a weird analogy but i want to i want in a minute guys about how to overcome these things right the weird thing i want to share with you it's just thinking about in preparing for this as i was preparing to be with you yeah i have two little pomeranians and one of them is this joyous pomeranian little lily's her name and she's been with us all her life she's had a pretty blissful you know life time my other one daisy we took from someone and the kind of the our groomer asked us to take her and she had been left in cars and had neglect and all these other things and there's these associations she makes with different things where she'll just like yesterday won't take her for a walk any walking outside the house she just begins to shake and tremble and so there's this connection she's made with certain circumstances places and things like anchors or triggers almost you got humans have these anchors and triggers many times we're unaware of them so can you take us through what happens to us when trauma happens some type of trauma and what is an anchor and or a trigger or what i'm at least using my own terminology for that yeah that's exactly right no you're doing a great job honestly you've done your homework let me say that because it's true so anytime anyone has an overwhelming experience it's stored in their body okay and it can be stored in any number of ways you can store it emotionally you can store it physically in your body and you can store it in thoughts and beliefs so anytime we go through something overwhelming it's stored inside and then what ends up happening ed is that we have this series of ways to try to protect ourselves it's the normal response so in the work that i do which is called internal family systems you develop protective parts of yourself that try to protect you from your overwhelming experiences most people and we'll call them defenses you know but they're protections okay that you protect yourself from your pain and so what ends up happening if you have an overwhelming experience in childhood college whatever it's still stored you think it's gone but it's not so anytime it gets triggered if you get yelled at as an adult by your boss it triggers those wounds that are still in there and then your protectors jump in you yell you scream you drink you do whatever so our protectors show up once our wounds get triggered okay and this is what happens for people you know people come into therapy ed they don't say hey i want to work on the fact that i was unloved by my mother father like that's not what people come into thinking they're like i'm i'm having trouble with my kids i'm getting into trouble at work i'm unhappy i'm this is my third relationship like those are the protective parts that are not doing so well in somebody's life but they're really rooted in their trauma right is it always people or circumstances or can it actually be places i've had i've had this belief system that sometimes i think someone could actually walk into a room that resembles a room where trauma happened or a space or a moment they find themselves four hours later at work sad and down and not knowing why and there was a trigger that happened when they walked in even i know i'm going pretty deep here but i want everyone in the audience to kind of get everything they can can spaces also be triggers 100 people can be triggers you look at somebody you're like oh my god that reminds me of even though it's not the same person spaces can be triggered getting on airplanes can be triggered being in the back seat of a car like there's so many things because whatever environment that you were in that was overwhelming people encode that you know so i've heard somebody say oh my god when i was being abused i was staring at the doorknob because that's what i focused on and so doorknobs are scary for them do you know what i mean so it can be anything and most people aren't aware of the triggers they think it just comes out of the blue but it doesn't come out of the blue there's always trailing it back to the trigger of what activated the thing that happened to you in your past what if you don't know is that why therapy's so important um because i think a lot of people avoid therapies which can be all the way to the sophisticated work you do where there's this integrated you know current neuroscience stuff you're doing in the internal family systems to just having somebody to talk to yeah do you why do you think therapy has such a stigma to it and is that the pathway to correcting this or can someone just become more aware if it's minor things and actually begin to live better just by their awareness yeah it's a great question i have to tell you because you know it depends on where you live within the country right if you're living in the boston area in new england or you're living in california those people are therapy heavy like everybody has a therapist right so it depends it depends on the region that you live in around the stigma you know in a lot of places in the midwest a lot of places in the south like and cultural differences too ed honestly like certain cultures are into therapy yes let's get help that makes sense other cultures absolutely not no way so it depends on where you live it depends on the region but there is generally a stigma around mental health because people like i don't need help i'm strong i'm not weak like people call vulnerability right go to therapy i'm vulnerable forget that crap i don't want to be weak and vulnerable right that's why i love brene brown so much she calls vulnerability a superpower not a weakness right and i agree with that so one of the things i do honestly when i work with any adolescent i want to give them the experience of asking for help can be a good thing if the kid learns that it's a game changer for them you know so people have this i'm not weak i don't need this and in fact they end up falling apart getting it their life is a mess and then they go reluctantly but honestly i'm gonna say instead of nine times out of ten it's honestly ten times out of ten it's rooted in something from your past that you have buried to get away from people get away from pain you know it's like the cavemen touch the fire the fire hurts oh don't touch the fire anymore it's kind of like that we're organized to stay away from pain how do you think sometimes you can evaluate yourself i mean this i don't mean that therapy is necessary because i'm a huge believer i also think there's an economic aspect sometimes in therapy um but i i'm aware of patterns of my own that i know come out of some of the what i would call trauma in my childhood it could just be dysfunction it could be your parents didn't ever hug you right or no one said i love you or there was a divorce that's trauma that fits under that spectrum yeah but for me one of the things that i'm i'm super sensitive to is um people being honest with me to an extreme or what are you really doing when you're away from me to an extreme and so it's affected relationships that i've been in in my life and i i've evaluated that's because my dad was doing things i didn't know he was doing and couldn't trust that he was doing so i think sometimes just being aware of your current patterns of behavior can help you draw the line backwards to potentially what that trauma was now in terms of solution and you can comment on that if you'd like but i just want to share that with the audience from from me and there's other things like i'm anyone around me gets too drunk to excess some people think that's cool and fun for me it's like oh that's i want to be away from them so badly because i experienced that stuff so so i'm curious though you have the eight c's of what you call self-energy in the book which is awesome and i don't want to give away everything because i want people to get the book and by the way this is two percent so get the book everybody but can you take us through what self energy is and how that works and maybe what the hc's are if you can pull them off the top of your head totally i'll see how many i'll come up with at the top of my head but you know what it's interesting so a couple things i want to tell you one of my favorite quotes from my book is trauma blocks love love heals trauma okay and it's a cyclical peace trauma blocks love and connection it blocks who we are and in fact love and connection is what heals trauma wow very good very okay okay and i believe this is my mission it really is my mission because you don't have to go to therapy in some ways this is why i'm bringing this to the public is you're talking about self-awareness self-connection this idea this mindset to do better so it's super important okay and i wanna i wanna i want this message to get to as many people as possible that's why i'm moving outside the therapy room into the general public right and i appreciate shows like this to help me get that message out right we're getting it out brother for sure i love it i love it thank you for that and so everyone has this thing that we call self-energy it's inherent wisdom and healing capacity and i believe we're born with it it's not something that needs to be cultivated and believe me a lot of people with severe trauma i don't have it i'm broken i'm empty and you know what i say to them we can agree to disagree you have it in you you have that wisdom and healing capacity this is why i say sometimes so maybe everybody doesn't have to go to therapy you have what you need inside of you and let me help you access it okay it's accessing that wisdom within right and i call it a state of being and and you know because it's a model and it has mnemonics we say the eight c's okay but i'll give you i'll say some of the c's right compassion calm curious connected courageous there probably is another one i think or another creativity creativity there you go creativity and i don't want people to think it's a c word per se it's just that's the model mnemonics love openness is part of self energy it's a state of being you could say something like this to somebody yeah i'm compassionate or you could say ah yeah i really care right do you feel the difference absolutely yes that's what i'm talking about it's not a word it's a state of being it's i'm open i'm receptive and it's not only toward other people it's toward the parts of us that have been through the trauma okay so what we do is we turn self-energy inward can i be compassionate and loving towards the part of me that was beat up as a kid toward the part of me that was shamed and bullied on the playground like because what we tend to do remember i said those protectors push it away to protect us from the pain the method here is bring accessing self-energy and bringing it in towards loving yourself loving the pain that you went through right that's the healing quality here is that i call it internal attachment work we're healing the internal wounds and we have the capacity within us to do that i just want to help people get there that is so beautiful i hope i really hope everybody hears that because there's this debate by the way the compassion curiosity calm clarity connectedness confidence courage and creativity these are all things that you have access to within you and there's this great debate sometimes on social media especially in the entrepreneur spaces a lot of entrepreneurs not all but many follow my work and yeah they make fun of this oh self-love but you don't want to change anything about yourself and that's not what we're we're discussing here what we're saying is that you have access within you or you're saying rather and i'm agreeing with that you have access and the ability to love yourself even though there are things about you i think sometimes there's this stacking that happens where there's some trauma that happens so we create these coping mechanism whether it is drinking or cheating or lying or disassociation or whatever those things might be then we act out and behave in ways that we're not proud of right right and then it stacks then we find ourselves at 20 30 40 50 years old with this stack of stuff we've done or behaviors we've taken place in that we're not proud of and now it's like a double stack this stuff happened to me i don't really know why i'm doing this but i've lied i've cheated i've stole whatever i've done and there's this stack so i'm i was a little bit curious about the idea of forgiveness of oneself as well yeah and i know it's not necessarily part of the book per se but there's little pieces that kind of allude to it what about that like is that part of what you would call compassion for oneself is forgiveness does it fall under there or what would you say about that totally so forgiveness is a big piece of it honestly and there is the forgiveness of yourself the parts of you that work so hard to try to protect you yes that have done untoward things okay those protective parts the parts that drink that yell that scream the reason we yell at our kids is because their behavior triggers our wounds so we try to stop them from doing that so our wounds don't get activated right so those protective parts i'm always looking at the intention of them not the effect of them the drinking the cheating the lying the intention is to protect my pain that's big the effect is it causes what i call a double trauma in our life because like you just said it's not only that i'm dealing pushing away my childhood this wounding now i have to deal with the fact that all the behaviors that were rooted to protect me have caused more trouble in my life yes yes okay so we're looking at the positive intention of every part suicide cutting you know suicide is one of the most effective protections if it gets bad enough i'm out of here yeah and we say to the suicidal part thank you for having a solution to this problem when nobody else was there to help you okay embrace it heroin epidemic same thing people are doing all opioids heroin to protect from their pain because they don't have another option yet yeah you know i was just thinking about by the way i'm loving this it's interesting for me i'm 50 years old it's just now maybe at this stage of my life that i reflect more on stuff that did happen when i was a kid and yeah because there's there's like double-edged swords on these coping mechanisms i don't know if you agree with this or not that's exactly what i'm saying yeah yeah like like for example for whatever reason i kind of got my dad's attention if i at least i thought i did probably isn't even fair to say but i get my dad's attention when i hit a home run or when i'd get an a or when i'd perform so to some extent that coping mechanism has helped help me become a wealthy man help me become an influential man help me become a very hard worker but there's the other side of this so let's address this sometimes these coping mechanisms also are difficult to break because for example in business my edginess or anger it's why i'm so successful i don't want to lose that part of me even though i know it's not very healthy because it helps me do this other thing that i do very well right so how do you how do you navigate that where you go i want to keep the good things about this coping mechanism i've got but i want to drop the part of it that's detrimental to me and the people around me yeah it's exactly what we do it's because we embrace i call them the gifts and the burdens of every part okay right we don't get rid of parts of us okay we get rid of the job it was forced to do oh it's so good right we don't get rid of like the drinking part like a let's take a drinking part for example i say what if you didn't have to drink all the time are you interested in that what if you didn't have to what if it could be a choice right so we try we help release the stuff we had to do to protect the wound and then we keep the stuff we want to do okay and the only way these parts of us stop doing what they need to do at is by healing the wound if i heal the wound i don't need to do this stuff anymore i could choose to we don't get rid of any of our parts we get rid of the job they were forced to do so good to protect the pain like that you see what i mean like that's what it is and they have good things i i i had this like smart was who i was like i thought that is me like that's me and i had an identity crisis when i was like wait a minute smart is a part of me not all of me i was like holy crap who am i then right yes look i can still hold on to my intelligence but it doesn't have to dominate every aspect of my life now i could be playful i could be fun i you know i can have a blast with my kids you know what i mean i before it was dominating me because it was working overtime to protect me i don't get rid of it but it's an aspect of my personality that's been valuable so i just really feel strongly everyone should go back and listen to this last part that we covered because there's this spectrum right we've talked about of the different types of trauma but what should be occurring to all of us like life should have an element of self-reflection at every age yeah and i think oftentimes we're just so busy in achieving and doing and caring for other people that we never take guys this could just be as simple as you starting to take some time and being more aware of yourself sometime in meditation sometime for a walk that's not just to work out but it's just to be with yourself to evaluate your patterns and emotions and what you're feeling regularly just to do a little work on you at the end of that next year 2022 you'd be a better person you will have grown and so i just want everyone if you want something complex where you're going to go to therapy you're going to do psychotherapy you're going to have a friend you talk to you're gonna pray more you're gonna just observe your patterns you're gonna whatever it might be self-reflection and self-awareness is a pathway to more bliss in your life and it's getting it's getting it's getting books like your book it's listening to shows like my show it's just starting to work on oneself how do you know frank if you have any ptsd are there signs that i have had some kind of trauma i might be unaware of and again remember guys ptsd could be you weren't hugged enough all the way to real abuse in your life right there's the spectrum but how does one know are there any underlying signs that i have some or does everybody it's a great question and i will deal with that in a minute i want to just add on to what you said because it was really important i was thinking to myself i'm like this is what i talked about in books self-awareness self-connection and you just came up with it on your own but that is what this is about right self-awareness self-connection in its simplest forms and i also like to say ed like take advantage of each moment what are you going to do with this moment are you going to learn from it are you going to repeat it are you going to ignore it like when you talk about okay let's look at the end of 2022 what did i do with my moments like i think we're all here to learn we're all here to grow or we just repeat it right so you can just take stock in your moment like it's submit it's the moment like all right bad time with the kid really difficult interaction at work like take your moment and what are you going to do with that moment i want the way profound i don't want to i don't want to interrupt you like it's so beautiful but this thing you said i just wanna highlight which is if you don't you'll repeat it totally you're just gonna have another it's gonna be the same a different boyfriend but the same guy different girlfriend same person different friendship different business different level of results same emotions same patterns if you're not aware so i just want to acknowledge what you said the profoundness of it let me add to that because the underlying reason of that is our wounds are looking for redemption unless they're healed okay you keep going for the same guy or the same girl maybe it's an upgraded version but it's the redemption of our wounds okay and if you don't address your weight wow this is why there's a 50 divorce rate in the world honestly because we keep looking for you're going to be the father or the mother that i never had you're going to love me in the way that i never was it's the repeating the pattern but looking for redemption instead of healing it and then looking for something that's healthy so i want to point that out for people so huge that's i've never heard that and that is a wow wow wow okay so how do you know you had signs of it what's some of the signs you have some of this ptsd well so exactly so that you know when you keep repeating stuff like when you can't get out of your own way why am i doing this again you know why am i here again and honestly ptsd is under the category of anxiety disorders like in the in the books and all this stuff and the dsm if you will it's an anxiety disorder so are you overwhelmed are you anxious are you reactive a lot do you go from high to low like a lot of times people with ptsd honestly get misdiagnosed as bipolar because it's mood swings right do you have a lot of mood swings do you crash after you get triggered and have periods of depression you withdraw you disconnect right because you can go from holy crap i'm freaking out to who cares what's the point i give up those are these mood swings which are really different parts reacting and responding so there is anxiety there's panic there's depression ptsd is kind of hard to diagnose interestingly enough and many people misdiagnosis because it's got so many facets to it right and it's got a lot of what we call comorbidities people are anxious they have eating issues you know eating disorders substance abuse issues like when somebody comes in with a list of stuff it's most likely rooted in trauma okay edd another one huge overlap with ptsd interestingly enough and you know we can change trauma out just for pain you know it's interesting with achievers the ones that i work some of the top you know whether it's an athlete or an entertainer or a politician or whatever sometimes they're um it's interesting all the things you've listed and then when they begin to achieve yeah there's this thing they start to do with themselves and a lot of people are gonna go oh my gosh i do this right now is it really worth it what's it all mean once they start to get somewhere they'll feed themselves because they should be blissful and joyous and proud the only way to rob themselves from it now is that it doesn't matter it was all for nothing it cost me all these other things so i'm curious about the relationship part let's say i'm i'm gonna i've you know i've got whatever i've got my baggage my patterns my things what if you interact you're in a relationship though let's flip it it's not so much us but maybe it still is but we're in a relationship with someone who clearly has these patterns clearly is overcoming protecting themselves trying to heal some form of trauma whether that it could be minor to extreme is there what advice would you give for interacting with someone who keeps acting out in a particular way and is there a point where you should separate from somebody whether it's a friend a loved one a spouse etc a parent what would your advice be there yeah so that's the whole couple's issue like when you're in you don't even have to be in an intimate relationship but you're talking about what if you're in relationship to someone who has a trauma history yes all right so it's not a coincidence there's usually a dynamic there okay i hate to say it okay i hate to bust people's bubble the people who are you know pointing out the other person's issue because usually in that case there'd be somebody who's activated screaming yelling reactive and there's the passive one the one who tolerates it the one who enables it the one who is drawn people tend to be drawn to each other because they're similar wounding even though they tend to show it differently wow okay so somebody could be like typical example and i'm going to use these gender stereotypes oh my god she's so hysterical she's so overwhelming with her feelings oh my god he's on the spectrum he can't connect with anybody you know such a typical male female gender dynamic right yeah the reality is both of them have wounds underneath that are similar because attraction is about the similarity in wounding okay so you may look totally different it may easy it's much easier to blame the other person but what i say to that is do the u-turn what about me has been drawn to this person what is going on for me that keeps me in this relationship okay it's much easier to point the finger at the louder screaming yelling version compared to the numb dissociated passive or disconnected version and there's usually that dynamic okay so it's rarely do i see a couple where both don't have trauma histories of sorts like you say however they they cope with it in opposite seemingly opposite ways yes does someone be by the way that's brilliant and does someone eventually become so toxic to you that you should cut them out of your life absolutely like you know usually if it's that toxic and you don't have a trauma history you break up with them you don't end up marrying them you know what i mean like i said whoa this does not resonate with me but what if you have that thing where you're like you're going to fix them you know what i'm saying a lot of people have that i'm going to fix him i'm going to fix her uh welcome to every therapist i've ever met by the way okay and i'm a person in that group i was such a caretaker you don't go into the field unless you're a massive caretaker okay okay you know what you do though frank i gotta tell you what you do and i love this of brilliant people and that is that you know as you're listening this you can hear his brilliance realize he's harvard trained but what you do that i love is that you take incredibly complicated and complex issues and and solutions and make them simple and easy to understand because you don't have this need any longer to be the smartest guy in the room you just are and so that's why this is so helpful i keep telling you this is my favorite because i just really really believe this is making a difference for people so you do think maybe someone might need to be eliminated let's talk about a few solutions now what is a corrective emotional experience let's give everybody the gift of what that is and yeah and have you explained that yeah so a corrective emotional experience it really is what i call a re-do okay so you're repeating your pattern you're repeating your pattern you're repeating your pattern and a corrective emotional experience is when you do it differently the moment that you do it differently okay for example now this could be in relationship with somebody else but it's also within yourself okay and what we like to do is this is so in therapy sometimes there's this idea that the therapist is the corrective experience for you i'm gonna be everything you needed and wanted and never gotten life ed you're gonna internalize that you're gonna skip off into the sunset and be happy right people are searching for the corrective emotional experience outside of themselves all the time now sometimes relationships are healing okay the relationship with my partner is is a corrective emotional experience it really he's like wonderful for me he's he's been that person in a way that's been amazing okay so that is there and we can get that from other people however oftentimes these people are not who we needed and wanted them to be and then it becomes a big failure okay so you've got to think about shifting and working internally to have the corrective emotional experience within this is where real healing comes that you remember that self-energy thing i talked about yes self-energy can give that little boy little girl inside what it needed and wanted and never got it's the true redo okay it's the true redo and it's through self love self acceptance and self-connection just like you talked about and if i give it to myself then i am going to have different experiences in my relationships with other people because i'm not going to need them to make me feel better okay so corrective emotional experiences can be useful in life in our relationships it's like i could remember the moment i'm like wow this is different i'm not doing what i used to do and this person isn't responding in the ways that i typically have people respond to me right so you could have a corrective emotional experience it feels different it lands different within you you're like oh this is different the way we get there is by giving to ourselves what we didn't get and always wanted like can i treat myself with respect can i love myself can i value myself because when i give it within i don't need it desperately from somebody else i can have it with somebody else it's an option versus a desperation hmm i'm just letting it sit there for me yes because and and is there a practical way i can give that to myself in other words an application of that is it just as is it as simple as saying you know i'm actually going to give myself a break when i make a mistake is it repeating to yourself that you love yourself is it feeding yourself a highlight reel of all the good things you've done in your life like what is something practical i can do that give myself that gift yeah i'm not you know i'm not a big affirmations person because affirmations aren't authentic it's like convince yourself you love yourself didn't work for me like it doesn't work so for me it's got to be can i connect it's really goes back to the self connection what do i feel what do i need and want because we're taught to disconnect from ourselves to keep the connection with our parent yes okay you have to kids have to connect to the parent to survive so they disconnect from themselves so it's it's easy as easy not easy it's as simple as what do i want what do i feel okay when you can connect to what you feel right i can't tell you how many people said i knew this relationship was crappy but i married him anyways yeah we know what we feel we disconnect from it right so it's simple moments of taking the pause what do i do i want to go to that holiday party you know what i really don't could i take the risk and not go yeah because other people don't care as much as we think they care is that true actually and then i'm treating myself kindly even a moment it's like oh huh and so each time you treat yourself kindly you're giving yourself a corrective experience very good i just gave myself one then i did that this year all right i love sharing things uh with my audience when someone says something brilliant just an application for me i've i've always i really took a look at my ask myself the question you said and you said so many brilliant things i want to make sure i just repeat the one that stands out to me which was what is it that i really want or need right now and for me i've had all these different things in my life i've had anxiety i've had frustration i've had depression i've also had there have been moments of my life of joy and bliss and ecstasy and passion and expectation and i found for me i've never had peace yeah what i really want is peace in my childhood there was no peace it was loving many many times loving awesome and then sometimes not and i've not had peace i've finally said ed what do you really want that you don't have that i can access within myself anytime i want and it was peace and i've really done work this year on giving myself the gift of more peace noticing more gratitude putting myself in situations that bring me peace and avoiding ones that don't i haven't done a great job of it i've done a better job of it i'm making progress towards more peace it wasn't just one decision and okay it's done i've got peace now i have tons of patterns and people and situations in my life that are around me that aren't peaceful yeah but slowly but surely i'm creating more peace in my life so i love that you said that and it's a it's a direct application for me in my life now one thing i've never struggled with but most people do that i want to ask you about complete right turn here yeah i don't struggle with making decisions i'm a decisive person i've never had this fear of this is right or this is wrong oftentimes i think i might make both of these things work but i find that so many people struggle with anxiety and fear over making a decision especially one that might be bold like a career change or ending a relationship or starting a relationship or starting a business so what what would you say to someone who deals with high levels of anxiety and fear about making decisions in their life yeah so it's it's i wish it was a little bit simpler i'd like to say a bullet or two okay but the thing that i would say about fear around making decisions is you really have to look at what the underlying issue is relative to the fear for example some people are afraid to make decisions because they're afraid of the loss is it this house or that house if i choose this house that means i can't have that house right so that's a loss issue so the root of that is i'm afraid i may lose something okay other people fear because fear is usually what's around decision making problems right will if i if i choose this if i say no i don't want to go to the party they might not like me i may that relationship may be over i may hurt somebody i may disappoint somebody so i'm not i'm afraid to make this decision based on what the other person might feel about me okay so you're always looking at what is underneath yeah so there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons why people have a hard time making making decisions honestly you know and it's it's so interesting because with my son the other day and i was saying we had gone home for a family visit and i said you know sometimes it's hard to tell your parents what you really even as adults tell your parents what you really want because you're afraid that they'll be disappointed in you or you're afraid you know of their reaction people are so afraid of feelings my own or somebody else's and i loved what my son said he's like well that's not a problem for me i tell you what i feel all the time and i was like yes i did one thing right you know that's exactly right right we do we're afraid of the feelings of others whether it's feelings of loss for ourselves feelings of how somebody's going to think about us so it's so rooted in emotion and fear is just a top layer of that honestly really what it ends up being is this is that most people's fear is based in their inability to tolerate emotions okay whether it be my own emotions oh my god i'm going to be hurt i'm going to be sad someone's not going to like me or tolerating somebody else's emotion like they may not like me they may just be disappointed in me i may lose the connection you know so fear of decision making is usually rooted in inability to tolerate emotion in one way or another i have to take back what i just said now that you said that i do struggle with making decisions in personal relationships yeah for the exact reason you just said okay and by the way the exact scenario you just described it's right now when we're doing this it's the holidays and i've had multiple situations like that where i was just riddled with anxiety about them maybe they'll never invite me back maybe i can't even though i had very legitimate reasons that i couldn't go yeah it's interesting because i'd say i'm a very decisive person i think that's more in business or in you know that kind of stuff but then in that other area personal it's there's still these underlying fears that i'm i'm working on myself so you did say something i'm really glad you brought up because i want to ask you about this so for many people and it doesn't have to just be the holidays but it is the holidays while we're recording this but it could be just randomly any time they're going to be around family members some of which are negative some of which are triggers like we've described earlier and they you know going in i'm gonna see uncle blah blah blah or aunt this or a parent or whatever it might be yeah and so and going into it creates tremendous anxiety for people tremendous angst what counsel would you give if you know you're going to be going into an environment a place people that are likely to trigger you in a particular way or just man they're just going to change your outlook and your energy yeah there's so many things you know and by the way i love saying this i'm not only the hair club president i'm a member of this group right i go home to my family too it's the same thing i cannot help it because we all slip into these old roles with family it's so true we slip and you know we slip into these old rolls so you get pulled back in to the family dynamic which makes it harder so you kind of lose stability you lose your competence in the world when you slip back into family right and so it really is tricky for people you know in the re and we bring there's everybody wants the holidays to be perfect like watch the damn tv all these beautiful moments hallmark moments whatever that is not reality we all bring all of us to each family dinner i'm not just bringing the good parts of me i bring the good parts and the bad parts of me and so does everybody else sitting at the table so like this idea that it's going to be perfect is ridiculous like i i always think about expectations right and especially and now with the pandemic and some people haven't even seen their family in two years right i'm going to visit my parents at the end of the month i haven't seen them in a year and a half right so the expectations are enormous for perfection red flag red flag red like it ain't gonna work that way right so you've got to deal with expectations and the thing i like to say to people is this what are my expectations what am i actually wanting out of this is it the perfect ham is it the best present or is it like real connection you know like what do i want out of this like what are my expectations and also we assume we know what other people's expectations are like ask your mother ask your brother what are they wanting out of this holiday because they actually may want something different ask your kids because what we do is we throw our kids with us right calm you're gonna enjoy this this is important like what are your expectations here what do you want to accomplish here right it reminds me for anybody who has kids and who's been to disney world you spend all this money you want it to be the best moment of their lives and it's a show excuse me it is terrible right it's because our expectations are way unrealistic and they don't meet reality like so bring it down to reality what if actually you connected with people in ways that you love them and care about them and things you have in common because there's this way that all the political decisions discussions all the vaccine blah blah blah like why do we need to get into the differences instead of what we have in common there's this way that people show up with their differences because they want to be seen yes and heard right and what i say is this we have more in common than we are different yeah and i would rather focus on the similarities versus the differences it just happened to me recently went to visit my my my husband's family and they started in politically here you go and i was like i'm not interested it was it was i was like you know what i love you guys it's been such a long time how about so and so and i kind of changed the subject very good that's a great technique because you know isn't it odd because i used to do this with my dad politically we would disagree on stuff it was like of all the things i love this man and we have so much in common and we love so many of the same people and the same things why in the world am i picking the two percent of the things we don't agree on and the rare time i get with him yeah it's the it's because we want them to know us it's because we want them to know us instead of us getting to know them you know and it's called theory of mind it's the capacity to step outside of yourself and see if you can see what's important for them right when i travel around the world and i before pandemic i used to travel around the world teaching ifs and trauma and internal family systems and all and what i will tell you is trauma and the resiliency of the human spirit are everywhere we all have that in common and so i want to tell people like join what you have in common over the holidays you may have a much better time it's so good so profound and the reason that you described i never thought before is we want them to know us instead of us just connect and meet them where they are at least we know why we do it that's so powerful okay i got one last question well i'll just say this the more you know them the more they are genuinely curious to get to know you so true that's true in everything by the way business relationships family everything i love when i play golf with someone for four or five hours and they'll tell a mutual friend of mine now i love ed and then he'll say what does he do because we spent the four or five hours talking about them right and then the next time we'll probably talk about me so you're so right last question i've enjoyed this so so much and i'm so glad it's happening at this time for both my audience but also for me this is just wonderful last thing is this tough one you had trauma in your life and a lot of people take that trauma they've been through whether it's uh they've survived cancer or they've lost a business or they were divorced or there there was some form of abuse in their life or whatever it might be and they then attach their identity to that trauma of this survivor and their entire life becomes attached to this identity of their trauma and they never escape it it's such a it's it's obvious to me why it happens but it's a sad thing to what that's you're more than that as you said earlier yeah so what would you say to someone who has someone in their life that's attached to their trauma as their identity or many maybe listen go wow maybe i do do that i am the divorced one i am the one who lost a child i am the one who had cancer i am the one who had a business failure i am the one who had this abuse or mistreatment what would you say so in a in a phrase a part of you is it's not all of you but yes people do take on these parts as identity okay and honestly i'm gonna say this and this may or may not be popular but it is one of my mantras one of my missions is when people do overly identify with one side or the other okay when you were talking about ed like i'm a victim i'm a victim it's who i am as they take it on as an identity i'm always saying to people it's a part of you it's not all of you and in fact we all have all of it within us i am interested in crossing this divide every victim has perpetrator parts every perpetrator has victim parts and we polarize because we want to be seen in on one side instead of the other and honestly i'm working on a show right now that is talking about the victim and perpetrator within all of us okay and that's hard for people to this is what happens politically one side or the other like we all have both sides and that's hard for people to come to terms with but it is one of my missions and one of my mantras is you know you're not going to be able to heal from your trauma unless you look at the ways you have perpetrated either within yourself or others okay so this polarity of us and them i'm interested in breaking down that bit wall and bridging the commonality in all of us well you would change culture if you could do that because i think you're trying i think i think you've changed so many lives today but that would change culture just i'm so grateful for today but that idea that we both have perpetrator and victim is true yeah and hard to accept yes and uh we embracing the victim part of ourselves ironically isn't all that difficult embracing the perpetrator part of us that's a whole other conversation and uh today's conversation was riveting i hope everybody stayed at the end because even right here towards the very end there were some breakthroughs in there for me i gotta tell you frank i enjoyed this so so much and i'm very very grateful that we've met and i've told you already i think we're gonna do this again i really love to do this again absolutely you're incredible brother and again guys i love this trauma blocks love and love heals trauma that's one of my favorite things i've ever heard and he's the author of transcending trauma you guys should go get that book and you guys should share this show it's the fastest growing show on planet earth for a reason because we change people's lives every week by bringing you the best of the best and dr frank anderson certainly fits that description frank thank you for being with us here today thank you so much for having me i really appreciate it it was awesome all right everybody what you're doing i'm going to keep doing it brother and hopefully part of it you're part of the solution and i want to have you back i know that we're going to do this again so hey everybody please share this and i just want to tell you all god bless you and max out your lives hey guys thanks for sticking around if you'd like more click the videos right here they're exactly what you need to see next and if you're new here hit subscribe and become a part of the max out community and tell me what you think about the videos in the comments below i read all of them every week and i select winners that get all kinds of prizes gear coaching calls with me make a comment

Channel: Ed Mylett

Views: 44,335

Keywords: frank anderson, dr frank anderson, internal family systems, ifs and trauma, transcending trauma, trauma, childhood trauma, healing trauma, emotional trauma, heal from emotional trauma, trauma healing, trauma therapy, emotional abuse, heal emotional wounds, healing from trauma, emotional trauma healing, healing emotional trauma, trauma treatment, unhealed trauma, treating trauma, attachment trauma, emotional baggage, how to heal from trauma

Id: WpA0GktFcDY

Length: 55min 21sec (3321 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 28 2021