Speaker 1: Many of us haven't encountered somebody who really exudes love
Speaker 1: and compassion such that our nervous system knows what that's
Speaker 1: like and has a reference point for how to get there.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they.
Speaker 3: Feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest
Speaker 3: on this episode is Ralph de la Rosa, a psychotherapist
Speaker 3: in private practice in New York City. He specializes in
Speaker 3: helping people resolve their early childhood traumas, anxiety, depression, and
Speaker 3: intimacy issues. Ralph began practicing meditation in nineteen ninety six
Speaker 3: and has taught meditation since two thousand and eight. He's
Speaker 3: a regular teacher at venues such as Spirit Rock, Omega Institute,
Speaker 3: and Kripalu. Today, Eric and Ralph discuss his newest book,
Speaker 3: Outshining Trauma, a New vision of radical self compassion, integrating
Speaker 3: internal family systems and Buddhist meditation. Also, I haven't mentioned
Speaker 3: this in a while. Please go to our YouTube channel
Speaker 3: and subscribe. There you can watch the one You Feed
Speaker 3: podcast interviews law at one You Feed pod on YouTube.
Speaker 4: Hi, Ralph, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me Eric.
Speaker 4: I don't know how many times this is. It's three, maybe,
Speaker 4: I don't know, but you've been on a number of
Speaker 4: times in the past. I'm happy to have you on again.
Speaker 4: You have a new book out and I was just
Speaker 4: telling you what a wonderful writer you are. The book
Speaker 4: is called out Shining Trauma, a New vision of radical
Speaker 4: self compassion, integrating internal family systems and Buddhist meditation. So
Speaker 4: we're going to talk all about that in a moment,
Speaker 4: but we will start in the traditional way, which is
Speaker 4: where I read this parable to you and see what
Speaker 4: you think. There's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild,
Speaker 4: and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside
Speaker 4: of us that are always in battle. One is a
Speaker 4: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 4: and the other's a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 4: greed and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops. They think
Speaker 4: about it for a second. They look up at their grandparents.
Speaker 4: They say, well, which one, and the grandparents says, the
Speaker 4: one you feed. So I'd like to start off by
Speaker 4: asking you what that parable means to you and your
Speaker 4: life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Oh you know me, Eric, I'm gonna make it complex
Speaker 1: because it begs the question what are they being fed?
Speaker 1: And if the so called bad wolf were fed heartful energies, compassion,
Speaker 1: emotional nourishment, wisdom, teachings, what would happen to that bad wolf?
Speaker 1: And could they unite with the so called good wolf
Speaker 1: or at least harmonize. Right.
Speaker 4: You know, we've had lots of people talk about honoring
Speaker 4: and treating the bad wolf. Well, but it's the first
Speaker 4: time anybody's I think brought up you know exactly what
Speaker 4: is the food involved?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, I mean this is how healing works, right,
Speaker 1: That which is distraught within us, that which is distorted,
Speaker 1: that which is mangled up and bruised, is really a
Speaker 1: product of love deprivation of some form, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: one way we could frame trauma is love being betrayed
Speaker 1: or withheld. And for me, that tells us what the
Speaker 1: antidote is, the restoration of love and compassion in someone's life.
Speaker 4: Let's start kind of at the beginning and talk about trauma,
Speaker 4: what trauma is, what it means to you. So let's
Speaker 4: spend a few minutes there before we get into the
Speaker 4: healing of that trauma. So what's a simple working definition
Speaker 4: for you of trauma?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I define it in the new book as
Speaker 1: any adverse experience wherein one's defense mechanisms are mobilized, which
Speaker 1: comes with a lot of neurochemical activity, but those defenses
Speaker 1: are rendered useless for any reason, for any reason. And
Speaker 1: so trauma then is not just the activation of all
Speaker 1: those neurochemicals that are quite intense and quite toxic. Frankly,
Speaker 1: cortisol is one of the most toxic chemicals that can
Speaker 1: be in the body long term, but then they have
Speaker 1: nowhere to go. And then what goes with traumatic stress
Speaker 1: because not all trauma becomes traumatic stress, and non all
Speaker 1: traumatic stress becomes PTSD. But then if a person is
Speaker 1: met with other circumstances such as not being heard, such
Speaker 1: as maybe having to deal with alienating doctors or police,
Speaker 1: or living in poverty, and all of the phenomenal amount
Speaker 1: of stressors that come with that sort of situation, then
Speaker 1: that sort of adverse experience where once defenses are immobilized
Speaker 1: or rendered useless in the context in a social context,
Speaker 1: that is again a love deprived kind of situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then we're looking at not just traumatic experience, but major
Speaker 1: traumatic stress.
Speaker 4: So anytime our defense mechanisms are in voge but unable
Speaker 4: to be effective is kind of a working definition. I
Speaker 4: want to ask a question about trauma from a slightly
Speaker 4: different angle. Should you say at one point in the
Speaker 4: book that we should think of trauma as on a
Speaker 4: spectrum versus you have it or don't have it, which
Speaker 4: I think is wise with nearly anything that we're talking
Speaker 4: about in the mental realm, you know, we exist on
Speaker 4: a spectrum of things. You also say that by doing
Speaker 4: that it allows us to honor the crucial role that
Speaker 4: subjectivity plays in the forming of traumas. And then you
Speaker 4: say After all, our brains don't respond to actualities, but
Speaker 4: to perceptions. So I want to ask from that lens,
Speaker 4: is there a way in which trauma is preventable? Or
Speaker 4: is there a way in which things that are being
Speaker 4: deemed traumatic by certain people could be non traumatic to
Speaker 4: other people. The one thing that a lot of critics
Speaker 4: say these days is the definition of trauma has just expanded, expanded,
Speaker 4: expanded to include almost like my door dash or it
Speaker 4: didn't come last night, right, And I know that's not
Speaker 4: what you're writing about, but I'm curious about that subjective angle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the subjectivity plays a humongous role because again, yet
Speaker 1: the brain doesn't know the difference between your imagination, which
Speaker 1: perception is essentially imagination actually, right, if we really look
Speaker 1: at how it's generated in the brain, the brain doesn't
Speaker 1: know the difference between that and the objective reality. It
Speaker 1: only knows the subjective. And so I think I even
Speaker 1: cite the example of like, you know, getting a nasty
Speaker 1: text message and then the person blocks you. That technically
Speaker 1: fits the definition of a trauma. Now again, whether or
Speaker 1: not that turns into traumatic stress that one holds in
Speaker 1: their body long term and then becomes a crucial factor
Speaker 1: in their life depends on a lot of things. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about one thing I'm learning about how
Speaker 1: recently eric is there's this new term. It's not an
Speaker 1: official diagnosis, but it's a new and very helpful term,
Speaker 1: called rejection sensitive dysphoria. It's being researched now and it's
Speaker 1: considered that up to ninety five percent of people with
Speaker 1: ADHD have this. Because part of being ADHD or neurodivergent
Speaker 1: is you come off weird to other people and you
Speaker 1: get thousand yard stairs wherever you go, where people take
Speaker 1: you the wrong way, and you get rejected a lot,
Speaker 1: and over time that accrues, that builds up in the
Speaker 1: nervous system. It's like death by you know, not death
Speaker 1: by a thousand paper cuts, you know, death by a
Speaker 1: billion paper cuts, and that begins to really matter. And
Speaker 1: so this is far flung, but given how wild and alive, frankly,
Speaker 1: our neurological systems are, there's a situation that I could
Speaker 1: imagine in which somebody with rejection sensitive dysphoria. One of
Speaker 1: the things they're starting to understand about it is even
Speaker 1: something like getting a text message in the person and
Speaker 1: blocks you, which is a literal rejection or even your
Speaker 1: door dash order getting messed up, that the perception of
Speaker 1: rejection itself, even if it's not actually happening, the nervous
Speaker 1: system itself reacts as if it is right, right, this
Speaker 1: is a real thing out there. And so in the
Speaker 1: context of somebody living with that kind of nervous system,
Speaker 1: that's heightened to a great extent. Yeah, little things that
Speaker 1: are totally negligible to other people might amount to a
Speaker 1: big deal to somebody at the neurological level, meaning separate
Speaker 1: from their personality, separate from their volition and their conscious awareness.
Speaker 1: And that person still has a choice about what to
Speaker 1: do with that internal eruption. But that's simple and not easy.
Speaker 1: Then we could go to the other end of the
Speaker 1: spectrum of you know, we know that material privilege is
Speaker 1: a mitigating factor when it comes to traumatic experience not
Speaker 1: becoming traumatic stress. We know that emotional intelligence, that a
Speaker 1: sense of spirituality, sense of community is really huge, a
Speaker 1: huge predictor of whether or not trauma becomes traumatic stress.
Speaker 1: So there's all kinds of factors that could be put
Speaker 1: around a person that would make one thing negligible that
Speaker 1: is deeply adverse to the person standing right next to them. Yeap.
Speaker 4: Later in the book, you talk about healing from an
Speaker 4: upward spiral perspective, and I talk about upward and downward
Speaker 4: spirals a lot, And as you were talking, I was
Speaker 4: thinking of trauma in that way, like it becomes a
Speaker 4: downward spiral if you're rejected in some way, now you
Speaker 4: are more afraid of being rejected, and then that could
Speaker 4: cause you to be rejected. You spiral down. It made
Speaker 4: me think of like the cruel conclusion of a lot
Speaker 4: of loneliness studies, which is the more you're isolated, the
Speaker 4: more you start to see neutral as threatening mm hm,
Speaker 4: and so you end up getting lost, you know, getting
Speaker 4: trapped in your own sort of loop. Right. And I
Speaker 4: think the same thing must be true in a traumatic sense, right,
Speaker 4: that over time you might become conceivably more and more
Speaker 4: sensitive to smaller and smaller things. That again, to your
Speaker 4: point quote unquote normal person would say, well, what's.
Speaker 1: The big deal?
Speaker 4: But for that person, based on a long history that
Speaker 4: kind of winds its way back, you see how it
Speaker 4: could be a big deal.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. And it is interesting how we
Speaker 1: can enter into what I call a hall of mirrors,
Speaker 1: like in a haunted house where it's kind of an
Speaker 1: infinity loop of mirrors going back and forth, but one
Speaker 1: of them's warped, and so the image changes when it's
Speaker 1: reflected back to you. Right like that.
Speaker 4: It's a great example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the mind can make I forget who said
Speaker 1: this that the mind is a place of its own.
Speaker 1: It can make the heaven out of hell and a
Speaker 1: hell out of heaven. Yep, I need to find the
Speaker 1: source of that quote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to say Blake, but I'm not sure
Speaker 4: if that's true. Okay, So we've talked about trauma as
Speaker 4: this adverse experience where our defense mechanisms are mobilized. You
Speaker 4: talk about one of trauma's overarching effects is a narrowing.
Speaker 4: Talk to me about what you mean by narrowing.
Speaker 1: Well, you actually just gave us a very elegant example
Speaker 1: of it with the last question. Honestly, what you were
Speaker 1: describing that downward spiral that has everything to do with
Speaker 1: somebody's subjective perception and not necessarily what's actually happening, but
Speaker 1: it's real to a human body. That's a form of narrowing.
Speaker 1: Someone's social world getting smaller and smaller, someone's perceptions of
Speaker 1: possibility and perceptions of the humanity around them getting more
Speaker 1: and more contracted. It's quite literal too, at a neurological level,
Speaker 1: that in any moment of stress, we get a form
Speaker 1: of tunnel vision that we don't even necessarily notice in
Speaker 1: the moment until we snap out of it. We feel
Speaker 1: better and there's a sense of space. But anytime stress
Speaker 1: arises in the body, there's a sense of contraction of
Speaker 1: our awareness, our muscular and fascial system, it all contracts.
Speaker 1: But then that is also a psychological metaphor too, around
Speaker 1: our self esteem, our community. We're seeing this hugely in
Speaker 1: our world right now, that our sense of community and
Speaker 1: that loneliness epidemic that's going on. Or how many people
Speaker 1: in the face of the pandemic started saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: I actually like this isolation thing. This works for me, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Or how many people it didn't work for, but they
Speaker 1: were so habituated to it after we were coming out
Speaker 1: of the pandemic that it was difficult to learn. You know,
Speaker 1: people have been saying, I've been learning how to human again,
Speaker 1: you know, So that's another example of a sense of contraction.
Speaker 1: But you know, all the way up to and including
Speaker 1: our sense of connection to nature, to wonder, to spirituality,
Speaker 1: our sense of connection to our life's purpose. The really
Speaker 1: big can also become quite narrow and quite contracted, and
Speaker 1: we can feel quite limited when traumatic stress is abiding
Speaker 1: in the body and totally unmet.
Speaker 4: There's one other description you use of trauma that I
Speaker 4: think can be helpful to understand, and you say, trauma
Speaker 4: becomes like a record skipping in the same spot, unable
Speaker 4: to complete the natural continuum of the song.
Speaker 1: So everything moves in cycles in nature, you know, every
Speaker 1: cycle wants to complete itself, whether we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: the cycles of the seasons, the cycle of breath, you know.
Speaker 1: And we certainly have emotional and mental patterns as well.
Speaker 1: And when traumatic experience disrupts the nervous system, you know,
Speaker 1: we can think about just how many thoughts we have
Speaker 1: that perseverate on the same point over and over again,
Speaker 1: or how if you get in an argument with somebody,
Speaker 1: you might stay up till three in the morning thinking
Speaker 1: about what you should have said or the way you
Speaker 1: could have got them better. Right, Yeah, Like that's one
Speaker 1: small example of what can go on. But all of
Speaker 1: us have emotional patterns in our lives, right like, I mean,
Speaker 1: my go to is depression. That's one pattern that's been
Speaker 1: in my licence I was very small. Other people have
Speaker 1: anxiety as what's on their heavy rotation, so to speak.
Speaker 1: And so what trauma does is basically amplifies that natural
Speaker 1: continuum and makes it so that a person gets stuck
Speaker 1: in a loop that isn't of their preborn disposition, isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily of their personality or will, but is a conditioning
Speaker 1: of the nervous system. And really, I think that those
Speaker 1: repetitive cycles that we enter into is actually the body
Speaker 1: asking us for healing. I talk about this to a
Speaker 1: great deal in my first book, The Monkey is a
Speaker 1: messenger that, if we think about it, those repeat experiences
Speaker 1: where maybe we're projecting something that happened in childhood onto
Speaker 1: a person who's in front of us right now, is
Speaker 1: in a way the nervous system saying, hey, I didn't
Speaker 1: get my needs met the first go around, I'm hoping
Speaker 1: to get them met now. And I'll just say briefly,
Speaker 1: the hopeful aspect of this is, first of all, anytime
Speaker 1: there's a cycle that repeats, you can get to know
Speaker 1: that cycle and learn the moment in the cycle that
Speaker 1: you can drop out of it. You can break the
Speaker 1: cycle if you get to know it. And two, the
Speaker 1: love and compassion we didn't get the first go around.
Speaker 1: We can actually offer to ourselves to respond to that
Speaker 1: question of the nervous system, Hey can I get this
Speaker 1: need met this time? And in that way we kind
Speaker 1: of smooth out the skipping of the record.
Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense. I love that word
Speaker 4: per severate. I have been thinking about it a lot lately,
Speaker 4: you know. I think any of us watch our mental world,
Speaker 4: and there are things we perseverate upon. And I've just
Speaker 4: been very tuned into that in myself lately, just like, oh,
Speaker 4: there it is. You're perseverating again on this thing that
Speaker 4: you've sort of already decided the plan of action of
Speaker 4: what you're going to do, and you keep sort of
Speaker 4: thinking about it.
Speaker 1: There's one school of thought that that mental activity is
Speaker 1: just fluff, it's meaningless, and I actually hold that view
Speaker 1: and contention. I think that that's parts of us kind
Speaker 1: of tugging at our shirt sleeve saying, hey, hey there's
Speaker 1: something here, Hey there's something here. Pay attention to me,
Speaker 1: Pay attention to me.
Speaker 4: So that idea has been on my mind a lot recently,
Speaker 4: but I've also thought about it for years, which is,
Speaker 4: to what extent do we take what's coming up in
Speaker 4: us as something that needs attention and we should focus
Speaker 4: on And to what extent is it an habitual pattern
Speaker 4: that just sort of comes up and there's not much
Speaker 4: to do with it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: And so my depression is one I've thought about, and
Speaker 4: I go back and forth on this. Right on one
Speaker 4: side of me, I find myself in a depressed state,
Speaker 4: and I think, Okay, it's trying to tell me something.
Speaker 4: What message am I not getting? But on the other hand,
Speaker 4: there are times that I've felt like it's been very
Speaker 4: useful for me to go, oh, this is like having
Speaker 4: the emotional flu. Don't make a big fuss out of this,
Speaker 4: take care of yourself in the way you normally take
Speaker 4: care of it, and it'll pass. And I kind of
Speaker 4: go back and forth with those things because a lot
Speaker 4: of times I've examined that and I haven't found anything.
Speaker 4: You know, I go in to examine it and all
Speaker 4: I find is just blankness. I'm like, okay, well, And
Speaker 4: so trying to know when something is worth excavating and
Speaker 4: when something is worth sort of treating as noise is
Speaker 4: a difficult thing, I think to figure out.
Speaker 1: Yes, it can be. What enters the conversation here is
Speaker 1: the internal family systems model and the view of the
Speaker 1: human psyche that's presented in that model, and in particular,
Speaker 1: this notion that we can be blended with the contents
Speaker 1: of our minds, or we can be unblended. In other words,
Speaker 1: we could be all wrapped up in those thoughts and
Speaker 1: feeling things and kind of like the body experiencing it
Speaker 1: as if whatever the content of those thoughts is happening
Speaker 1: right now. Or we could learn how to step back
Speaker 1: from those thoughts and be more of a witness, be
Speaker 1: more of an observer. We can unblend and put a
Speaker 1: little space between us and that mental activity and take
Speaker 1: a look at it. And when we do that, we're
Speaker 1: in a much better position to discern. Is this, you know,
Speaker 1: what we might call an ifs, a trailhead, you know,
Speaker 1: an opening to something that could take me down a
Speaker 1: path that would be worth exploring. Or is it just
Speaker 1: mental noise, the natural chaos of our neurology.
Speaker 4: Hey, friends, it's Eric. Let's talk about something hard. How
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Speaker 4: or stop reaching for that late night snack, But when
Speaker 4: the moment of choice came, something pulled you in the
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Speaker 4: and when we keep failing at them, it doesn't just
Speaker 4: derail our goals. It chips away at something deeper, our
Speaker 4: trust and ourselves. But it doesn't have to stay that way.
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Speaker 4: There does seem to be a certain amount of like
Speaker 4: you said, natural noise and chaos, that does resemble a
Speaker 4: habitual pattern. It is an habitual pattern. It's just a
Speaker 4: thought I think about a lot, trying to sort of
Speaker 4: determine when to delve deep and when to say, like, okay,
Speaker 4: let's keep moving here.
Speaker 1: I think if we can be curious so about that
Speaker 1: and not assume that it's mental fluff, right, and kind
Speaker 1: of get inquisitive within ourselves and maybe even ask questions
Speaker 1: inside of ourselves from a place of curiosity. This is
Speaker 1: another internal family system saying that. Actually, I find quite
Speaker 1: magic that if you're in a curious place and you
Speaker 1: start inquiring about parts of you inside that are active
Speaker 1: in your mind, oftentimes you get answers, and sometimes they're
Speaker 1: very surprising. Somebody might start with, hey, I seem to
Speaker 1: be obsessed with my inbox, for example, and like whether
Speaker 1: somebody's emailing me back or not, or whether somebody's texting
Speaker 1: me back or not, and I'd keep perseverating on that.
Speaker 1: It creates a thought loop for me. Well, you could
Speaker 1: get curious about that thought loop, and the content of
Speaker 1: it is what, like I'm maybe abandoned, or there's fomo
Speaker 1: I'm missing out on something you might be surprised you
Speaker 1: start exploring, you know, are their emotions in there or
Speaker 1: their sensations in the body. What happens if you get
Speaker 1: curious about it for a moment and when you start
Speaker 1: getting in touch with what lies beneath the surface. A
Speaker 1: lot of times, I mean I see this constantly in
Speaker 1: my therapy practice and then sitting with folks in meditation
Speaker 1: groups where we do this work that somebody will arrive
Speaker 1: at a place of like, oh, yeah, when I was
Speaker 1: a kid at school, nobody included me, and I felt
Speaker 1: ostracized all the time. I felt othered, I was bullied
Speaker 1: perhaps or at home, I was the middle kid who
Speaker 1: felt like they were never a special enough or something
Speaker 1: like that. There's so many examples of kind of a
Speaker 1: core wound that could lie what appears like something superficial.
Speaker 1: H I'm just obsessed with, you know, whether they texted
Speaker 1: me back or not.
Speaker 4: And I think that the amount of emotional energy that's
Speaker 4: present also can be an indicator. Sometimes. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 4: have a couple thought patterns, like phrases that come up
Speaker 4: that are very I mean, things like I hate myself
Speaker 4: comes up for a second, and sometimes I will examine
Speaker 4: that and just realize, like that doesn't feel like there's anything,
Speaker 4: and actually that's not true, because I've identified what when
Speaker 4: that comes up it usually is, right, It's usually a
Speaker 4: realization that I Am not going to be able to
Speaker 4: make somebody happy. It's a realization that either I'm going
Speaker 4: to have to make a decision that's going to make
Speaker 4: somebody unhappy or I'm caught between two people. If I
Speaker 4: do this, then they're happy, but then they won't be happy.
Speaker 4: And so I've kind of started to realize that that's
Speaker 4: what that is. So I guess as I'm saying this
Speaker 4: out loud, I am recognizing that I spent the time
Speaker 4: to diagnose and understand what it was, so that when
Speaker 4: it comes up now I can kind of look at
Speaker 4: it and allow it to in a sense become noise
Speaker 4: because to a certain degree, because I've recognized what it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what i would call benevolent ignoring, right, Like,
Speaker 1: in the name of love, I've got to like just
Speaker 1: let that be a stream of thought on the side,
Speaker 1: you know, But one could also choose to take that
Speaker 1: as a part of themselves that maybe again has missed
Speaker 1: out on love and compassion in some way. You could
Speaker 1: explore the history of that you know very well might
Speaker 1: come down to a core wound, something experienced in childhood,
Speaker 1: something maybe even that you thought was negligible, that happens
Speaker 1: all the time. One could also enter into a relationship
Speaker 1: with that voice inside. You know, what is that voice
Speaker 1: really trying to do? You said, there's a fear there
Speaker 1: around I'm not going to be able to make someone happy,
Speaker 1: and so I would suggest, you know, maybe that's a
Speaker 1: defense mechanism of like trying to get you to avoid
Speaker 1: the risk of even trying by feeling low and small
Speaker 1: about yourself, right, which is necessarily a method of trying
Speaker 1: to keep yourself emotionally safe. Even if it's confused, even
Speaker 1: if it's distorted and off, it's still a part of
Speaker 1: you that's actually, if we look at it from a
Speaker 1: certain angle, is acting benevolently with a voice of like
Speaker 1: I hate myself, which is bananas. I know it's convoluted,
Speaker 1: and yet this is what we discover all the time,
Speaker 1: and when we do this deeper curiosity based searching inside
Speaker 1: and inquiring inside. So there's a lot there and again
Speaker 1: just something that seems like ephemera. Actually, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a tip of an Iceberg basically right right.
Speaker 4: I love that idea of benevolent ignoring at points, and
Speaker 4: it makes me think, oh little bit about cravings for
Speaker 4: drugs and alcohol. Yeah, like trying to discern, you know,
Speaker 4: when is this craving telling me something important? And when
Speaker 4: is this craving a physiological response or habitual response? Yeah,
Speaker 4: and working with that energy also.
Speaker 1: And don't we both know it as former drug addicts,
Speaker 1: both of us, you know, and with heroin the most
Speaker 1: intense of all, I mean, fentanyl and now has come
Speaker 1: along and knocked that statement out of the water. But
Speaker 1: everybody has craving in their lives. Everybody has some level
Speaker 1: of compulsive behavior, some sort of self numbing, self medicating
Speaker 1: kind of thing in their lives. And this is something
Speaker 1: we get into in section three of the book on
Speaker 1: inner reparenting, that you have to learn how to also
Speaker 1: hold a benevolent no and let that part of you
Speaker 1: have a tantrum and maybe throw a fit. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's that whole modality of urge surfing where you say
Speaker 1: no to the urge and you watch it cress and
Speaker 1: you ride the wave as it gets really intense, knowing
Speaker 1: that eventually it will die. Down and you'll go back
Speaker 1: to your homeostasis. But you raise a whole different point
Speaker 1: around Is there a different kind of need that's belying
Speaker 1: that craving in me versus again just writing it off
Speaker 1: as mental fluff, something to ignore, and that doesn't have
Speaker 1: any meaning to it.
Speaker 4: Right, So let's spend a couple minutes on IFS. You've
Speaker 4: referenced it a couple times, some listeners are going to
Speaker 4: be familiar with it. Internal Family Systems. We did an
Speaker 4: interview with Richard Schwartz, who's the founder of IFS. But
Speaker 4: that's a big part of this book is Internal Family
Speaker 4: system So give us the couple minute overview of what
Speaker 4: IFS is sure.
Speaker 1: So IFS is rooted in the insight that we have
Speaker 1: a natural multiplicity to our psychological being. In other words,
Speaker 1: just like your body is constructed of many parts and
Speaker 1: yet it's one body, but your hand is a distinct part,
Speaker 1: and yet it too is the body. It works like
Speaker 1: that with our psyches as well. We can identify that
Speaker 1: there are defensive parts of us. There are parts of
Speaker 1: us that hold woundings, usually in the background, and there's
Speaker 1: parts of us that are trying to manage our lives
Speaker 1: and proactively hold us together, keep the ship from falling apart.
Speaker 1: And yet beyond that we have you know, heart energy
Speaker 1: as well. We have what in IFS is called self
Speaker 1: with a capital S, that we know to be present
Speaker 1: anytime there's the sense of openness inside that might have
Speaker 1: some calm to it, might have some love, some curiosity,
Speaker 1: some friendliness, openness. And so we identify all of these
Speaker 1: mind states as discreete parts that are in relationship with
Speaker 1: one another. And the idea here is it really is
Speaker 1: an internal family. We have all of these parts that
Speaker 1: are sometimes in conflict with one another, you know, called
Speaker 1: being at war with myself. Everybody experiences that every day.
Speaker 1: You know, one part of me wants this, the other
Speaker 1: part of me knows that that's a bad idea, and
Speaker 1: I'm struggling now with it right. And so the idea
Speaker 1: here is internal family, meaning I can begin to assume
Speaker 1: these different parts of my mind are like individual family members,
Speaker 1: wherein everybody wants the same thing to be seen, to
Speaker 1: be heard, to feel held, to feel safe, to feel loved,
Speaker 1: to feel respected, appreciated. Just like in any literal external family,
Speaker 1: everybody wants those same things. And when we begin a
Speaker 1: process of offering self love, self compassion to these different
Speaker 1: aspects of our psychees, something really beautiful begins to happen.
Speaker 1: Those parts of our minds begin to shift their presentation,
Speaker 1: and we tend to organically begin moving in the direction
Speaker 1: of healing, insight, awakening, transformation, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: That's the basic gist. Okay.
Speaker 4: So we have these different parts inside of us, which
Speaker 4: all of us can recognize at least that multiplicity. And
Speaker 4: I think even if that's all that we take from
Speaker 4: ifs like if that was where you left it, just
Speaker 4: to recognize that multiplicity inside of us and be able
Speaker 4: to identify what these different parts of us are wanting
Speaker 4: to do, I find to be incredibly helpful. Just that
Speaker 4: very idea.
Speaker 1: I think it was Young Pueblo, the poet who said
Speaker 1: I stayed with my anger long enough to realize its
Speaker 1: real name was grief. Right. We all get that, we
Speaker 1: all get that there's these layers to add. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the idea there is you know that there's also a
Speaker 1: saying that anger is sad's bodyguard. Right, You stay with
Speaker 1: a mental affliction long enough to get down to the
Speaker 1: other parts that are being protected underneath. Nobody wants to
Speaker 1: have their sadness, their vulnerability, their childhood wounding out on
Speaker 1: the surface layer running their lives, they would cease to
Speaker 1: be able to function right, And so we need other
Speaker 1: parts of us to kind of hold that more vulnerable
Speaker 1: material at bay. And then when that vulnerable material gets triggered,
Speaker 1: we need parts of us to swoop in and address
Speaker 1: this situation because maybe we're being attacked, maybe we need
Speaker 1: to get out of there. Maybe you know, there's a
Speaker 1: threat to our survival.
Speaker 4: This is a question that is more curiosity driven than
Speaker 4: anything else, which is from a neuroscientific perspective or neurological perspective.
Speaker 4: Do we have any sense of what these parts actually
Speaker 4: are because we're talking in metaphor, right, We're talking in
Speaker 4: metaphor to some degree? Or do you not think we're
Speaker 4: talking in metaphor?
Speaker 1: That is up for debate and the jury is out. Okay.
Speaker 1: I do think that we're anthropomorphizing the nervous system, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's the most successible view that I
Speaker 1: order narrowly acquiesced to. There are some folks that are like, no,
Speaker 1: these are real sub personalities that you should treat like
Speaker 1: other people that are inside of you. There is that
Speaker 1: view within IFS as well. And I can't actually answer
Speaker 1: the question, but I do know that there's a neuroscientist,
Speaker 1: a Buddhist neuroscientist named Kelly mcconagall. I believe she lives
Speaker 1: in Japan, and she wrote a number of really brilliant books,
Speaker 1: including The Willpower Instinct. And I do know that she
Speaker 1: talks about how when different regions of our brain are activated,
Speaker 1: we are literally a different personality. And so there is
Speaker 1: some neurological underpinnings of this, but this is something that
Speaker 1: the folks in the internal family systems world deeply want
Speaker 1: to study, Like, Yo, can we get somebody in an
Speaker 1: fMRI machine doing what we call parts work and entering
Speaker 1: into self compassion with like maybe an angry part of oneself?
Speaker 1: And what is happening in a human nervous system when
Speaker 1: that goes on. I mean, what we know with if
Speaker 1: US work, even though much there is research on it now,
Speaker 1: it is an evidence based model, but we also know
Speaker 1: anecdotally from therapists and clients and people who experience this work,
Speaker 1: a wide range of people who experience this work, that
Speaker 1: a lot of what we do find in these processes
Speaker 1: these self compassion processes are incredibly consistent, are incredibly consistent
Speaker 1: across the board, such as finding out that anger is
Speaker 1: protecting a sad part of you, such as finding out
Speaker 1: that when self compassion enters the picture, everything inside begins
Speaker 1: to change its shape somehow. For me as a therapist,
Speaker 1: I've found that if I can really be in the
Speaker 1: heart of compassion as I'm sitting with traumase survivors all day,
Speaker 1: hour after hour, session after session, and I don't like
Speaker 1: to take breaks in my day either. So if I'm
Speaker 1: in the space of compassion, genuinely inside in the body,
Speaker 1: that day is not going to burn me out in
Speaker 1: the same way as if I'm being analytical with folks
Speaker 1: and thinking about what's the solution to this problem and
Speaker 1: just kind of in a maybe a more habitual mind state.
Speaker 4: You say that the guiding reality for healing trauma, and
Speaker 4: thus the north star of the entire book is that
Speaker 4: we cannot go wrong with compassion. And we've talked about
Speaker 4: self compassion. Self compassion is I sometimes feel like it's
Speaker 4: a little bit like for people who really struggle with it,
Speaker 4: it's a little bit like you can get a loan
Speaker 4: from a bank when you really don't need one. Right,
Speaker 4: Like you go to the bank, if you really are broke,
Speaker 4: you're not going to get a loan. If you've got
Speaker 4: tons of money, they're going to loan you money. And
Speaker 4: self compassion if you're broke, feels very hard to get
Speaker 4: or generate, right, it feels very difficult. How do you
Speaker 4: encourage your clients or the people in your programs to
Speaker 4: start to access that energy? Because we do know, I
Speaker 4: think that it is extraordinarily healing and really important for
Speaker 4: a whole lot of different different things. How do we
Speaker 4: start to get it if the message we've carried and
Speaker 4: the way we've felt about ourselves for most of our
Speaker 4: lives has been one of really disliking who we are.
Speaker 1: Great question, Great question, and thankfully there's a number of answers,
Speaker 1: because you're right, many of us haven't had a model
Speaker 1: for what that could look like, that that we got
Speaker 1: to internalize, such as an early caregiver, early school teacher.
Speaker 1: Many of us haven't encountered somebody who really exudes love
Speaker 1: and compassion such that our nervous system knows what that's
Speaker 1: like and has a reference point for how to get there. However,
Speaker 1: there are reference points and models all around us at
Speaker 1: all times, and the easiest one that I can point
Speaker 1: to is the Earth. Actually, if we think about the Earth,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why people gender the Earth and call
Speaker 1: it Mother Earth, right because there is We know that
Speaker 1: there are negative ions in the Earth that put our
Speaker 1: body into a healing mode. We know that our gut
Speaker 1: biome absorbs useful bacteria when we're in nature. We know
Speaker 1: that the Earth is constantly propagating all species of life,
Speaker 1: and the Earth has provided even the materials that made
Speaker 1: this computer that I'm talking to you on, and the
Speaker 1: couch that I'm sitting on, and the raw materials of
Speaker 1: my apartment that I'm in right now. The Earth is,
Speaker 1: you know, propagating species that are recycling the air so
Speaker 1: that I it's the right mix of gases for me
Speaker 1: to breathe. I mean, if that ain't love, I don't
Speaker 1: know what is. That is incredibly generous, And you know,
Speaker 1: the Earth has a vast creative propensity as well, And
Speaker 1: so we can relate to the Earth, and I think
Speaker 1: there are other models that we can relate to to
Speaker 1: get in touch with if our minds are open to
Speaker 1: the natural world and to the reality of the planet
Speaker 1: that we inhabit if our minds are open to these ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a reason why. For centuries, for millennium,
Speaker 1: for problem, probably as long as humans have been around,
Speaker 1: spiritual teachings have come from folks going out in nature
Speaker 1: and just observing the way things work. Right, So the
Speaker 1: earth is a nurturer. There's a good model for what
Speaker 1: compassion is that we can begin to take in. And
Speaker 1: this is where meditation comes in. And something that I
Speaker 1: love teaching is is can you get in touch with
Speaker 1: the Earth's presence or at least imagine it, because again
Speaker 1: the brain doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality,
Speaker 1: and begin to take that into your body to create
Speaker 1: a reference point for yourself of what nurturance looks like,
Speaker 1: what compassion looks like. In case that sounds way too
Speaker 1: woo woo for somebody, I'll give you one more that's
Speaker 1: a little less out there. Also, there are entry level
Speaker 1: states of compassion, calm, curiosity, a little glimmer of openness
Speaker 1: inside the heart space, friendliness, kindness. These are certainly things
Speaker 1: that anybody can begin to open too with a little
Speaker 1: bit of training, a little bit of effort, and if
Speaker 1: you follow the thread that that creates within you. You
Speaker 1: will arrive at compassion eventually, and so not all hope
Speaker 1: is lost. There's lots of options.
Speaker 4: I like what you said about imagination because I think
Speaker 4: that imagination can be really useful in these ways. I
Speaker 4: may not be able to directly feel this thing, but
Speaker 4: I can imagine it. I can imagine what it would
Speaker 4: be like, and oftentimes it takes that sort of consistent imagining.
Speaker 4: My experience is before any real feeling comes along, the
Speaker 4: feelings often lag behind. You know, I read your book
Speaker 4: or we read somebody else's book, and it's like, okay,
Speaker 4: do this and sit down and visualize that and imagine that,
Speaker 4: do it. And I'm like, well, I didn't really do anything. Yeah,
Speaker 4: But continuing to do it a little bit by little
Speaker 4: bit oftentimes then feeling sort of comes along. It's that
Speaker 4: old saw that I use all the time of somebody.
Speaker 4: You can't think your way in the right action. You
Speaker 4: have to act your way into right thinking. And some
Speaker 4: of it the acting in this case is imagining.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we could actually do something right now that would
Speaker 1: take two minutes and would demonstrate what you're talking about
Speaker 1: to the listener. Are you up for that?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 1: Okay? So for anybody listening. Maybe not don't do this
Speaker 1: if you're driving a car or operating heavy machinery, as
Speaker 1: they say, But even if you're just doing chores around
Speaker 1: the house or whatever, you don't even have to close
Speaker 1: your eyes. You can just take a breath, kind of
Speaker 1: come into being here with yourself, and think of a
Speaker 1: time when you felt love or compassion coming from someone.
Speaker 1: And please don't think of a time that would be
Speaker 1: very complex, but just a simple time. One moment where
Speaker 1: maybe somebody looked you in the eye with understanding or
Speaker 1: hug'g you like they meant it, or showed up for
Speaker 1: you in a time of need, something like that. To
Speaker 1: think of one moment where love and compassion were flowing
Speaker 1: towards you, And now, can you imagine what it would
Speaker 1: be like if you could really feel that right now
Speaker 1: in your body? What would that be like to viscerally
Speaker 1: sense love and compassion flowing into your body? What would shift?
Speaker 1: And then notice what's happening? Now? Did the dial move
Speaker 1: in that direction? Right? That was a quick and dirty version,
Speaker 1: but if you spend a little more time with that,
Speaker 1: it can become much more substantial. I love that trick.
Speaker 1: It's when I use a lot like if you can't
Speaker 1: get to gratitude, imagine what it would be like if
Speaker 1: you could feel a full body thank you. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: what that does is a primes are neurological systems to
Speaker 1: actually have the experience, and it's kind of a workaround
Speaker 1: in case there's a blockage or resistance. What did you
Speaker 1: experience just now?
Speaker 4: I thought of something that my partner Ginny does for
Speaker 4: me when I'm feeling bad, and yeah, it gives a
Speaker 4: bit of a warm feeling. Yeah, it's interesting. The other
Speaker 4: thing I've often done, like a similar example is you know,
Speaker 4: loving kindness meditation, where you sort of direct kindness to
Speaker 4: other people. I start by imagining how I feel about
Speaker 4: she's passed now, but a dog of mine beansy, because
Speaker 4: that is uncomplicated, simple and immediate, like that's warmth, like
Speaker 4: it's just there. And then I can sort of take
Speaker 4: that sort of feeling and see if I can move
Speaker 4: it around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, There you go. This is a
Speaker 1: wise intelligent use of imagination within the realm of knowing
Speaker 1: this thing about subjectivity and the brain that we've been
Speaker 1: discussing this whole time, that it's real to the body.
Speaker 1: So often even if it's not real externally. And I
Speaker 1: do want to say this is tricky. This is a
Speaker 1: tricky area in that somebody could be way off in
Speaker 1: the way that they're using their imagination. But if you
Speaker 1: are familiar with you know how basically the architecture of
Speaker 1: the psyche works, and you're using that power for good,
Speaker 1: then you know, very very useful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it also can get tricky because you know, Kristin
Speaker 4: Nev talking about self compassion, has said sometimes when you
Speaker 4: try and practice self compassion, you imagine it, you are
Speaker 4: in many ways reminded of all the times you didn't
Speaker 4: get it right. So you think about a moment of
Speaker 4: warmth from your mother and you're like, oh, that's nice,
Speaker 4: and then you think about the rest of your relationship
Speaker 4: with your mother, and all of a sudden you're in
Speaker 4: you know, complicated territory. Which is why you know, when
Speaker 4: I talk about beansy or you talked about it is
Speaker 4: like pick something simple.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is something that actually is part of why
Speaker 1: I went down the path I went down of focusing
Speaker 1: on trauma in my work and focusing on working with
Speaker 1: difficult emotions as a trailhead to trauma in my practice,
Speaker 1: both as a therapist and a meditation teacher. Was I
Speaker 1: would teach these thirty day self love challenges in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: once upon a time, fifteen years ago maybe, and we
Speaker 1: would do loving kindness phrases, but just for oneself for
Speaker 1: thirty days, and people would have the most intense like
Speaker 1: shame spirals, trauma reminders, all kinds of things. And when
Speaker 1: I got into self love practices, I actually I didn't
Speaker 1: have that, and so I was like, well, wait, I
Speaker 1: what do I do? What do I do? You know,
Speaker 1: in the Buddhist recipe is you just keep going with
Speaker 1: it and eventually it shifts. But in the context of trauma,
Speaker 1: if somebody's having that kind of activation long enough, then
Speaker 1: we have a self love practice that's actually re traumatizing somebody, right,
Speaker 1: which is bananas right right.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the longer you are in this sort
Speaker 4: of space of generalized healing, well being, mental health, is
Speaker 4: you start to realize that a lot of these simple
Speaker 4: prescriptions are anything but for certain people. This idea of
Speaker 4: like just everybody can do this and it'll be good.
Speaker 4: You start to realize, like that is a certain degree
Speaker 4: of being naive about them.
Speaker 1: It's always an if then proposition. If it's like this
Speaker 1: for you, then this might work. If it's like this
Speaker 1: for you, then you might need this other thing over here.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is the problem with the instagramification of
Speaker 1: self help and psychology and what have you.
Speaker 4: Yep, for sure, So I want to turn our attention
Speaker 4: to something you talk about post traumatic growth. We talked
Speaker 4: about the upward spiral. There's a phrase that you use
Speaker 4: that I really liked, and it was enlightenment within reach.
Speaker 4: Talk to me about that, because enlightenment is a very
Speaker 4: vigorously debated thing among people who care about such a thing.
Speaker 4: What is enlightenment within reach?
Speaker 1: So, yeah, this is a way that we can get
Speaker 1: our heads around this what a liberated experience would look like.
Speaker 1: And in the IFS model, they would call this becoming
Speaker 1: a self led person. In other words, you're healed enough
Speaker 1: that compassion, your heart energies are actually in the driver's
Speaker 1: seat of your life, and all of your defensive and
Speaker 1: wounded parts are kind of acting in service of that.
Speaker 1: And what that could look like. When we heal inner
Speaker 1: children and parts holding trauma, we begin to uncover more playfulness,
Speaker 1: more vitality, more of our the best of our childlike qualities, right, spontaneity,
Speaker 1: uninhibited and sweetness, joy, laughter, We begin to recover that stuff.
Speaker 1: That's part of the promise of doing trauma focused work
Speaker 1: on oneself is getting that stuff back. But when we
Speaker 1: do the reparenting work also, such as the compassionate no
Speaker 1: in the face of cravings like we were talking about,
Speaker 1: we begin to develop these other more mature qualities, you know, wisdom, discernment,
Speaker 1: and what have you. And so I think that enlightenment
Speaker 1: within reach something that we can have in this lifetime,
Speaker 1: if not relatively quickly as far as these things go,
Speaker 1: is a life where you've reclaimed the best of your
Speaker 1: childlike qualities within the context of mature qualities. So what
Speaker 1: would it look like if you had easy access to
Speaker 1: playfulness and laughter, spontaneity, joy, sweetness, and what have you,
Speaker 1: but you also had financial intelligence and emotional intelligence and
Speaker 1: ninja level communication skills and an altruistic spin on your
Speaker 1: life where you were a service of others. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever buddhahood is, I think that's good enough.
Speaker 1: You know, I'll take that much.
Speaker 4: Probably my favorite line in the book, you're describing this
Speaker 4: best of both world scenario and you're sort of saying like,
Speaker 4: you know, if you only get that playfulness but you
Speaker 4: don't add a certain degree of maturity to it, right,
Speaker 4: that can be problematic. If, on the other hand, if
Speaker 4: you cultivate full maturity without wonder and spondaneity, we'd be
Speaker 4: like replacing all playgrounds with DMV offices. That's good, that's
Speaker 4: a good metaphor.
Speaker 1: Nice gotta have two wings to fly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I appreciated that. So in that section, you talk
Speaker 4: about two key energies we need to bring about these
Speaker 4: both worlds scenarios, and you talk about subtraction and addition.
Speaker 4: It's become very common in certain spiritual parlance for people
Speaker 4: to talk about subtraction. You know, you need to unlearn
Speaker 4: everything and just subtract. But you're saying we need kind
Speaker 4: of both of those. Talk to me about what each
Speaker 4: of those are and how they come into harmony together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's right here in this enlightenment within
Speaker 1: reach model, right, the subtraction element is healing the traumas,
Speaker 1: unburdening ourselves of the pain, shame, and fear we've carried
Speaker 1: around our entire lives, which can happen relatively efficiently depending really,
Speaker 1: but in the space of compassion and good support, good community.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely possible to begin unburdening your traumas. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's the subtraction piece that allows us again to reclaim,
Speaker 1: you know, these really wonderful qualities that were maybe lost
Speaker 1: along the way. But again the addition pieces is the
Speaker 1: cultivation of those mature qualities. And that much isn't going
Speaker 1: to come from focusing on your traumas. That is also work.
Speaker 1: We have to go out and do you know, you
Speaker 1: can't go to therapy and work on your childhood traumas
Speaker 1: and then suddenly know how to work with your finances
Speaker 1: or be more skillful in your place of business or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. And this is you know, also a
Speaker 1: piece of the Buddhist path as well, right, is how
Speaker 1: do we cultivate skillful means? How do we walk that
Speaker 1: afold of learning how to be nonviolent with our speech
Speaker 1: and nonviolent in our relationships and thoughtful about what we
Speaker 1: do for a living and how we're contributing or not
Speaker 1: contributing to the suffering of the world. Right. So it
Speaker 1: is a path simultaneously it goes in both directions of
Speaker 1: somehow becoming younger again and finishing with growing up. At
Speaker 1: the same time, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that old gardening analogy is a
Speaker 4: good one. You have to plant seeds and you have
Speaker 4: to pull weeds, right, Like, both those things are pretty
Speaker 4: critical to a garden. If you're not doing both of those. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, you could pull the weeds out, but you're
Speaker 4: gonna have not a whole lot there. And you can
Speaker 4: plan a lot of seeds, but they'll get choked out
Speaker 4: if you have too many weeds.
Speaker 1: Oh and I've been choked out before many a times.
Speaker 1: But I love that analogy too because it points us
Speaker 1: in the direction of something else that a gardener does
Speaker 1: that work pulling the weeds and planting the seeds without
Speaker 1: knowing what the garden is actually going to look like,
Speaker 1: without an idea of what the final product is really
Speaker 1: going to be. You might know, like these are dandelion seeds,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to get a dandelion, but you don't
Speaker 1: know the shape that that dandelion plant is going to take,
Speaker 1: how tall it's going to become, how long it's going
Speaker 1: to live, how many flowers will bloom on it versus
Speaker 1: just petals and stems, Right, And I think that that's
Speaker 1: an important lens for us to look through when it
Speaker 1: comes to healing and growth, because there's this thing out
Speaker 1: there right now in the self help world of optimization,
Speaker 1: meaning I know what my life should look like, I
Speaker 1: know what my realized potential ought to look like. And
Speaker 1: therefore I'm going to engineer my inner work so that
Speaker 1: I go in that direction. That's not gardening. That's not gardening,
Speaker 1: and I think the way it really needs to work,
Speaker 1: or at least the easier way, the more human way,
Speaker 1: is I'm going to plant these seeds, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pull these weeds. I'm going to water this garden with
Speaker 1: love and good things. I'm going to stay consistent with that.
Speaker 1: I get to be in a process of discovery wherein
Speaker 1: I don't know how this is going to turn out,
Speaker 1: but I know that Dandelin is going to be beautiful.
Speaker 4: Yep, well, I think that is a beautiful place for
Speaker 4: us to wrap up. Ralph, thank you so much as
Speaker 4: always for coming on. It's a great book. Well have
Speaker 4: links in the show notes to where people can get
Speaker 4: the book and find all your other work.
Speaker 1: So thank you, yeah, thank you so much. Always a pleasure. Eric.
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