On Being a Healer in a Traumatized World by Gabor Maté Innovations in Psychotherapy Conference

out I want you to know that I'm looking at the chat in the Q&A you can put your questions in there you see a question you like go ahead and upvote it it'll bubble it to the top and we'll take your questions a little bit later here in the session for those of you in the room here uh you'll raise your hand and I'm going to get my steps in running around this place to bring you the microphone to ask your question so with that I'm going to cut right to the Chase and give you

Dr Gabor mate so the um the questions will the mics go around or do they I will take the mic around thank you and then all right well welcome to the session um it is a workshop so you expect to be working um I will um give some initial remarks I'd like to show you a video and then I just invite questions I'll tell you right away that um when you ask me a question you're just as likely to get a question back back and that's an invitation for you to engage in a conversation you

don't have to it's an invitation not a demand so you don't have to accept if you don't feel like uh answering my question just say I don't feel like answering your question um and um I might invite some of you to in fact is it possible to get a couple of chairs on stage cuz I might invite sometimes somebody to come up just have a conversation with me but let me just Plunge in the therapeutic approach that I helped to develop is called Compassion or inquiry and um how it evolved is very simple I was

in Family Practice I began to notice I had by the way I have not had one hour of formal training as a counselor or as a therapist or psychologist okay so anybody thinks they here for credentials go away okay um but what happened was that I was in fin practice I began to notice that who got sick and who didn't wasn't accidental there are certain personality traits lifelong patterns processes associated with diagnosis and which also and this is through whether I'm talking about addiction or ADHD or autoimmune disease or malignancy so that as I said

this morning these were not things that people mysteriously or calamitously acquired there were actually manifestations of their lives and that wasn't an overnight Epiphany was a gradual dawning of an awareness what I didn't know is that other doctors other researchers psychologists had also noticed the same thing and researched them and documented it it's just that nobody ever tells you this stuff in medical school so I can tell you in um 1939 there was a very famous teacher of medicine a medical doctor at Harvard University who like myself was a Jew from Hungary his name was

s Weiss he was so revered that to this day at Harvard there a som name day in his honor a research day and Som in 1939 gave a lecture to the medical school class at Harvard and he said that psychological and emotional factors are at least as important in the causation of illness as physical factors as physiological factors and it must they must be at least as important in the healing of them he was talking about the Mind Body Unity this lecture was published in the Journal of the Medical Associate American Medical Association in 1940

six years ago I was talking to a friend of mine uh psychiatrist at Harvard and he said to me now this is keep in mind they still have a day in his honor but this psychiatrist at Harvard said to me to talk about Mind Body medicine at Harvard to this day is to jeopardize your career in 19 72 I think it was there was a very famous American physician and uh psychiatrist George angle who said that the problem is that Physicians separate the Mind from the body and the and the individual from the environment and

he called for what he turned a bioc psychosocial view of medicine disappeared Without a Trace almost 2500 years ago in ancient Greece 2400 years ago Socrates said that the problem with the doctors of today is that they separate the Mind from the body we haven't come too far and when you wonder what that's all about there's many different factors but the fundamental one is um is our fear of pain and especially our fear of emotional pain now what is the fear based B on it's based on a very simple fact first of all in the

brain itself the same part of the brain the anterior singulate cortex that registers the suffering of physical pain also registers the suffering of emotional pain and the endorphins the body's natural opiates soothe both emotional and physical pain but for the Endorphin circus to develop properly they need the right environment just like I said this morning for the serotonin circuits the dopamine circuits endorphin circuits oxytocin circuits we all need the right environment and the right environment is the presence of emotionally present um consistently available non-stressed non-depressed attuned panting caregivers and those conditions in this Society are

not only lacking they're rapidly disappearing and if you want to look at the epidemic you know all these so-called genetic disorders ADHD well if it's genetic why the heck is it increasing all the time genes don't change in a population over 20 or 30 years if things are genetic then why is it that the risk for women for multiple sclerosis has doubled or tripled in the last 80 years genes don't change over 80 years I could go on but the point is that it's a fear of pain so it also when it comes to therapy

then the last thing we have to be afraid afraid of the people people's pain not that we should cause pain deliberately it's not our job to to trigger pain deliberately that's cruel but at the same time you must not be afraid of people's pain either in fact the fundamental thing that happened and I mentioned that this morning is that when you had pain as a child that's not a problem life brings pain and the Buddha recognized that 25 mil years ago you know that life is painful it's nature of life to bring pain to bring

suffering that's not the problem the problem is that we're all alone with the pain and there's nobody to Hold Us in it then becomes unbearable for the child and that unbearability then is what then causes the child I.E your future your client to develop all these defense mechanisms and adaptations so if you look at something like ADHD which I mentioned this morning the absent mindedness is not a disease It's A coping mechanism there's a lot of stress in the kids's environment when the not because the parents don't love the child but the parent is just

stressed the child is stressed how does the child protect himself well one way to protect yourself is to go absent minded to tuna to dissociate which then becomes wired into your brain CU that's when the brain is developing no you're told you got this disease no you don't what you got is a coping mechanism that had a value when it originally was adopted but it no longer has value and now Gets In Your Way same with pushing people people's emotions down as happens in depression that was a coping mechanism at some point but that same

coping mechanism or addiction genetic disease no it isn't it's neither a disease nor nor is it genetic what is it actually well let me let's just do a quick um survey here I'll give you a definition of an addiction that I don't think is particularly controversial so addiction is manifested in any behavior in which a person finds temporary pleasure or relief but then suffers negative consequences as a result of and does not or cannot give up despite the harm so pleasure relief craving in the short term harm in the long term inability to desist that's

one an addiction is and notice that I've said nothing about drugs it could be drugs could be the legal drugs with which it's perfectly legitimate to kill yourself like nicotine or alcohol or it could be the illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine could also be eating shopping bulimia self-cutting pornography compulsive sexual act out um work extreme sports many many things so it's not the behavior as such it's your relationship to it you can drink and not be an alcoholic you can eat and not be a food addict you can even do heroin and not be

a heroin addict not that I recommend it the question is the relationship to it craving relieve pleasure in the short term harm in the long term in to get up you got an addiction so with that definition in mind I'm just going to ask you raise your hand if you've ever had an addiction in your life okay well that's how common it is which also brings an interesting question of why do we ostracize the drug addicts so much when they're just like the rest of us that's another question I won go into now but here's

what I'm going to ask you now not going to ask any of you what you addicted to or when just in the front rows where I can hear you the question I'm asking is if you're willing to volunteer not what was wrong with the addiction and um in this book the uh this is not my book on addiction my book on addiction is called in the r of hly ghost but I do REI revisit the issue in two chapters in this book The the normal and the question I'm asking in this book is not what's

wrong with the addiction but what's right about it what does it give you in the short term that makes you want to keep going back to it so anybody in the front row what does it do for you Amy helps you keep going survive what what does it help you survive meaning meaninglessness so you got a sense of meaning somebody else yeah right behind you John yeah so the addiction helped to mitigate the loneliness of feeling the absence of connection okay meaning um sense of connection yes um the sense of like being validation and finally

being uh validated being validated okay thank you okay thank you yeah help me deal with helplessness s okay all right I could I could keep going and each of these manifestations that you've all articulated helplessness lack of meaning lack of validation these are form of emotional pain and nobody's born with them you never met a Wonder day old baby with a sense of lack of meaning hm what's life all about anyway you know you never got a one day old baby um who's healthy who needs validation they are their own validation so in other words

and my mantor therefore is don't ask why the addiction ask why the pain and if you want to understand why the pain don't look at people's genes look at their lives we're talking about trauma and the people people who are so nice and they push down their emotions their their their healthy anger now pushing down your Healthy anger by the way diminishes your immune system documented physiologically cuz that's one system think about it healthy anger we wired for anger you know our brains are wired for a whole range of emotions biological by Evolution and each

of these emotions are necessary for survival and we share these same emotional circuits with other mammals so we're we're wired for loving caring and we have Associated brain circuits with endorphins and oxytocin and prolactin and so on WE provir for curiosity seeking Vitality without that no creat survives we're wired for grief we're wired for fear these are all essential we're also wired for anger and anger is simply a boundary defense healthy anger I'm talking about I'm not talking about excuse me toxic rage I'm talking about healthy anger it's simply a bounding defense if I were

to intrude on you right now you better say no get out it's my space that's healthy anger it's a boundary defense in fact the role of emotions in general is what is to allow in to invite in that which is caring and nurturing and welcome and to keep out that which is not that's in generally the role of emotions now trick question for you what's the role of the immune system the same damn thing keep up whatever is unhealthy and toxic and dangerous and to welcome in that which is nutritious and life supporting now not

only do they have the same role they are the same system physiologically scientifically although they don't teach you this in the medical schools for some weird reason but which other issue it's one system when you're suppressing your boundary defenses your Healthy anger you're suppressing your immune system as well which then just as healthy anger can if you suppress it can turn against you in the form of depression and self-loathing it can also turn against you physiologically through autoimmune disease but the immune system is now attacking you so these connections are pretty straightforward scientifically not in

the least uh controversial and completely ignored in most of medical education but what we're talking about in all of these Cas so so whether it's addiction which is an attempt to escape from Pain whether it's being nice so that people will like you because they didn't get the love you needed so now you have to be very nice so people will like you and that's just a compensation all these compensatory mechanisms came along for a good reason and now they're creating problems for you so the essence of it all was a disconnection from the self

and that disconnection if we're compassionate about it wasn't a mistake on your part it wasn't a it wasn't um a decision that you made it was simply how you survived because the child has these two needs well I should say a child has more than two needs but a child is born with expectations in fact that's not even true the child is not born with expectations the child has no conscious sense of expecting anything the child is an expectation it's an an expectation for food it's an expectation for oxygen our lungs don't expect oxygen they

are an expectation for oxygen they evolved in an oxygen bearing environment that's why we have lungs in the same way human beings evolved in a certain environment that met their needs so we're born with those expectations that will be physically nurtured and protected that will be emotionally cared for that will be seen understood validated accepted valued those are the expectations the child is born with when that happens I should say when that doesn't happen either because overt big te trauma like the adverse sh experiences that we talked about these days or because not because anything

terrible happened but simply because the expectations that the child was born with for being validated seen held emotionally understood valued weren't meant that's also wounding so you can wound kids by doing bad things to them that you shouldn't you can also wound kids just in an environment that's not able to meet the expectations that the child is and in a country like the United States where 25% of women have to go back to work within 2 weeks of giving birth and mostly of course poor women and women of color do we wonder that there all

this epidemic of childhood so-called disorders and diseases these are in fact normal responses to abnormal circumstances that's why my book I talk about the meth normal so amongst the child expectations primary is attachment which is the drive for closeness and proximity with another human being for the purpose of being taken care of or for the purpose of taking care of the other we're wired for it most of us are capable of holding on to that if we don't we go into politics but that's the whole other question well I mean the uncaring things they do

in Britain the new labor government you know the first thing they did they cut off heating support for for poor elderly that's the first thing they did that's a tremendous Act of non-caring you have to be totally emotionally shut down to be able to do that to people it gets pretty cold in Britain in the winter time I could go on so we have this need for attachment to be close to somebody to be taken care of but we have this other need and I'll illustrate this with another question for you have you ever had

the experience of U having a strong gut feeling about something and then you ignored it and then you regretted it afterwards so if you had that experience raise your hand okay again the vast majority now you just told me the story of your childhood because God feelings are nature driven biologically embedded evolutionary survival mechanisms the gut has more serotonin than the brain does the gut sends many more messages to the brain than the brain sends to the God be evolved out there in nature until a few thousand years ago through a Evolution millions of years

of human evolution hundreds of thousands of years of our own species we left out in nature how long does any cre creature in nature survive without connection to their gut feelings so it's not a luxury but when you put your hand up you know what story you told you told the story that at some point you got the message that if you stay connected to yourself you will not be accepted so there's this what in the methan normal I call the tragic tension between on the one and attachment and then the other authenticity ideally and

this is what you want for your clients you want them to be able to find meaningful relationships in which they can be themselves without having to pretend without having to selfs supress it's difficult enough as you know even for an adult to maintain that sense of authenticity if that threatens your relationships and especially if there there are other social cultural factors if people are racialized it becomes even more difficult the Great American black writer James Baldwin said that to be a black United States is to live in a state of suppressed anger all the time

but a black person who's angry we know what happens to them in this culture women who get angry what happens to them in this culture so even for adults the drive to be authentic is so difficult to to manifest and to realize for a child if you got the option of being authentic expressing your emotions which is in need of yours it's a child's need to express all their emotions rage anger fear grief pain and they have those emotions validated accepted and received with compassion by the adults now when the adults can't do that let

alone if you're being abused you have a choice to make I can be authentic and lose the attachment figures on whom my life depends or I can suppress my authenticity for the sake of attachment and that then becomes a lifelong pattern and everybody who walks into your office that's what they're bringing to your office at some point I had to suppress myself and then I had to run away from the pain through addiction or through excuse me self-suppression whatever so there's a way back I'm going to quote you now Peter line who's one of the

great trauma theorists and Pioneers and Peter wrote in his recent book um and I'll have the pleasure of working with Peter and also with Bessel and others in Scott lions and others in a couple of weeks in Massachusetts Peter writes we all have the capacity to heal I believe there exists in humans a fundamental Primal drive towards wholeness and health in fact wholeness means health health means wholeness literally that's what it means this includes access to a part of ourselves that has always been within that lives beyond any trauma and is eternally whole and undamaged

it is a part that could be called the true self or real self I would only add that this drive is to become more like our true self more like who we really are outside of our roles and personas he says in my experience this drive is akin to that innate impulse towards curiosity and exploration so the whole idea of my compassion Cory is that I'm assuming that the answers are within everybody if you ask the right questions and Peter says sadly this Primal instinctual energy is all too often forced underground by oppressive oversocialization overwhelmed

by toxic stress and trauma but he says nevertheless this powerful resource lives deep within all of us and lies in weight ready to be awakened at the right moment so that's what we're banking on is that that true self is there that the right with the presence of compassion people can drop their defenses so they can really find who they are and that may be attended by experiences of pain and grief they're welcome again not that you deliberately set out to evoke pain but but that if people are getting in touch with what's there Pain's

going to arise and you welcome it and you're not scared by it and you don't try to distance from it I'm going to stop talking here and take questions but before I do I want to show you a video and this video is a two-minute message sent to me from Death Row uh by somebody um this is from Texas and as you know Texas executes people and Texas especially executes not exclusively but disproportionately black men so this guy whose name is Howard is in a death row in Texas typical story traumatized childhood age 13 he

gets into a gang for companionship and power and a sense of belonging they get into drugs and then at age 18 he kills somebody now in Texas there are two trials first there is the trial to determine guilt of course he was guilty he committed the murder then the second trial is about the sentence where the prosecution's job is to convince the jury that this man has no redeeming qualities no possibility of redemption he does not Bel belong on this Earth he must not walk this planet amongst us so is sentenced to death and then

the appeal process begins so this man has been in death row in a cage for the last 20 22 years and if you wins his appeal his best case scenario is life without parole that's what he can hope for now he thanks me in this message for my understanding of addiction but that's not why I'm showing it to you I'm showing it to you cuz I'm want to see show you guys what healing looks like so if I can get this video playing I just want to give a brief message no um I started to

play the video but oh yeah there it is okay yeah Dr kab think cuz he means can you turn the lights on a bit he's had a real impact on my life but um just directly to Dr kab excuse me can we turn the house lights on just for the video is that possible yes no working oh they're doing it okay all right can you dim it even more all right but let's I mean thank you for everything you do thank you for having the compassion that you have for people I wish there were 100

million people like you and but you're a perfect example of how like one person can have so much influence and so much power to change things in in the world and I want you to know that like even me I've had problems with addiction in my life when I was a kid I started smoking marijuana when I was um 12 and all the way through I smoke in prison I've done some drugs too just to try to cope coping mechanism for me but in the back of my mind deep down inside I knew that like

it was just me running away from my reality cuz I was afraid of it and there men like you in prison that sat down with me and they didn't brow beat me about the drugs that I did um they just spent time with me they loved on me they fed me uh they showed me who I was and they allowed me to be me but just being there the love for me was enough to to motivate me just to leave it behind to face reality and man I'm addicted now to living I'm I'm addicted to

looking forward to life to get contributing to life and I I just want to thank you man for the books you you've written in the realm of Hungry Ghost is one of my favorite books um but continue doing the work that you do uh we need you and I am so fortunate to be able to give you this message thank [Applause] you okay well now we can the light back on thank you so look it's not the personal thanks I going I appreciate the personal than um but what do you see in him don't you

see a light do you see a groundedness don't you see a sense of peace that you wish you had I do and a love of life he says I love life I'm going to contribute to life and this is a life that he's got to look forward to if he wins this case they'll be in jail for the rest of his life well what can you say about the possibility of healing how can you doubt the possibility of healing when you look at a man like that and what is it that allowed him to get

there he said it people came and visited him in jail who twet him with compassion so he was allowed to see so he could see himself for who it really is that's what we can all bring to our work so I'm going to finish this talk with giving you my five levels of compassion if you will and then we'll take questions and do some exercises so compassion is essential as a great spiritual teacher says only when compassion is present will people people allow themselves to see the truth now compassion as I distinguish it exists on

five levels one is what I call ordinary human compassion by ordinary I'm not dismissing it I'm saying it's really part of our makeup and actually it is this whole myth that we're by Nature uh competitive aggressive selfish and acquisitive is absolute capitalist nonsense it's got nothing to do with genuine human nature if you study people in their natural habitats Aboriginal people indigenous people around the world universally it's about giving it's about communality it's about generosity it's about contribution it's about being put part of something much greater than just your little self so ordinary human compassion

literally we're born with it we're born with it it's when we don't like to see other people suffer in fact we don't like to see other creatures suffer that's the first level not enough necessary not enough there also has to be what I call the compassion of understanding it's not enough that I don't like the see you suffer from a heroin addiction or from self-cutting or from bulimia I also have to want to understand the sources of those behaviors those dynamics that means I have to really be curious about your life what happened to you

that's the second level The Compassion of understanding that takes some work the third level is what I call the compassion of recognition now I don't know about you but I've never dealt with anyone whether they're hopelessly addicted Denis of down he side or more privileged people with anxieties and you know relationship challenges or anybody in between I've never been anybody where I didn't recognize to some degree something about myself in them and that's what I call the compassion of recognition so you know when I told my drug addicted clients that you know I got my

own addictions I don't do drugs but I lie and I cheat and I manipulate and I neglect my duties they said hey Doc you're just like the rest of us aren't you well here's the point we are all just like the rest of us and the compassion recognition brings you from this level of expertise and superiority to this now there's two human beings you might know more I hope you do but that doesn't make you an expert on them and the more you can recognize it in yourself and when appropriate even share when appropriate sometimes

it is sometimes it isn't so that's the compassion and recognition the fourth level I've already talked about is what I call the compassion of Truth and that means that when people recognize the truth it's going to be painful if you're afraid of people's pain don't do trauma therapy okay do some other kind of therapy behavior modification or this that but but don't do trauma therapy but you'll only be comfortable with other people's pain if you're comfortable with your own that's the compassionate truth which whatever is true needs to arise the fifth one is the most

difficult one of all and that's why I showed you the video with Harold and how many of you have worked [Music] in um high security prisons or people with death throw you will probably agree because this is a universal experience that they're some of the sweetest people you ever meet these murderers what are you talking about here's what I'm talking about this morning when I talked about sensitivity and I said that the more sensitive You Are by temperament by genetic temperament when things go well the better you'll do but things go not so well the

more hurt you're going to be some of these hardened criminals amongst the most sensitive people in the world when I say sensitive I don't mean sensitive in the sense of being aware of other people's problems I mean in the terms of the depth of their feeling that means when they were hurt and they all were they were really hurt and their violence and their aggression came from that pain that also means that when you go into that prison or when you go into that prison anybody does and treats them with compassion like happened with Howard

that se2 that sweet self that true self emerges and we see this all the time and I'm sure you've seen it in your offices as well so that's what I call the compassion of possibility that when you look at the person you're not just mistaking them for the demeanor for their behavior for their body for the tone of the voice but you see the true self in them that they don't see and you're a mirror for their true self but here's the trick if you're going to be a mirror you better keep cleaning yourself so

the most important work we ever do is on ourselves so that we can be that clear mirror all right questions yeah so let's just think the John's got the mic here yep all right I saw hands we start your mic okay dos um I guess I'm just going to say something a little controversial in the sense of being authentic um I was thinking about what you said about anger um and I was thinking about anger in men um and I know a lot of men that are terrified of accessing their anger say it again please

um I just have trouble hearing that's all okay yeah uh so I wanted to ask you about anger with men anger with men men yeah um so um you mentioned women but I I know I work with a lot of men almost all the men I work with struggle to access and express their anger their healthy anger yeah healthy anger yeah um and I was wondering if you had a suggestion how you would address talking to these people acknowledging the complexity of what happens to men um in and how you would talk to them about

the pain of grief and loss and how they would um maybe even access tenderness again stay with the mic would you thanks for the question yeah what difficulty are you facing when you're trying to do that work um they're so afraid of being uh rejected um or uh cancelled by their their Partners their friends they've often been abused or neglected have they've been told their whole lives that their pain isn't real so accessing that pain is seems terrifying to them because they'll be rejected yeah and they're man they're supposed to suck it up and uh

right not not not be vulnerable um but are you saying that these men have trouble expressing their anger uh little to know ability they're very afraid of conflict they're very nice because the frequent pattern with men is that they go from sadness to to rage in a split second right we're no longer talk talking about healthy anger yeah now we're talking about toxic rage right and what I'm saying is that's a story that we often tell that I don't see that's not what you see I don't see that I'm trying to challenge that story truthfully

is that what I see is a lot of men who are who have been abused and neglected don't have access to their feelings in fact they keep being told the story that you said I think you're totally right thank you but I don't think it's one or the other great okay now let me just ask you a the audience a question here okay if you've either yourself experienced as a male just let's start with the men in the room if you've experienced manifested toxic rage just raise your hand okay yeah so quite a few okay

the women if you've witnessed or being a subject of toxic male rage you raise your hand just about everybody so it's not that it's pretty common okay now I got it a certain subset of men will be suppressing themselves and not not even experiencing that toxic rage I got it do they feel safe with you that's why they talk to me about this yeah because they feel safe they trust me well my sense my guess is that if they feel safe with you then they will be able to access those emotions that's right they do

sorry they do well good when that's the answer to your question yeah I mean if you're able to show up with compassion for them where they feel safe then naturally they'll expect experience all that stuff yeah so I'm not sure that I appreciate your question I'm not sure what you thought about it was controversial but um I think we see both these are not gender issues these are not gender issues as such I think the story I just wanted to acknowledge is like like people like naobi way write about this this the story though your

of course the toxic rage is real yeah but really also acknowledging the very true reality that these men don't the the story that you're saying is the one that hear all the time that toxic rage is the norm and that makes no space for the also the narrative that there are many men who don't know how to access their feelings at all and feel incredibly silenced and that's a cycle of violence that just keeps reiterating itself okay I don't know if that makes any sense okay I got it thank you all right somebody else let's

I I want to make sure the web gets included too so we've got one online online yeah an online question asking you uh how do you think unresolved trauma especially uh from childhood impacts generation Z's mental health in the age of social media and constant comparison well let's separate the question into three parts first of all how does how does mational trauma how does trauma affect Generations just assume just assume that trauma is multigenerational cuz it is in Canada the indigenous people raised children much more in a healthy way than the Caucasians ever did they

never hit their kids they didn't abuse their kids they didn't yell at their kids their kids grew up very free very confident very um much into their bodies until colonialism came along and established these terrible residential schools such as also existed here in the US where generations of indigenous kids were sexually abused by the church and their teachers where they were beaten for speaking their own language where an indigenous little girl at age 4 had pins stuck in her tongue if she spoke her tribal language now if you look at the indigenous communities in Canada

sexual abuse of children is rampant Family Violence is rampant killings are rampant suicides are rampant addictions are rampant why because of multigenerational trauma and my own case I didn't talk about much about my own life I don't want to it this point but I passed on my trauma to my kids before I I I didn't know I was traumatized when I had kids it took me much later to figure all that stuff out and by the time I had beat past it on and I got bad news for all of you we always marry somebody

at the same level of trauma that we're at that's just the law this is like what water finding its own level so that means that two traumatized people are raising kids without having dealt with their trauma of course we pass it on so that that's just how it goes not because we mean to um you know pardon me I'm going to use some profane language here there's a British poet British poet laurate called Philip Lin and he wrote this book on parent this poem on parenting and he says they you up your mom and dad

they do not mean to what they did but they do they give you all the faults they had and add an extra few extra just for you and he ends the poem with by saying um Man Hands On misery to man it deepens like a coastal shelf get out as quickly as you can and don't have any kids yourself okay so that's that poem so that's that is multigenerational just take it for granted until one generation begins to work it out and break the chain of transmission and that can happen and it's probably happening significantly

in this generation now then you have the other question of the social media and the social media well first of all we know if you look at the impact on brain development of children who watch a lot of screens their brain damaged functionally their brain damaged I I quote that research in the metanormal more and more evidence to that fact so that actually we're damaging our kids and not only that children have a need they actually have a need it's one of the essential needs of children we have a circuit in our brain for play

as do lion cubs and dogs and kittens and Dolphins play is essential for brain development one of the essential needs of human children irreducible needs is free spontaneous play art in nature social media has destroyed that furthermore social media connects kids with other immature creatures so that immature creatures are now influencing each other across the airwaves in a ways that the parents don't even know about that is mentioned in one of my books got hold on to your kids um so the second level to the question was about social media I forget what the third

part was uh about comparisons about uh especially child mental health in the age of social media and constant comparison oh yeah comparison um let me tell you something there's something called evaluative stress evaluative stress they done this experiment where they took paid volunteers who are supposed to give a little talk in a front of a panel of Judges it was just a game they were getting paid to do this nothing dependent on it but the judges the the so-called judges were instructed to look bored and uninterested and critical and and those participants whose judges looked

bored and uninterested and critical they had higher stress hormone levels even Days Later evaluated even though it was just a experiment it had no significance now this Society evaluates you all the time for your looks for your smarts for your compliance and kids immature kids unmowed from adult guidance are doing that to each other all the time so the evaluative stress and look at these kids that get attacked or criticized on the internet to the point where they driven to Suicide why because they have no real sense of themselves the sense of the themselves depends

on what other people think of them in the absence of adult contact is what the Pierce think of them and when the Pierce speak badly of them it destroys them it affects their physiology and so on so all of these things okay yeah other questions thank you I'll go back to your lecture and you talked about compassion of recognition compassion of understanding compassion of Truth find it in ourselves first so I'm going to ask a very difficult one yeah we're approaching October 7th what what what what we are approaching October 7th yeah when the horrible

Massacre happened in Israel yeah where young children were murdered burnt babies in oven there that didn't happen there were no babies in ovens oh yes they were no there weren't that's been refuted even by the Israelis there were no there weren't there were there were no babies in ovens well but but but let's agree hold on let's agree on what we do agree on okay a horrible Massacre happened people were killed in their homes civilian hold on second raped stay look let's agree there was bad enough without adding stuff to it okay now I'm telling

you there's been no evidence of mass deliberate rapes no such evidence my gosh I'm sorry there's no such evidence oh yes of course there was no there isn't there there was a woman in the united nation that came to Israel and did the research and brought those evidence to thetion I'll let you I'll let you finish your question my question is how do I find compassion for these people which people the animals that did that the animals that did that I get your point of view okay in your point of view everything you read actually

happened the way You' read it hold on a second I'm telling you what I understand your point of view is there was mass rapes children beheaded put into ovens so on okay now objectively I'm telling you I looked at all the evidence I could there were horrible massacres let's agree on that okay there were hostages including young children and elderly people civilians that should never have been captured that were taken into a captivity let's agree on that okay on the specific issues of babies in ovens and mass rapes you and I are not going to

agree cuz I looked at evidence that you haven't looked at but hold on a second let's just let's just agree on what we do agree on okay and then let's take your question how do we have compassion for these animals well I'm not going to into a big political rant here but I'll tell you what I think think very quickly okay if I saw the world from the perspective that you see the world from I would 100% agree with you but that's not how I see the world that's not how I see the world number

[Applause] one number two I've been to Palestine 2 and a half years ago I went there to work with Palestinian women whove been tortured in Israeli jails which has been documented by Israeli Physicians for human rights by bet salum the the Israeli human rights organization by United Nations and others nobody ever talks about the thousands of Palestinians did you know that two Palestinian doctors were tortured to death recently by Israel doctors tortured to death now my question to you is and and I'm not going to go into the history this is not the place for

it but I have a different view of the history I used to see it the way you do I don't anymore I'm not going to I'm not going to go into I do see the history cuz this is not the just just let me finish honest to God I let I'll let I'll give you the last word I promise you I do promise you okay history did not begin on October the 7th and and here's what I know most of my fellow Jews now in Canada you know I mentioned the residential schools in Canada four

years ago there was a poll a national poll now thousands of children died in those schools people were tortured raped all kinds of stuff not even controversial there was a poll in Canada 70% of Canadians four years ago said they knew nothing or little about their residential schools 70% of Canadians knew nothing or little about the residential schools so what happened to indigenous people if you do a poll in the United States based on all the Hollywood movies that people have seen until very few years ago and even now in most people will know nothing

about what happened to the indigenous people here nothing the genocide the torture the rape the starvation they know nothing about it and in some states in the United States it's illegal to even to teach it in the schools now do you think the aage jeun knows anything about the indigenous people of Palestine now no just a second just a second so these animals that you talk about you know the first massacre of Palestinians in Gaza didn't happen last year didn't even happen four five years ago when they killed hundreds of children with their bombs it

happened in 1956 which just let me second just a second in in 1956 they massacred 200 civilians do you know about it do you know about it never heard you've never heard of it of course you haven't heard of it that's why you can call them animals otherwise you'd see them like human beings like the rest of us anyway I'm done go ahead yeah so human beings can murder and rape and maim and cut breasts of women that's okay no it's not okay well that's that's the message you're giving did I say it was okay

that's the message you're giving that's the clock I'm how many how many have you heard me say that it's okay to rape and kill people raise your hands I will finish with one thing there is a Nova by the way how do you feel about how do you feel about the the the rapes of Palestinian women by the Israeli Army in 1948 that's a false no it's not yes it is no it's not you know you know what you want to believe me read the Israeli historians well our opinions I lived it no I can

give I Liv it I I can give you the names let me tell you one thing in United States we teach kids I'm sorry you will let me finish in United States we teach kids how to be in bum in in fire alarm okay I'm done this is this is what happens people is you and I don't live in the same world but let me tell you one thing this is not about you and I okay there was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust called Edith Edgar have you ever heard of her okay she's a

therapist here in California she was on the same train to asit says my grandparents my father okay no no okay I'm talking I'm telling you something now okay I'm not debating with you anymore you and I don't live in the same world we don't you're a good person good heart we don't live in the same world just let me finish Edith was on the same train to aru as my grandparents her parents were on the same train my grandparents didn't survive she didn't her parents didn't survive either she did and at some point in her

book called The Choice which is worth reading she goes back to um burkhoff I think which is Hitler's lair in the Bavarian Alps and she goes back there to forgive Hitler okay and she says not because it's okay what Hitler did but because I didn't want to keep him prisoned in my heart anymore so I'm not here to preach forgiveness but I'm telling you that place where we call other people animals if you want to live there that's your choice I don't want to live there I want to understand people I want to understand what

happened to them I want to know why they behave the way they behave I'm not into justifying taking civilian hostages I said that was unjustifiable why you didn't hear me I don't know I said there were massacres that shouldn't have happened why you didn't hear me I don't know you know why you didn't hear me because you live in a bubble that's why anyway all right other questions over here gabber anybody by the way wants to know about my visit to the occupied territories there's a film online you can watch called where the olive trees

weep marer gor over here Gabor I'm over here over on this side sorry where are you yeah I'm here hi Amy hi uh being a heal let me just say this is difficult this is really difficult is difficult because this debate has been going on in the Jewish Community for over 100 years now not that you know that but it has been going for 100 years it's going on especially right now and you can see how whether I'm right whether my friend here is right whether neither of us are right just how big the feelings

are and it's even for people of goodwi like you and I and I know you respect me you wouldn't be here otherwise you know it's so difficult to communicate it's so difficult anyway Amy yeah being a Healer in a traumatized world yeah for me that has shown up as I am still doing my own work I'm still in my own expansion there's still way Wes that hit me and that I have to ride so as I work with patients or clients or course members whoever I'm working with how have you found that balance between me

sharing what I'm going through and to be authentic versus just holding that space for them and not sharing anything of of my own the question of sharing is is um vexatious one because on the one hand we're always told not to share about ourselves that it's unprofessional which I think is nonsense um but I but there is an there's appropriate sharing there's inappropriate sharing okay now it's it's always a question of why am I sharing if I'm sharing because I want sympathy then I'm using the client if I'm sharing cuz I don't look like a

good guy I'm using the client and the clients's in my office in the first place cuz they were used sometime or another but if I'm sharing because I want them to see that in our ESS essential Humanity we're not different then that's liberating for people so I never I I don't have an issue with sharing as as long as it's come from a place of I get it cuz I've had the same experience not oh poor me please help me or look how honest I am you know no just I get it that's your experience

that's my experience as well so that's where the sharing comes from that I think is healthy yeah another question yeah uh we're going to take one from the web here Cassandra wants to know why all these mindbody connections do you think why are they medically ignored what say that again why are all these mindbody connections these proven things medically ignored why are they ignored in the medical schools um well there's you know what I'm not going to answer that question and the reason I won't it's therapeutically not helpful okay it's not going to help anybody

if I gave you my theory lots of reasons the influence of money the pharmaceutical companies the the traumatization of doctors themselves how they uncomfortable you know I mean you know how do you build a cult you know how you build a cult you give them a uniform a special jargon you sleep deprive them uh you subject them to Authority and leaders you send them to medical school you know a lot of doctors are very traumatized if you measure the biological variables I'm not going to go into details of doctors in training they age faster than

other people their age so in order to look at trauma people have to look at their own they don't want to do that there's all kinds of reasons but you know what it's not helpful for me to to go into that and maybe it wasn't that helpful to engage in discussion either but there it was anyway carry on yeah hi Gabriel hi everybody my name is Pamela ains and just felt like need light in the load and validate some of that Gabriel was talking about you remember the video they showed of the young man that

was in jail and his story of drug use and so forth and um but we are hardwire to heal myself I am one as a health professional never taking movement for granted I talk about my story of resilience and my fight with debilitating disease and winning with Ms um never take I mean someone that had impeccable nutrition and as a scientist and researcher I said what I felt like when I got the when I heard Ms like a predator was lurking around ready to Ambush me but I said no when my my immune system this

system that's designed to protect me to um keep track keeps a score of germs I said no I I had to look back getting to the root was where the healing began and it tuck me on a journey going backwards to okay being in a trapped in a house fire and having Belle's pausy as a sophomore at University of Florida and I was like hm but I forgot about me and that suppressing healthy anger you know there are some things I needed to get angry back and say no that wasn't all right so I just

thought I wanted to show and we fight for ourselves so I have his books I have when the body says no so I encourage everyone in this room when the body says no rather it's a cold Co or cancer don't just take the status quo and say I'm accept that diagnosis but say um why my body why in me and what do I need to learn about me to be whole healing and whole and fighting Find Your Way Back to Wellness so okay thank you um when I was writing when the body says no and

by the way we're going to do an exercise now but before we take more questions we're going to do an oh stop it John listen to me before we do take more questions we're going to do an exercise okay but uh when I was writing when the body says no um I I hadn't done the research yet so I was phoned by a group of self support group for people with Ms multiple sclerosis and they said we heard you working on the book on stress and health would you come and talk to us and tell

us your theories and I said yeah I will so I went and and and I began with an apology I said look I'm so sorry I have no idea of what I'm saying is true I've done no research I'm just giving you my Impressions so if I insult you in any way at all please forgive me but here's what I think and then I told them that people who develop Ms are people who are very nice they have trouble saying no they suppress healthy anger etc etc when I finished the talk they all said you

just described our lives and I said great are some of you willing to be interviewed for the book so 23 of them out of 25 put their hands up they couldn't say no you know and uh and uh there was a woman there there was a woman there who says I can't even say the word now think about that one because if your parents if you are a parent what does your kids start saying at one and a half quite spontaneously no that's Nature's wisdom cuz nature says you need a barrier behind which you can

develop your yes if you don't know how to say no your yeses don't mean a thing so you better say no automatically so that's what an imp par called that the terrible toos I mean that's nothing terrible about it totally natural a friend of mine Ben was a doctor and no Harold was a doctor Ben was his three two and a half year old child and Harold said to Ben one day Ben do you want an apple and Ben said no I want an apple it's the will asserting itself now there's one moment there and

she said I can't say no I said okay good give me $100 right now she said I don't have $100 I said that's okay after the meeting we can go to the ATM machine and get it she said I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that I said I'm just trying to get you to say no to a ridiculous demand from a perfect Strang to whom you owe nothing whatsoever she says I can't do it so we're going to do an exercise now okay I'm going to ask each of you very quickly to find a partner [Applause]

[Applause] okay all right every's got a partner here's what's going to happen I'm just going to give this three minutes each okay you're going to put a question to each other and when the first partner puts the question to the second partner the first qu the the person who ask the question just shuts up they just listen you're not there to support or to validate or to empathize or to disagree with you just start to really get what your partner is saying at the end of 3 minutes and that's all we have time for usually

I make it longer I'm going to say stop switch image case now turn it around and then the second partner will put the first same question to the first partner and then the second partner now just listens With No Agenda your only agenda is to really get what your partner is saying here's the question tell me where in your life you have difficulty saying no all right that's the question now they shows up I'll repeat the question again tell me where in your life you have difficulty saying no now this shows up usually in two

major areas personal relationships spouses friends adult kids parents or in work so whatever you identify your difficulty saying no no but and here's what I mean but there's a no that wants to be said like when I say to this woman give me $100 she doesn't want to give me $100 so but there's a no that wants to be said and you're not saying it okay clear all right please start [Applause] [Applause] so and that's in little ways again like I enjoy being on all these things I get or four minutes talk to your partner

[Music] know [Applause] okay I'm fine please stop this is part of an exercise that is in the myth normal but I can give you the other parts very simply I've been told that this exercise Alone by the way before I go on I need to say something I apologize de okay you're asking a question and I love myself to get triggered and get into an argument with you so I apologize to all of you it's an example um it's an issue I lived with all my life I used to believe as this lady does I

don't anymore but I have tremendously strong feelings about it no excuse me let me just talk now okay no now all I'm saying is the proper response to your question what been I understand where you're coming from but this is not the place for me to address that issue that's what I should have said okay and uh nothing you said explains my own emotion reaction that's totally my own responsibility okay all right now this exercise in terms of um when you don't say no that's the first part you can do it once a week where

this week did I not say no where does a know that wanted to be said and I didn't say it just write it down second question what is the impact of my not saying no so if you actually look at the impact fatigue sleeplessness resentment worse all kinds of physical symptoms what's the impact self-criticism shame that's the impact the third question is what is the belief behind my inability to say no if I say no then they won't like me remember what I said about attachment versus authenticity they won't like me or if I say

no I'm selfish if I say no I'm letting down my responsibilities that's important because once you look at the belief you can actually question it is it really true does me saying no actually make me selfish if I been working all night and you call me up to have a cup of coffee in the morning with you and I said no am I really being selfish if I say no to you so that's the third question is now where fourth question is where did I learn that belief well you know where you learned it you

learned it in childhood fifth question is who would I be if I didn't believe that if I didn't believe that if I say no that makes me a bad person who would I be and the last question is where am I not saying yes where is there yes in my life that I want to express that I want to manifest I want to live but I'm not doing it cuz I'm too busy not saying no to all the other stuff so those two little words yes and no make all the difference in your life that's

just a little exercise you can do or teach your clients if you want to it it really does change things very quickly all right questions John if you run the mic around yeah let's take one from you as a social worker I'm curious about ways to change our system and I feel like you probably have a lot more experience with this than me um how would we start to advocate for this to be taught to Physicians on that level for like call for for PhD level or how would we advocate for change within our system

well look so first of all the change is happening I mean Harvard University now has this little mindbody Institute you know that's good Harvard University should be a mindbody Institute but at least they have something um more and more doctors are reaching out Beyond traditional medicine to functional medicine integrated medicine and all this um this conferences that you people are coming at to hear about Trauma from people like Amy and Nadine and Bessel and myself and others um this wouldn't happen 10 15 years ago this itself is a sign of change so I don't beat

my head I don't beat my head against walls trying to convince people of anything I just think we should all just speak Our Truth at whatever platform we have on whatever issue whether it be political or personal or therapeutic or professional and trust that there's a need for this in the world and the world will respond which it is I mean look um the first time I gave a public talk after my first book got published 25 years ago now there were six people there and two of them were my childhood friends so you know

just keep doing your thing is what I'm saying but don't worry too much about trying to change the institutions let natural erosion and evolution do that okay questions so we're we're going to take one from the web here uh Alexander asks if you can speak to the importance of language in our work and do you encourage people to use mindbody terminology regularly why or why not it's not that I um encourage people to use any kind of language it's that I notice what kind of language they use because when somebody's talking to you they're giving

you a narrative which is the thought content but then there's the words they use to express the thought content those words are always meaningful so I I you know if I was working somebody therapeutically I pay a lot of attention to the language to their verbal language also to the tone of their voice it's quite extraordinary how sometimes just to give it one example very immature and confident and competent women can sound like a 5-year-old little girl when they go back to that vulnerable hurt little self and then you notice that you notice that um

let me tell you an amazing story um I had a person once who was diagnosed with what was then called multiple personality disorder now it's called dissociative identity disorder so trauma base she had this she split herself into all these personalities one of her personas was that of an 8-year-old little boy and one and she had asthma so I prescribed for her a medication called theophine theophine is a liquid that you drink that keeps the Airways from narrowing so one day the 8-year-old boy calls me he's having Tremors and he's got nauseated he's got diarrhea

these are typical symptoms of theola filine overdose when she was when the when this person was in their 8-year-old body they had the physiology of an 8-year-old now I thought I was seeing things it's been described in the medical literature people in different personas with different eegs they'll have different responses to skin stimulation I'm talking about the Mind Body unity and to go back to this question a person's voice tells you so much about where they're coming from so whatever you do don't just pay attention to people's narrative you don't get lost in the narrative

pay much more attention to the language they use to their body language to the tone of their voice and and address them much more important than just dealing with the narrative that's my answer to that question yeah hi yes my question is to what level do you assert your authenticity as a person who is working to recover that and how much do you just give an emotionally immature person less access to you if they cannot accept that vulner ability with safety well wait a minute so let's start with the first question okay repeat the first

question again to what level do you assert your authenticity as a person who is recovering authenticity to what level do you what assert your own assert your who wants to know me I could lie and say my clients but I want to know okay you want to know all right so you're asking to what degree do you assert your authenticity when surrounded by unsafe people mhm what do you do well I've done work on giving those people less access to myself okay but I'm curious what your thoughts are on that approach well look now partly

it's situational if I had six cops with their guns pointed at me my first priority would not be to assert my [Laughter] authenticity but borrowing that extreme situation you have a decision to make you can have two kinds of pain the pain of self-suppression and pretense and self-denial or the pain of not being liked by some other people attachment versus authenticity I can't tell you what to choose you have to decide there might not be a painfree option and sometimes the the best you can do no if you can have authenticity and attachment great if

you have friends who can accept your authentic manifestation and say oh great but that's good but if some people in your life can't handle it cuz they're not ready for it and that's not what they bought in for when they established their relationship with you then you have a choice to make which pain would I rather have the pain of self-suppression or the pain of perhaps being rejected your call but there may not be a pain-free option okay at least not in the short term thank you all right does that answer it thank you okay

uh one from the web uh Tiffany let me see okay Tiffany shares she says she's on board with most of this for most of her clients yeah but the mothers that she's worked with who's lost uh your children have died by Suicide or homicide yeah uh trauma plus grief plus Injustice entwined it feels intolerable to them and she says who am I to say that it is not what feels intolerable to them the just the the trauma and grief the the the enormity of it all I think is she what she's saying it is intolerable

it's too much it's not what any human beings should have to deal with but but I don't understand the question because this is what it goes back to what I said you have to be able to be with people's pain you have to be able to be with people's pain I've worked with people recently who's lost and ter families and I have to be with their pain and so what I would say to the questioner is if you're not able to be with the pain of these mothers whove so tragically lost their beloved children for

whom they would have given their lives if they could have if you can't be with their pain then recognize your limitation or do the work that'll help you be with their pain and stay compassionate and still believe in life maybe you can achieve that stage if you can you'll be able to be with the pain of these women if you can't you might not be the person to help them okay hi I was wondering if you ever struggle uh finding the feeling of Hope in the work that you do just can you just wave your

hands okay hi yeah yeah go ahead yeah I was just wondering if you ever struggle with the finding the feeling of Hope or remaining hopeful doing this work I don't deal in Hope at all okay and you might say I'm hopeless okay um because hope is for something to happen in the future I don't go there I don't know what's going to happen in the future when I look at some situations I just see things getting worse in the short term that's my best assessment but ideal impossibility my question is what is possible for people

so when I see somebody like Howard or in another context when I see people who are supposed to be enemies actually embracing each other and supporting each other which I've also seen recently I see human possibility and that possibility is in the present moment so I just believe in possibility I believe in human possibility and and if I didn't we all do you all believe in possibility you all believe it's possible for people to transform to learn to change to let go of hatred to let go of judgment to find the common Humanity with each

other um to find their own Humanity that's not a hope of something happening in the future that's a possibility that exists in the present moment so it's that possibility that keeps me going not any hope for the future thank you yeah hello can you hear me hi amazing hi um so this morning um you shared something that really resonated with me you mentioned how you wet the bed until you're about age 13 and that just again I just I could relate a lot to that and I was just wondering um it's something that kind of

filled me with deep deep shame and I really just disconnected completely from my body for years and shame you said shame yeah are you willing to come up here oh boy sure [Applause] thanks all right thank you hello hi what's your name Emily nice to meet you hi nice to meet you so you talk to me about shame what about shame yes so I'm wondering if you had similar feelings with shame with that um just the like loss of sensation over your body and just it being such a vulnerable thing to happen to you and

for it to be happening like later in life later than normal um and it's I just I never connected it to a slow down a sec yeah I'm nervous okay what are you experiencing right now um activation yeah what else um sweating nervousness okay all right hot what about in your body in your chest um my heart is beating very very fast my shoulders are up here Fe okay is there some fear for you yes what's the fear uh the fear is that I'm going to embarrass myself or stutter and embarrass yourself meaning what sharing

something too vulnerable or that I think isn't going to be beneficial for others and only beneficial for me okay so there's a couple of things here okay first of all if in this room of I don't know how many people you saw somebody else come up on stage and share as you have shared what would you think of them thought they were really Brave uhhuh yeah so do you notice that that you look on other people with more compassion than you look at yourself okay you notice that and that's a constant theme people have a

lot more compassion in general for others than they do for themselves okay now there's a reason for that okay how you feeling at the moment yeah what's going on conflicted s I'm feeling conflicted um which means which means I'm feeling multiple things it's hard to pinpoint exactly what I'm feeling just physically [Music] um relief okay and awe yeah I can totally understand that okay no the relief is about what what's the relief about the relief is that I'm not alone no you're not even if I'm the only person in this room other than you sorry

who wet the bed when they were 13 I'm not alone in the shame it feels like yeah okay so tell me about what do you feel ashamed about what's the self- accusation um that I was different that there was something wrong with me I couldn't okay do the thing so so there there's an assumption there maybe you were different right but that doesn't mean there's something wrong with you is it supp to be different without there being something wrong yeah so let's not mix the two up how many of you have felt different growing up

than other people around you look at all these different people you know why cuz it's a sensitive people who feel different and they see things and experience things differently than other people then they made wrong for it and you're still buying into it but can you see how it might be a gift to be different yes tell me the gifts the gifts of being different yeah well being able to see different perspectives that's how change happens exactly exactly um art creativity it's all built in differences exactly um so you're different but does that make you

worse no not necessarily yeah no the shame basically shame says I want to sink into the ground I don't even want to be here yeah yeah yeah and that's what kids feel when they're not accepted cuz the child's got two things the child can believe okay one is this world is cruel it can't understand me it's hopeless these adults are stupid okay the child can believe that or the child can believe oh there's something wrong with me and maybe if I work hard enough I can fix it y now which belief do you think is

more acceptable to the child the latter the latter one so even that shame came along to help you do you see that yeah but if you ask yourself how old is that shame I mean what age would you put on it one all right now if you could talk to that one-year-old now Emily if you could talk to the one-year-old Emily from your adult self what would you want to say to her is it too cliche to say that it's going to be okay and that there's nothing wrong with you yeah and you would hold

her right yeah I went hold her hold her now thank you you got herh you think you have her yeah I have her good next time the shame arises just hold her okay okay thank you is that clear thank you thank you thank you okay take care thank you morning all right let's let's have another question and come back here a little bit we got to pay attention in the back of the room sorry folks it's hard to pick okay thank you I first want to say thank you as an indigenous woman from Alaska um

in Vancouver is where my people are from the simcan people thank you um my question is as a Healer who has experienced um the effects of historical trauma on our people I am working boots on the ground with adolescents that are also experiencing the impacts what advice would you give to I guess someone like me um well what advice do you need um I think where I struggle the most is feeling like I hit a wall like what like I hit a wall um with cuz I work with adolescents who come from two different sources

yeah one source is the Juvenile Justice yeah system yeah and the other source is uh the tribal Health Clinic that I work for yeah so they're either coming with behaviors that are are well they're either coming with emotional trauma that is like imploding inside and they feel suicidal and do a lot of self harm or it's external and it's they're harming other people um and I struggle with the ones that are coming from the juvenile justice system because it feels like they're harder to reach what is your struggle just to help them open up or

I think um getting past the barrier of the defenses yeah well look um these kids have been beaten up by life since they were born most of them as you know they were born into as I said earlier generations of traumatized families they were em bibing trauma even even in the womb the the uterus of their mothers when they were pregnant I know maybe the mothers were even drinking when they were pregnant some of them they've had many blows aimed at them and the juvenile court system just adds to it it takes a lot to

be with these kids and um you can't force them to open up what you can do as much as you can is to be an empathetic witness to accept them exactly the way they are and not need and drop any need that you have for them to open up yeah CU as soon as they sense your need for them to open up so you can feel better about yourself as a therapist they're going to shut down even more so I say that the most important work you can do here this is a very fasile and

very quick answer to a very complex question but the best thing you can do for them is to really work on yourself so that you're not uncomfortable with their discomfort so that you're not uncomfortable with their defenses so that you need nothing from them and I think that gives you the best chance of being the person for them in whose presence they feel safe enough to open up that's what you can do and you're going to fail many times and you're going to have to accept the failure but but that doesn't mean you haven't done

any good because everybody here can tell you how many times just raise your hand you had the this is the last comment I'll be able to make how many of you had the experience of somebody you don't even recall coming up to you in the street or somewhere and saying you don't remember me but something you said to me 20 years ago or 30 years ago or just the way you spoke to me May made such a huge difference in my life raise your hand if you had that experience well you're going to have that

experience too but you may not have it next week maybe 10 years from now so just keep doing what you're doing and drop any need for them to be any different I think that um the need that I have is it feels like an urgency because I have children and I've broken the bond I do my own work um and I feel like I'm just it's not enough time I have these kids for a whole year in it's look the system is inadequate which is a mild way to put it they need much more than

you can give them in a year even it's totally true but as long as you're deciding to do this work just do what you can while you're with them and you're right the system is inadequate okay thank you thank you all for your attention [Applause]