Bigger Than Our Trauma Cher Ofstedahl

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Thriving Adoptees Podcast today. I am delighted to be joined by Cher Ofstedahl. Looking forward to our conversation Cher. I'm looking forward to it as well. Thank you for having me Simon. Delighted to have you on the show. So, thriving. What does thriving mean to you Cher? Oh goodness, that's a really good question these days. Thriving means understanding that you really are doing the very best you can

[00:00:32] with the tools that you've been given. Yeah? Tell me both. I think it means rising above your circumstances, not being caught up in those really nasty hurdles that can leap out at you when you stop to revisit your past and when you stop to dwell on doubt and

[00:00:58] uh, insecurities that may come up. I think if you can set those aside and really take control of your own life, you can thrive. Yeah. So, it's all the metaphor that was coming to me was like helicopter vision. Because I think you said something about rising above. So, I was thinking about

[00:01:22] how to put a helicopter rather than being down in the in the doldrums, in the in the dirt, in the weeds. Really? Because you can't see over those weeds. If you can get into that helicopter and see beyond those weeds, you really can move forward. And I think that's what happens with so many people is they get caught up looking at the obstacles that are right in front

[00:01:50] of their face when if they just either took a step back, they would be able to see around those or climbed a little bit above. They would be able to be able to see over those and move forward. But people just get paralyzed. Yeah. The thing that's coming to me as I listen to that, I think about that, um, Einstein quote, something, something like we can't solve a problem with the same level of thinking

[00:02:17] that created it. It's about a higher order. It's about more perspective. It's about the bird's eye view, which is why you're a leader, right? Well, I don't know if that's why I'm a leader. Sometimes I think I was just in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the right time, depending upon

[00:02:40] the day of the week it is. Yes. Sometimes it's very difficult. But I do know that I, I try to come from a place of yes. It's really important now more than ever to really try to come from a place of yes. Because so many people just are closed off to new ideas or different ideas or someone else's opinion,

[00:03:10] or even learning. I consider myself a lifetime learner and I don't ever want to assume that I know best about any one thing. There's always going to be someone who can do that thing differently or better. Yeah. And we all need to take stock in our own limitations, the fact that none of

[00:03:35] us does know everything. I think of that in terms of the children that we serve every day and especially those that are seeking permanency in new homes, those that are being adopted. It's very difficult for a child to be placed with a stranger family or even a kinship family

[00:04:03] and try to come from a place of yes there. Because these kids really just want to be back with their family of origin, no matter how horrifying that family of origin may have been, or what the circumstances of their removal from that home may have been, they want their families back.

[00:04:26] And so coming into any new family, whether it is the most brilliant placement in the world, the most loving, the most caring, the most nurturing, it's very difficult for a child to look at that in any perspective other than, I don't want to be here. That happens over time. Because it's all about the difference.

[00:04:54] It is. It's all about the difference. It's all about change. And it's, if we, if we look at reframing change, no one likes it. You know, we all want to stay wherever we're at, unless someone proves to us, proves to us that that change is going to be better. Because it's risk. And everyone is risk averse

[00:05:23] just by nature. Yeah. So what's the difference? What you talk about reframing change? How does that, how does that look for you? Again, I think it's getting out of your own way. It is, we all have to take a risk. There are no real certainties in life. No one is going to be there

[00:05:52] to prove to you that if you do something differently, it's going to succeed. Yeah. I, I have, I hear that phrase, that phrase, getting, getting in our own way. And maybe I'm, I just go very left brain logical on this, right? Yeah. And I, and I think, well, I can't actually get, it's not me getting in my way. It's, it's maybe a belief that I can't,

[00:06:21] it's, it's not, it's not personal. If, if I, if I stood up now and tried to get in my own way, I'd have to jump 180 degrees and there'd have to be two Simons. But aren't there always, aren't there always two Simons though? Isn't there always that little voice that's telling you something you may or may not want to hear? I, I liken it to getting in my own way

[00:06:48] to me is like looking in a mirror. And if that reflect reflection is telling me, oh, this is too scary. You don't want to do this. What might happen? It's that little voice. So it's, yeah, I can, I can imagine it as actually being in my own way because I'm looking at that mirror reflection telling me,

[00:07:13] wait, stop. Do you really want to do this? I love what you, I love what you did with that. Cause I think probably two things, two things can be true. It's what was popping into my head was, have you come across this, uh, uh, this trauma guy called, um, Dick Schwartz? He's got, he's the founder of something called internal family systems. No, no, I have heard of internal family systems,

[00:07:40] but I, um, I have not read his work. So, so the, the idea with internal family systems is it sounds like it is about the family, but he, he has also taken it in terms of the family within us, right? The different parts within us. So for me, it would be, uh, scared Simon, four weeks old,

[00:08:04] who are these new people, right? Or there would be, there would be, um, scared Simon, uh, 10 year old bullied on scout camp. And then there would be confident Simon who spent that time doing that, you know? So there's the different parts of us. Yes. And, and, and so the, the parts

[00:08:30] are, I think you used this word, it might be a really old fashioned word in American jar, in American slang, the parts are duking it out, right? Yes. It's a fight between the parts, not all the parts think the same. So, uh, so to take it back to your mirror, um, analogy,

[00:08:54] the, the, the, the, the real share is saying one thing, but the share in the mirror is saying something else. And therefore we've got this in internal conflict between, between two, two parts, two parts of us. Absolutely. And, and I think we all go through

[00:09:20] that on a daily basis, we're having this internal dialogue with ourselves on whether we should take a risk, whether we should move forward in a different direction, whether we should accept an opportunity or accept a challenge. We always are weighing that, you know, we're making decisions all day long, every day. Have you heard of a guy called, uh, Michael

[00:09:48] singing? I think he goes as Mickey, Mickey singing. He's like, he's the, he's the guest guy. I think, is he? Yes. Uh, I've listened to, I listened to a few of his books. Is that where, is that where that came from for you or did that come from somewhere else? Or do you remember? No. This will be very surprising to you or, or maybe not. Um, it actually came from Buffy, the vampire slayer. Okay. Right. Which is a very cheesy American

[00:10:16] series that was on decades ago, but I grew up loving it. And like many of those sitcoms, they try to have some sort of, uh, moral platitude that they're trying to share with us. And she would often say a world of yes or a world of no, when she was answering questions. And to me that just always stuck.

[00:10:43] I always want to come from that world of yes. Yeah. Have you heard that quote from Wayne Gretzky, he's a ice hockey player. He says, uh, uh, I miss a hundred percent of the shots I don't take. Absolutely. Or, or, I mean, there are so many, um, different sayings out there about it is like,

[00:11:04] we're, we're, we're only as good as we dare to risk. Yeah. So this, this inner narrator, this inner critic, what, what have you learned about your inner critic? Oh, my inner critic, uh, was born of

[00:11:31] my mother's really undiagnosed mental health issues and her inability to own the decisions that she made in her life and then inflicted upon her children. Um, very early on, I was told I was stupid. I was ugly. I, she wished she had killed me with a

[00:11:58] baseball bat when I was born. Um, these things really created that inner dialogue, that, that inner reflection that always tells me, oh, you're not good enough. You can't do that. You shouldn't even try. You can't compete. Um, I had to, I've always fought with that voice. I,

[00:12:26] I have terrible imposter syndrome because of that. You know, anytime I've gotten a promotion, I've felt like someone's going to discover that I'm playing dress up, that I'm wearing my mom's high heels and pearls. Um, but I'm just this little girl who really shouldn't be in this room making these decisions or leading this team. Um, and, and it was, you know, it stemmed from her

[00:12:56] never being able to get past thinking that her mother abandoned her and her siblings when they were put into adoption. And hers was a very interesting case because she was placed through the church, um, with people that her biological mother knew. Um, and these people were not particularly loving or,

[00:13:22] uh, nurturing. They took in these children because they thought it was their civic duty. You know, they did it because the church said this would be a great thing to do and they had the means, but it was, it was not an easy road for my mother and the two siblings that stayed in that home with her. The two younger siblings were separated out and sent to different homes.

[00:13:53] The children always knew that there were five of them, but only the three stuck together. And they could never reconcile why their mother left them. They were just too young. They knew she was still around. They would occasionally see her at church. Uh, they didn't understand why they couldn't

[00:14:18] go home to their mom. And so my mother grew up with just all of these feelings of anger and resentment and abandonment and, uh, uh, had nowhere to put these things. So she put them into her children. Yeah. She took it out on you. It's heartbreaking. When you shared with the last time we spoke about this, it really, it really, it really landed for me. Um,

[00:14:49] So I've always struggled with that inner voice and it wasn't until I, and I'm not, I don't know that I'm a big enough person to say that I really forgave my mother for everything that she put my brother and myself through. Uh, but when I was able to reconcile that she did the best

[00:15:13] she could with the tools that she had, the fact that she survived when it would have been very easy to just throw in the towel. You know, I have to give her credit for that. The fact that she sold, you know, antiques in our house to put shoes on our feet. Yeah. The fact that she did some things that, you know, the fact that she took a job dancing in a bar and,

[00:15:40] you know, putting herself in front of some very awful men, um, and bringing them into our home, you know, she was surviving and that takes a lot. Yeah. It's very easy to just give up. So when I stopped looking at her as a monster and started looking at her as someone who was doing the very

[00:16:08] best they could to survive, it really changed the way I listened to that inner voice. Um, Do you remember this moment? Do you remember the moment when that happened? Uh, unfortunately it was, it was when she was dying. Uh, she had been diagnosed with a stage four

[00:16:32] glial blastoma multiforme brain cancer. And she never was able to own the things that she put my brother in her hand. And I threw, however, she was able to sort of reframe it in kind of a third person, uh,

[00:16:58] way. She, she said to me, I'm really sorry, those things happened to you. And it was sort of in that moment that I thought she doesn't have the capacity to claim that it would be too much, even, even as she's dying, that would break her. So she had written a narrative

[00:17:29] for her life and everything that led up to that moment. And that was the best she could do was I'm, I'm really sorry those things happened to you. Yeah. And it just made me believe, you know, this is, I can't blame, I can't keep laying blame on her for something she didn't have the capacity to change. Yeah. Because that would have made you a victim, right?

[00:17:59] Oh, absolutely. And I have had many, many, many encounters with people who came from similar situations as I have. I work with children on a daily basis who came from similar situations and they fall into two schools. They are victims and they carry that with them almost like a badge of honor. It shapes their destiny.

[00:18:28] Or they are survivors who are desperately seeking to thrive. Yeah. And every step they take is in a direction toward thriving. Is it as extreme as that, the two camps?

[00:18:49] I think so. I do. It may not, you may not see it in that way. It may not be visible to others. But I do think that there is a very clear distinction internally, where either you are constantly looking at those barriers that are right in front of your face and saying there's no way I can get around those. But it's okay that I can't get around them

[00:19:18] because of all these things that happened to me. You're constantly making justifications for why you are the way you are, why you make the decisions you make, why you can't or won't move forward. And when you, and I think you can make the shift at any point in time in your life. I think you can have that epiphany, that aha moment. This is, wait a minute. This,

[00:19:44] this isn't what's going to define me. And that's when you can get into the helicopter. Yeah. I've talked about this listeners. I don't think I've talked to you about it, Shia, but do you remember, do you remember American kind of self-help guy called Wayne Dyer? Yeah. Absolutely. Yes.

[00:20:06] Yeah. Did you hear the story of him? He's told it on a, he told it on a interview on PBS. I think it was. And I've, I've read it in one of the books about the story of him finding his, going to his, his father's grave. Have you heard that? I don't, it sounds really familiar.

[00:20:28] Yeah. So it's, it's worth watching listeners. He, he tells it as an incredible story. It's an incredible story of serendipity that gets into his father's grave side. And, and, and it's a long story. So I'm not going to go into that, but he, he gets this. So the backstory is that his, his dad had

[00:20:52] left him and his siblings and his mum and, and to fend for themselves. And it had been time. And he, through this serendipitous circumstances, he ends up at the grave side and he, he, he rams,

[00:21:14] he shouts and swears at his, at his father's grave side for two hours. And then something happens for him. Something happens in turn, internal for him. Some kind of bit of magic happens that we can't put into words. And he has a spontaneous forgiveness for his father, right? He, he, he went to the grave to

[00:21:43] pee on the grave, right? He did not go to the grave for a, for an epiphany moment that changed his life. The, the epiphany happened despite his intentions, not because of his intentions, right? And, and, and I, he, I think he, I think if I'm right, he broke down at the, he broke down at the,

[00:22:07] the, the grave side and, and had that forgiveness. The forgiveness thing came to him and he credits that with his life taking off. So his, his life as a, as a, as a speaker, as an inspirational speaker, as an author and that, and he was going down that path. But I think he uses a metaphor of a rucksack,

[00:22:36] right? So he was on that, he was on that path. And, and then the spontaneous um, forgiveness happens to him. And it was like the, the, the yoke had been lifted off his shoulders. Right. And he was suddenly, he was suddenly free, a lot freer. And I, and I think, I think that's very similar to how I felt when my mother said that to me. And I realized

[00:23:06] she's, she's not capable of taking that in because it's too much, you know, no mother, I can't imagine a mother anyway. And I like never to say never. Uh, but I can't imagine a mother who would not feel guilt about abusing her children or

[00:23:38] trafficking her daughter to pay the bills. Uh, no mother would go into those actions lightly. It, it has to weigh on a person. And I think she had to compartmentalize that that that was a thing that happened and not a thing that she participated in.

[00:24:06] I, I really believe that, that she just could not own that and still survive. Yeah. How, how long ago was this, this moment for you? Uh, she passed in the middle of my 40th birthday party. So, uh, it probably was maybe

[00:24:34] a week to two weeks prior to that. And, and how did that change things for you? I think, I think it, I don't know that it changed, uh, in a dramatic way at first. I think I was able to

[00:24:58] let go of a lot of anger, let go of a lot of resentment, let God go of a lot of, if that hadn't happened to me, what would my life be like today? How would things have been different? Would things have been easier? Would I not have had to face so many challenges in my own life? I kind of let go of all

[00:25:19] of that. Let those barriers remove themselves from my path and was able to look at just humans differently. It's like, we are all flawed individuals. We have all had some sort of trauma in our lives, but how we choose to deal with that trauma makes an incredible difference, not only in our own lives,

[00:25:46] but in the lives of everyone that we touch. And I think getting to that place with my mom really helped my relationship with my own daughter because she was, I think 10 years old at the time and just getting to the point where she was starting

[00:26:10] to test me and be a little sassy. And, uh, I always knew that, you know, I always said that if I had a child, it would be my mission in life to let her never go one single day without knowing how much she was loved. Because that was the thing that I missed. That was the thing that I craved. And my mother, uh,

[00:26:34] for most of my life served as the poster for don't let this happen to you. I wanted to be anything other than what she was. And when my daughter started to get to the point in time, you know, those tween years, and then into the teen years where she was really testing boundaries and testing my

[00:26:58] patients, I think it really helped me be a better mother because I always took a moment to think how I react in this moment will shape who she is as a person. Words that you say can't be unsaid,

[00:27:19] actions that you do can't be undone. So take a minute to think. All behavior is communication. What is she trying to tell me? So it prompted a lot of really heartfelt conversations. And I'm not going to say everything was easy. There were still times when, uh, she would, she's very emotional. She's

[00:27:44] a very sensitive, very emotional young woman. And there were these moments when she would go into what I call just, uh, hysteria rage where she could not have a conversation. It was all just emotion being thrown out of her body. And I would say, okay, uh, go to your room, but I'm not sending you to your room to punish you. I'm sending you to your room so that you can take a deep breath and you can calm down

[00:28:12] and you can tell me what you're angry about. Tell me where this emotion is coming from. Because right now you can't even tell me. You're just so blind with all of this coming out of you. So go take a breath. And doing that without escalating the situation to where I was at the same level she was

[00:28:35] and spewing that anger or hysteria back at her made a huge difference for us. And it was not all sunshine and roses and no mother daughter relationship ever is, but I tell you, she is my very best friend now and a very confident young woman, unafraid to share what she's feeling, but she can do it in a much more controlled way. She knows to walk away when she needs to

[00:29:06] and come back when she can. Um, so it helped me just look at people differently that we all have unresolved issues. We all have trauma to deal with, but how we deal with it affects everyone in our periphery. So what I'm getting is a sense that the, the understanding of your mum

[00:29:33] uh, uh, created a bigger capacity within you to understand what was going on for your daughter and handle it a little bit more elegantly is the strange word that's coming to my mind. But yeah. Yes. I think so. I do. I, I carried around this anger as a child because of things that my mother did and,

[00:30:04] my daughter did not go through any of the same things that I did, you know, thank the Lord. But she still was dealing with all of those things that children deal with. She was bullied a little bit at school and she, you know, didn't make friends easily sometimes. And so just not, not adding to her trauma with my reaction, I think was the goal.

[00:30:38] Because one of the things that strikes me when I'm talking to different adoptees, I think, and reflecting on that, it, it strikes me that, you know, we can, we, we can look at the trauma in two sorts of trauma, right? So, so there's the kind of the, uh, how we were relinquished trauma.

[00:31:02] And then there's the, how we were raised trauma. And, and it's almost impossible that those, those two things multiply. It's not a plus B, it's a times B. Yes.

[00:31:25] And it's impossible for us, for, for, for adoptees to be able to see the exact equation. Yeah. So we, we know that we know that we're at 60, right? So if, if it's, if it's 10 times 10, right? So if it's on a score of one to 10, um, the, the, the nature of the relinquishment and the

[00:31:53] trauma to do the relinquishment, and then the nature of how we were raised, if they're both on one, for one, uh, one, uh, on a rate, they're both rated on a one to 10 scale, it's 10 times 10 or six times 10. But we, we know that we've got, we've got a feeling for what the, what the number is, if, if we were to have to put a, um,

[00:32:19] a score on it. And yet we, we don't, we don't know. We, we, we blame, I think, I think we have, we, we can blame how we were raised as a, as adoptees on the relinquishment trauma. We, it's impossible. Does that, I don't know if I'm making any sense. You, you're making absolute sense. Trauma is exponential. It's not, it's like an earthquake.

[00:32:49] Uh, if you look at the Richter scale, uh, a 3.0 earthquake, um, which we have many of in California, uh, you know, kind of, you get to know what that feels like. A 3.1 is not just plus one percent. It's, it's exponential each time it goes up. So trauma is exponential. If you add trauma to trauma,

[00:33:19] it isn't just, um, an addition, it's a multiplication. It is definitely the trauma scale should definitely be like the Richter scale. And once you have been traumatized as a child, you, you're sitting on a fault line. And as other trauma is added, that fault line,

[00:33:41] can either cause mass destruction or you can let off some of the, the power of that destruction. You can, you can ease that off, um, by making small actions. Um, when an earthquake happens,

[00:34:07] tiny earthquakes will relieve the pressure on the fault so that it doesn't have a massive earthquake. So I think that there are little steps you can take that relieve the pressure of that trauma. As long as you know to do that, as long as you're taking the steps to heal from that trauma, you're not building up to this giant massively destructive moment in your life.

[00:34:39] What, what does healing mean to you? Healing to me means a little bit of compartmentalizing like my mother did. However, there's also the ownership piece. Um, it's accepting and understanding that what happened to you was not your fault,

[00:35:10] was out of your control. And then being able to file that, you know, I have a filing cabinet in my head. That's how I look at the way I think of things. So I file that and I don't refer to it on a daily basis.

[00:35:34] I know it's there. I acknowledge it when it rears its head, comes out at the strangest moment. And I acknowledge it. I tell it, I see you, but you're not going to define this moment for me. This speaking engagement, or this event. This is not the time or place. And I think when you can start to control when that trauma comes back up, you are healing.

[00:36:04] You can't ever make it go away. I don't think it's healthy to do like my mother did and start sort of look at it as it happened to another person in another time in another place that you weren't involved in. But I think it's being able to be the master of it rather than letting it be the master of you.

[00:36:27] Yeah. Um, there's a word for what your mom did. I think, uh, it's, and I, I'm, I might be teaching my, my grand sister. Okay. I think it's called, is it called disassociation? Disassociation? Yes. Disassociation. Um, some incredible, I think there's an incredible movie

[00:36:47] about this with the guy, it's a guy from one of the Marvel films, is a Scottish actor that's made it big in Hollywood. Um, anyway, it's gone. But yeah, uh, disassociation. It's, it's when, it's when the, the, the trauma is so, so bad. It's, it's, it's, it's past suppression. It's like,

[00:37:20] yeah, you have to look at it, uh, in an almost out of body way that it just, it wasn't me, you know, asking for a friend, those kinds of things. I, I heard a, I heard a story of a guy. Oh yeah. I listened to this, this guy's autobiography kind of thing. I'm a British guy,

[00:37:45] um, who was, uh, he was an adrenaline junkie that became a junkie junkie. And he did that. He, it was clearly a little bit on the, in the insane, insane side. He, he took heroin for two weeks to see what it was like coming off it. And five years later,

[00:38:12] was his low point at which he, he bounced, he bounced back. And, and, and that was the start of him getting, getting clean. And he, so the book is, I don't know, eight, 10 hours long listening to the audio book, but he, the point when he realizes there's a point at which he realizes that he,

[00:38:38] he's bigger than his addiction. What a great moment to have. What a great moment. And that, but he just, he, he, he, he describes it in about, in not much more detail than that. It's one sentence and it's the whole pivot point on the story. And I think that perfectly describes it. You know, at some point in time, you will realize

[00:39:07] you are bigger than what happened to you. And those that have the victim mentality, I wish for all of them to get to that point. You know, and it's funny, you said that he was an adrenaline junkie and then became a junkie junkie because it occurred to me that there was a point in time in my life where

[00:39:34] I engaged in very risky behavior because I felt that that was all my life was worth at that point in time. Had a series of horrific relationships, very abusive men, because I thought that was my worth,

[00:39:55] because it had been, I had been told that was my only value. And I think I was just wanting, even the negative attention was attention. And it made me feel alive because I was at a point in time where I felt pretty dead inside. And I, I have had acquaintances that were adrenaline junkies. And

[00:40:24] one of them said to me, I just want to feel something. And when they feel that, that rush, that adrenaline surge, they, they feel alive. But you're constantly chasing that because once that becomes normal and doesn't give you that surge any longer, you go back to feeling the same way you

[00:40:51] felt before. So it's always got to be something bigger. And it's got to be bigger. Yeah. Yeah. The metaphor that's coming to my head was, and you almost said it, but I think you said bigger than the event, bigger than what, than what happened to you. I said this guy was bigger than his addiction.

[00:41:21] And the phrase that was popping into my head was bigger than our trauma. Yes. There's a book you should write Simon, bigger than my trauma. Um, I think, cause I think we all are, I think we all are so much bigger than our trauma, but how many of us feel small because of it?

[00:41:52] And, and how many, how many people see, see themselves as bigger than the trauma? You know, I, I was thinking, um, about Star Trek and I'm not a Trekkie. I'm not.

[00:42:14] Um, but what I was thinking about was if like, literally we are, we are the space for our feelings. We, we are, we are the space in which our feelings happen.

[00:42:31] And literally, and if we took it from a universal perspective, right? If, if we're the, with the whole, if we're the, you know, we're a part of the universe and, and, uh, and there's a Mars seems to be the, uh, ideal planet for anger, right?

[00:42:58] Yes. That's that, that's our hotspot. That's our hotspot. Right. But we're, we're the space in which we're the space in which Mars appears. We're not Mars. Right. I mean, what a beautiful way to look at it. I, especially because we're all made of stardust,

[00:43:21] right? We all came from the universe and we all are the universe and we carry an entire universe of feelings and events and reactions to those events within us. It's a really beautiful way to look at it. And, and it's true. Like our anger comes and goes.

[00:43:48] It does. It does. If, if we, I came up with this a few years ago, um, trauma, uh, trauma is a cocktail of, trauma is a toxic cocktail of shame, anger, and terror. But, but, but we're the glass, not its contents.

[00:44:11] Right. With the glass, not its contents. And it seems to me that, you know, I felt sensation and the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the trauma is most often felt it's a felt thing rather than a thing. Right. It's a felt very much so. So the, the closest thing to it is it's, it's, it's, it's a feeling. So it's anger or fear.

[00:44:41] Yeah. For me, most of the time it's fear, uh, almost akin to thinking I'm having a heart attack. I, a real tightening in my chest when that trauma presents itself. Um, you know, it's, it's heartbreaking and literally takes place in my heart. Um, it is very real feeling, very physical manifestation.

[00:45:13] Have you read the body keeps the score? No, you're going to have to send me a, a required reading list. Simon, you have so many amazing references to books or movies. And I, I just want to spend more time with you finding out, you know, all of these sources, because you speak about trauma so beautifully

[00:45:35] and, uh, you, I, I, you perform such a service for your listeners. You really do. Well, it's a joint production, right? It's a joint performance. Yes, but I, I, it's, it's amazing that you're doing this work. It really is because it's not often discussed, you know, it's certainly something we don't discuss in polite circles,

[00:46:04] right? We don't go to parties and talk about our trauma and dump it on the table. And, uh, it's something that we keep. Unless it's a trauma party. That's true. You know, we should have trauma parties with trauma cocktails. Uh, it's something we keep inside and that's, that's the real, that's the shame. It is the real shame. The real problem, uh, that keeps so many people from moving forward is because we're unable to

[00:46:32] both get it out and, and reign it in at the same time to tame it. And as I said, you can't ever expel it completely. It happened. It existed. It's there. It's within you. It's part of what made you, who you are, both good and bad. There are opportunities to improve your life through those experiences just, just by going through them and having a better understanding of, uh, as I told my

[00:47:01] daughter when she was bullied once, uh, I said, how did it make you feel? And she told me all of the things that made her feel, it made her feel sad and, and angry and, uh, depressed and all of these things. And I said, and the best lesson you can take from that is you don't ever want to make someone else feel those things. And it's the perfect reason not to bully anyone else because you don't ever,

[00:47:27] you don't want to be the person responsible for making someone else feel that. So when you can name it and get it out there and wrestle with it and look at it and call it who it is, and

[00:47:45] you can also tame it and put it away and say not today. So it's, it's, you know, a trauma parties should be a real thing somewhere. Well, people do go, um, yeah, that there is some stuff goes on in

[00:48:09] that where, um, people go out in the, they go out into the wild to, uh, what's it? Um, there's, it's scream therapy. Is it primal screaming? Yeah. Yeah. I think primal screaming is probably a great thing. I've never actually done it myself. I'm sure it is a great way to release things, but once you've released it out there, where does it go? I still think you need to take the time to

[00:48:40] shape it back into something manageable once you've let it out and be able to, you know, put it in its place and return it there whenever it starts to come up. I want to go back to the space. I want to go back to the space idea. Yeah. I want to go to space with you. Okay. Well, we're, there's only 6,000 miles between us. So I

[00:49:04] could, I can be there. I can be there in about a 10 hour flight and 11 hour flight to LA. Anytime, anytime. Um, but meanwhile, you know, like we're, we're 18, we're 18 inches away from each other on the screen, right? Um, the space thing, because we are that we are the space in which our

[00:49:28] fear, our terror arises. And then it, it, it, it sinks back down. It, it subsumes, it rises and it, it falls, but with the space in which it rises and falls with a space in which our terror arises and falls with a special, with the, with the place in which our anger goes today. Um, I got a cold call

[00:49:55] and it sounded like one of those robot calls. You heard these leads recording? Yes. And I said, are you a recording? And the guy said, yes. And I said, what? I said, he said, you know, what did happen? I said, are you recording? And he said, yes. And I said, are you? You're recording. And he said, no, I thought you said, are you recording me?

[00:50:22] And then I thought, oh, this is, and then the, the guy said, he's calling from my bank. And I, and I just thought, this is a, this is a scam. This is, this is a scam. So I said, I don't believe you send me an email and I hung up, but I was angry in that moment. Yes. I was angry in that moment. And, and then it, and then, then it dissipated. That's what feelings do.

[00:50:49] They kind of the come and go, but I'm the space in which those come and go anyway. So I, it rung me on my mobile. So I knew the, the WhatsApp, I could, so I, I keyed the number into Google. I keyed the telephone number into Google to see it was, if it was associated with my bank. Right. And, and it was associated with scams related to my bank, according to this website,

[00:51:19] according to a few websites, actually, you know, like when Google shows you the top five results, I didn't look at each individual register. So it says it's a scam there. This is a scam related to HSBC, the bank. And then 10 minutes later, I got an email from him and I think he's legit. Really? I think he's legit. Yeah. From what he said in it. Um, he, because I, I don't need to,

[00:51:49] I'd had a conversation with the bank about doing something on Monday and it hadn't worked. And he was repeating back the problem that hadn't worked. How interesting. So I was really, I, I, I, you know, as soon as this, that, you know, you hear the, you hear the delay on the pickup on the phone and you know, you know, it's a spammer. It's a spammer. They're in a call center somewhere.

[00:52:16] And then I'm like, yeah, call center and I'm away. Right. And I'm away. And then, you know, and then I asked him if he's recording and he says, yes. I thought, well, you can't be, that AI can't be that clever. Right. Right. That they say, if, if the caller says, are you recording? Say yes. You know, I don't know. I don't know. We're living in some very strange times, but the space,

[00:52:44] right. But we, we are that space in which we, we are bigger than, we are bigger than our trauma because the trauma comes and goes within us, whether we're a part of the universe or just our bodies or we're stardust, you know, like it's not, it's kind of, it's not who we are. It's the whole thing is like, for me is this putting, putting, putting some space

[00:53:13] between the trauma that we feel and the essence of who we are. Right. And with all good Star Trek episodes or space travel, you, it's the exploration. It's the exploration. And I think when you are having those feelings come up again, it's, it's in our best interest to explore

[00:53:42] why we're feeling what we're feeling and to make, to act in a way, in a positive way, rather than a negative way when we're feeling that. So I do think that, you know, of course in Star Trek, the goal was never to interfere with, you know, what was going on on

[00:54:05] a certain planet. I think it's our job to interfere when it's our trauma. I think our job is to interfere with what it's telling us we can't do or telling us we're not good enough for, or telling us we're unworthy. I think our job then is to interfere and say, you're not right.

[00:54:33] I found it more useful to ignore it than argue with it. Well, that's one way to, you know, conflict resolution. One of the, one of the first steps of conflict resolution is to avoid, to walk away when you're not ready. But then when you are ready to

[00:54:54] engage in conflict resolution, then we start to communicate and compromise and do all of those good things that will lead us to just moving forward in, in a healthy direction. Like I said, I don't revisit my trauma on a regular basis. Every once in a while it will

[00:55:18] rear its ugly head and tell me I'm not good enough or that I'm not pretty enough. Or that I'm all of those things. I hear my mother's voice in my head. That I just shouldn't be here.

[00:55:38] And I just have to say to that voice, you're wrong. You're just wrong. That's not who I am. That doesn't define me. And by what standard do I need to be good enough? Only my own.

[00:56:01] Not my mother's. That was never going to happen. So I need to be happy with myself. That's thriving. That's really thriving. And that's an ideal point to bring it in, I think. I don't want to end my time with you, Simon. I hope we have another chance to have a conversation. We are going to have another conversation. That's for sure.

[00:56:31] Thanks, Chef. Please take care of yourself. Yeah, I will too. And do some space exploration. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Chef.