Primally Wounded Or Fundamentally Unwoundable? With Nick Mabey

[00:00:00] - [Speaker 0]
Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees podcast. So today I'm delighted to be joined by a fellow Brit adoptee, a fellow bloke. We're around the same vintage, I think, Nick. So ladies, gentlemen, listeners, is Nick maybe who we're going to be talking, hearing a little bit about Nick's story and then how we actually came together through a conversation, an online conversation about the primal wound. So we're gonna hear a little bit about Nick and his story and then we're gonna have a discussion about this work because it seems to be a very influential and seminal work in world of adoption.

[00:00:55] - [Speaker 0]
So that's it's a slightly different format to the episodes that you've seen, but we just thought that we'd do something different and so we're looking forward to it. So Nick, great to see you again. We had a fantastic conversation last time. And I don't know whether it was you came up with it or me that came up with, but the idea is like, well, why don't we carry this conversation on, but with an audience and share our similar and different perspectives on Nancy Berriere's great book. So welcome to the show.

[00:01:31] - [Speaker 1]
Thank you, thank you Simon. Yeah, and I think we are similar vintage. I'm imagining you're quite a bit younger than me. I'm 1964 vintage is my vintage, I was adopted at birth, I knew a bit like your story, I knew all the way through my childhood that I was adopted, in fact I thought most people were, and then I sort of started to get into it as a young adult, curiosity about birth, and then it's been a lifelong journey since of getting on with life and also dipping back into this stuff periodically as and when it sort of came up for me, yeah.

[00:02:08] - [Speaker 0]
Fascinating, Yeah, yeah. So I was born three years later.

[00:02:11] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, I knew you're a youngster.

[00:02:13] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah and I've got a real baby, I've got a real baby face, so I did

[00:02:17] - [Speaker 1]
And you had an easy paper round.

[00:02:19] - [Speaker 0]
So easy paper round. Yeah. I did, I worked in a sweet shop, We did deliver newspapers, but I worked on the sweet shop. So I spent, I probably ate more than I earned. If you know what I mean?

[00:02:32] - [Speaker 0]
Don't, hopefully nobody's going to, we're past the statute of limitations.

[00:02:36] - [Speaker 1]
Yes, I'm sure you're safe. You're safe. Yeah.

[00:02:39] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. So yeah, yeah, but baby face easy, easy job in a paper, in a, in a, in a sweet shop eating too many sweets. Three years, three years younger than you. So you were told, so you've known since? Yeah.

[00:02:57] - [Speaker 0]
Forever, yeah.

[00:02:58] - [Speaker 1]
I think my adoptive parents decided that the best policy was to tell me often and tell me early, and they used a book called Mr Fair Weather Gets a Family, which is a book I think you know as well, which was I think probably the go to tool in the 60s for brainwashing your children into what the adoption story is, and so yeah that's the way I knew, and then I remember finding out the day that I found out someone wasn't adopted and thought, woah you're weird, you're not, you didn't come into the pub like I did, and then lo and behold over a period of fairly short period of time, realised that actually, no, perhaps I was the exception and they were the rule, not the other way around.

[00:03:38] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, that when we had that last conversation a few weeks ago and you raised that book, that Fairweather, Mr Fairweather book up to the screen, it did send shivers down my spine because I had that book and it was in my bookshelf and that was how I was, how it was explained to me and what a gentle way it was. Yeah, yeah. What a gentle way and it normalised, it normalises it, I think is the jargon. And it normalised it so much with you that you thought that that was everybody. So that, you know, that's great because I think as human beings, we want to fit in, you know, we don't want to be that outlier.

[00:04:27] - [Speaker 0]
We don't want to be that outsider. We, whether it's like, this is real caveman, early human stuff that, you know, if we were alone, we got eaten by saber tooth tigers or not, but we wanna be part of the gang, don't we? So that's part of the great thing about the connections that we make in the adoption community is that we see that people who have been through things the same as us or similar to us and have had similar feelings, similar different feelings, similar different feelings. And we get that idea that we've had a normal reaction to an abnormal.

[00:05:15] - [Speaker 1]
And that's, I mean, it's a good link to the book, The Primal Wound, because that was my first impression when I read it. I got bought it by my partner, and she in fact she read it before me, and then I read it and I went, oh okay, this is all, I could have written these are stories that are I've reread it a couple of times and they're just like this is what I would have written if I'd written a book and this to hear stories of other people really helped normalise the sum of feelings, some behaviors, some experiences, all of that. I think my first impact of reading the book, which is why I think it does last the test of time and it does resonate for people, is because it's telling stories that people can just relate to if they are adopted.

[00:06:09] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, my first reaction was very similar and I thought, so you thought I could have written this book. I thought this book is written for me. This book describes me. And I went on a bit of a crusade on it really with the only two adoptees that I know who, a friend and my sister. And I also got my coach to read it.

[00:06:53] - [Speaker 0]
I asked my coach to read it and she did to my delight. And she's not adopted. She actually, she was abused by her dad to the extent that she wanted to be adopted. And she

[00:07:05] - [Speaker 1]
went

[00:07:05] - [Speaker 0]
through the courts and all sorts of things with, I'm not sure whether that was actually to be adopted or just to stop her dad abusing her. But she had a very different take on it when she said, well, yeah, I actually wanted to be adopted because of the hell that I went through. My sister's reaction was completely different to mine. And I was gonna talk about it, but I won't in case because I haven't really cleared it with her. And this friend of mine who is adopted a friend of ours, I kind of implored her to read it but she wouldn't.

[00:07:50] - [Speaker 0]
Or yeah, she said that she'd come around to talk about it and borrow the book or something but never did it. There's a whole different answers there.

[00:08:00] - [Speaker 1]
I know, but what you've touched on there with the story of your friend is actually, I can relate to that because I think we well let's say I, not try and generalise, I think I lived under a myth that I was special and I was chosen and I was lucky. And actually what this book does, it normalizes some alternate story to that, it normalizes and it speaks to feeling like different, feeling alone or having strange thoughts that you can't quite justify thinking, but it does require you to want to go and read it, because if you're still living in the idea that I'm special, I'm chosen, I'm the luckiest person alive because I got adopted, then you're not going to want to read this book, because this book doesn't really, this book sort of punches holes in that sort of idea, so I can understand if you're not ready or just not wanting to, or let's be honest, you don't feel the need to, if you're perfectly well adjusted and happy, why would you feel the need to go and read a book like this?

[00:09:15] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, I came to read the book because somebody told me that I had a problem And I rang an adoption helpline and they recommended the book. So I was kind of running to, I was running to a solution that I thought I was unconscious of. Do you see what mean? So I wasn't, I'd done a lot of my healing for one of those. I've done a lot of my healing work probably six years before.

[00:09:50] - [Speaker 0]
And I was feeling a lot better in myself because of, well, mainly because of the fact I've got out, I'd got out of a business that was driving me completely. So I was feeling a lot better and I was feeling a lot better in myself. So I was like, okay, so this guy thinks I've got a problem. I really respect him. He's a quite highly emotionally intelligent guy.

[00:10:17] - [Speaker 0]
So he thinks I've got a problem. So maybe I've got a problem that I'm not aware of. So I'll read the book. And then, so the book said that, yeah, I have a problem. And I thought, well, I'm stuck with this problem.

[00:10:33] - [Speaker 0]
I read the follow-up book, which is about home to self as it's a thinner, interestingly, the healing book is a lot thicker, a lot thinner than the problem book, which is an interesting thing. But I really felt that, I felt really, I felt like I've taken a step back into an unsteady space that I thought I'd come past. Yeah, completely. And this

[00:11:14] - [Speaker 1]
is where I think when we first spoke, this is where we slightly parted company in terms of our experience of the book, and it might be, we didn't talk about it, but it might be the timing of when you read it, because I read the book, I'd done an intensive therapeutic process called the Hoffman process, which I'm happy to talk about, but it's not specifically relevant, so I feel like I'd done my work after fifty odd years of sort of grappling and struggling and being in denial and stuff, I did my work, felt like the first inkling of healing, then I read the book, and what the book did for me is it propelled me forward, whereas you said it made you feel like a step back, for me personally the book felt like a step forward, because I felt validated. I was like, I've done some work, I've experienced firsthand some feelings and now I'm reading a book that tells me the theory of why I felt those things, I feel validated, I feel heard, I feel joined, I feel I was going to say worthy, but that's a bit too worthy a word, but I feel validated, I'll just stick with validating.

[00:12:25] - [Speaker 1]
And therefore the book for me was a catalyst rather than a pullback, which it appears to have been for you.

[00:12:33] - [Speaker 0]
Well, first reaction was one of validation, exactly the same. But then I felt stuck with that.

[00:12:47] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's interesting.

[00:12:49] - [Speaker 0]
And feeling stuck with it was the step back, you know, sorry, if my life was a six out of 10 or six out of 10 before I did all my consciousness learning stuff about thirteen years ago, Mine was like a six out of 10. It meant to more to like a nine out of 10 or nine and a half out of 10 most of the time, eight out of 10. Then so it went from six to nine and then back to probably seven. I mean, I was still ahead, but I've taken a step back from where I've been. But then when I realized later on what I was doing, believing, sorry, realizing that I had taken that step back and the book had done that and believing the book had done that, my life went shot and forward to better than it had been after the learning.

[00:14:05] - [Speaker 0]
So was back like nine and three quarters. That's what I felt like that. So I felt like the beach ball that has been held under water, down by reading the book. So the book had taken me down, then realizing that the book was taking me down, the bull jumped higher out of the

[00:14:39] - [Speaker 1]
pool. It's really interesting, isn't it? I mean, I'm trying to create my version of your own metaphor just for the so that listeners can sort of see a comparison, guess there isn't one, but if there was one I would say it was reading it that helped my ball jump out of the water. Cool! And it was like I only realised my ball was in the water a few months before, and then read the book and it helped the ball jump out of the water.

[00:15:10] - [Speaker 0]
So it didn't did you feel you felt validated? Did you feel that that validation was going to Did you feel stuck?

[00:15:25] - [Speaker 1]
No, that's the bit that you've said that I'm trying to remember any feeling like that. I think I didn't feel at all stuck, it's fair to say. What I noticed was experiences I've had retold through someone else's voice, like for example, I had a problem with stealing and hoarding as a child, I didn't have a problem, I was very good at it, and that's in the book. I was a projectile vomiter as a baby, had to spend time in hospital, that's in the book. Now all of these things you could say, yeah, but there's a percentage of the population that has these things and they're not adopted, but the combination of things that I read, they almost liberated me from feeling like I was somehow something to be ashamed of, they liberated me from a feeling of I'm wrong or I'm faulty goods.

[00:16:30] - [Speaker 1]
They sort of say, yes you are faulty goods and here's the reason why, but they liberated me from this feeling like that was inevitable, Because I think I combined it with a period where I was doing work which was shifting some of that stuff as well.

[00:16:45] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. The because I think the mind is a meaning machine and we're looking for patterns. So the way I describe this is that, you know, the hopefully with a metaphor that people can get is that I spent a lot of time, a lot of many years in publishing, right? And I did very little writing, did a little bit of editing and a fair bit of proofreading. Yeah, once even though I had some staff, had a small team of five and we had a new project manager and she was supposed to do the editing and proofreading.

[00:17:38] - [Speaker 0]
And I checked her first work and it was like there was a glaring error in the first sentence and I just saw. So I spent the following two weeks doing my eight till six job and proofreading after coming home and proofreading after having dinner. And I proofread a 100,000 words. And when you're proofreading, you're always looking for what's wrong. Like a lawyer's looking for what's wrong in

[00:18:15] - [Speaker 1]
a case. Yes, yes, yes.

[00:18:17] - [Speaker 0]
And an auditor is looking for what's wrong in some numbers. And that's how I think we act as the meaning machine is looking for what's wrong. And people will say that this is some brain science here though, something in our mammalian mind, scan as the blokes are scanning the horizon for

[00:18:45] - [Speaker 1]
saber tooth tigers or something. Credators of some sort, yeah.

[00:18:48] - [Speaker 0]
Something like but we're looking for what's wrong. And we're also, we're looking for what's wrong. We're looking to make connections. So we're looking for a reason. We're looking for what's wrong and we're looking for a meaning of saying, Yes, right.

[00:19:00] - [Speaker 0]
Okay, that's adoption, that's adoption, adoption, adoption, that's like the stealing and hoarding thing and projectile vomiting. So interestingly, I haven't done either of those things. Did go through, I did steal about three or four, well I did steal some sweets as I've said earlier on from my employer who was paying me £1.50 now. So you know, somebody was stealing him. I had some justification, but I did go through a phase of, I think I nicked free gifts off comics.

[00:19:39] - [Speaker 1]
Oh yeah, that's hard work. That's a lot harder than just nicking the comic.

[00:19:43] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, saw it, buy the comic and I've nicked the gift from the one underneath as well. So I'd have two free gifts. But, so my mind went to looking at Nancy barriers. My memory of not reading the book six years ago was, she says that adopted people don't like rejection, adopted people don't like change and adopted people can't control things.

[00:20:11] - [Speaker 0]
Those are the ones that really rang for me. So we both looked for the, in my opinion, right? We both looked for the evidence of, we looked in for the tie in between her story and us. And we both got different things out of it based on the things that you said and the top the stuff that you remember about in the time. One of the big realizations that I had was, and it kind of alludes to what you said earlier on, a little bit of something earlier on, is that six because I've done most of my consciousness, practical spirituality, emotional intelligence, that sort of stuff, psychology.

[00:20:58] - [Speaker 0]
I've done that learning with non adoptees. And what I've discovered, learned by learning alongside non adoptees is that none of them like rejection, none of them like change and all of them were trying to control stuff. So for me, this is one of my fundamental challenges with the book is that it is attributing, however you say it, attributing what is human to the adoption. And my evidence of that is that if my evidence, when I think when I first got this right is I saw that my feelings change. So feelings of insecurity come and go and yet adoption, being adopted is a constant.

[00:22:09] - [Speaker 0]
So one historic event cannot explain a variable fixed, it's fixed in time fifty four years ago, cannot explain a variable condition, a variable feeling, a feeling that comes ago. Something that is constant cannot be the causal factor of something that is intermittent.

[00:22:43] - [Speaker 1]
I guess so, I guess that's a view, don't, that's not a view I share. It seems to me I hadn't planned to talk about this, but I had open heart surgery last year, so I was born with a wound because it was a hole in my heart that was undiagnosed until 2019.

[00:23:04] - [Speaker 0]
Wow!

[00:23:04] - [Speaker 1]
And so I had a wound, and as far as I know, I've been asymptomatic all my life, I don't recall ever having symptoms, although apparently I did when I was a baby, did have them, it was noticed, but it got fixed for elective reasons. And so I've carried that all my life without realising it, that wound, and with an expectation actually now from what I know that I would have killed over or had a stroke or something at some point, probably in my late 60s, early 70s, because of the nature of it, it was a big one and my right heart's world, anyway that's another story. So I do have a belief that things that happen to us in utero, in the womb and in those first, particularly those first couple of years, have a profound effect on us and the issue we have is that we are not conscious, and even if we're conscious, we're unable to process in a cognitive way what's going on, and so therefore whether they be mental scars or physical scars or wounds, they just show up in odd ways occasionally, and my thing about the feeling of rejection, this is a good one actually, we stop, if we stay with feeling of rejection is, I am like you, that's not constant.

[00:24:37] - [Speaker 1]
That happens under certain circumstances. I got made redundant recently and it triggered it, but six months before I had no feelings of it, so by what you're saying, therefore it can't be connected to my adoption. However, know it, all I do know is the impact it had on me was more than just being made redundant, it was more than just the practical worries of finding work, it had undertones and shadows of something that I've got no conscious memory of, but I believe, and you might say I believe it because I want to believe it and it fits with the model, but I believe it comes from a wound, it comes from a wound that I've largely healed, but the little ripple of feeling I have about it is still there. Don't know if that makes any sense

[00:25:29] - [Speaker 0]
You at all, but you know, I wouldn't say that you want to believe that. The fundamental freedom, the most freeing thing that I have learnt, well, top five, I guess. And this is going about twelve years ago is that most of us aren't choosing what we do feel or think most of the time.

[00:26:06] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, those things are feeling us, they're choosing us, aren't they? Thoughts are thinking us and feelings are feeling us rather than us feeling them.

[00:26:16] - [Speaker 0]
I guess so, I hadn't really

[00:26:20] - [Speaker 1]
Put it that way.

[00:26:21] - [Speaker 0]
I hadn't really, so logical conclusion of the fact that we're not choosing would be, okay, so I'm going to choose. Well, that doesn't work. Positive thinking doesn't work most of the time. Not for me, but personally, But we're obsessed by our thoughts and our thoughts aren't us. So we should be So my metaphor for this is the diamond in pile of dog poo.

[00:27:07] - [Speaker 0]
We've got pooey feelings in our head. We've got pooey that are causing pooey feelings in our heart. But with the diamond that's hidden in amongst that, we are the use another analogy, we are the screen of consciousness and the thoughts or the feeling of insecurity appears on that screen. The pieces to be had is on what one of the guy I'm listening to at the moment says is to softening our focus to look at the screen rather than focusing on the thoughts and of the feeling. But we live in a world and me too, you know, I used to worry about worrying.

[00:28:17] - [Speaker 0]
And then I'd worry about worrying about worrying. And so there's like, it's those screens. It's the dialogue boxes exploding across the whole of the screen to obliterate the screen, to cover up. And that's what we do with our drama because we focus as human beings, focus on our especially our feelings. We are emotophobic.

[00:28:48] - [Speaker 0]
We're like me, I was emotophobic. We have a phobia. We don't wanna feel bad. I don't want to worry. So I worry about worrying and then I worry about And it just disintegrates.

[00:29:05] - [Speaker 0]
The drama just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And rather than focusing on the constant us, that is where the thoughts are occurring on top of.

[00:29:20] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, suppose so. I mean, to me, Yeah, I'm sort of, I'm with you on all of that, except for perhaps the idea that if I'm worried about something, right, if I feel an emotion, let's take when I got made redundant, so I'm feeling like I've got a variety of thoughts going on, but the one that's making me grumpy is a feeling that I'm no longer wanted by this organisation. The moment I notice that, is a chance to be free of it, so if I don't notice it, if I don't notice that that's what's going on, that I'm making this a bigger story than it actually is, it's a very straightforward story, but I'm somehow on an unconscious level making it a bigger story, a story that I'm no longer liked by these people. The moment I go, oh look at me, yeah look what I'm doing, I can let go of it, and so actually facing my own worry about wariness rather than make it worse is actually sort of pops its balloon, if you like, goes, oh yeah, that's me. That's okay then.

[00:30:33] - [Speaker 1]
It's just me being me.

[00:30:34] - [Speaker 0]
That's brilliant. That's brilliant. Because as you say, so I'm taking the worry balloon and then adding another one to it and you're popping the balloon. Great, brilliant,

[00:30:49] - [Speaker 1]
love it. And I think that's what we're crystallising here is a reaction to a source material, so we go back to the book, if we called it the worry balloon and applied it to the book, for me what happened is the the book helped to puncture the worry balloon. And for you, think it ended up putting some more air in it and you had to reconcile that.

[00:31:17] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah.

[00:31:18] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[00:31:19] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Well, it initially, so this is great. I love this. I don't know where the balloon, the balloon ideas. Great.

[00:31:28] - [Speaker 1]
It's yours. It's

[00:31:30] - [Speaker 0]
not, I've heard it from some down some time.

[00:31:32] - [Speaker 1]
Well, not mine. So we

[00:31:37] - [Speaker 0]
both had this worry balloon. You read the book and it was like deflating the worry balloon. So you let the air out to the balloon and it's flaccid, right? Reading the book, as I read the book, I started blowing more air into

[00:31:56] - [Speaker 1]
the balloon.

[00:31:57] - [Speaker 0]
And then when I realized that I was blowing more air into the balloon, I let it go too. So we both got to the same end point, but you did it a lot faster than me. Because I added another layer of complexity on it. Yeah. Another layer, you know, I did I pumped up the balloon before I realised that I

[00:32:16] - [Speaker 1]
was doing. Yeah, and I can see how that I mean, that now all makes complete sense to me, I can see how. How a person can read that book and it can actually pile on or pile in to our balloon some more air, I can see it because it is actually written, I mean for an academic book it's written I think in really easy language to read, was a page turner for me, I just kept going, but it doesn't pull any punches, I think it's somewhere in the introduction it says it's not a PC book, so it's not a book that's written in flowery language, it's fairly straight to the point about what it believes, and so I could see how that could activate people, that could actually, it's a bit like some people say talking therapy can re traumatise people, you know, if you have an experience, a traumatic experience, then you talk about it, you just re traumatise them again, and you can imagine some people reading the book just start to reenact whatever it was that was going wrong in the first place, yeah. But that wasn't my experience at all, my experience was it was game changing, that experience, And I think that's partly timing in relation to when I read it, and also partly where I was in terms of readiness to have my balloon punctured, if you like, yeah.

[00:33:50] - [Speaker 0]
So I've started writing my own book like five times.

[00:33:56] - [Speaker 1]
You should finish because this is American, that's the thing I haven't said about the book is the American experience of adoption is different to The UK, I think. It's got a lot in common, I would imagine, but I'd love to hear an English voice writing and I think you're just the man for the job, Simon.

[00:34:13] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, thank you. I've tried it and I've dropped to 10,000 words and then I've thought that's not right and I've restructured it all and then I've went round and round and did it. I've had five goes, that's it.

[00:34:27] - [Speaker 1]
I

[00:34:29] - [Speaker 0]
actually prefer talking to writing.

[00:34:33] - [Speaker 1]
I can tell that from your website, you've got lots of.

[00:34:36] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, so what happens with me with writing is because I've been in publishing so long, I disappear down a road to perfection. Whereas if I do a Facebook live or a podcast, I'm just chatting away and I know I can't edit it. I can't edit it. I don't have the technical skills. I don't have the patience to learn the technical skills to edit video or audio.

[00:35:03] - [Speaker 0]
I don't have the desire to learn to do it. So I don't want to do it. It's just gone.

[00:35:08] - [Speaker 1]
These podcasts are your book then really?

[00:35:11] - [Speaker 0]
Kind of. But they're also a way, you know, I'd rather be talking adopted parent or talking to an adoptee than reading my book. And also yet, so because I enjoy it, a two way conversation. So that's why I've not written a book yet. Also if you write a book, then you have to go and promote it.

[00:35:45] - [Speaker 0]
And you have to try and figure out how to sell copies of it. And have to, and the book's gonna be a tenner and it costs £2 for a Facebook advert to get a link. And the whole internet marketing thing, I've been down this channel, I've been down this route a lot in the last seven or eight years. And it's a nightmare, absolute nightmare of complexity. So I'm just not going there.

[00:36:18] - [Speaker 1]
What would your book say though if you wrote it?

[00:36:21] - [Speaker 0]
Well, the title would be, Drake Crushing, thank you. The title would be Fundamentally Unwoundable.

[00:36:28] - [Speaker 1]
I'd love that, I'd love to take you on, we should write a book in two halves because mine would be almost, I can't think what the opposite of that phrase would be, but it would be diametrically opposite, it'd be something like 'flawed but willing' or the wound is what has made me', how about that, yeah, the wound is what has made me'.

[00:36:51] - [Speaker 0]
Okay, so what's the 'me' in one word?

[00:36:58] - [Speaker 1]
You can't do it in one word what is me', it's the same

[00:37:00] - [Speaker 0]
Three, three.

[00:37:03] - [Speaker 1]
The person here.

[00:37:04] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, the person. Do you mean the personality?

[00:37:09] - [Speaker 1]
No, I mean, the the the life story, the impact on others, the Okay.

[00:37:17] - [Speaker 0]
Well, first off,

[00:37:18] - [Speaker 1]
Are you pulling my book apart? I haven't even written it

[00:37:21] - [Speaker 0]
yet. Yeah.

[00:37:23] - [Speaker 1]
All right, I'm gonna have a go fundamentally unwoundable then.

[00:37:26] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. Do you want me to go first with my bit and then you can take shots?

[00:37:31] - [Speaker 1]
Sure, then.

[00:37:31] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Okay. So as some French guy whose name I always forget and I can never remember how to pronounce it despite getting an A at O level French and a D at A level French. The D at A level French, shouldn't be so proud of, should I? He said, are not human beings having a spiritual experience.

[00:37:58] - [Speaker 0]
We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Okay, so that sums up how I see it. So we are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are spirit. If we shorten that down, we are spirit.

[00:38:19] - [Speaker 0]
Spirit is unwoundable. Spirit is unwoundable. The stuff where the wound happens is the human part of us. So if you're saying we are are if you're saying we are human beings having a spiritual experience, then yes, I agree with your I agree with where you're coming from. But because I see us as spirit, that spirit is in my world, in my opinion, and it's a bit wacko, I totally get.

[00:39:04] - [Speaker 0]
That spirit is unwoundable.

[00:39:07] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, I'm sure there's, I'm sure I don't describe, I mean, what you're describing is a diamond in the poo, isn't it, in a way?

[00:39:13] - [Speaker 0]
Exactly. It's the same matter. It's just a metaphor for the sake.

[00:39:17] - [Speaker 1]
But I guess I'm more interested for the purpose of this conversation in the poo than the diamond, because I can completely accept that somehow, I wouldn't call it a diamond fund enough because my version of that is a spirit energy that connects us all and connects everything in the universe. The wacko stuff, I'm sort of with you in a way, and that stuff I'm completely with you is like pure light and is unwoundable, completely get that. What I'm saying is, I've showed up on this planet in flesh and blood and interfaced with the world all people I've interfaced with it in a certain way, that way has been at its core a wound, as it happens it's got two because the other one got surgery, but as it happens I was born with two wounds, one was the wound of a hole in my heart and the second was a wound of being adopted. And my experience of that has ebbed and flowed, hasn't been constant, and the consequential attitude, feelings and behaviour of that has ebbed and flowed hasn't been constant, but that is that's my story. And I guess my journey on the story has been to discover it more really, just to be a bit more aware of what's made me tick I think.

[00:40:43] - [Speaker 1]
Sorry just to finish while to plug my as yet unwritten book, is the way I'm going about this is I've got a website up, I'm going to plug, which is stillwaters.world.

[00:40:56] - [Speaker 0]
And ladies and gentlemen, there will be a link.

[00:41:00] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, that's very kind of you.

[00:41:01] - [Speaker 0]
In the show notes to that. So you don't need to like try and remember that. It's a great name.

[00:41:09] - [Speaker 1]
Well, it's You

[00:41:09] - [Speaker 0]
need to remember it because you need to pay attention to the rest of what Nick's saying

[00:41:13] - [Speaker 1]
I can tell you a clever thing about why it's called that, but I won't yet. But what I've decided to do is just to write 500 to a thousand word articles and then put them up on the website. And so I've decided that that is my book. It's my version of your podcast in a way, it obviously fails on the interactive and conversational front, but it's a way in which I can just unload concepts and ideas, no doubt I'll write about this experience of chatting with you and that will go up there and all of that stuff is my book and it's got the benefit of I don't have to ever worry about all that Facebook charging muck that you worry about, it's just there, it's free, anyone can read it and they don't have to wait till I've finished even, they can start reading it now, even though I probably won't finish it for another ten years. So that's my attempt at a book, yeah.

[00:42:10] - [Speaker 0]
Brill, we're each doing it in a different way.

[00:42:12] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, and the thing I'd like to say is that what I felt when I first spoke to you is, I think we come at this in a different way and we believe different things, and that's absolutely fine. To me, need more in the world of people who can sit and have a conversation and not either they don't have to get to consensus and they don't have to just call each other names and jump in a trench and be divisive. It's a proper dialogue. It's great.

[00:42:41] - [Speaker 0]
No, I totally disagree. You need to agree with me.

[00:42:45] - [Speaker 1]
I respect you're right, but I disagree with it.

[00:42:53] - [Speaker 0]
So, the thing is with your hole in the heart thing, right? So before I knew it, you didn't, you shared with that last time.

[00:43:11] - [Speaker 1]
I don't I don't think I did actually. I didn't intend sharing it today.

[00:43:14] - [Speaker 0]
So, yeah, my take on that, one of the metaphors that I've come up with is actually in one of or more versions of the book was that one of my first memories is, or one of my first, one of my first horrible memories was my granddad dying and he died of a heart attack and I was heartbroken. So there's a difference between a heart, so I explain it like the difference between heart attack and being heartbroken. So a heart attack is a physical thing. Feeling heartbroken is an emotional thing. Well, it's an emotional thing, it's an emotion.

[00:44:03] - [Speaker 0]
It's not a thing. So there's a word for this. One of my mentors took me, oh yeah, nominalization. It's taking something that is a process and making it into a thing. And so for me being the feeling of insecurity comes from insecure thought, which we're not aware of because we are unconscious, but neither the feeling or the thought is a thing.

[00:44:49] - [Speaker 1]
I mean, it's profound. I can tell you though that I had my heart broken, I've had both parents die and I've been rejected four times by my birth mother, and that hurts in a physical way, in fact it hurts more in a physical way than when I had my chest sawed open and had my heart repaired. I completely get that it's conceptual, but I felt it, I felt it physically.

[00:45:18] - [Speaker 0]
I have felt that too. When I was in a therapist chair and the idea of my birth mother rejecting me again came into my head and that it hurt like hell. But that is my human experience, not my spirit. And as soon as I said that, thought, Simon's copying out, but no, that's how I see it. Isn't me copying out.

[00:46:16] - [Speaker 0]
Is, oh, there's this phrase isn't that going around at the moment, spiritual bypass. You know, bypass is always clogged up, don't they? I'm thinking about Swampy, do you remember Swampy?

[00:46:33] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, Winchester Bypass, that's near very near where I live.

[00:46:36] - [Speaker 0]
Okay, bypass is always filled up, don't they? There's always a problem on the Edinburgh Bypass. So I live near Wetherbee, which is always used to be famous for its race course. Now it's famous for the A1 always getting clogged up at junction, whatever it is 41 between Wetherbee Bram, Wetherbee and Bramman because it goes from three to two lanes or something like that. The Edinburgh Bypass that's always getting clogged up.

[00:47:04] - [Speaker 0]
And maybe emotional bypasses get clogged up as well as we all go down that. But no, that is the way I see it. It's that feeling. That's a concept. On the other side, you being rejected four times by your birth mother makes me want to cry.

[00:47:29] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, because we're empathic human beings and we do feel emotion, but I completely get where you're coming from. You've got yourself in a frame of mind which gets you through this life and gets you to sleep well and gets you up on the pitch and serving others, so that's just good, I'm not going there's no way I'm going to try and undermine or dig away at your foundations, because you know, it brings you health and happiness, Simon, all that matters to me, so

[00:47:55] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, thank you.

[00:47:57] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, and I feel the same, I feel light and healed as a result of a number of things, including the book.

[00:48:07] - [Speaker 0]
Brilliant. That feels like a pretty good place to bring it in, doesn't it?

[00:48:15] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah, it's been a joy, thank you.

[00:48:18] - [Speaker 0]
I hope the listeners get something.

[00:48:22] - [Speaker 1]
Well, I'm sure they'll tell you if they don't.

[00:48:26] - [Speaker 0]
Podcasts are funny things, you know, what is it that silly thing? You know, if a tree falls in the forest and there's nobody to hear it.

[00:48:38] - [Speaker 1]
Doesn't make a noise.

[00:48:42] - [Speaker 0]
What was the other one? You know, in the philosophy

[00:48:47] - [Speaker 1]
Is it something Schroeder's cat?

[00:48:49] - [Speaker 0]
Schroeder's cat.

[00:48:50] - [Speaker 1]
Is it the cat's in the box, is it dead or not? And it is both dead and not dead.

[00:48:58] - [Speaker 0]
I haven't heard that one. I've heard I've heard it, but I've heard the name, but the thing I was thinking more of, you know, is is this a question? Yes, if this is an answer.

[00:49:10] - [Speaker 1]
Oh, my word. I think you're what few listeners we've got left at the end of this now are just starting to get headaches, I imagine.

[00:49:18] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, sorry, listeners. As I say, I haven't got the technical skills to edit the nutso stuff. Are you getting it?

[00:49:29] - [Speaker 1]
These are the outtakes, yeah, very good.

[00:49:31] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, thanks a lot Nick, this has been great.

[00:49:39] - [Speaker 1]
Nice speaking to you.

[00:49:40] - [Speaker 0]
Take care.

[00:49:42] - [Speaker 1]
Take care,