The Cure Is In The Pain With Stacey Gagnon

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Thriving Adoptees podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Stacey, Stacey Gagnon. Looking forward to our conversation today, Stacey. Oh, I am excited to be here Simon, thanks for having me. You're very welcome. And you know, you just said that you have your own podcast too. So how do you feel when the boots on the other foot? How do you feel about... I love it. I feel like the pressure's on you and no, there's no pressure on me.

[00:00:35] Yeah, it's those moments, isn't it? When you...what do you say next? Luckily I don't have too much of a challenge with that. I can just go on and on and get enthusiastic and start shoving my own stuff into the conversation when I'm supposed to be interviewing the guests. But I would say that's the bigger issue for me than being short of something to say. Well, I think we will have no problem filling the time today.

[00:00:58] We're good. We're good to go. So, Thriving. Ladies and gentlemen, Stacey is an adoptive mum just for context, right? And she also runs Lost Sparrows. Great, great mission. So what does Thriving mean to you, Stacey?

[00:01:17] I think Thriving has changed in what its meaning for me was. I think when we first, just as a young adult starting out with a career, I started as a teacher before I went into nursing and I got my RN. But I think initially Thriving was probably more driven by what success would look like. So have a good job, have a house, be happy in my marriage.

[00:01:45] I have a faith background. And so I, you know, my relationship with Jesus, these were all really important things for me and to measure Thriving.

[00:01:55] It would have been something that was very tangible. After many, many years of living life and parenting and working with adults who have experienced a lot of adversity and trauma, I recognize that Thriving and success are very, very different things.

[00:02:20] And, you know, I look at, for me, Thriving is each day waking up and having some type of inner sense of joy and purpose. And again, my faith is a huge piece of who I am. And it's also just contentedness, you know, just to be content where I'm at and circumstances and behaviors of my kiddos in my home or behaviors of people in the, you know, out and about.

[00:02:49] Like all those things, the environment cannot be a barometer for Thriving. The barometer for Thriving needs to be internal. And so I think that's been the big shift for me is to move from an external barometer or measurement for Thriving and success to an internal. Yeah. And do you remember that? I mean, there's so much that do you remember specific any specific moments?

[00:03:20] What when this became clear to you or clearer to you? Mm-hmm. I was a three-sport, full-ride college athlete, very, very high performer. And I also was an honor student. So I have always ran at a very high capacity.

[00:03:42] And there was a point with one of my children where they ended up making really scary, horrible choices and being incarcerated. And they, I had no control. And it was a complete, just no matter what I did, I could not fix what had occurred.

[00:04:07] And I remember this moment and just kind of being curled up in a ball because there's no handbook for what had occurred in our home. And then also how to continue to support a child who can never live in your home again. And for me, it was just this complete surrender of like, there's nothing that I can tangibly do to fix this.

[00:04:32] And I recall a moment, Simon, where, so my child was very angry and hurting and broken. And he has a really hard history and we're sitting in a courtroom and he doesn't even want to look at us. And I kind of was tipping between this brokenness for him and this anger at him.

[00:05:00] And even when they took him out of the room to go to be incarcerated, he wouldn't even look at me. And I remember that night getting a phone call from him in jail. And his voice on the other end was so, it was like hearing my little boy again.

[00:05:27] And, and, and this is, this is a very huge point in my life because I, I could have chosen to be very self-righteous and angry and say, how could you do this? How could you hurt your family? How could you choose this? When the reality is, is I needed to choose to help him, to help him understand that love doesn't hold a record. Love isn't going to have this, you have to perform to do something. Cause my entire life was performance.

[00:05:57] So I said to him over the phone, I said, and this is something I had said when he was, since he was a little boy, every night I would tuck him in. I said, son, if I lined up all of the 15 year old boys in the entire world. And he finished the thought, he said, you would still pick me mom. And I said, I would still pick you.

[00:06:21] And I think that that is this for me was a tipping point in recognizing like thriving and caring and love and things like, like I cannot live in a performance based space and be okay. Like, and so I guess if you were to say, what was that? That was my tipping point was realizing like, I didn't want to live that way anymore. Yeah.

[00:06:50] It's often in the toughest times that we have these big moments. A hundred percent. And I think that when I look at it, you know, I'm a speaker on kids and behaviors. I am an international speaker on trauma and all these things.

[00:07:10] And here I have not been able to work hard enough to cure it, to fix it, to mend it. And I think that that was the, that tipping point for me was recognizing that thriving could not come from that external thing or that success could not come from that.

[00:07:31] Look at, I just parented this child into a high performing fortune 500 CEO who's got a family and does all the things. But like, that's, that's not even anything. But I think in my mind, because my entire life had been this performance driven thing and I was such an achiever. And if you work hard enough, you'll get it.

[00:07:53] Recognizing that that, that doesn't work when we're talking about the life that I've kind of living and who I am and just being human, right? That being human. Was it a let go moment then? A hundred percent. A hundred. I did even completely, I think changed my parenting. I think, you know, the hardest thing about healing from early adversity.

[00:08:24] And I have a, I have a history of as a child, there, there was a lot of hard things that happened to me as a kid in my home. And I think that what that made me realize is that you can't bootstrap stuff. You're not going to bootstrap your, your healing and, and trauma. You know, we say that the cure is in the pain.

[00:08:48] Um, it's really hard when relationship is what caused the pain, but relationship is where the cure is for healing and being able to thrive and, and be successful in relationship with people. Yeah. Just going back, you mentioned a couple of times, um, in the courtroom that your son couldn't look at you.

[00:09:13] Have you got an idea what that was or have you found out subsequently what that was? Have you had a conversation with him about that? Absolutely. I, I mean, it was shame, right?

[00:09:28] He, his, I think that when you look at, we call it the language of the abandoned, um, when, when there has been a failing on some level and an adult in a child's life, um, whether it is adoption or foster care or whether it is divorce or whether it is abuse or any of those things, a child doesn't ever blame the parent. A child blames themselves. That's just the way that it happens.

[00:09:57] And so for me personally, um, my father was an alcoholic. He was scary at times. Um, I had molestation occur when I was a child. Um, all of those things for me were my fault because that's what kids do. And so there's a piece of me that's going to work harder because there's a little piece of a shame component to my attachment process.

[00:10:22] So for my son, you know, um, and all, all of my children who have come to live with me or who have been through my home through foster care, there is that piece of, if I had done this. I would have been loved. If I had not, you know, I'm not worthy. I'm not lovable. There's, there's that little piece of that.

[00:10:42] And so him not looking at me looked like rejection and anger and I hate you, but what it really was is I hate myself. I'm not worthy. And this is, I'm, I'm a bad person. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think I'd come, I'd taken a guess at it from the outside and I, I'd come to that shame point too.

[00:11:12] Um, I haven't mentioned it in a, in a while on an interview because, um, I've, I think I went through a stage of mentioning it too much, but have you heard of, um, uh, the scale of, scale of consciousness? Um, so, um, the, it's called, the book's called power versus force by David Hawkins.

[00:11:42] And he's got, and it's, it's a scale of human consciousness and it goes from zero to a thousand. Have you come across that? I have not. No. So zero is dead. Okay. Um, and a thousand is the great religious, uh, religious avatars. So you mentioned Jesus, but, uh, other guys as well, like Buddha people and that, um, and 200 is the tipping point.

[00:12:10] So below 200, it's life detracting and above 200, it's life affirming. So, um, the United States Marine Corps qualifies that, uh, resonates at 180.

[00:12:30] Um, now if you're, if you've come from the wrong side of the tracks and, and the army has been your way out, you know, you've, you've left your world behind and there's this huge, they, they break you down and then build you back up as they do in any, in any, um, military place. Uh, and then they, and then they build you back up and they, and they mold you. And I think it would be even more extreme in the elite, you know, like the Marines or the UK equivalent.

[00:13:02] I think anger is 50. Unconditional love is about 500, but shame is 20. Unconditional love is about 150. It doesn't surprise me, but. And it's, it, that really puts for me, puts the finger, but, you know, puts the finger on it in terms of it's, uh, toxicity, toxicity. If I can even say that word.

[00:13:32] I, I think one of the things that I really surprised me and I learned and, um, is when, what I, what I saw, I mean, we, we've had lots of kids come through my home through the foster system in the States. Um, you know, reunification is always the goal. So I've had a lot of children reunified with families or, um, or they end up, um, going to a grandparent or an aunt or an uncle or things like that.

[00:14:00] And so not every kid that we foster did, did stayed, um, or we'd have about 50 kids. But, um, one of the things that I, that I saw, and this is what I wish that, um, parents understood is that when children are in your home who have struggled and have some of that shame piece of things, shame is a piece of the attachment process.

[00:14:29] So what, what this looks like is a child that's going to do behaviors on a subconscious level to make you get really upset at them or reject them or to be angry because they're, they're inducing in you what they believe themselves to be.

[00:14:50] And when you can see the behavior for what it is, instead of how it makes you feel, then you actually can start addressing that. And so when you start realizing, like, it's not that this kid or this adult is trying to get you because it's not about you, right?

[00:15:10] It is about you in the sense that my attachment history and my history as a child causes me to have feelings and reactions, um, to behaviors or words said. But what it really, what it really needs, like people need to understand is that when you have these behaviors that induce in you this feeling, it's really them trying to. Have you prove out what they already believe about themselves. Yeah.

[00:15:39] It was the last thing that I wrote down, uh, on my notes about, from our notes for conversation the last time. Uh, and I thought to what extent have I done that or have I done that?

[00:15:59] And I didn't come to an answer after our conversation, but as you were talking about it just then, I, I did. I, I came to an answer. I came with a specific, I came with a specific, um, time in which I, in which I, in which I did that. In, in terms of not, not good enough.

[00:16:30] Putting others down. I, I, I think a lot of our, a lot of us live in a space where we're not enough or we're too much, not enough or we're too much. And I, I, I, I see like, and it is interesting when you think about response, like trauma responses or reactions or behaviors. And the reality is, is mine were applauded, right?

[00:16:58] I wasn't, I was an overachiever performer, um, going to, you know, kill myself in order to be successful. And the reality of that is I wasn't being my authentic self, right? I wasn't.

[00:17:16] And it, I think that's why when we look at the difference between men and women in trauma responses and a woman's trauma response tends to be more acceptable. It's the internalizing of behavior. It's the self-harm. It's the performance. It's all those things where boys and men tend to externalize and we tend to notice those.

[00:17:43] And, you know, one of the things when we're training teachers or we're training professionals on, on working with, with students is you have to recognize the response in girls too, because we're missing whole swaths of children. And who need intervention and support, but because their behaviors look, they're, they're not a problem.

[00:18:06] They're, they're, then we're not, we're not seeing what's right there because kids and adults are communicating to us. We just have to learn the language to be able to understand what they're communicating. Yeah. So big question here, right? And what's that, what's the antidote to shame? It's, it's empathy.

[00:18:33] It's looking and understand like, and this is what's difficult. This is what is difficult for church, for schools, for society is if someone does something bad, that's a sin or that's a bad thing. So there needs to be a consequence or a punishment. Right. Right.

[00:18:53] And so the, the problem with that is that there, there has to, like, we can't, when you punish trauma, what happens is you're just reaffirming and you're just, you're kind of piling it on. And so what, what we try and do is to explain like, okay, relationship is the cure. So that empathy, that, wow, you must be hurting. It doesn't mean there are zero boundaries, right?

[00:19:21] There are always like, but understand that boundaries, boundaries are not about the things you put on other people. Boundaries are what I'm willing to help, what I'm willing to do. Boundaries are about myself. So I have boundaries. Do you want an example, Simon? Yeah, sure. Okay.

[00:19:40] So if one of my children is, has a trauma response or a reaction or a trigger and gets angry and starts yelling and cursing or breaking something, my boundary is that this does not feel safe to me and in my, in my home, in our home, we, we are safe. We live safely. I'm not going to have someone talk to me that way.

[00:20:06] And so the boundary is for me, but then I'm going to also that, like, I'm also going to be able to be empathetic and be curious as to why this behavior is occurring. And I'm not going to talk about it in that moment. So I'm going to make sure everyone's safe and all things, but at the afterwards, I'm going to come back. And the, the boundary is that in our home, we don't break things. We don't yell. We don't curse. Right. So there are some natural consequences for that, but I'm also going to go around and say, wow,

[00:20:37] I can't imagine what kind of day you must've had or what's going on. I've not seen you that upset in a long time. I'm, I'm wondering why and letting it set and waiting because so many times when I've seen this overreaction to a small stimulus, it's never really about that stimulus. It's about something else.

[00:21:00] And so I think the job of the parent, the job of the friend or is to really, to be curious about the behavior because it's truly never about the behavior that you see. It's always something deeper that you're, oh. And so that's when I look at shame, that empathy piece and helping them have the self-awareness.

[00:21:29] So what about our own shame rather than our kiddo's shame? I mean, that's, that's the piece of it is, is so my husband knows me better than anyone. Right. Right.

[00:21:43] And there are very honest and deep conversations we have where I am genuine about, I, I, I feel like this, or I don't like myself because of this, or I am, I see my, like, he'll point out, Hey, you are like, cause I am a performer by nature. So I'll get into a groove of like all the things have to, all the boxes have to be checked and he'll, he'll say like, what's going on?

[00:22:12] I think it's Simon. It is, it is literally understanding that we have to be, we have to have people in our lives that we are very honest with. We have to have people and be intentional to have people that I can sit there and he knows signs in the symptoms that I have and the reactions I have that I am dysregulated or I am living out of a past history. I'm living out of a space of shame.

[00:22:42] And so I think it is the permission for him to call that out in a loving way, but also me sharing with him the feelings and the thoughts and the things that I know internally I struggle with, with shame. I'm, I'm guessing too. I mean, that's incredible. What an incredible partnership you have to, to, to, to do that. Right.

[00:23:07] And, and I'm guessing that there was some internal moment or series of moments that went, went, went on for you as well in terms of becoming aware of that. What I don't, what we would call it performance tendency, should we say? So there was, and, and, and was it in that moment that you mentioned earlier on when you thought, well,

[00:23:36] performance can't fix this. No, I think it's been a, it's been a series of like, especially series of moments and a series of, of research. Like I think it's really important that every human being understand their attachment style. They understand the way that they operate in relationships with people, because my husband and he would be, he, he gives me full permission.

[00:24:06] He's an avoidant. So his childhood has created someone that's an avoidant. And so I know that when he starts shutting down, doom scrolling, you know, spends more time at the office than for him. That is it. That's a sign of like, Hey, he's not feeling so great. Right.

[00:24:27] And so I think that it is, we both are very open about what our attachment styles are and, and what we do in moments of distress. And so, but it was, it was a series of, okay, that moment. And then realizing like, I don't, I can't live this way. I'm never going to be good enough. Never going to do well enough. I'm never going to work hard enough. And then recognizing like, why am I this way? Because other people aren't this way.

[00:24:58] And so then starting to be curious about myself. And I think one of the things Simon, I hear a lot is like, well, I don't have someone that I can talk to that way. Well, I think that for us, when we, when we hit a real rock bottom in our home, we both realized, number one, we had to be intentional. To find other people besides each other, because when two people are drowning, they can't save each other.

[00:25:27] So we were drowning in a lot of things that were happening within our family unit. And so we both sat down and we prayed about, and then talked about like, who could we be intentional to talk to every week or to get coffee every week? And it was, it was easier for me. I think females in general have an easier time with the conversations and friendships. And men tend to be like, not as maybe emotional in their friendships.

[00:25:56] Well, he decided to sit down. He picked a guy and was like, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to be open. And I'm going to tell him I am hurting. These are the things happening. And I, you know, and it was for him, it was interesting because he found some friends that really wanted the same thing. I don't think that men don't want a deep relationship, you know? And then for me, I had to stop saying that I'm okay. I'm fine. Let me support you.

[00:26:24] Instead of being real saying, yeah, I'm struggling. This is hard. I don't know what to do. And it's not like they had the answers, but it was actually just being real and authentic and genuine about the struggles and letting someone else just walk alongside of you in that. Yeah. So I want to take you back a bit because I think it's in terms of insights, it might help.

[00:26:54] But before I do that, I just wanted to just share one thing that came to me last week. So I was thinking about insights and, you know, on all the different metaphors there are for that. So from a religious perspective, you'd be looking at an epiphany, an epiphany moment, road to Damascus, you know, like a Damascene conversion.

[00:27:22] But I also thought about pennies dropping. My sister's called Penny. And it's like pennies keep dropping from two perspectives, right? On one perspective, the same penny keeps dropping. It's like the same learning at a deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper level.

[00:27:51] And that's what my take is on the shame versus self-esteem thing, right? You know, human. That is the same learning again and again and again and again. And sometimes it's a deeper learning than it was before. Sometimes it's a shallower one.

[00:28:15] Sometimes I had one of my own insights on shame last week. And I think it's something to do with what you said about inducing in others the feelings that we have ourselves. But I want to take you. Sorry, first off, does that ring true for you?

[00:28:45] A hundred percent. I think when I look back and I see like, I'll laugh. I'll say I'm a slow learner when it comes to emotional things. But I also think that. We all are, I think, Stacey. When it comes to hard stuff like this, I think if it was all at one time, it would be too much to take.

[00:29:09] Let me tell you a quick example of one of those penny drop moments after some of this stuff had happened in our home. I work with an inmate population. I work with them understanding trauma and adversity and behaviors and healing from from adversity. And I had 15 to 20 guys that I was talking about a lot of things with.

[00:29:34] And we were in one room and there was a moment I was talking about my child who was incarcerated. And many of them had started in juvenile. So I really wanted I wanted their insight. I learn a lot every time I go into the jail and how to best support him. Right. And what they needed from family and what, you know, and there was a moment where one of the inmates said,

[00:30:02] Stacey, is there anything your son could ever do to make you stop loving him? And it was the craziest thing because right at that moment, there had been a little bit of chatter around the room. The whole room went and dropped silent and every single man looked at me. And here's a group of hardened, tattooed, you know, men sitting in this room. And that I think is the question when you see behaviors or when you see things like this,

[00:30:32] is that is there anything. There's nothing that you're that I could do that makes you stop loving me. And I think that what I learned in that moment is shame. Shame tells you you didn't deserve the love in the first place. And so you see the self-sabotage happen or you see the things happen where you're like, this doesn't make sense.

[00:30:55] And I just remember I looked at them and I said, no, because love is a daily choice. And there are things that I don't like. There are things that hurt me and grieve me. But love is a daily choosing. And I just I just remember the looks on their faces because that room full of men looked like little boys all of a sudden.

[00:31:20] And I think about the way that we must have failed them as a society when they were kids. And I just because if you look statistically in the United States, I believe it's like 70 percent of inmates were at one time in our foster system. And so it's like, oh, that's what that's what shame. Shame tells you you don't deserve love. You don't.

[00:31:44] And I think that penny drop that you're talking about is it's been this series of events and series of things that I've witnessed and seen. That's continually teaching me a little bit more deeper of an understanding of that. Yeah. You talked about internal and external.

[00:32:10] Stuff earlier is what you're getting at. I'm unlovable on the inside and you don't love me on the outside. Is that kind of where you're going with internal and external? Yeah. Or even I would say you can't love me. I don't know that.

[00:32:36] I think it is when you feel unlovable, unworthy and you don't trust the world because of. Trauma. Then how could someone? Because that's what shame says. There's no way. And that's where you see that self-sabotage piece, Simon. Like I see it over and over. And I am one of the most brilliant men that I've ever talked with. He he started drinking at the age of five.

[00:33:03] He was engulfed in a crack cocaine addiction by the age of 11. At 12, he started opioids, ended up incarcerated through most of his 20s. He earned three college degrees while in jail, in prison. Very, very brilliant, brilliant man. He had a 10 out of 10 on the ACEs, the Adverse Childhood Experiences quiz. Um, but he told me, he's like, I, I, I, I'm like, Ashley.

[00:33:32] And he gave me permission to use his name. Ashley, I don't understand what, like, you know, you're smart. You, you've been, he had been out and sober. He was on the speaking circuit. Um, he was doing all these things and, and he ended up just making a stupid decision. And he talked about self-sabotage and how he had hit the pinnacle. So he had performed and made it to what he thought was the pinnacle, but he was so terrified

[00:34:02] to actually feel joy. He was so terrified to actually have arrived because he knew at any minute it would be stripped away from him because he wasn't enough because shame told him you're not enough. You're not going to be, this is, you're a fraud. You're a fake. Right. And so what did he do? He controlled his own descent by self-sabotaging. So if I choose to do drugs, I choose to steal.

[00:34:31] I just like, if I choose this, then that means I was the one that controlled it. And again, that's another penny drop moment of like, oh my gosh, that's why you see what you see it with, with your, my, with myself or with others is because of that absolute fear to be successful because someone could take it from you.

[00:34:58] Someone could strip that of you because you'll, you're not, you're really not good enough to like, I don't know how every, you faked everyone out. I don't know how you were able to arrive where you've arrived. Yeah. I want to, and I started this, doing this a couple of minutes ago, but we, we went on a slightly different task. I want to bring it back. That's what happens, Simon. That's what happens when you have two podcasters.

[00:35:29] So you, you, you mentioned earlier on, um, uh, you summed up in three words, right? Like you said kids blame ourselves. Sorry. Kids blame themselves. Right. So I'm going to go as far as to say, we blame ourselves because we're looking at this from an adult perspective now. And what, what strikes me is that you've got, you know, I think when I think about adopt,

[00:36:00] adoptees and I think about myself, not an adoption from foster care, but, you know, as a five week old kid, baby, um, that there's, there's some, and I, I can't remember what it was like, but I hear echoes, you know, there are, there are echoes that I hear about it in, um, in when

[00:36:27] we get a new dog and the dog cries, right? There's an echo for me there somehow, but the, the clearly has this, this kind of not good enough thing, which sounds like a belief, right? That's not there. There are no, there are no words for that.

[00:36:56] Um, when do we start believing? When do we start believing that we're not enough? When do we start blaming ourselves? Well, I think that that's, so when I say kids blame themselves, I think that that's, um, they grow into adults that don't, that believe the same thing. So it is a swath of into adulthood.

[00:37:26] When this happens, I think that it's in those formative years. I mean, we understand that when we look at brain development, that in utero to about the age of five is pivotal for attachment. It's pivotal for that understanding of, and I actually, when you look at Dr. Bruce Perry,

[00:37:51] um, or looking even at Bessel van der Kolk or Dr. Gabor Matej, they're going to tell you in utero to about the first year of life or less, right? It's it, those are the, those thousands and thousands of times that an infant, a helpless infant cries out and a mom or caregiver meets the need.

[00:38:14] Those thousands and thousands of, of times that that attachment cycle is, is closed because babies are an open, what we call an open loop system. And an open loop system is that they, their needs have to be met in order for them to survive. And so that, that open loop system has to be closed thousands upon thousands of repetitions.

[00:38:37] And what that does is it builds in on the basement level of a brain, the idea for a child that they are loved, they are worthy and that the world can be trusted. And so all from that point, once we have built that in a brain, what we see happen when they

[00:38:59] get older is that's where you filter through stressful events or how that's where you filter through new and novel things. So if, if I am a child or a baby that was maybe neglected or had lots of different caregivers, or I had someone, I had a mom that was struggling with postpartum and couldn't even deal with

[00:39:27] me, um, was in an orphanage setting, any of those things, then what happens is that loop doesn't get closed or it's closed in a way that's chaotic and not predictable. And so that unpredictability, it is, it is breeding in a baby, that whole idea of like, okay, well, when something bad happens, when I'm nine, I'm going to filter it through a brain that says, of course that happened. I'm not lovable. I'm not worthy. And I can't trust people.

[00:39:57] However, if you have a baby that grew up the first year of life in a nurturing, loving that attachment cycles happening over and over. And this is even when you talk about attachment, it's not just this environmental thing. It's a hormonal thing. We're talking oxytocin and dopamine and all these other hormones that are happening. Okay. Okay.

[00:40:21] And so what that does is if that baby has really good attachment, when they're nine and something really bad happens in their life, they're going to filter that through a brain that says, that's okay. I'm loved and I'm worthy and I can trust people to be here for me. And so that's where you see that little bit of like a shift in the brain is that, that it's a foundational thing that isn't just, you can't go back and repair a foundational thing.

[00:40:51] It's that repetition of like showing up and showing up and showing up. And like you were saying, the self-actualization and starting to realize, oh, wow, that might be why I'm thinking this. That's not correct thinking. But it happens very early on. You mentioned Gabo Mate and I'm so delighted you did because as you were thinking, I was thinking about something I heard from Gabo Mate, which I've said this, I've said this a lot.

[00:41:20] Sorry, listeners, but it's still a big thing for me, right? I saw, I'm not a Gabo Mate fan, right? I don't dislike him. I just don't, he just, he doesn't attune. I don't, I don't tune into, I don't tune into him. I feel him. I actually feel that he's very pessimistic. And you mentioned Bruce Perry as well. And same thing.

[00:41:50] I feel he's very pessimistic. And I don't know why I'm telling this. Let me go back to the top. However, the reason I'm telling you this is about Gabo Mate. Because I heard this thing from him and I just thought that's genius. Right? He said that the feeling of not being enough is actually a belief that we're not.

[00:42:20] Yeah. And for me, that was pure genius from a guy that I don't normally like. So it really, not normally like, that's probably overcooking it. But I'll say why I don't take to those guys.

[00:42:40] I don't take to those guys because whenever I hear them speaking, they seem to be talking about the problem and not about a solution. And so whenever I bought the Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey book, I listened to it for eight, 11 hours, whatever it was. And it basically seemed to me to be an advertorial for working with him.

[00:43:11] He showed me some awareness stuff, but he didn't show me any change stuff. And that drives me a little bit nuts. Anyway, back to the point. The feeling of not being enough is actually a belief that we're not good enough. So unpacking that from on the basis of what you just said, Stacey.

[00:43:36] What I'm seeing is you talked about being filtered through a belief, filtered through a brain with a belief. And it seems to me that what's actually happening is that belief is growing within the brain. So the brain didn't have any words and brains didn't have any words for it. So my brain didn't have any words at five weeks old.

[00:44:03] But the belief is growing and it's becoming kind of self-reinforcing. How do you see that stuff? How do you see that? The evolution of that belief. I think that then it evolves into then I'm going to see what I believe. Right. So I'm going to interpret the world around my belief.

[00:44:29] And so that's where I think when we look at healing and even for myself, healing happens within community and people. Because when my filter is off and I'm talking about myself personally here. There are things I believe about myself or I perceive that are so wrong.

[00:44:50] But I don't see it unless when I am with those that I trust and that love me and care for me, they are able to point it out in a way that I'm like, oh. And it's kind of like, I think that community is huge. I think that the brain is just this magnificent, amazing creation. It's amazing. And I love what you said about Dr. Perry and Matej. Like I do. They're science guys.

[00:45:19] But when you're just science, you miss. There's a whole faith component that's missed, but there's also just the mystique and the mystery of this. We're more than just science and a test tube or whatever. I think in 20 years, we're going to even know more and be like, we were so dumb 20 years ago.

[00:45:39] But I think that in order for me, because I have a brain that filters things a little skewed, I need people around me when I am stressed out or when I am struggling to be regulated that can point that out, that that's a flawed thought. But I also tend to be patterned. I also tend to be patterned, Simon.

[00:46:08] I can tell you that I will have patterns where, and I'll be vulnerable on your podcast. I don't care. I struggled greatly with some disordered eating and some things like that and exercising too much because in my mind, like my dad did some real number on me that way. And so there are times where I'll be like, oh my gosh, I'm getting fat or I need to do this.

[00:46:33] And that is a pattern for me of control. And so when I see myself moving to that way, I now recognize that. I now recognize that for me, that is a pattern of control when I don't feel control and I don't feel like I'm enough. And so, but how I help myself in that is I have conversations about it. I speak it out loud.

[00:47:02] I bring it out into the light because it's a behavior from my filter. But it's not reality. Indeed. And every filter, everybody has a filter and everybody's filter is off. This is something that happened for me last week, right?

[00:47:31] An insight that happened for me last week. It's about filter, filters and worlds, right? And I heard somebody talking about a particular insect that has like a gazillion eyes. And I thought, well, that world must look different.

[00:47:57] It must look different if you've got a gazillion eyes. So we've only got two eyes. Right. Right. So we are, there is no one world out there. Worlds look similar to people with the same sets of numbers of eyes. Right. Similar, right? But the world looks different.

[00:48:27] And going back to what you said about open loop systems, you talked about feeling loved and worthy and the world can be trusted. I heard something from Einstein years ago. And it's something like the biggest question we can ask ourselves is, is the world for me or against me? Right.

[00:48:56] So that kind of fact fitted in with the world can be trusted. But every world is, we're all seeing the world differently. If we're talking about trees, like the world, and it's going to look different. Two eyes or a gazillion eyes.

[00:49:19] And what you're talking about is friends calling you out on bad stuff. On incorrect stuff. Friends calling. So in, you know, like in the UK, maybe it's just my friendships, right? My friends.

[00:49:39] People call us out when we are in a different, calling out is not based on something that helps us grow. It's more criticism than encouragement.

[00:50:09] And I think that's why the permission part is important. And that the being authentic part is important. You know, my friends know what I struggle with. My husband knows the things that I struggle with. And I'll say, I am feeling this way. Or he, you know, I see that, you know, how are you? How are you doing it? See, it appears like you're not doing so great. And it isn't a recrimination. This is out of love. So I get what you're saying.

[00:50:36] If I had a person come up and just be like, hey, you're doing this and this jacked, like I probably would be highly offended. But since it's done with permission and it's done from a space where I've been very open about my struggles, I think that that's why it works. Yeah. So you have an insight. So you have an insight.

[00:51:05] One, I've had a number of different people that have been in and out of my life as mentors, as coaches. And some haven't lasted very long at all. But one of the reasons I'm here doing this is what something a guy called Christian Simpson said to me 13 years ago.

[00:51:32] And his, my favourite quote of his is, it's hard to see the picture when we're in the frame. Hard to see the picture when we're in the frame. So what you're talking about here is your husband and your friends, with permission, are pointing stuff out that you can see when you're being tougher on yourself, when you're entering into your pattern behaviour.

[00:52:02] And you mentioned the word healing. And we've been talking about Bruce Perry and Gabor Martin. In that Bruce Perry book, the one with Oprah, it's basically, it's trauma all the way. And then every now and again, he drops a little bit of hope. And he says, but that's okay, because we have neuroplasticity. Right?

[00:52:30] And I'm thinking, yeah, what? You know, like, why didn't he just say insights? Why didn't he just say epiphany moments? Why didn't he just say penny drop moments? Why didn't he just say that, you know, when we have a change of heart or we have a change of perspective or when we see something differently?

[00:52:54] Because all those things, it strikes me that time doesn't, time isn't greatest healer. You said this last time, which I loved, I wrote down. Trauma doesn't age well. Right. Trauma doesn't age well. And you're right.

[00:53:21] You know, the genius, there's a genius in that sound like that. Trauma doesn't age well. And what you're saying is also time isn't the greatest healer. No. I think it is, it's just hard. I mean, and even, even in my own journey of trying to heal from things, it isn't some linear process.

[00:53:50] And it's just, oh, I'm fixing whole, you know, Simon, just to have a visual of this last week, I had my, my, my kids. He was born in an orphanage. We went to an ophthalmology appointment. And they're doing all these MRIs and scans on him because he has vision impairment, but it's actually not correctable because it's actually connected to his brain. So it's not, we can put eyeglasses on.

[00:54:17] It's literally because he missed out on having somebody to look at that eye gaze. He was in a room with nothing on the walls, in a crib every day, all day, nothing to focus on. So because of that, he has brain damage that he won't ever be able to see the world like you or I see the world.

[00:54:41] And, and, and I think that is, that is a physical picture of what we're talking about when we talk about things that happen internally to the brain, when it comes to adversity and trauma, where yes, he sees the world as he's capable of seeing it now, but he'll never see it. Like you see it, or I see it because of the beginnings and it's not fixable.

[00:55:04] And so when I say trauma doesn't age well, what, what I see ends up happening is that as the brain develops. So from, from three to about the age of five, the middle of the brain develops. And then from five to about 25 to 30, the thinking brain develops. What happens when you have some foundational cracks or foundational issues is that the top of the brain is going to struggle a little bit.

[00:55:34] And so as we, as the world requires more and a deeper understanding, if you don't have people in your lives or in your life to walk alongside of you and help you to visually see the world, how it truly is, then you are going to interpret it through the foundational pieces.

[00:55:56] Because when we look at how information in the world, especially when we're talking about emotional things or things that are stressful things, they're always, it always starts at the basement of the brain and works its way to the top. So on a science level, when you get newer novel information through a basement brain that has some issues who doesn't know that they can trust the world. And there's some fear there.

[00:56:21] Sometimes stuff just gets stuck into that emotional brain instead of actually moving up to the thinking brain. So there are things in my life that trigger me that I literally will have it stuck in my emotional brain because I'm scared and fearful and I need to survive in this moment. And it's the people around me that say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is okay. Let's walk this through. Let's talk this out.

[00:56:46] Let's actually look at this so that it actually can move to the top of my brain and I can use my thinking brain. And so that's a very rudimentary way to explain it. But I think that that's when I say trauma doesn't age well, we end up in life in harder experiences and more emotional things and more stressful things and all that stuff. And if we don't have that village or we don't have that community of support, we end up spiraling. Yeah.

[00:57:17] And that's why the community is so important to calling us out when we are off track, to put it. And it has to be intentional. We live in a world that's very isolating. Right. We live in a world where I don't have to need people. Right. I don't have to need the village of people to support me through the winter. Right.

[00:57:44] So I think that because we live in a world that's isolating, it's easy to live in that world and remain isolated. You have to be intentional. And being intentional means that you have to put yourself out there in an authentic and genuine way and share in a vulnerable way with people once you get to know them and trust them. But or you can decide, nope, I'm never going to do that.

[00:58:09] And I'm always just going to live in the space where every time someone asks, I say, I'm fine. I'm fine. Which I always laugh and I always say this because if my husband asks how I'm doing and I say I'm fine. He knows. Your wife Simon says, I'm fine. You're like, oh, no. Yeah. Or it's an acronym, isn't it? Fine. Yeah. Yeah. But this is a family show.

[00:58:39] And so the F stands for something. So we're not going to go into that. Stacey, it's been a been an absolute pleasure. Well, I've appreciated being on Simon. Thank you. And, you know, if any of your listeners have questions, I'm sure they'll shoot them to you and you have access to my email. Yeah. They're never get any questions. Really? Oh, my goodness. Well, maybe. Well, you're a podcast.

[00:59:08] You're a podcast too. Maybe you're maybe you're asking different stuff or something. You get some questions. Occasionally get a compliment, you know. It's cool. Thank you, Stacey. Thank you so much, Simon. And have a great, great holiday. Thank you. Thanks, listeners. We'll speak to you very soon. Take care. Bye bye.