Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hey, one more thing before yougo. What if the key to healing isn't
about fixing what's broken,but instead rediscovering the truth
of who you are? How do we movebeyond suffering and sip into self,
trust, agency and innerliberation? We're going to answer
these questions and more withour next guest. I'm your host, Michael
Hurst. Welcome to one morething before you go. Today we're
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joined by Julian Bermudez.He's a transformational guide who
helps people break free fromold patterns and reconnect with our
authentic selves. That's whatwe all want to do through self inquiry,
reflection, stillness andpsychedelic integration, which we'll
get into a little deeper.Julian's work invites people to rebuild
their inner relationships withhonesty, gentleness and joy. Julian's
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approach isn't about quickfixes. It's about deep, lasting transformation.
He believes that healing is ajourney of awareness, choice and
liberation. And we all have achoice. And he's here to share how
you two can step into a moreempowered, connected version of yourself.
If you've ever felt stuck,disconnected, or unsure of how to
move forward, thisconversation will challenge, inspire,
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and open new doors for you.Welcome to the show, Julian.
Michael, thank you for having me.
So thank you very much forcoming on here and sharing your wisdom,
your experience and what wecan do to help improve our lives
and more natural and holisticapproach. I appreciate that.
Thank you. I'm very happy tobe here.
I always like to start at thebeginning. Where'd you grow up? Tell
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me a little bit about yourself.
Yeah. Well, in a nutshell, Igrew up in Detroit, Michigan. And
my parents were. My dad was19, my mom was 21. And they were
of very different cultures andethnicities. My dad was Mexican,
Puerto Rican. His parentsimmigrated here and my mom was German.
Her mother moved here afterthe second World War. So I grew up
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in this very raciallymotivated and segregated area. And
my parents, being as young asthey were and not really liking each
other very much, they bouncedme back and forth for the first,
I don't know, 13 years of mylife. And as I modeled one parent,
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as children do, since myparents didn't like each other, they
also didn't like me. I becamea mirror for that pain. And so I
never had anybody to protectme. I never had a safe place and
the doors for abuse were wideopen. So I internalized a lot of
this pain as being thesebeliefs of, I'm defective, there's
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something wrong with me, I'mnot worthy, I'M not good enough of
love or safety or protection.And this left me with tremendous
pain all throughout my life.And in my early 20s, I really sought
to try to transform that, totry to figure out how I could live
life in a more meaningful waythat allowed me to not just feel
safe, but actually enjoy life.And so I went back to university,
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or I went to university morelike, and started studying addiction
psychology and clinicalpsychology. And through my own self
study and finding someteachers, I found this mode of therapy.
And the more and more Iapplied it to myself and the more
I was able to transform my ownpain, the more and more I was able
to help other people do thesame. And that's how I got here today.
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You know, that. What a. What ajourney. I know that, you know, we
all grew up in differentfamily environments and you know,
I understand the environmentthat you grew up in. You know, I
grew up with a verydysfunctional family myself, but
my parents were alcoholics andwhen they did get divorced, one hated
the other and the other onehated the other. Alternated depending
upon what day it was of theweek and you know, being switched
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between my father and mymother, and my father, my mother
and my father, a couple offoster homes in between. I understand
that journey from, from thatperspective to a point. You know,
obviously we all, we all walkthe same pathway, but sometimes we,
we go off that little pathwayon different shoots of our own. So
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it is that what inspired youobviously, to dedicate your life
to helping others andtransform that kind of suffering
and self trust. Your, yourdelving into the psychological aspect
of it. Were you introducedinto what you do today within the
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academic arena, or am I tounderstand that?
Yeah, the university I wasgoing to didn't have very many answers
for what I was looking for interms of addictions. Everything was.
It's a complex mechanism ofenvironment and genetics. And at
the very worst, it was peopleare making a choice and deserve to
be punished. So there wasn'texactly a lot of answers for how
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to understand trauma oraddictions and to transform or heal
these things. So I startedlooking for teachers through my own.
And I found some medicalspecialists who were in this field
of addictions. And throughthat I found a tremendous amount
of literature, medicalliterature, and I reviewed all of
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it over the course of aboutseven years.
Did you graduate, did you geta degree? Or did you delve off into
a different direction once youleft there with the new information
that you have?
Yeah, I finished theundergraduate and then eventually
I went and grabbed a master'sas well.
So how does I know that youdid a lot of self inquiry, you know,
I'm sure in reflection inregard to, to your life and where
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you were and how you can applywhat you've learned in the new things
that you have learned intowhat you do today. Does that play
a significant role in breakingfree from old patterns? Did it help
you?
Oh, absolutely. Through thisprocess, of course I was trying to
transform my own pain and healit and also trying to build the skills
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to help other people. And sothe more and more I was able to do
it for myself, the more andmore people came to see me to do
the exact same thing. And youknow, it's very important to notice
or to mention that thesepatterns, as far as I've experienced
these, the ways that we'veadapted to pain or to trauma, they
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don't exactly go away. It'snot like we ever fully exile them
or, or cure ourselves ofthese. Rather, the healing comes
where we can become very awareof these pattern, where we can recognize
and identify when they'reactivated and we can use that awareness
to make choices and to takeresponsibility and cultivate agency
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for what we do with ouremotions, our beliefs about ourselves,
our perceptions and ourbehaviors. So it's a constant exercise
or practice of recognizing andidentifying when something's active
inside of me, whether it's anold pattern, an adaptation to pain,
or a behavior perception thatI've learned through my childhood
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and making choices on what wedo with that. So that's the big part
of the practice that we do.
So if I can ask you this, atleast part of your personal transformation
and your personal journey initself. I know that you had talked
about, you went into college,into university in order to learn
about addiction patterns andso forth. And we all know that addiction
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could be many things, not justdrugs or alcohol. It can be anything
from eating and, you know,addiction to eating, addiction to
sex, addiction to, you know,so many other aspects of addiction
that kind of infiltrate our,our personal lives, our professional
lives, our ability to functionwithin society in a way that we kind
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of, we kind of fit in. How didyou. I know. Let's talk a little
bit about how you take thosekind of things, those kind of incidences,
those kind of experiences. Andlet's talk about what, what. Let
me try it this way. Sorry,I've got like 12 million things running
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through my head now. I knowthat you use a psychedelic integration.
So coming from my previousprofession that we just spoke about
as a retired police sergeant,actually the majority of the psychedelic
integrations that I had anyexposure to were from a different
side of that. You know,between psilocybin and mushrooms
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and LSD and things like this.How did you make the crossover? I
mean, I know that you had theintegration from your academic side.
How did you make theconnection between all of those traumas
that I just mentioned andbeing able to work with people utilizing
those from a medicalperspective or holistic perspective?
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That's a long question, isn't it?
Let's start with theaddiction. So I would define the
addiction as any behavior thathas short term relief. So there's
a craving of it and aninability to give it up, and it has
long term consequences. Sothere's relapse, there's a lot of
harm that comes fromcontinuing this. So like you said,
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it could be to anything. Itcould be to substances, of course,
and it could also be to thingslike behaviors like sex, gambling,
high adrenaline, highdangerous experiences, relationships,
food, anything that provides ashort term relief and then has long
term harm. So when I work withsomebody who's working through addictions,
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the things that go wrong withthe addictions are apparent. They'll
tell me right away. They'llsay, I lost my health, I lost my
family, I lost my job, I lostall my relationships, I lost everything
that I had. So the questionbecomes what? Well, what worked so
well for it that despite allof those negative things, it was
a behavior or a pattern thatwas continued. And very frequently
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what I hear is it provided ashort term relief from pain. So it
was a distraction or an escapefrom being present and feeling pain
that's always here. So thequestion becomes not why the addiction,
but why the pain causing theaddiction. And what we find is that
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when we go through trauma,which I would define as bad things
happening that shouldn'thappen. And it could also be good
things that are supposed tohappen that don't happen. It's not
so much about the things thathappen to us, it's about what happens
inside of us as a result towhat happens. So especially when
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we're children, when we'redeveloping and we go through trauma,
we adapt to it in the onlyways that are available to us. The
most common ways of adaptingto pain and to trauma at an early
age is that we go away or wedisconnect, we go away mentally.
So there's only a few thingsthat we can do. If we're going through
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pain as a child. We can setboundaries. But if it's our parents
or our caregivers who are theones who are causing the pain. Very
frequently, we can't setboundaries. Either we don't know
that that's an option, orsetting the boundaries would make
things worse or more dangerousfor us. So the second option is we
can go away physically. Butagain, if this is happening as children,
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when we're completelydependent on the relationship with
our parents to survive, wecan't just pack up and move away.
So the third option comes in,which is a survival mechanism. It's
an adaptation to the pain,which is we check out, we go away
mentally, we disconnect fromall the pain that we're feeling.
So the way that we disconnectis we distract ourselves. We do things
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to go away. We might makeourselves very small and agreeable,
and people please and alwaystry and make others happy, or we
might try and go and be goodenough, and we do all the tasks and
all the activities to get therecognition, to get the vet, be the
respect or the value to besafe and cherished or valued from
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our parents or our community,or we find things that disconnect
us and distract us and occupyus from that. So in that sense, the
addiction is an adaptation tothis early pain. And the pain is
not knowing what to do withwhat we're experiencing, Whether
it's our emotions or thefeelings that we're having from the
things that are happening tous. So what we want to do to heal
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the addiction is to start toreconnect with the feelings, the
pain that we have there. Wewant to build the skills, the tools
to navigate pain, to identifyit, recognize it, to accept that
it's here, and then to processit, to express it and comfort and
soothe it. And that's where apsychedelic experience is very powerful,
Because a psychedelicexperience is one that connects you
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deeply to yourself. So if wecan start to build the foundations
of not running away from thepain anymore, not avoiding it or
distracting from it, butactually turning into it and wanting
to engage with it and wantingto comfort it and soothe it and process
it. That's where thepsychedelic experience is very powerful.
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Mainstream therapy sessions inregard to anybody involved in, at
least in trauma, not justaddiction, but even trauma, post
trauma, PTSD, or any kind oftraumatic incident that took place
in their life. You know, Ihave found that, you know, you. I
suffer from ptsd. I mentionedthat to you and I before it start.
Before we started thisconversation. So from a PTSD perspective,
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it was difficult for me tohave conversations with people because
the opportunity. Theopportunity to talk about it, sometimes
it was like it was good to aperspective. But the majority of
the therapist or theindividual that I was speaking with,
once I got to a certain pointwithin my old career or certain things
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that I was having PTSD aboutthat I wanted to work through, by
the time I got to those,they're going, I'm not the right
person for you. So after aboutthree or four, three or four chances
of trying to talk to somebody,that once I started talking about
the suicides or the assault orthe murders or the domestic violence
and et cetera, et cetera,which, some of which ended up reverting
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my own, brought up memories ofmy own past. Again, I kind of gave
up because of that kind ofstandard therapy. They were textbook
therapies. And I've saidtextbook. I'm doing this. Like you
can see the textbook. Therewere textbook therapies. And in.
In doing so, again, I gave up.So obviously, this differs from that
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type of approach you. This ismore of a holistic, naturopathic
approach, if I can say that.Correct me if I'm wrong, but a more
holistic, naturopathicopportunity for us to give us better
introspect, instead of just atherapist saying, did you like your
mother? Did you like yourfather? Tell me what happened and
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leave it at that.
Right? Yeah. What you'retalking about, Michael, is unfortunately
very common. You know, whetherit's working with, like, a psychiatrist
or a family physician, thedoctors, for the most part, they
don't have the time or thecapacity or the training to really
work with all these pains thatwe carry around. And so then we start
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working with a therapist. Andfor the most part, the therapy isn't
well suited or well designedto really go into these very difficult,
painful areas. And once westart talking about how impactful
they were and how present theyare with us today. So the pain from
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the past showing up here, mosttherapists say, I'm not touching
that and I'm not the rightperson for you, like you were saying.
So my approach is verydifferent because, well, I understand
a lot of that. I've gonethrough it all myself. I've seen
all of those myself. I've beenthere myself. I know what this is
like. So when somebody comesto work with me, because they're
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going through it themselves,is we can have common ground and
common understanding here. Andso I go straight for the core of
what's bringing people in. Soif you come to me and you tell me
that you're going through PTSDand you've seen suicides and murders
and all of these things, I'Mnot going to do you any favors by
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going around in circles,talking about, you know, the things
that are happening this weekor last week and talking about the
current relationships that youhave. What I do is I go straight
for the core of what'sbringing you in. So if you say you've
got all this big pain and allthese things that are present, we're
going to go straight for it,and we're going to try to understand
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the pattern of it. Not so muchabout what happened, but how did
it affect you internally and,you know, just from a little bit.
Well, almost every person thatI worked with, which I've worked
with, I've had the privilegeof working with lots of cops, retired
police officers, EMTs,paramedics. And they all say something
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very similar to what you said,is this was highly traumatic, and
I have a lot of PTSD fromthis. But they also tell me something
very similar to what you toldme, Michael, which is this wasn't
where it started. It usuallygoes back much further. The patterns
of how we deal with pain andthe types of pain that we go through
usually start very early inlife. And that's what I want to try
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and figure out is how did wenavigate pain at a very early age?
How did we learn to express orrecognize, identify, process our
emotions? Who do we talk toabout it? What are our support methods
for navigating very difficult,painful times? And those are the
things that I want to try andfigure out right away. And once we
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can figure that out, then wecan start to make choices on what
we're going to do with thosethings moving forward.
So let's understand whatpsychedelic integration is. What
is. What are psychedelics andhow are they incorporated into this
kind of a regime? Regimen.
Yeah. Well, let me definepsychedelic first, and then I'll
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explain how we do it. So theword psychedelic is broken into two
parts. You have psyche anddelic. Psyche we hear all the time
psychology. Psyche is referredto all the immaterial aspects of
who we are. So we have ourminds, our thinking patterns, our
perceptions. We have ouremotions, all of the. The feelings
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that are inside of our bodythat are associated with our emotions.
A lot of the times, the psycheis synonymous with something like
the soul. So it's somethingalong the lines of our spirituality.
So we have psyche and then wehave delic. Delic is a root for emerging
or manifesting. So we have oursoul or all these immaterial aspects
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of who we are manifesting oremerging. So when we have a psychedelic
experience, it's one where weconnect very deeply to ourselves.
And this is something that isalmost across the board, homogeneously
described as the experience. Ifelt very connected to myself, to
others, to the world, theuniverse, whatever it is. This is
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something people describe ofhaving a psychedelic experience.
It's perhaps the hallmark of apsychedelic experience's deep connection.
A psychedelic experiencedoesn't have to use a psychedelic
substance like you mentioned,like psilocybin mushrooms, lsd, Ayahuasca,
dmt, all of those. You don'thave to use an external substance.
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Our bodies actually produce apsychedelic substance, dmt, which
is the primary component,while one of the two primary components
of something like ayahuasca,so we can tap into our body's natural
ability to have thispsychedelic experience. And this
has been something, whetherusing a substance or getting there
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through other means, thatevery single human culture all throughout
history has respected and heldalmost sacred, or you could you say
sacred in their culture andsociety. And there's always been
forces that have tried tosuppress it or take it away. So you
can get to this exact samespace through self inquiry, through
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reflection, throughmeditation, through sensory deprivation.
You can go into caves, veryclaustrophobic and sensory depriving,
and then have these incrediblepsychedelic experiences and paint
some of the most glorifiedbeautiful arts that we've ever seen
in history. You can go intonature for 40 days and 40 nights
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in isolation and hear thevoice of God. You can meditate and
fast, you can do a Sundanceand push your body to the brink of
dehydration and exhaustion.And throughout this you'll have a
psychedelic experience. So ourgoal in the therapy is to start to
induce that psychedelicexperience where you connect very
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deeply to yourself throughmeans like inquiry, self reflection,
and then building a practice,you can call it a meditation practice,
where you connect very deeplywith what you're experiencing internally.
I think that's a greatexplanation of some misconceptions
they have about psychedelics.Because obviously when you grew up
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in an environment, you know, Igrew up in the 60s and the 70s and
was hippies, my sister was ahippie, you know. But at the time,
obviously we called hippiesand the use of psilocybin, the mushrooms,
magic mushrooms, and the useof LSDs and the use of psychedelics.
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It was something that theyused on, on a consistent basis. And
obviously they would have tosay that they seemed a lot happier
than a lot of us they weredoing today. I do and I, and I have
seen that they're starting todo some studies in regard to soldiers
and people coming back fromcombat, as well as police officers
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and firefighters and EMTs thatyou mentioned earlier to where they're
starting to show that thistype of methodology has been able
to make some positive impactwithin their lives. Do you feel that
we as a society have anopportunity for that to kind of get
a little larger scale? I knowthey were having trouble here in
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Arizona with getting itapproved, for trying to get it done
in a positive way.
Yeah, yeah. The 60s were aninteresting time because it was so
widespread. And, you know, theanalogy is oftentimes the blind leading
the blind, there was just somuch use. It was unstructured. There
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was no real knowledge orgenerational wisdom handed down in
the terms of how to use thisin. In a healthy, constructive way.
So we had, you know, thispendulum swing of, you know, psychedelics
being oppressed or suppressedin our society and then swinging
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fully to the other side. Andright now, it seems like we're kind
of in the middle where. Yes,we're seeing so much research throughout
the 60s, the 50s, 60s, stilltoday. There's been so much research
that has been done. Some of ithas been really therapeutic and incredible,
showing these wonderfulresults that you're talking about.
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And some of it has been usedin perhaps sinister. Sinister ways
as well. So right now, yes,we're seeing with the Internet, just
like how you and I aretalking, information becoming so
accessible, and there are somany authorities, whether they're
health authorities, medicalauthorities, government authorities,
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that are really starting tosee the therapeutic benefits of this.
This model, of this approach.And so, like here in Oregon, they
have numerous legislation andpolicies that are passing and ever
changing. Colorado has it. Ijust saw yesterday, I think it was
that Texas was passing somenew legislation.
Even Texas. Wow.
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Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to keeptrack of all the states that are
doing it right now, but fromwhat I see, it seems like about maybe
20 states right now haveactive legislation passing in some
regard or another. So we havethis wonderful opportunity right
now, if it's done correctly.
Well, and I think that, youknow, the misconceptions about it
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in the first place, it builtfrom the 60s and the 70s and widespread
youth contributed to theapprehension of them passing and
changing things. But I'm happyto hear that they're. They're kind
of expanding that in that manystates. I didn't realize that. I
was sad to hear that they shutthe thing down here, and it was.
They had veterans that theywere dealing with, and it really.
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My wife and I were reallyupset that they didn't pass that
it, I think it would havebenefited so many other people, so
many more people. We, asindividuals, in utilizing this methodology,
how can we, can it help usrebuild our inner relationship with
honesty and gentleness andjoy? Because I think especially with
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the chaos in today's world,the chaos in today's society, we've
kind of lost our relationshipwith honesty and gentleness and joy.
Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutelyright about that. When, when I work
with people, every singleperson that I've ever worked with,
and myself included, has avery harsh way of relating to themselves.
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They're very critical,judgmental, evaluating everything
that they do. It's verydifficult to navigate living life
when we have this type ofrelationship to ourselves. And we
always learn this somewhere inour lives, usually from our, from
our early relationships withour parents. So if we were going
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through trauma as children,very frequently, we're continuing
that exact same pattern withthe way that we treat ourselves.
So this disconnection that Iwas talking about, this adaptation,
this survival mechanism, thisdefense mechanism to that pain is
just ever present. And whenwe're so harsh and critical to ourselves,
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the reaction is we want todisconnect from ourselves. Like if
you and I were being veryharsh and critical to each other,
chances are we probablywouldn't keep having a conversation,
we would want to disconnect.So it's, it's, it's a built in mechanism
to, to save us from our ownrelationship to ourselves. So, yeah,
when we start doing thistherapy, the first things that I
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want to try and figure out arewhat is the relationship that we
have to ourselves? When I'mworking with somebody, what is the
relationship that you have toyourself or that they have to themselves?
How do they treat themselves?What do they do with their emotions?
How do they express or processor soothe their emotions? Or do they
suppress them or depress themand bottle them up and stuff them
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down, as is very commonlyfound? And once we can start to understand
those things, then we canstart to cultivate a practice where
we go intentionally into thatspace, into those emotions, into
those feelings, or into thatbelief and start to comfort it and
soothe it.
Is that fortunate that we,this society, has gone to this point?
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I mean, obviously we have somuch depression. Let me ask you this
question in lieu of that. Canthis type of methodology not only
help people with trauma andpeople with, with PTSD or something
along that line, can it also,in an addiction, can also help people
with maybe depression andanxiety and those type of mental
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illnesses? They call themmental illnesses. I Don't like calling
them that way, but mentalmaladies, I guess.
Sure, sure. Well, when I talkto people about what is depression
or what is anxiety, what Ifind is that these are adaptations
to trauma in itself. So youtake anxiety, for instance. It's
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this constant overwhelmingfear that's always present that something
terrible is going to happen.And it's not even about something
that's happening, it's justever present, it's always there.
It's not about anythingspecific. And I can pinpoint in people's
lives where this developsalmost within five or ten minutes
of talking to them. Forexample, we have these emotional
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circuits that are built intous that are, they help us develop
and they help us thrive in ourlives. So parents, for instance,
have an emotional circuit thatfacilitates connection with their
child. Because as humans,we're the most undeveloped, immature,
dependent species that we canfind in nature. A human takes three
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or four years to learn how towalk and run to where a horse learns
how to run on this first dayof life. So our parents, as parents,
we have to nurture childrenfor a very long period of time. And
so we have these built inmechanisms that facilitate a bond
with our children so that waywe can nurture them as they develop.
And as children, we have builtin mechanisms that go off when we
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don't get the nurturing thatwe need. So for instance, we can
see this in animals. If a babybird falls out of its nest, it has
an emotional circuit that goesoff and it feels panic and it cries
out and it cries and criesuntil the mom comes and picks it
back up and puts it in thenest and comforts it and then that
emotional circuit resolves.But what happens if our parents are
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too stressed when we'rechildren or they're too busy with
life to comfort us and nurtureus in the way that we need? Or perhaps
they're really well meaning,really caring parents. So they listen
to the experts. The medicaladvice that says when your baby's
crying, don't hold them, letthem learn how to self soothe, let
them learn how to cry it out.They need to learn how to be independent.
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So in other words, thisemotional circuit of panic that is
designed to bring the parentsback to comforting you is always
activated and that becomes thebaseline for that emotional circuit.
It's always activated and itnever got the chance to comfort or
resolve. So then later in lifewe call that anxiety. When I ask
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somebody what what depressionmeans for them, they'll tell me very
clearly what they're doing.The word depression the literal meaning
of it means to bury something.So if we depress our power lines,
we've buried them underground.The second part of the definition
is to take away energy. So ifwe're burying something, like we're
trying to hold a beach ballunderwater, we're using tremendous
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amount of energy to hold itunder, and the beach ball just comes
bursting back up. So when I'mworking with somebody with depression,
what is it that you're holdingunder? Very commonly, it's our emotions,
it's our boundaries, it's ourexpression. So at some point in our
lives, we learned thatemotions were bad and that we needed
to depress them and suppressthem. And we use a tremendous amount
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of energy to keep theseemotions suppressed. This again goes
back to very early childhoodtrauma. At some point, if I would
have expressed my emotions, ifI would have expressed my anger,
my fear, or my pain for notgetting my needs met, it would have
made my situation even worse.Or maybe my parents were following
(32:30):
common culture where they weretaught that if your child expresses
anger, which is a healthyhuman emotion that is designed to
express when your needs aren'tbeing met or a threat is present.
So if the child expressesanger, they need to be exiled and
disconnected until they canregulate that emotion and then they
(32:52):
can come back. In other words,they're going to be threatened with
the thing that's mostimportant to them, the attachment,
the connection. So the childlearns emotions are bad. I need to
suppress my emotions tomaintain my connections. So whether
it's addictions or, I'm sorry,anxiety or depression, all of these
are adaptations to trauma.They help us. At some point, they
(33:15):
might even save us, but nowthey're causing us tremendous harm.
So this approach of reallygetting curious about these patterns
that we have and trying torecognize, identify them and inquiring,
why are they here? What is thepurpose that they serve? I can see
how it hurts me or how itaffects me, but what wisdom is here?
(33:37):
What, what's this pattern ofaddiction or anxiety or depression
trying to teach me? If we canstart to figure out what the teaching
is, then we can start to meetthe needs of that anxiety or that
depression in moreconstructive ways.
That's brilliant, actually.That's brilliant. How do you guide
somebody back through thatprocess to recognize stillness and
(33:58):
self awareness? Because weboth recognize that the world is
in chaos at the moment. Ourcommunities are in chaos. How do,
how do you get people back to that?
Yeah, there's so much chaos.The, the, the, the society that we
live in is created by humans.We make our society. So all of the
(34:22):
turmoil, all the chaos that'sin the world, it's an external expression
of our internal states, ofwhat we're experiencing inside of
us. Very frequently, peopleare desperately looking for a way
to navigate this internalstress, this internal turmoil. So
people come to me and whenthey're. When they're ready to start
(34:46):
working with me, and theyunderstand that we're going to go
straight for the core of theirpain and we're going to try to build
a relationship with it. Mosttimes they're completely ready. And
granted, there'll be variousdefense mechanisms that will come
up that'll try to keep themaway from that pain. But if they're
convicted to wanting to gointo this space, it's very easy to
(35:09):
help them turn back into it.So I just ask lots of questions of
what are you experiencing?What are you feeling? Very frequently,
those repressed emotions,those repressed feelings, they're
right underneath the surface.In fact, they're almost. People are
almost always feeling them,and they go through extreme lengths
(35:29):
to try to disconnect fromthem. So it's not very difficult
to reconnect with it. Within,you know, five minutes, I can help
somebody reconnect with thosefeelings. The problem is, is that
most times we don't know whatto do with those feelings, so they
overwhelm us, and it'ssomething that we want to try to
avoid. So once we can start toidentify them, what we need to do
(35:51):
is build a practice to figureout what do we do with these emotions
or with this pain that I'mcarrying around? And that's something
that's fairly simple as well.The question that I usually ask is
the line of questioning aswell. How often do you feel this.
This feeling or this emotion?Is it here now? Is it here every
(36:13):
single day? Is it throughoutthe day? Is it once a week? Is it
once a year? Or the next thingis, when do you first remember feeling
this? Right. If we're noticingthis depression and this anxiety,
where can you remember firstfeeling this? And very frequently
it goes back to early in life,in which case we look at what was
(36:34):
happening then. And then thequestion is, what did I need when
I first started feeling thisemotion or this pain or this pattern
of adapting to these painsthat I'm feeling? And very frequently
it's something very similar. Ineeded somebody to be with me. I
needed somebody to be presentwith me, to see me, to listen to
me, to understand what I'mgoing through, to validate and reaffirm.
(36:59):
Of course, you're feelingthose emotions. Of course you're
angry, of course you're inpain, of course you're scared. Your
needs aren't being met, yourparents aren't available, your parents
are stressed, your parents arecausing you, you pain, harm, whatever
it is. And then we needed somesort of comfort, some sort of physical
comfort to begin to feel safewith these emotions. And then we
(37:22):
need to be taught what can wedo with these emotions? How do we
express them, how do we askfor help? How do I say I'm in pain
right now and I really needsome support? And then we need somebody
to do that for us and do itconsistently. So the practice that
we build, Michael is verysimple. It's just to be the parent
(37:43):
that we didn't have. So weturn our attention into that feeling
of pain. And then we're goingto be the people who are going to
be present with it. We'regoing to listen to it, we're going
to try to understand it. We'regoing to say, of course I feel this
way, of course it's here. Thismakes perfect sense. It's trying
to teach me something. Andthen I'm going to do all the things
that it needs to me to do inconstructive ways. In other words,
(38:06):
I'm going to be the personthat I didn't have when I first started
feeling this pain. So inshort, that's, that's what we try
to do, is we try to constantlyturn our attention to that pain and
comfort it.
And I find that it's eyeopening to me too, because it allowed
me, at least from ourconversation, it's allowed me to
(38:26):
see that there are optionsthat, that we have some way to overcome,
or not necessarily overcome,but have a better understanding of
where we need to go, how weneed to find the answers, to start
having a deep personaltransformation within ourselves and
maybe understand ourselves alittle more. Because I think that
(38:48):
a lot of, and I know that I'msure you've heard of this, I was
introduced to this term acouple years ago, intergenerational
trauma and how that follows usthrough. And I think we all have
the opportunity to even stopthe intergenerational trauma at some
point once we recognize it andsay, I'm not going to let my kids
suffer that, you know, fromhere forward. But if somebody, if
(39:11):
somebody feels stuck in oldpatterns and things like that, what
this conversation kind ofshowcased, what's the first thing
you recommend they do to kindof shift their mindset, to start
going towards a deep personaltransformation or Seeking out how,
how to do something like your methodology.
(39:32):
Yeah, you're mentioningsomething very important here. When
I asked somebody when theywere going through their pain, who
did they talk to about it?Very frequently the answer is nobody.
When I'm working with retiredpolice officers like yourself or
emt, paramedics, who did yougo to for support when you were feeling
(39:53):
this pain? And very frequentlyit's nobody. I dealt with it myself.
When we go back to thechildhood when we were first experiencing
this pain, when I was beingbounced around, or you were bouncing
between your parents or anadoption, who do we talk to about
it? I didn't talk to anybodyabout it. I was totally alone with
it. This isolation is thebiggest trauma right here, the disconnection.
(40:18):
And we disconnect fromourselves. We're disconnected from
each other, we're disconnectedfrom the world around us. We're disconnected
from what we do, meaning thatwhat we do doesn't represent who
we are. So if we're stuck inthat pattern, the first thing that
we need to do is to try tofind somebody to go to help us go
through it, because we don'tneed to go through it alone. And
(40:41):
my ancestral culture and mostnative cultures, if somebody was
going through terrible pain,the community would come together
and they would circle aroundthat person and they would have a
ceremony for this person orseveral ceremonies for this person.
They would sing, they wouldchant, they would drum, they would
(41:03):
encircle and encompass thisperson with presence and compassion.
In other words, they would tryto transcend that isolation. And
this is exactly what we needto start doing. We don't have to
go through this alone. So ifyou're stuck in those same patterns
and you're building theawareness to identify this exact
same thing is coming around,you don't have to go through it alone.
(41:25):
The first step is to reach outand find somebody who can help you
go through it. It's a lot likeputting together like a 10,000 piece
puzzle, except you're staringright at it, you know, a couple inches
over the puzzle, you can't seethe whole thing. And when these patterns
are activated, they're veryelusive. And a lot of the times they
feel like the only way. Andwe'll justify and rationalize it
(41:48):
with our minds of this isright, this is how it's supposed
to be. So we really got tohave somebody to be there with us
to help us see these patternsand identify them when we're in them
them. And then of course,figuring out what we can do differently
and how we can make different choices.
I agree with you. I agree withyou. You have to reach out and understand
that there are opportunitiesfor us to be able to get some help.
(42:11):
We just have to ask for it andsometimes that's difficult. So I
know that you have someopportunities for people to reach
out and to help them. How didsomebody get in touch with you and
what do you have? What do youhave to offer those individuals that
are seeking help?
Yeah, my website's the easiestway to get a hold of me. Psychedelic
hyphen integration.net on thewebsite we have lots of small short
(42:36):
articles talking about thesevarious patterns themselves, whether
it's the intergenerationaltrauma, the estrangement from parents,
the disconnection betweengenerations, our emotional circuits,
and all the different patternsthat we have of adapting to pain.
You can contact me directlythrough the website. You can schedule
(42:56):
a free consultation. Sothere's lots of resources on the
website. Our Instagram is alsoanother place too, if you want to
follow us, which is justinstagram.com psycheintegration those
are two fantastic ways to stayin touch.
I'll make sure that all thoseare in the show notes on the webpage
(43:16):
just specifically dedicated tothis episode. So make it an easy
way for people to get in touchwith you and get a hold of you because
the first step is to take thestep. I think Julian has been absolutely
eye opening and thank you verymuch for coming on the program. And
I think what you are doing tohelp those individuals that are kind
(43:40):
of lost in seeking and lookingand. And want to transform themselves
into a better person, theyhave an opportunity to do that with
you. So thank you.
Thank you for having me,Michael. Very happy to be here with
you.
This is one more thing beforeyou go. I could talk to you for another
hour, but so we'll have. Youhave to come back on is what it is.
We'll have to continue theconversation, but for now, it is
(44:04):
one more thing before you go.So before we go, do you have any
words of wisdom?
You mentioned somethingearlier that I thought was very important,
which is thisintergenerational trauma, which is
when we start to identify thepain and the pattern that we carry.
A lot of the times it camefrom our parents and so a lot of
the times we want to blame ourparents and blame is not constructive
(44:29):
for any outcome that we'retrying to achieve here because that
same pain is inside of us.
So.
So when we look at what kindof person does what our parents did
to us, the answer is somebodywho's in terrible pain themselves.
And when we look at where didour parents learn it? Well, they
learned it from their parentsand their parents learned it from
their parents. So this paingoes through the generations. And
(44:52):
you said we have a wonderfulopportunity to transform or change
that pain. And I actually lookat it as more we have an obligation
or a responsibility totransform that because it's not that
we intentionally want totraumatize our children. It's that
the pain passes through us toour children unconsciously, inadvertently.
(45:17):
We don't mean to traumatizeour children, but these pains are
just so deeply entrenched,these patterns are so deeply ingrained
in us that the pain just flowsthrough us. So I think that it's
really in our current day andage, it's our responsibility to start
to take accountability and tocultivate agency and choice for what
(45:39):
we do with these patterns. AndI'm very happy to be in a place where
I can help people do that.
Brilliant words of wisdom.Brilliant words of wisdom. Everything
that you said. Absolutely.Well, I'll make sure that all your
contact information is goingto be in the website so that they
can easily find you. Thank youagain for coming on the show. Thank
you for sharing your wisdomand your experiences. I'm grateful
(46:01):
for that.
Very happy to be here. Thankyou for having me, Michael.
Yep. And for everyone else,this is a wrap for today's episode.
I hope you found itinspirational, motivation and a new
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(46:23):
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(46:44):
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