April 23, 2025 • 56 mins
What if your gut instincts aren't guiding you—but misleading you through unresolved trauma? In this thought-provoking episode on trauma healing, emotional regulation, and behavioral influence, we’re joined by Dr. Abbie Maroño, an internationally recognized behavioral scientist whose work has impacted elite agencies like the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security. Together, we explore how trauma shapes decision-making, the myth of love at first sight, the neuroscience behind emotional shutdown, and why true resilience isn't about being bulletproof—it's about being bouncy. Dr. Maroño brings a rare blend of scientific rigor and lived insight, with a background in forensic psychology, counterterrorism, and consulting for global intelligence agencies. Tune in to uncover how your brain, body, and beliefs are more entangled than you think—and what it truly takes to break generational cycles. If this episode resonates, drop a comment below, subscribe for future deep dives, and explore more transformative conversations at ZuluOne.
Find more from Abbie:
Work in Progress: https://a.co/d/5LjMVXK
Abbie Marono: https://www.abbiemarono.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Zulu One Podcast.
Today, we're joined by Dr AbbyMarano, a leading expert in
human behavior who has trainedelite agencies like the FBI and
the Secret Service.
Together we explore psychologyof trauma, how to rewire your
brain for healthier habits, andwhether love at first sight is
real.
Get ready to uncover hiddentruths about resilience,
(00:20):
decision-making and the power ofself-awareness.
Dr Abby, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm good, thank you, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
good to see you again good to see you so last time we
we met, we were at the socialengineering conference in
Orlando and, man, I was blownaway by how you guys approach
this subject of socialengineering and how we can
really use our biology to hackpeople in some way.
(00:59):
Can you tell me a little bit ofhow?
What was your journey gettingto this place?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
My background was forensic psychology.
So I started publishingresearch papers in forensics
when I was 19.
And my first papers were onserial killer behaviors, looking
at nonverbal communication.
I'd started working withprofilers from the FBI and I
actually originally wanted to bean FBI agent.
(01:25):
But then I published my firstpaper and I realized there's
questions of human behavior thatwe don't know, that we don't
know the answer to, and I can bea small part in finding out new
knowledge.
And when I published that paperand I'm like this paper tells
us something, even if it's justsomething small, that wasn't
(01:47):
known before I did that and Ijust got hooked on that feeling.
So I knew absolutely I want tobe a scientist, I want to be an
academic, I want to be in thesciences and absolutely
psychology.
But my background was serialkillers and forensics.
And then I moved intocounterterrorism.
I did some stuff on cannibalism, so I did a lot of the really
(02:07):
dark stuff.
But I ended up doing my PhDlooking at non-verbals and
elicitation, and that's reallywhere all of this came from,
where I didn't just want tounderstand how we can use X to
create Y.
So if I do one thing, so say Imimic your behavior and then it
creates cooperation.
That's usually kind of what weget.
(02:29):
Okay, if you want this result,this is what you should do.
What we don't always get is thewhy.
And that was the thing that wasreally key to me, because if
you don't know why and howsomething works, how would you
know what hurdles you'reovercoming or what hurdles
you're not overcoming?
That, if you did understand,you could do so much better.
And I compare it to going to thedoctor and saying you know, I
(02:52):
have these symptoms, you knowthey're really causing me
distress.
And the doctor goes here, takea pill, don't know how the pill
works, but your symptoms shouldgo away.
You wouldn't really becomfortable with that knowledge.
So, when it comes to influenceand persuasion, why don't we ask
yeah, but how does this work?
And that's where I decided Ineed to know more than just
(03:12):
psychology.
I need to understand how thebrain works, I need to
understand how the body works, Ineed to understand how the mind
works.
So I took a it's called abiopsychosocial approach, where
I take some biology, psychology,sociology and I combine it all
together to try and understandthis overall picture of how
human beings make decisions, sowe can influence them, but
(03:34):
understand how we areinfluencing them and that's so
fascinating because I'm by bytrade, I'm an IT cyber security
guy.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Right, that's what I do and that's how our paths met
or crossed in some way.
Right, and on the side I dothis weird, you know, unresolved
trauma work and it's systems,right, you start thinking of
everything as systems.
And when you said that, I waslike, oh, of course, that's the
hardware and the software andthe kind of environment all
interacting on top of each other, all interacting on top of each
(04:02):
other and in some way itcreates almost, I want to say a
momentum, right, that it's likeit creates.
It's like the chicken and theegg.
It's both.
Right, it's like it's a bothkind of scenario.
It's the chicken meets the eggat some point.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Such a great way to put it, and we think of human
behavior as linear.
Do this and this will happen.
But my research papers wereusing behavior sequence analysis
, so I took a sequence approachof okay, well, if I do A, will I
get B, or will I get C, or willI get D?
Will I get a variation?
And then you look at feedbackloops.
(04:39):
So it's all about how oneinfluences the next chain, but
how it kind of influences itselfand goes back on itself.
And human behavior is so thesame, because there's so many
things going on at once to thinkthat I can just do X, and every
single time I do it I'm goingto get Y.
And that's the approach thatwe're taught, especially in
(04:59):
non-verbals.
You know, if you smile, you'regoing to have this effect on
people.
Or if you see, the worst is, ifyou see this behavior, it means
someone is lying every time yousee it.
Those things drive me crazybecause humans are so much more
complicated than that.
For one thing, if I say do thisand if I say if you do this,
(05:20):
it's going to have the sameeffect on everyone.
Don't trust a word I say,because human behavior is
complicated and humans arecomplicated.
You can say this is likely tohave this effect, but what are
the other variables?
And that's where thatunderstanding how it works and
why it works is so important,because you can kind of
counteract that effect andinstead of just looking for one
(05:43):
thing, you can look forvariations and you can
understand things at a greaterdepth and then you can be more
effective.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
That's such a good point because it's like you know
, it's almost a probabilistickind of math right, it's like
there's a high likely chancethat this is going to happen.
And I have this concept of anunresolved trauma index in
business, in a culture, in aperson, and then they're almost
unresolved trauma resiliencyfactor that it's.
(06:14):
You know, if somebody has avery difficult childhood but
they don't have the mechanismthrough religion, Kung Fu,
psychology, whatever thing thatthey do, right, Mickey Mouse,
whatever the thing is if theydon't have the ability to break
that generational curse, what wecall generational curses or
patterns, right, the momentumwill go towards creating
(06:35):
destruction that could beamplified by a myriad of
environmental factors.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yep, and this is why I was so interested when we
spoke at the conference, becausea lot of the work that I do,
including my first book that waspublished, is all about trauma
and trauma recovery.
And, using your example, ifthings were that simple, you
would have two children who gothrough the same experience with
the same outcome.
And if we use the example of meand my sister, we both grew up
(07:04):
in the same environment.
My mom was very emotionally andverbally abusive and we both
had the same struggles tovarying degrees, but we had the
same struggles.
Now, if things were simple, wewould both, in the future, be
the same.
My sister is very hyper hyperdependent.
(07:25):
She's in a relationship and shedoes not know how to function
outside of that relationship.
So if things were simple, I'dbe the same.
I'm the opposite.
I'm so hyper independent thatyou know you try and pick up my
shopping bag for me and I'm likedo you think that I can't do
this myself?
Give it to me, I can do it.
I remember I got sick and one ofour team said to me oh, you
(07:48):
should have told me I could havemade you soup.
And I said why would I do that?
I have hands Like I'm sick, butI can go make my own soup, you
don't need to look after me,whereas my sister would be the
opposite.
And it's because there's such amyriad of other factors
involved when it comes to humanbehavior and it's so interesting
to pick apart those extraneousvariables to try and understand
(08:11):
us so that, once you understand,you can influence.
Because it's like if you don'tknow how to drive a car, you
can't go on a road trip, and theroad trip is influence.
So why are we trying to makethis journey without
understanding the mechanisms ofhow to actually make a human
being make decisions?
And that's why I just find itso interesting that why question
(08:35):
, when it comes to science, whenit comes to any application,
security, trauma, anythingyou've got to dig to that deeper
level to be able to use it moreeffectively that's really
interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I'm I'm just fascinated by this conversation
because you know, there's what I, what I've seen is that there's
some hard-coded switches andcorrect me if I'm wrong, you're
the expert, right, I'm not.
I'm not the expert in anycapacity, but there's some
hard-coded switches that whenyour presentation at the social
engineering factor, you knowlike you were talking about, you
know like opening the neck andthe, the kind of body language
(09:09):
things that's like this isbiologically hard coded in who
we are right, but there's alsolike a systemic influence on it
and then a social, social effecton what that looks like.
And so you can.
I think most people think thatone of them is the answer rather
than being D.
All of the above kind ofsituation, right?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yes, and this is a really common mistake that I see
, because, especially when itcomes to when people talk about
male and feminine and male andfemale roles they talk about
well, the men have this providerrole.
Female roles they talk aboutwell, the men have this provider
role, so they have resourcesand women, they get choice.
And then you see people likeAndrew Tay and all these like
(09:51):
influencers talking about bodycount and why you know, men
should cheat because it'sevolved.
What they forget is thatevolutionary theory has two
parts.
You have the hardwired instinctand, when I was talking about
influence, the brain and ourgenes.
Our genes, as every human being, are nearly identical.
(10:13):
We have 99 percent genetic or99.9 genetically identical genes
to every other human being onthis planet.
That's just how we're wired, sothere are absolutely things
that will be the same foreveryone because they're
biologically predetermined.
However, the difference betweenus and things like chimps is
(10:34):
their brains are genetic, sothey're born with a brain and it
doesn't really change instructure and function.
Now, human brains, they changein structure and function based
on our experiences, so we'reborn with a brain.
We all have the same basicthings.
I'm not going to lose myprefrontal cortex, but the way
my brain functions and wires andthings like my gray matter
(10:57):
density, the structures ofcertain regions, they change and
adapt based on my experience.
They change and adapt based onmy experience.
So that's why we're soexperience dependent.
And then going back to thatevolved argument of yeah, but
these are our evolved behaviors.
There's two parts to that.
We have the ultimate causations, which is the biologically
(11:20):
predetermined factor, but that'shalf the picture.
Biologically predeterminedfactor, but that's half the
picture.
The other half is a proximalfactor, meaning our experiences,
our personality.
So if I donate to charity, theultimate causation is that
biological predetermined factorof I do it because my ancestors
who did it?
(11:41):
They were more pro-social, sothey were liked by the group,
they got more resources, so theysurvived.
But that's not why I do it now.
I do it because it feels good,because I want to.
So that feeling is proximal.
And then say you have, let's goback to make choice.
Say influencers argue that youknow women want a man that is
(12:02):
strong, that has these traits.
Okay, because that would, inour evolutionary history,
increase survival.
But the proximal argument iswhat if they have gone through
an abusive relationship?
What if they've witnessed theseindividuals not providing them
what they need.
What if they have doneself-growth and they have a lot
of self-respect and they wantsomething more from themselves?
(12:24):
They value other traits.
Those two factors, the proximaland the ultimate, are
constantly connecting with eachother.
But people forget one half ofit and that's why those
arguments can seem to make sense, because they argue them and
you're like that actually doesmake a lot of sense from science
.
That is an above function.
(12:45):
But it's because theymisunderstand evolutionary
theory and they forget the otherhalf of it.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, I think you were.
You were.
You were the one that said it'slike everybody has the hands on
the elephant.
You know and they don't knowit's an elephant, right, if
there's too close to it.
You're just looking at this isa gray wall, right, and it's
like this is a gray wall thathas texture and hair.
It's very weird, you know, kindof, and they're absolutely
right, it is a gray wall ifyou're standing close enough to
it.
But you take a step back andyou take a further step back and
(13:12):
you're like oh, it's anelephant, right.
And it's like reallyunderstanding the whole picture
and I know you're a specialistin the brain and how the brain
wiring works, right and do yousee, and going kind of back to
the chicken and the egg question, is that, do you see that how
that proximal experience, right,or that proximal influence, can
(13:34):
activate certain parts of thebrain in one way or another or
have influence on the biologicalwiring of a person?
Or is that?
Are they?
Are they completely different?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yep.
So let's go to trauma, forexample.
So we all have the same basicstructures and we know the
prefrontal cortex is reallyimportant for critical thinking,
emotional regulation, thingslike that.
Now say, I go through traumaand I enter a freeze response.
So we have the fight, flightand freeze.
And the freeze response is anevolved response where the brain
(14:07):
says if I run I'm going to gethurt.
If I fight I'm going to gethurt.
So the only other option is tostay immobile because if there's
a predator and I run or fight Imight die.
If I freeze, it might think I'mdead and leave me alone.
So we have this evolvedresponse.
We're going to a freezeresponse.
But we can get stuck in thatresponse.
(14:29):
So then it can change our brain.
So people who have been stuck inthe freeze response, often what
happens is you see adysfunction in parts of the
regions.
So during a freeze response,broker's area which controls
speech, it reduces in function.
It can completely shut down.
Individuals who have gonethrough, say, sexual assault and
(14:49):
they're asked why didn't youshout, why didn't you ask for
help?
And they say I don't know.
And often that's used againstthem as well.
They're lying and actually it'sthe way the brain tries to
survive because it tries to shutdown all unnecessary functions
and part of that is shuttingdown part of the vocal cords,
part of that, shutting down partof Broca's area which controls
(15:12):
speech.
So our brain in survivalsituations like that and this is
just one example of thousandsit adapts itself when it changes
and then say let's go tosomething more extreme, like
emotional shutdown.
And emotional shutdown is sayyour brain is saying to you hey,
(15:32):
feel this emotion, you've gonethrough trauma.
And it's saying please dealwith this, please deal with this
.
And say you're feeling shameand it's hard, and you don't.
You suppress it.
You go no, no, no, I won't feelyou.
And you try and make the paingo away by saying it's not there
.
Eventually, what the brain does, it goes okay, you won't feel
me, we'll turn it off.
Then and you see activation inareas controlling emotional
(15:55):
regulation and the emotionalaspect of memory and
self-processing, which is theinsula.
So if you ask me who are you,and I'm thinking who am I, my
insula is going to light up.
But those regions are allconnected to that trauma and
because I don't want to feel itenough, and I'm pushing and
pushing and pushing, the brainstarts to shut them down.
(16:16):
Now the regions that areresponsible for negative
emotions are also responsiblefor positive.
So that's when you get emotionalshutdown and you see trauma
victims who you look at them andyou can almost not understand
and you don't get why?
Why are you cold, why are younumb, why are you empty?
You might see someone who'sjust lost someone and they seem
(16:39):
unemotional and it's really hardto comprehend what's going on
internally.
Is they're in so much pain thatto, in order to keep themselves
alive, the brain says if painis too much, let's shut it down.
And that's where that emotionalnumbness comes from.
And that is a biologicalresponse.
And that's why these things areso confusing, because we don't
(17:01):
know what's going on inside.
Often and let's go back to thatsexual assault example it can
create a lot of really difficultfeelings after that, because
you might have some self-blameof why didn't I do these things?
Why am I feeling this way?
What is wrong with me?
And that's what I often hearwith trauma victims of I'm
(17:23):
dysfunctional, I'vemalfunctioned, I'm broken.
And actually, when you teachthem the why and you say,
biologically, this is what'sgoing on and you can't think
yourself out of this situation,you can't go, you turn back on
and then it goes.
Okay, it is much, much harderthan that to change that
(17:43):
biological response.
It is much, much harder thanthat to change that biological
response.
And when you teach people thatwhy you see a lot of self-blame
disappear because they start torealize actually my body was
keeping itself alive.
It's not that something's wrongwith me.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
What came up when you were saying that is that it
seems like it's the samemechanism and correct me if I'm
wrong that would create theperpetrator as well.
Right, if you shut down thatemotional you know, if we're
emotionally available andconnected and that because of
childhood trauma or somethingthat happened when the person
was a child and you had to shutthat down, you could grow up to
(18:20):
turn into that perpetrator thatdoesn't feel any empathy or
connection or doesn't have anemotional response to the
violence or to whatever that'shappening.
And so I'm always very curiousof that entanglement between the
victim and the perpetrator.
Right that you probably knowmore about this than I do, but
(18:42):
in our work we see a lot that ifand this is not to victim blame
in any way, right, but thatvictim wound, depending on what
it is, can turn into aperpetrator wound if it's not
dealt with appropriately andthat's and it may not be the
same, but it may rhyme, right,that that is like a mother that
was emotionally abused maybecome emotionally unavailable
(19:05):
to her child when it during acritical time, and then that arc
is all the way from, you know,psychopathy and becoming a
serial killer, right to somebodythat just simply has a wound
and everything in between.
So I'm fascinated by thedynamic between the perpetrator
and the victim and theperpetrator, and how that cycle
perpetuates in a family systemor in systems in general.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, and there's a lot of learning theory to it as
well, because we repeat what weknow.
So if your understanding of theworld is one way, say you grow
up in an abusive home and sayyou witness your mom and dad
being abusive to each other orone to the other, that's where
(19:51):
love lies for you.
Okay, mom and dad are my modelof what love is, what parenting
looks like.
And as kids, like I said, ourbrain morphology changes based
on our experiences.
Neurons that fire together,wire together.
Kids' brains are going okay,how do I understand this world?
Because I'm going to need tointeract with it as I get older.
I'm going to need to find myway in this world, so I need to
know what to expect.
I can then model that.
(20:11):
So we're looking around atthese relationships and say
again they're abusive, so you go.
Okay, so abuse and love theycoincide.
So now, as you go into theworld and you meet someone that
reflects those behaviors, wehave to remember that
familiarity is comfortable.
It doesn't have to be healthy.
(20:34):
It resonates, it's comfortablebecause it's predictable.
So the brain goes oh, I knowhow this works.
So someone starts to treat youin a certain way and you go yeah
, this makes sense.
And you can get yourself intothose repeat patterns.
Now say you have a differentperson who witnessed a healthy
relationship, or you have aperson who witnessed someone
(20:55):
intervening in that negativerelationship and taught you this
is not healthy, it shouldn'tlook this way.
When you then meet someonelater that exemplifies those
behaviors, your brain goes weknow how this works, we know
that this isn't the rightpattern.
So you go no, thank you.
And then these cycles reallyperpetuate.
(21:15):
Because when you get into thesenegative relationships and when
you don't have a strongemotional support system, not
only do you not know how toregulate your own emotions,
which is so key to interactingwith the world Emotional
regulation is one of the mostimportant factors for a healthy
life but you also then start toreally embed those negative
(21:37):
self-narratives.
So people start to break youdown and you start to believe
them.
So then it starts to reallyincrease that cycle.
You start to see someone who isabusive.
You begin the cycle becauseit's familiar, and then the
abuse breaks you down.
So you stay in it.
And that's why often, if youget built up and you leave, very
(22:01):
common that they get back intoit unless you give them a way to
rebuild a sense of self and youhave to teach them to recognize
unhealthy behaviors.
But just knowing this isunhealthy isn't enough.
It's really, like I said,emotional regulation and having
a strong sense of self, becauseit's so easy to get back into
that cycle.
(22:21):
And when we talk about thoseneurons that wire together, we
think, okay, remove yourselffrom that cycle and then we can
start a new one.
But it doesn't work that way,because if I have these two say,
I have a pattern here wired andI want this healthy pattern I
can't just switch becausethey're wrapped up together.
(22:43):
I have to unwire one wire, anew one, unwire one wire, a new
one, unwire one, and over andover and over again, because
they have to continuously refire.
That's why creating newpatterns isn't just about
something new.
It's continuously recognizingthe old one and purposely
(23:07):
undoing it and then redoing anew one, time and time again
before you can get intosomething healthier this is
fascinating the you know a lotof stuff that comes in trauma
workshops, the the familyconstellations, that.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
That that I particularly am fond of is a lot
of inner child work.
Right, when trauma happens at acertain age, you disconnect
from that child, right, and itdisconnects with what you were
talking about, that portion ofyour brain.
You can see it in the workshops, like the person disconnects
from that in order to survive.
Right, and that reintegrationprocess of bringing those two
(23:40):
together, right, the person withtheir inner child has such a
profound influence on their lifemoving forward.
Because I think this is and I'mkind of out there when it comes
to this but I think our corevulnerability as human beings is
that unresolved trauma load.
(24:01):
Right, it's like you caninfluence people.
Right, know, there's, there'swhole agencies in the world that
influence people based onelicitation, like they're what's
the mice?
The mice stuff.
Right, is like if you have ahigh mice score, let's call it a
my score.
Right, which is money influence, is it coercion and ego?
Is that?
I can't.
I can't remember what the fourare, but if you find somebody
(24:23):
that's in a position of powerand they probably got in that
position of power becausethey're, you know high ego,
whatever that looks like you.
Can you know through thesemethodologies, find out where
their vulnerability is and workthat out and and gain influence
over that person figured out?
Healing unresolved trauma is amatter of national security.
(24:45):
Yeah, on the individual level,to be influenced as an
individual, as a social level,to be influenced as a society,
because I think systems havetrauma in them.
It can lead to tearing downWestern structures that are
maintaining the world order insome capacity right now.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
A large part of that is because of self-awareness.
So, in order to heal yourtrauma, you have to do a huge
amount of self-reflection, ahuge amount of continued
self-reflection, and throughthat you increase your
self-awareness.
Now, if you have wounds thatare there, they're expressing
(25:23):
themselves and you press themdown.
You don't deal with them.
You are living in a state ofdenial, to small degrees or
large degrees, however, but youare living in a state of denial,
so you're not consciously awareof why you're making the
choices that you're making.
Now, none of us are 100% awareof the choices we're making all
the time.
Most of the decisions we makeare unconscious, but with a
(25:43):
higher degree of self-awarenesswhen someone tries to bring
something to you.
Because you are reflective, youknow more often why you are
making that choice and saysomeone who knows their own
tendencies.
So if I say I'm attracted tounhealthy partners, but I'm very
(26:04):
self-aware that I have innerwork to do and I'm doing it,
when I feel this emotion towardsa person that I know is bad for
me, I can stop and questionmyself and before I make that
behavior, I stop and I thinkokay, what is it that's driving
me to do this?
Because I feel one way but I'mnot going to act on my feelings
(26:25):
having me to do this because Ifeel one way but I'm not going
to act on my feelings.
Now, if I don't do that innerwork and I don't have that
self-reflection and my emotionsare saying you want this thing,
I'm not going to question it,I'm going to go for the thing
that I want because that's whatmy emotions are telling me to do
.
And that's where it becomesreally dangerous with influence,
because you're going to be madeto feel a certain way and you
(26:45):
don't stop and recognize that.
I know this is my pattern.
Let me think before behaving onemotion, because emotions say
do it now, do it right now,because that they make us feel
like we have to act on them.
So, and like I said, a largepart of that is all because of
self-awareness, which comes fromthat self-reflection.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I love to say when logic is not present,
entanglement to unresolvedtrauma is.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And and this is such a such a cool conversation,
because you see people that aredating the same person, right,
and it's like you know, talkingabout relationships right, they
deal they.
They're dating their motherright, right, let's.
Or they're dating their fatheror whatever.
That is right.
You see, them kind of findthese cycles and they date the
same person over and over andover again.
It's like, yeah, there you havea father wound or a mother
wound or kind of whatever thatthing is and you're fine.
(27:36):
You're trying to heal that,that that dynamic in the other
person.
When you know your triggers areyour breadcrumbs to healing, to
figure out where yourvulnerabilities are.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And, like I said, you'll never know a hundred
percent all of your triggersbecause there's so many things
that are unconscious.
But just because we won't knowall of them doesn't mean we
shouldn't know as many as we can, because it's like you can go
through a normal situation andsomeone just starts acting
completely erratically and youcan be like that's so strange.
(28:13):
But for them they might notunderstand why they're having
that reaction either if theyhaven't done that inner work,
and it could be because of acompletely unrelated trigger.
But when they have done thatinner work, when they feel
themselves having that reaction,they can stop themselves.
And this is why it's soimportant, not just on the
individual, because I have onebook called Work in Progress.
That is all about our owntrauma responses, post-trauma
(28:47):
behavior, because we often seeother people behaving in ways
that we don't understand.
And this came because I was anexpert or I was hired as an
expert witness for the ConorMcGregor trial.
I was on the side of NikkiDeHand.
They were playing her CCTVfootage and she was behaving in
ways that were very strange andI could see her looking
distressed because she did notunderstand her behavior, she
could not remember and she wasso just much in shame and
(29:13):
confused and she said I don'tknow why I'm behaving that way.
It's so out of character.
The jury they had a face thatlooked like this behavior is
weird and I could feel in theroom and just reading comments
on social media and stuff lateron people are like well, she's
lying, because no one that waswent through what she said she
(29:35):
went through would behave thisway.
But I was sat there in thatroom wanting to scream because I
was just thinking this makes somuch sense.
Everything that was shown was afreeze response, a fawn
response and delayed emotionalprocessing.
It made so much sense.
But because we don't always seekto educate that why we just see
(29:57):
things on surface level and wego, nah, doesn't make sense.
Because it doesn't seem likely.
And that likely is based onthese scripts that we have very
basic scripts that seem to makesense about how people should
behave and again, it's morecomplicated than that.
So when people don't fit thatscript, we go.
(30:18):
They're the problem we don'toften go.
I wonder what's going on intheir brain that could possibly
explain this behavior.
I wonder what's going onpsychologically and that's why
I'm, just like you, sopassionate about educating these
factors because it's soimportant, not just for empathy
of others, but for self-blametoo, on both sides.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
It's so essential essential, married in a
(31:06):
long-term relationship.
That person passes away, thespouse has a high probability of
dying within the next two years.
Right, but it's not only thespouse, it's everybody in that
person's circle, right, I'vealways looked at it almost like
a Richter scale.
Right, depending on howprofound the trauma is in a
system, it echoes out to thedifferent people in that social
network.
Right, and I think the samething happens with you.
(31:29):
Know how you see sardines inthe ocean evading a predator?
Right, like, there's some typeof like.
You know if you're from a familyof origin?
Right, and that family oforigin has this let's call it
systemic momentum.
Right, that has a subconsciousconnection between all the
members and that is triggered byan external event that happens
(31:51):
in the future.
You may revert to the behaviorthat mom was doing when dad was
abusive.
Or you might revert to, youknow if grandpa was a violent
drunk.
You know, or you know analcoholic or something, that
you're reverting to thatbehavior, that you may find
yourself in a new scenariobecause it resonates and say
(32:12):
people play their part.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Without judgment.
It's like everybody plays theirpart and it's so odd to see
that behavior.
Say you know, what you weresaying is like this doesn't make
sense.
It doesn't make sense becauseyou're close to the elephant,
you're looking at the gray wallrather than seeing the whole
elephant itself.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
With the chains.
It's the same when it comes tosuicide.
You see these suicide chainswith actual someone who has
committed suicide and then thechain of others that do so too,
but then you also see it withjust deteriorating mental health
.
So it's not just that extremefactor.
There's so many other thingsthat come from that chain and
(32:52):
they continue on and on and onand on.
And there's so many ways thatwe perpetuate this cycle and it
can be through the learningtheory and it can be
biologically, and then it canalso be just if you have gone
through something, you're goingto react in a certain way and
then you just teach yourchildren the same thing and you
(33:12):
teach them that that is right.
And there's so many reasons whythis cycle perpetuates.
And that's why I always sayjust seek out education.
Even if you don't think that youhave any maladaptive patterns,
seek out education anywaybecause those cycles are so
familiar.
So if you're used to behaving inone way and used to thinking in
(33:34):
one way, used to experiencingsomething, you might not know
that it's not healthy becauseit's so familiar to you and it
feels comfortable inside.
Because it's so familiar to youand it feels comfortable inside
and there's only maybe you seesomeone else like I remember
this.
It hit me when I went touniversity and everyone was
talking about their upbringingsand their family, and then I
(33:56):
would say something about mine.
There's like a silence in theroom and I'm looking around and
you're like something isn'tright and they're like that's
not normal, and you have thatmoment of that wasn't normal
(34:16):
because it's all you knew.
So having good people aroundyou that hold you accountable is
so important, but justgenerally seeking out education
on well, how can I grow, how canI be better, can sometimes open
your eyes to things that youdid not realize.
Like if you're struggling withhaving healthy relationships and
you're thinking, but I'm notdoing anything wrong.
Just seek out information fromrelationship experts like real
(34:39):
relationship scientists, notinfluencers on Instagram.
Stay away from TikTok, pleasebut seek out actual scientists,
books and information and youmight start to realize why
you're not having healthyrelationships, but things that
you did not know were an issueuntil then.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That's such a good point and you know people are.
I think we're at the precipiceof a kind of an awakening for
understanding how trauma worksin systems and I'm so, so glad
that you're doing the work thatyou're doing, because it really
understands the hardware of whywe have these connections and
why we have these patterns andit's very, you know, very, easy
(35:21):
to understand and I was.
I was just so impressed by yourpresentation is like how
detailed it was of understandingthe mechanisms that are used,
and you know, I know you've donesome work with, you know some
special agencies out there.
What does that look like?
How do you navigate thosewaters of teaching people how to
deal with these triggers orpsychopathy, or figuring out how
(35:41):
the mechanisms of the brainworks?
Speaker 2 (35:43):
For example, I was just in Seattle training secret
service, homeland Security, FBI.
Now what I like to teach is Ialways try and teach a basic
understanding of the nervoussystem, because most behavior
comes from the nervous system.
So I want to make sure I do amyth-busting session first
always a myth-busting session,because if you don't start on
(36:07):
the same page, I might teachsomething and they're going to
then add that to the knowledgethey have or they're going to
look at it as the knowledge theyhave, as the framework through
which they understand what I say.
So I try and do a myth bustingsession, just so we're all kind
of on the same page, and thenteach the real basics of you
don't need to be aneuroscientist I'm not a
(36:29):
neuroscientist, I'm a behavioralscientist.
You don't need to be ascientist at all to understand
these basics.
And again, those were mypurposes with my books to take
complicated things and make themas simple as possible, because
my motto for everything I do ismaking science accessible.
And I take that when I trainthese agencies.
(36:49):
You take the real complicatedscience of threat detection and
you pin it down to what are thebasics of the nervous system and
why is behavior linked to thenervous system?
So we can understand where itcomes from.
Linked to the nervous system,so we can understand where it
comes from.
So if you see one behavior, ifI teach you, you see like 10
(37:10):
different behaviors and theymean these things.
You're going to try and connectall those 10 different things
individually.
If I teach you the framework ofwhere behavior comes from, from
the nervous system, and becauseof that these things occur when
you see them, you're not tryingto get that really specific
knowledge.
You can kind of go back to thatframework of understanding and
(37:30):
it's just such a better approachwhen it comes to being a
practitioner.
And I thought that federalagencies would be really
unreceptive to this kind ofteaching.
And it's completely theopposite.
And I went to teach.
I've taught them elicitation.
I've never done traumarecoveries with these agencies.
(37:51):
It's always non-verbalsinfluence, that kind of thing.
And I was at an event recentlyand I had a book published and
they said I can't wait, we'regoing to use it to train our
agents for elicitation.
And I said probably want tohold up.
My elicitation.
Book isn't out until next year.
My book is actually on emotionregulation and trauma.
So I thought the response wouldbe okay, we'll just get the
(38:13):
other one then.
And actually it was thecomplete opposite.
They really wanted thatself-growth knowledge because
they deal with such difficultthings and that information
about self-help and emotionalregulation and trauma isn't
always available to them in anaccessible manner.
So they're very, very receptiveto it.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, I think that being able to connect to your
intuition is a superpower right,very receptive to it.
Yeah, I think that being ableto connect to your intuition is
a superpower right, and I havethis, this theory, that your
intuition is hidden underneathall your unresolved trauma and
the more you deal with it, themore you can connect with that
intuition and call it resonance,call it, you know, whatever
mirroring thing that you'redoing with other people to to
not have those triggers activateyou and blind you on that
(38:58):
predetermined path that you'vealready, that you've already set
yourself on, and I really dothink that that's so cool that
you're doing that work, becauseyou know if we can understand
and and because this is kind ofkind of leading to my next
question is like if we canunderstand social patterns yeah
we can start getting kind ofdoing some root cause analysis
of where we can figure out thosethings and create actual social
(39:22):
you know policies to be able tosupport that, rather than doing
it.
I'm a big fan of Freakonomics.
Have you ever read that book,freakonomics?
No, I don't think so.
Looking at differentphenomenons that happen in the
world and how they werecorrelated, right, they was like
how do sumo wrestlers andstandardized testing cheat?
(39:44):
You know?
What do they have in common?
And so they go through theseexercises of understanding how
little things have thesesystemic entanglements.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Almost like the butterfly effect.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah, almost like the butterfly effect, exactly.
And so you know, if we thinkthat we're individuals, like
those minnows, right, that areevading, or the fish evading the
predator, right, that thetemperature of the water and the
water has influence on us,right, the acidity of the water
and also the predator has aninfluence on us, and then also
(40:16):
the other minnows that we're inor the other sardines that we're
in in the system with, if weunderstand that all those things
have to do, let's start lookingat the elephant and create
social policies or socialmovements towards dealing with
understanding the whole elephantand how to feed it and how to
take care of it and how tocreate more connection rather
(40:37):
than destruction, because ifthat elephant goes down the path
of, you know, going rampant, itcan destroy villages and have
massive effects that createlasting social wounds that we'll
have forever, right.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Well, I love what you said about intuition as well.
Because that unresolved traumaI get a question all the time of
well, how do I know what's agut instinct and what's a trauma
response?
And they can feel very similar.
Because we're always told totrust our gut and we should
trust our gut because a processcalled neuroception is that our
(41:10):
nervous system is alwaysscanning the environment and
it's sending signals to ourbrain to say this is safe, this
is not.
That's why, when you enter asituation that's sometimes not
safe or a person is interactingwith you and you get that
feeling of I don't want to behere and I don't know what it is
, but something isn't right,that's a gut feeling.
And it's usually thoseunconscious signals that are
(41:31):
saying to you get out.
But you don't consciously knowwhy.
And those aresaving, those areabsolutely life-saving.
But we also have thoseunconscious traumas that it
might say get out, get out, getout.
But it's not life-saving, it'smaladaptive because it's
unresolved trauma.
So it's really important to dothat work so you can learn to
(41:54):
trust your gut.
And there are little things likea gut instinct is kind of quiet
.
It kind of slowly builds andsneaks up on you.
It doesn't have that youabsolutely have to react to me
right now.
When you have that feeling ofreact right now, right now,
right now, and there isn't anevident threat, this is all
(42:16):
about.
You know, if there's an evidentthreat, gut feelings and
intuition are kind of irrelevant.
It's an obvious threat.
We're talking about whensomething doesn't appear wrong
but it feels it, and when itfeels like you have to
absolutely right this.
Second deal with this that'susually a trauma response,
(42:37):
because that's when our nervoussystem is saying it's going AWOL
and saying get me out now.
That's when you kind of have toquestion it of.
This might be a trauma responserather than that sneaky app of
something here is wrong.
But again, unless we do thatinner work and be
self-reflective and try and dealwith those core wounds, it can
become really difficult to trustour gut.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
And that's such a good point.
It's that the trauma muddies upthe signal.
Right, it muddies up the signal.
And the same thing happens withlove at first sight.
You know, you see, you knowlike, oh, I love at first sight,
it's like whatever that thingis that you're resonating with
in that person's system is thething that says I need to grab
(43:20):
this and become like, I need toheal this, right.
And so everything in your beingis saying I logic again, logic
is not present.
Unresolved trauma is and ratherthan building on trust and
building on a relationship andan exchange, it just becomes
this.
You know, just, you get hit bylightning and it's like, it's
the same, it's the samemechanism, right, like what you
were, and I'm making anassumption here, but it seems
(43:44):
like it comes from the sameplace.
The same mechanism that has anegative feeling also has a
positive feeling.
So that can muddy those signalsto say your intuition is is
muddied up and that's why peoplesay I don't trust myself, like
I don't trust my, you can't.
But obviously it's layered withall this stuff that's telling
you to go left when you'resupposed to go right.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Yeah, and I love that example of love at first sight
because I did a whole podcast onthat, because, as someone who
grew up watching Disney, I wishlove at first sight was real and
you see people that go.
Yeah, but it was love at firstsight with me and my partner and
it worked out perfectly.
So obviously it's true.
Now you can't use examples likethat as why it's true for
(44:24):
everyone.
Just coincidentally or luckily,you met and you developed a
relationship.
That doesn't mean that you arethe rule.
Now.
Love at first sight can'tpossibly be possible because you
don't know that person, youdon't know their character, you
don't know how they act whenthey're angry.
You don't know that person.
You don't know their character.
You don't know how they actwhen they're angry.
You don't know what their corevalues are.
You don't know what theirmorals are.
(44:46):
You don't know their religiousviews if that's important to you
, you don't know their routinesif that's important to you.
You cannot possibly know thisperson in any way, shape or form
by the first meeting.
But you can feel like you doand what it is is just
attraction at first sight,bonding at first sight.
(45:08):
It is not love at first sight,but it can feel like it.
And again those cases of peoplego no, me and my husband were
love at first sight.
No, you weren't.
You were strong attraction atfirst sight and you developed
love from that.
And a lot of that, like yousaid, is we don't trust our gut,
so we're acting on thoseinstincts where our brain is
(45:29):
saying, oh, we like this.
This is familiar, but it'susually very maladaptive.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
You know, that puts into context is like I think
that the people that thathappened with had enough social
infrastructure to help both ofthem grow through whatever.
That is right, because I thinkpeople can process through
trauma, through religion,through, you know, meditation,
through yoga, whatever theirthing is, but that they in some
(45:54):
way were had the tools to beable to process through those
things.
And I would imagine and everygreat leader that I've ever met
in my life has gone through helland they through either a
12-step program, throughcoaching, or through finding
religion or finding whateverinfrastructure that is able to
(46:14):
give you an infrastructure to beable to deal with that trauma
and heal it.
Whatever way that is.
But there's an adaptive skillthat happens that people are
like their resiliency index.
You know I don't know if youknow, some people talk about
grit and I think it ends upbeing like your developed skill
(46:35):
set to be able to deal withexactly what we're talking about
during this conversation.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I hate the idea of being bulletproof and people
talk about being successful.
Develop skillset to be able todeal with exactly what we're
talking about during thisconversation.
I hate the idea of beingbulletproof and people talk
about being successful.
You have to be bulletproof tobe empowered.
You have to be bulletproof andactually truly successful people
, genuinely powerful peoplethey're not bulletproof.
They have gone through hell andthey have been on the ground
(47:02):
and they haven't just gone no,no, doesn't matter.
Because they have learned thestrength to fight, to get back
up, and it's that strength, thatpower to get back up, that
allows them to be thatsuccessful.
So I say scrap bulletproof.
The actual magic is in beingbouncy.
Yes, so it's.
It's not not falling down, it'sgetting back up.
You can hit the ground but youcome back up twice as hard and
(47:26):
that's the resilience factor andit's, like you said, most
strong people.
They have gone through hell.
They've gone through reallydifficult things because they
have learned that they have tofind a way to get through this
and it's those skills sets thatallow them to adapt to life.
Now, that doesn't mean youcan't be successful if you
haven't gone through trauma, butit just means that people who
(47:49):
have gone through difficultexperiences tend to have more
resilience factors if they havepulled themselves out of it and
then they can adapt that andapproach other difficult
experiences with that same levelof strength.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
And I think it's like you know how pain is relative,
you know, like the worst thingthat's ever happened to you is
the worst thing that's everhappened to you.
I think it's the same thing.
It's the mechanism of how youadapt and deal with it, right,
it's like some people have to gothrough hell a bunch of times
to get there through their, youknow, stubborn head and I'm
talking about me, right?
This is my particular case,right, that I have to go.
I have to hit my head againstthe wall a million times and be
(48:26):
like maybe it's me, not the wall, right, yeah, and through that
process, and some people justlike, oh, walls are hard, so I
don't have to hit my headagainst it, I'm going to learn
from, from the future, right,but it's the same mechanism,
right?
If you have to do it a milliontimes to be able to figure it
out, or you learn the first timethe mechanism exists, right,
that that operating systemupgrade is already in there and
(48:48):
ingrained, and it's just such acool point to look at these
things.
I'm just fascinated by thisconversation.
So where do you see the futureof this work going?
With machine learning, ai, likewhat do you see the future of
this work going with machinelearning, ai, like what do you
see kind of?
How do you see these worldsconverging?
Speaker 2 (49:04):
in some way.
I think most areas willconverge with AI, and it
definitely scares me, but Ithink, when it comes to doing
the inner work, there is noreplacement and we can have AI
help us in terms of okay, createa guide for me, create a
program for me, but the onething that AI can never do is
(49:25):
deal with your trauma.
It can never get in, I mean,unless I say can never get
inside your brain.
But let's see what Elon Muskdoes with Neuralink.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, exactly so maybe it will.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
It can't do the inner work for you.
Yeah, exactly so maybe it will.
It can't do the inner work foryou.
And it does scare me because,technically, brains are just
electrical signals.
You know, that's how we think.
We just communicate byelectrical signals between
neurons in a synapse.
So technically, it would makesense if we could program the
brain and understand it like acomputer.
(49:58):
And I do think that Elon Musk isonto something incredibly huge.
I mean he's, you know,regardless of your opinions of
the man, he's a genius and Ithink that the work that he's
doing with robotics and withNeuralink truly incredible,
scary.
But I think it makes a lot ofsense when we think about how
(50:20):
the brain works with theelectrical signals.
But I still stick to my pointof when it comes to trauma
recovery, I don't think therewill ever be a full replacement
for just sitting with yourselfreflecting, journaling,
consciously monitoring your ownbehaviors and you doing the work
.
We're always looking forsomeone else to do it for us.
(50:41):
Like I compare when I talkabout therapy, we go to therapy
and say, okay, well, thetherapist is going to heal me.
No, no the therapist shows youwhere to step and you have to
make the steps.
They're not walking for you.
We expect to go and they do thewalk.
No, they show you.
Okay, here's to go.
Go here, go here.
(51:02):
You still have to do ityourself and I don't think
there's ever going to be areplacement so there's um.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Are you familiar with jacob collier?
I'm not very good with names,I'm just like he's he's from
england originally and he's this, just, you know, savant
musician, incredible musician,right, it just comes up with,
you know incrediblearrangementsvant musician,
incredible musician, right, itjust comes up with.
You know incrediblearrangements.
And he does this thing where hehe's.
He's at, I think, the O2 centerin in London, right, so he's at
(51:28):
O2 and he's this.
All the whole audience has hasnever done this before.
And he started doing this athis, at his concerts, and he
started having the concert matchhis voice in harmony, right,
like almost like a choir, right,and then he brings the choir up
and then he brings the choirdown and then brings one side up
and the other side down andthey're harmonizing with each
other.
(51:48):
And these are not trainedsingers, right, approach.
You know this singularity withAI or the, you know general
intelligence or whatever thatlooks like.
We're going to reallyunderstand that we're not just
one individual units, that weare socially connected in some
(52:10):
phenomenological way, right,that the closer we are to that
discovery, the more we're goingto say, oh, there's a part of
the equation, there's a darkmatter, for lack of a better,
better term that we have, we'rejust at the surface of
scratching right now to reallyunderstand how this subconscious
communication works, and yousee it in football teams that
can predict each other'smovements and they create a
(52:32):
synergy.
And where is synergy emergentfrom?
In consciousnesses, you know,in general consciousness right,
that you see, I grew up in, Iwent to a Catholic, an all-boy
Catholic school, and there wouldbe fevers that would happen at
school, right, a kid got a yo-yoand then everybody's got a
yo-yo and then there's yo-yotournaments and there's these,
these like waves of in systems.
(52:53):
There's these waves of resonancethat happen.
And I think that that's aphenomenon that happens in all
systems and that the closer weget to understanding AI and this
technology, that the closerwe're going to become to that
discovery of this hidden, darkmatter that we can't really
understand where it's comingfrom, that presents itself in
(53:15):
all social systems.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yet when we forget, it's not just each other we're
connected to.
We're connected to really theenvironment, the universe, and
that might sound very out there,and I'm probably the least out
there person because I needevidence.
I won't change my opinionunless you give me evidence, and
I think that that's my duty asa scientist.
But you show me evidence, I'llconsider it and then I might
(53:39):
change my opinion on it.
If you show me evidence, I'llconsider it and then I might
change my opinion on it if youshow me enough.
So I've always been againstmindfulness when I was forensics
and then there was so muchevidence and I had to really
rethink my approach because Irealized all this stuff that I
thought was, you know, woohoo,all of you know crazy has a lot
of scientific grounding and wetalk about being connected with
(54:02):
nature.
When we're out in nature, itaffects our hormonal response
patterns, the way that we wakeup, depending on the time.
We talk about early birds andnight owls.
Well, when you go to sleep whenthe sun goes down and wake up
when the sun rises, it regulatesyour cortisol levels and your
serotonin levels.
So it creates the basis ofeither an unhealthy or healthy
(54:26):
living.
So all of these, and there's somany small things like that
that we don't think you know.
We know go for a walk in natureis good for you, but we don't
realize that the way we go tosleep and wake up, depending on
whether it's early or light, orgoing for a walk and being out
in nature and getting sunlightwe don't think about those
things biologically changing us,and that's what they're doing.
(54:49):
They're changing our hormonesand our stress hormones and
whether we are happy because ofserotonin levels and things like
that.
So they're having a realimportant biological change on
us.
So we are connected to eachother, but we are also connected
to the world around us.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
That's a great point.
I know you have a heart stompsoon, so I want to make sure
that I'm mindful of your time.
Dr Abbey, I'd love to have youon again.
This has been an incredibleconversation.
I really enjoyed it.
How do people if they want tofind out about you, how do they
do that?
And I know you guys have someconferences coming up, so if you
can talk about that a littlebit in your books, Yep, so it's
(55:28):
been a pleasure and I willdefinitely be on again for sure.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
You can find me at Dr Abby Official, so Dr spelled as
Dr Abby Official, on Instagramor drabbyofficialcom, and that's
Dr as in D-R Abby officialcomor abbymoronocom.
Linkedin, dr Abby Morono.
All of my books, everythingkind of goes on my website.
So the main thing abbymoronocomyou'll get updates for
(55:55):
everything.
We do have another edition ofthe Human Behavior Conference
coming up and that will be inOrlando in November and you can
find that onhumanbehaviorconferencecom or
socialengineercom, and it willbe a two-day event.
We're not releasing any moredetails other than right now.
It will be two days instead ofone day and it's going to be
(56:17):
amazing.
Speaker 1 (56:18):
Highly recommend it.
I had a blast and got to youknow, up close and personal with
you guys and learned a lot anddid some exercises.
So it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, it was.
It was really highly recommendanybody that's in you know
understanding, want tounderstand further human
behavior and how to interactwith people.
It's it's been, it's beenincredible.
Thank you so much.
This has been, this has beenoutstanding.
Thank you so much for having me.
(56:39):
Thanks for tuning in to theZulu One podcast.
If you found value in today'spodcast, please don't forget to
like, share and subscribe.
Your support means everythingto us and thank you for being
part of this journey.
Welcome to the Zulu One Podcast.
Today, we're joined by Dr AbbyMarano, a leading expert in
human behavior who has trainedelite agencies like the FBI and
the Secret Service.
Together we explore psychologyof trauma, how to rewire your
brain for healthier habits, andwhether love at first sight is
real.
Get ready to uncover hiddentruths about resilience,
(00:20):
decision-making and the power ofself-awareness.
Dr Abby, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm good, thank you, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:36):
good to see you again good to see you so last time we
we met, we were at the socialengineering conference in
Orlando and, man, I was blownaway by how you guys approach
this subject of socialengineering and how we can
really use our biology to hackpeople in some way.
(00:59):
Can you tell me a little bit ofhow?
What was your journey gettingto this place?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
My background was forensic psychology.
So I started publishingresearch papers in forensics
when I was 19.
And my first papers were onserial killer behaviors, looking
at nonverbal communication.
I'd started working withprofilers from the FBI and I
actually originally wanted to bean FBI agent.
(01:25):
But then I published my firstpaper and I realized there's
questions of human behavior thatwe don't know, that we don't
know the answer to, and I can bea small part in finding out new
knowledge.
And when I published that paperand I'm like this paper tells
us something, even if it's justsomething small, that wasn't
(01:47):
known before I did that and Ijust got hooked on that feeling.
So I knew absolutely I want tobe a scientist, I want to be an
academic, I want to be in thesciences and absolutely
psychology.
But my background was serialkillers and forensics.
And then I moved intocounterterrorism.
I did some stuff on cannibalism, so I did a lot of the really
(02:07):
dark stuff.
But I ended up doing my PhDlooking at non-verbals and
elicitation, and that's reallywhere all of this came from,
where I didn't just want tounderstand how we can use X to
create Y.
So if I do one thing, so say Imimic your behavior and then it
creates cooperation.
That's usually kind of what weget.
(02:29):
Okay, if you want this result,this is what you should do.
What we don't always get is thewhy.
And that was the thing that wasreally key to me, because if
you don't know why and howsomething works, how would you
know what hurdles you'reovercoming or what hurdles
you're not overcoming?
That, if you did understand,you could do so much better.
And I compare it to going to thedoctor and saying you know, I
(02:52):
have these symptoms, you knowthey're really causing me
distress.
And the doctor goes here, takea pill, don't know how the pill
works, but your symptoms shouldgo away.
You wouldn't really becomfortable with that knowledge.
So, when it comes to influenceand persuasion, why don't we ask
yeah, but how does this work?
And that's where I decided Ineed to know more than just
(03:12):
psychology.
I need to understand how thebrain works, I need to
understand how the body works, Ineed to understand how the mind
works.
So I took a it's called abiopsychosocial approach, where
I take some biology, psychology,sociology and I combine it all
together to try and understandthis overall picture of how
human beings make decisions, sowe can influence them, but
(03:34):
understand how we areinfluencing them and that's so
fascinating because I'm by bytrade, I'm an IT cyber security
guy.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Right, that's what I do and that's how our paths met
or crossed in some way.
Right, and on the side I dothis weird, you know, unresolved
trauma work and it's systems,right, you start thinking of
everything as systems.
And when you said that, I waslike, oh, of course, that's the
hardware and the software andthe kind of environment all
interacting on top of each other, all interacting on top of each
(04:02):
other and in some way itcreates almost, I want to say a
momentum, right, that it's likeit creates.
It's like the chicken and theegg.
It's both.
Right, it's like it's a bothkind of scenario.
It's the chicken meets the eggat some point.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Such a great way to put it, and we think of human
behavior as linear.
Do this and this will happen.
But my research papers wereusing behavior sequence analysis
, so I took a sequence approachof okay, well, if I do A, will I
get B, or will I get C, or willI get D?
Will I get a variation?
And then you look at feedbackloops.
(04:39):
So it's all about how oneinfluences the next chain, but
how it kind of influences itselfand goes back on itself.
And human behavior is so thesame, because there's so many
things going on at once to thinkthat I can just do X, and every
single time I do it I'm goingto get Y.
And that's the approach thatwe're taught, especially in
(04:59):
non-verbals.
You know, if you smile, you'regoing to have this effect on
people.
Or if you see, the worst is, ifyou see this behavior, it means
someone is lying every time yousee it.
Those things drive me crazybecause humans are so much more
complicated than that.
For one thing, if I say do thisand if I say if you do this,
(05:20):
it's going to have the sameeffect on everyone.
Don't trust a word I say,because human behavior is
complicated and humans arecomplicated.
You can say this is likely tohave this effect, but what are
the other variables?
And that's where thatunderstanding how it works and
why it works is so important,because you can kind of
counteract that effect andinstead of just looking for one
(05:43):
thing, you can look forvariations and you can
understand things at a greaterdepth and then you can be more
effective.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
That's such a good point because it's like you know
, it's almost a probabilistickind of math right, it's like
there's a high likely chancethat this is going to happen.
And I have this concept of anunresolved trauma index in
business, in a culture, in aperson, and then they're almost
unresolved trauma resiliencyfactor that it's.
(06:14):
You know, if somebody has avery difficult childhood but
they don't have the mechanismthrough religion, Kung Fu,
psychology, whatever thing thatthey do, right, Mickey Mouse,
whatever the thing is if theydon't have the ability to break
that generational curse, what wecall generational curses or
patterns, right, the momentumwill go towards creating
(06:35):
destruction that could beamplified by a myriad of
environmental factors.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yep, and this is why I was so interested when we
spoke at the conference, becausea lot of the work that I do,
including my first book that waspublished, is all about trauma
and trauma recovery.
And, using your example, ifthings were that simple, you
would have two children who gothrough the same experience with
the same outcome.
And if we use the example of meand my sister, we both grew up
(07:04):
in the same environment.
My mom was very emotionally andverbally abusive and we both
had the same struggles tovarying degrees, but we had the
same struggles.
Now, if things were simple, wewould both, in the future, be
the same.
My sister is very hyper hyperdependent.
(07:25):
She's in a relationship and shedoes not know how to function
outside of that relationship.
So if things were simple, I'dbe the same.
I'm the opposite.
I'm so hyper independent thatyou know you try and pick up my
shopping bag for me and I'm likedo you think that I can't do
this myself?
Give it to me, I can do it.
I remember I got sick and one ofour team said to me oh, you
(07:48):
should have told me I could havemade you soup.
And I said why would I do that?
I have hands Like I'm sick, butI can go make my own soup, you
don't need to look after me,whereas my sister would be the
opposite.
And it's because there's such amyriad of other factors
involved when it comes to humanbehavior and it's so interesting
to pick apart those extraneousvariables to try and understand
(08:11):
us so that, once you understand,you can influence.
Because it's like if you don'tknow how to drive a car, you
can't go on a road trip, and theroad trip is influence.
So why are we trying to makethis journey without
understanding the mechanisms ofhow to actually make a human
being make decisions?
And that's why I just find itso interesting that why question
(08:35):
, when it comes to science, whenit comes to any application,
security, trauma, anythingyou've got to dig to that deeper
level to be able to use it moreeffectively that's really
interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I'm I'm just fascinated by this conversation
because you know, there's what I, what I've seen is that there's
some hard-coded switches andcorrect me if I'm wrong, you're
the expert, right, I'm not.
I'm not the expert in anycapacity, but there's some
hard-coded switches that whenyour presentation at the social
engineering factor, you knowlike you were talking about, you
know like opening the neck andthe, the kind of body language
(09:09):
things that's like this isbiologically hard coded in who
we are right, but there's alsolike a systemic influence on it
and then a social, social effecton what that looks like.
And so you can.
I think most people think thatone of them is the answer rather
than being D.
All of the above kind ofsituation, right?
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yes, and this is a really common mistake that I see
, because, especially when itcomes to when people talk about
male and feminine and male andfemale roles they talk about
well, the men have this providerrole.
Female roles they talk aboutwell, the men have this provider
role, so they have resourcesand women, they get choice.
And then you see people likeAndrew Tay and all these like
(09:51):
influencers talking about bodycount and why you know, men
should cheat because it'sevolved.
What they forget is thatevolutionary theory has two
parts.
You have the hardwired instinctand, when I was talking about
influence, the brain and ourgenes.
Our genes, as every human being, are nearly identical.
(10:13):
We have 99 percent genetic or99.9 genetically identical genes
to every other human being onthis planet.
That's just how we're wired, sothere are absolutely things
that will be the same foreveryone because they're
biologically predetermined.
However, the difference betweenus and things like chimps is
(10:34):
their brains are genetic, sothey're born with a brain and it
doesn't really change instructure and function.
Now, human brains, they changein structure and function based
on our experiences, so we'reborn with a brain.
We all have the same basicthings.
I'm not going to lose myprefrontal cortex, but the way
my brain functions and wires andthings like my gray matter
(10:57):
density, the structures ofcertain regions, they change and
adapt based on my experience.
They change and adapt based onmy experience.
So that's why we're soexperience dependent.
And then going back to thatevolved argument of yeah, but
these are our evolved behaviors.
There's two parts to that.
We have the ultimate causations, which is the biologically
(11:20):
predetermined factor, but that'shalf the picture.
Biologically predeterminedfactor, but that's half the
picture.
The other half is a proximalfactor, meaning our experiences,
our personality.
So if I donate to charity, theultimate causation is that
biological predetermined factorof I do it because my ancestors
who did it?
(11:41):
They were more pro-social, sothey were liked by the group,
they got more resources, so theysurvived.
But that's not why I do it now.
I do it because it feels good,because I want to.
So that feeling is proximal.
And then say you have, let's goback to make choice.
Say influencers argue that youknow women want a man that is
(12:02):
strong, that has these traits.
Okay, because that would, inour evolutionary history,
increase survival.
But the proximal argument iswhat if they have gone through
an abusive relationship?
What if they've witnessed theseindividuals not providing them
what they need.
What if they have doneself-growth and they have a lot
of self-respect and they wantsomething more from themselves?
(12:24):
They value other traits.
Those two factors, the proximaland the ultimate, are
constantly connecting with eachother.
But people forget one half ofit and that's why those
arguments can seem to make sense, because they argue them and
you're like that actually doesmake a lot of sense from science
.
That is an above function.
(12:45):
But it's because theymisunderstand evolutionary
theory and they forget the otherhalf of it.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, I think you were.
You were.
You were the one that said it'slike everybody has the hands on
the elephant.
You know and they don't knowit's an elephant, right, if
there's too close to it.
You're just looking at this isa gray wall, right, and it's
like this is a gray wall thathas texture and hair.
It's very weird, you know, kindof, and they're absolutely
right, it is a gray wall ifyou're standing close enough to
it.
But you take a step back andyou take a further step back and
(13:12):
you're like oh, it's anelephant, right.
And it's like reallyunderstanding the whole picture
and I know you're a specialistin the brain and how the brain
wiring works, right and do yousee, and going kind of back to
the chicken and the egg question, is that, do you see that how
that proximal experience, right,or that proximal influence, can
(13:34):
activate certain parts of thebrain in one way or another or
have influence on the biologicalwiring of a person?
Or is that?
Are they?
Are they completely different?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Yep.
So let's go to trauma, forexample.
So we all have the same basicstructures and we know the
prefrontal cortex is reallyimportant for critical thinking,
emotional regulation, thingslike that.
Now say, I go through traumaand I enter a freeze response.
So we have the fight, flightand freeze.
And the freeze response is anevolved response where the brain
(14:07):
says if I run I'm going to gethurt.
If I fight I'm going to gethurt.
So the only other option is tostay immobile because if there's
a predator and I run or fight Imight die.
If I freeze, it might think I'mdead and leave me alone.
So we have this evolvedresponse.
We're going to a freezeresponse.
But we can get stuck in thatresponse.
(14:29):
So then it can change our brain.
So people who have been stuck inthe freeze response, often what
happens is you see adysfunction in parts of the
regions.
So during a freeze response,broker's area which controls
speech, it reduces in function.
It can completely shut down.
Individuals who have gonethrough, say, sexual assault and
(14:49):
they're asked why didn't youshout, why didn't you ask for
help?
And they say I don't know.
And often that's used againstthem as well.
They're lying and actually it'sthe way the brain tries to
survive because it tries to shutdown all unnecessary functions
and part of that is shuttingdown part of the vocal cords,
part of that, shutting down partof Broca's area which controls
(15:12):
speech.
So our brain in survivalsituations like that and this is
just one example of thousandsit adapts itself when it changes
and then say let's go tosomething more extreme, like
emotional shutdown.
And emotional shutdown is sayyour brain is saying to you hey,
(15:32):
feel this emotion, you've gonethrough trauma.
And it's saying please dealwith this, please deal with this
.
And say you're feeling shameand it's hard, and you don't.
You suppress it.
You go no, no, no, I won't feelyou.
And you try and make the paingo away by saying it's not there
.
Eventually, what the brain does, it goes okay, you won't feel
me, we'll turn it off.
Then and you see activation inareas controlling emotional
(15:55):
regulation and the emotionalaspect of memory and
self-processing, which is theinsula.
So if you ask me who are you,and I'm thinking who am I, my
insula is going to light up.
But those regions are allconnected to that trauma and
because I don't want to feel itenough, and I'm pushing and
pushing and pushing, the brainstarts to shut them down.
(16:16):
Now the regions that areresponsible for negative
emotions are also responsiblefor positive.
So that's when you get emotionalshutdown and you see trauma
victims who you look at them andyou can almost not understand
and you don't get why?
Why are you cold, why are younumb, why are you empty?
You might see someone who'sjust lost someone and they seem
(16:39):
unemotional and it's really hardto comprehend what's going on
internally.
Is they're in so much pain thatto, in order to keep themselves
alive, the brain says if painis too much, let's shut it down.
And that's where that emotionalnumbness comes from.
And that is a biologicalresponse.
And that's why these things areso confusing, because we don't
(17:01):
know what's going on inside.
Often and let's go back to thatsexual assault example it can
create a lot of really difficultfeelings after that, because
you might have some self-blameof why didn't I do these things?
Why am I feeling this way?
What is wrong with me?
And that's what I often hearwith trauma victims of I'm
(17:23):
dysfunctional, I'vemalfunctioned, I'm broken.
And actually, when you teachthem the why and you say,
biologically, this is what'sgoing on and you can't think
yourself out of this situation,you can't go, you turn back on
and then it goes.
Okay, it is much, much harderthan that to change that
(17:43):
biological response.
It is much, much harder thanthat to change that biological
response.
And when you teach people thatwhy you see a lot of self-blame
disappear because they start torealize actually my body was
keeping itself alive.
It's not that something's wrongwith me.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
What came up when you were saying that is that it
seems like it's the samemechanism and correct me if I'm
wrong that would create theperpetrator as well.
Right, if you shut down thatemotional you know, if we're
emotionally available andconnected and that because of
childhood trauma or somethingthat happened when the person
was a child and you had to shutthat down, you could grow up to
(18:20):
turn into that perpetrator thatdoesn't feel any empathy or
connection or doesn't have anemotional response to the
violence or to whatever that'shappening.
And so I'm always very curiousof that entanglement between the
victim and the perpetrator.
Right that you probably knowmore about this than I do, but
(18:42):
in our work we see a lot that ifand this is not to victim blame
in any way, right, but thatvictim wound, depending on what
it is, can turn into aperpetrator wound if it's not
dealt with appropriately andthat's and it may not be the
same, but it may rhyme, right,that that is like a mother that
was emotionally abused maybecome emotionally unavailable
(19:05):
to her child when it during acritical time, and then that arc
is all the way from, you know,psychopathy and becoming a
serial killer, right to somebodythat just simply has a wound
and everything in between.
So I'm fascinated by thedynamic between the perpetrator
and the victim and theperpetrator, and how that cycle
perpetuates in a family systemor in systems in general.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, and there's a lot of learning theory to it as
well, because we repeat what weknow.
So if your understanding of theworld is one way, say you grow
up in an abusive home and sayyou witness your mom and dad
being abusive to each other orone to the other, that's where
(19:51):
love lies for you.
Okay, mom and dad are my modelof what love is, what parenting
looks like.
And as kids, like I said, ourbrain morphology changes based
on our experiences.
Neurons that fire together,wire together.
Kids' brains are going okay,how do I understand this world?
Because I'm going to need tointeract with it as I get older.
I'm going to need to find myway in this world, so I need to
know what to expect.
I can then model that.
(20:11):
So we're looking around atthese relationships and say
again they're abusive, so you go.
Okay, so abuse and love theycoincide.
So now, as you go into theworld and you meet someone that
reflects those behaviors, wehave to remember that
familiarity is comfortable.
It doesn't have to be healthy.
(20:34):
It resonates, it's comfortablebecause it's predictable.
So the brain goes oh, I knowhow this works.
So someone starts to treat youin a certain way and you go yeah
, this makes sense.
And you can get yourself intothose repeat patterns.
Now say you have a differentperson who witnessed a healthy
relationship, or you have aperson who witnessed someone
(20:55):
intervening in that negativerelationship and taught you this
is not healthy, it shouldn'tlook this way.
When you then meet someonelater that exemplifies those
behaviors, your brain goes weknow how this works, we know
that this isn't the rightpattern.
So you go no, thank you.
And then these cycles reallyperpetuate.
(21:15):
Because when you get into thesenegative relationships and when
you don't have a strongemotional support system, not
only do you not know how toregulate your own emotions,
which is so key to interactingwith the world Emotional
regulation is one of the mostimportant factors for a healthy
life but you also then start toreally embed those negative
(21:37):
self-narratives.
So people start to break youdown and you start to believe
them.
So then it starts to reallyincrease that cycle.
You start to see someone who isabusive.
You begin the cycle becauseit's familiar, and then the
abuse breaks you down.
So you stay in it.
And that's why often, if youget built up and you leave, very
(22:01):
common that they get back intoit unless you give them a way to
rebuild a sense of self and youhave to teach them to recognize
unhealthy behaviors.
But just knowing this isunhealthy isn't enough.
It's really, like I said,emotional regulation and having
a strong sense of self, becauseit's so easy to get back into
that cycle.
(22:21):
And when we talk about thoseneurons that wire together, we
think, okay, remove yourselffrom that cycle and then we can
start a new one.
But it doesn't work that way,because if I have these two say,
I have a pattern here wired andI want this healthy pattern I
can't just switch becausethey're wrapped up together.
(22:43):
I have to unwire one wire, anew one, unwire one wire, a new
one, unwire one, and over andover and over again, because
they have to continuously refire.
That's why creating newpatterns isn't just about
something new.
It's continuously recognizingthe old one and purposely
(23:07):
undoing it and then redoing anew one, time and time again
before you can get intosomething healthier this is
fascinating the you know a lotof stuff that comes in trauma
workshops, the the familyconstellations, that.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
That that I particularly am fond of is a lot
of inner child work.
Right, when trauma happens at acertain age, you disconnect
from that child, right, and itdisconnects with what you were
talking about, that portion ofyour brain.
You can see it in the workshops, like the person disconnects
from that in order to survive.
Right, and that reintegrationprocess of bringing those two
(23:40):
together, right, the person withtheir inner child has such a
profound influence on their lifemoving forward.
Because I think this is and I'mkind of out there when it comes
to this but I think our corevulnerability as human beings is
that unresolved trauma load.
(24:01):
Right, it's like you caninfluence people.
Right, know, there's, there'swhole agencies in the world that
influence people based onelicitation, like they're what's
the mice?
The mice stuff.
Right, is like if you have ahigh mice score, let's call it a
my score.
Right, which is money influence, is it coercion and ego?
Is that?
I can't.
I can't remember what the fourare, but if you find somebody
(24:23):
that's in a position of powerand they probably got in that
position of power becausethey're, you know high ego,
whatever that looks like you.
Can you know through thesemethodologies, find out where
their vulnerability is and workthat out and and gain influence
over that person figured out?
Healing unresolved trauma is amatter of national security.
(24:45):
Yeah, on the individual level,to be influenced as an
individual, as a social level,to be influenced as a society,
because I think systems havetrauma in them.
It can lead to tearing downWestern structures that are
maintaining the world order insome capacity right now.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
A large part of that is because of self-awareness.
So, in order to heal yourtrauma, you have to do a huge
amount of self-reflection, ahuge amount of continued
self-reflection, and throughthat you increase your
self-awareness.
Now, if you have wounds thatare there, they're expressing
(25:23):
themselves and you press themdown.
You don't deal with them.
You are living in a state ofdenial, to small degrees or
large degrees, however, but youare living in a state of denial,
so you're not consciously awareof why you're making the
choices that you're making.
Now, none of us are 100% awareof the choices we're making all
the time.
Most of the decisions we makeare unconscious, but with a
(25:43):
higher degree of self-awarenesswhen someone tries to bring
something to you.
Because you are reflective, youknow more often why you are
making that choice and saysomeone who knows their own
tendencies.
So if I say I'm attracted tounhealthy partners, but I'm very
(26:04):
self-aware that I have innerwork to do and I'm doing it,
when I feel this emotion towardsa person that I know is bad for
me, I can stop and questionmyself and before I make that
behavior, I stop and I thinkokay, what is it that's driving
me to do this?
Because I feel one way but I'mnot going to act on my feelings
(26:25):
having me to do this because Ifeel one way but I'm not going
to act on my feelings.
Now, if I don't do that innerwork and I don't have that
self-reflection and my emotionsare saying you want this thing,
I'm not going to question it,I'm going to go for the thing
that I want because that's whatmy emotions are telling me to do
.
And that's where it becomesreally dangerous with influence,
because you're going to be madeto feel a certain way and you
(26:45):
don't stop and recognize that.
I know this is my pattern.
Let me think before behaving onemotion, because emotions say
do it now, do it right now,because that they make us feel
like we have to act on them.
So, and like I said, a largepart of that is all because of
self-awareness, which comes fromthat self-reflection.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I love to say when logic is not present,
entanglement to unresolvedtrauma is.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
And and this is such a such a cool conversation,
because you see people that aredating the same person, right,
and it's like you know, talkingabout relationships right, they
deal they.
They're dating their motherright, right, let's.
Or they're dating their fatheror whatever.
That is right.
You see, them kind of findthese cycles and they date the
same person over and over andover again.
It's like, yeah, there you havea father wound or a mother
wound or kind of whatever thatthing is and you're fine.
(27:36):
You're trying to heal that,that that dynamic in the other
person.
When you know your triggers areyour breadcrumbs to healing, to
figure out where yourvulnerabilities are.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And, like I said, you'll never know a hundred
percent all of your triggersbecause there's so many things
that are unconscious.
But just because we won't knowall of them doesn't mean we
shouldn't know as many as we can, because it's like you can go
through a normal situation andsomeone just starts acting
completely erratically and youcan be like that's so strange.
(28:13):
But for them they might notunderstand why they're having
that reaction either if theyhaven't done that inner work,
and it could be because of acompletely unrelated trigger.
But when they have done thatinner work, when they feel
themselves having that reaction,they can stop themselves.
And this is why it's soimportant, not just on the
individual, because I have onebook called Work in Progress.
That is all about our owntrauma responses, post-trauma
(28:47):
behavior, because we often seeother people behaving in ways
that we don't understand.
And this came because I was anexpert or I was hired as an
expert witness for the ConorMcGregor trial.
I was on the side of NikkiDeHand.
They were playing her CCTVfootage and she was behaving in
ways that were very strange andI could see her looking
distressed because she did notunderstand her behavior, she
could not remember and she wasso just much in shame and
(29:13):
confused and she said I don'tknow why I'm behaving that way.
It's so out of character.
The jury they had a face thatlooked like this behavior is
weird and I could feel in theroom and just reading comments
on social media and stuff lateron people are like well, she's
lying, because no one that waswent through what she said she
(29:35):
went through would behave thisway.
But I was sat there in thatroom wanting to scream because I
was just thinking this makes somuch sense.
Everything that was shown was afreeze response, a fawn
response and delayed emotionalprocessing.
It made so much sense.
But because we don't always seekto educate that why we just see
(29:57):
things on surface level and wego, nah, doesn't make sense.
Because it doesn't seem likely.
And that likely is based onthese scripts that we have very
basic scripts that seem to makesense about how people should
behave and again, it's morecomplicated than that.
So when people don't fit thatscript, we go.
(30:18):
They're the problem we don'toften go.
I wonder what's going on intheir brain that could possibly
explain this behavior.
I wonder what's going onpsychologically and that's why
I'm, just like you, sopassionate about educating these
factors because it's soimportant, not just for empathy
of others, but for self-blametoo, on both sides.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
It's so essential essential, married in a
(31:06):
long-term relationship.
That person passes away, thespouse has a high probability of
dying within the next two years.
Right, but it's not only thespouse, it's everybody in that
person's circle, right, I'vealways looked at it almost like
a Richter scale.
Right, depending on howprofound the trauma is in a
system, it echoes out to thedifferent people in that social
network.
Right, and I think the samething happens with you.
(31:29):
Know how you see sardines inthe ocean evading a predator?
Right, like, there's some typeof like.
You know if you're from a familyof origin?
Right, and that family oforigin has this let's call it
systemic momentum.
Right, that has a subconsciousconnection between all the
members and that is triggered byan external event that happens
(31:51):
in the future.
You may revert to the behaviorthat mom was doing when dad was
abusive.
Or you might revert to, youknow if grandpa was a violent
drunk.
You know, or you know analcoholic or something, that
you're reverting to thatbehavior, that you may find
yourself in a new scenariobecause it resonates and say
(32:12):
people play their part.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Without judgment.
It's like everybody plays theirpart and it's so odd to see
that behavior.
Say you know, what you weresaying is like this doesn't make
sense.
It doesn't make sense becauseyou're close to the elephant,
you're looking at the gray wallrather than seeing the whole
elephant itself.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
With the chains.
It's the same when it comes tosuicide.
You see these suicide chainswith actual someone who has
committed suicide and then thechain of others that do so too,
but then you also see it withjust deteriorating mental health
.
So it's not just that extremefactor.
There's so many other thingsthat come from that chain and
(32:52):
they continue on and on and onand on.
And there's so many ways thatwe perpetuate this cycle and it
can be through the learningtheory and it can be
biologically, and then it canalso be just if you have gone
through something, you're goingto react in a certain way and
then you just teach yourchildren the same thing and you
(33:12):
teach them that that is right.
And there's so many reasons whythis cycle perpetuates.
And that's why I always sayjust seek out education.
Even if you don't think that youhave any maladaptive patterns,
seek out education anywaybecause those cycles are so
familiar.
So if you're used to behaving inone way and used to thinking in
(33:34):
one way, used to experiencingsomething, you might not know
that it's not healthy becauseit's so familiar to you and it
feels comfortable inside.
Because it's so familiar to youand it feels comfortable inside
and there's only maybe you seesomeone else like I remember
this.
It hit me when I went touniversity and everyone was
talking about their upbringingsand their family, and then I
(33:56):
would say something about mine.
There's like a silence in theroom and I'm looking around and
you're like something isn'tright and they're like that's
not normal, and you have thatmoment of that wasn't normal
(34:16):
because it's all you knew.
So having good people aroundyou that hold you accountable is
so important, but justgenerally seeking out education
on well, how can I grow, how canI be better, can sometimes open
your eyes to things that youdid not realize.
Like if you're struggling withhaving healthy relationships and
you're thinking, but I'm notdoing anything wrong.
Just seek out information fromrelationship experts like real
(34:39):
relationship scientists, notinfluencers on Instagram.
Stay away from TikTok, pleasebut seek out actual scientists,
books and information and youmight start to realize why
you're not having healthyrelationships, but things that
you did not know were an issueuntil then.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
That's such a good point and you know people are.
I think we're at the precipiceof a kind of an awakening for
understanding how trauma worksin systems and I'm so, so glad
that you're doing the work thatyou're doing, because it really
understands the hardware of whywe have these connections and
why we have these patterns andit's very, you know, very, easy
(35:21):
to understand and I was.
I was just so impressed by yourpresentation is like how
detailed it was of understandingthe mechanisms that are used,
and you know, I know you've donesome work with, you know some
special agencies out there.
What does that look like?
How do you navigate thosewaters of teaching people how to
deal with these triggers orpsychopathy, or figuring out how
(35:41):
the mechanisms of the brainworks?
Speaker 2 (35:43):
For example, I was just in Seattle training secret
service, homeland Security, FBI.
Now what I like to teach is Ialways try and teach a basic
understanding of the nervoussystem, because most behavior
comes from the nervous system.
So I want to make sure I do amyth-busting session first
always a myth-busting session,because if you don't start on
(36:07):
the same page, I might teachsomething and they're going to
then add that to the knowledgethey have or they're going to
look at it as the knowledge theyhave, as the framework through
which they understand what I say.
So I try and do a myth bustingsession, just so we're all kind
of on the same page, and thenteach the real basics of you
don't need to be aneuroscientist I'm not a
(36:29):
neuroscientist, I'm a behavioralscientist.
You don't need to be ascientist at all to understand
these basics.
And again, those were mypurposes with my books to take
complicated things and make themas simple as possible, because
my motto for everything I do ismaking science accessible.
And I take that when I trainthese agencies.
(36:49):
You take the real complicatedscience of threat detection and
you pin it down to what are thebasics of the nervous system and
why is behavior linked to thenervous system?
So we can understand where itcomes from.
Linked to the nervous system,so we can understand where it
comes from.
So if you see one behavior, ifI teach you, you see like 10
(37:10):
different behaviors and theymean these things.
You're going to try and connectall those 10 different things
individually.
If I teach you the framework ofwhere behavior comes from, from
the nervous system, and becauseof that these things occur when
you see them, you're not tryingto get that really specific
knowledge.
You can kind of go back to thatframework of understanding and
(37:30):
it's just such a better approachwhen it comes to being a
practitioner.
And I thought that federalagencies would be really
unreceptive to this kind ofteaching.
And it's completely theopposite.
And I went to teach.
I've taught them elicitation.
I've never done traumarecoveries with these agencies.
(37:51):
It's always non-verbalsinfluence, that kind of thing.
And I was at an event recentlyand I had a book published and
they said I can't wait, we'regoing to use it to train our
agents for elicitation.
And I said probably want tohold up.
My elicitation.
Book isn't out until next year.
My book is actually on emotionregulation and trauma.
So I thought the response wouldbe okay, we'll just get the
(38:13):
other one then.
And actually it was thecomplete opposite.
They really wanted thatself-growth knowledge because
they deal with such difficultthings and that information
about self-help and emotionalregulation and trauma isn't
always available to them in anaccessible manner.
So they're very, very receptiveto it.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, I think that being able to connect to your
intuition is a superpower right,very receptive to it.
Yeah, I think that being ableto connect to your intuition is
a superpower right, and I havethis, this theory, that your
intuition is hidden underneathall your unresolved trauma and
the more you deal with it, themore you can connect with that
intuition and call it resonance,call it, you know, whatever
mirroring thing that you'redoing with other people to to
not have those triggers activateyou and blind you on that
(38:58):
predetermined path that you'vealready, that you've already set
yourself on, and I really dothink that that's so cool that
you're doing that work, becauseyou know if we can understand
and and because this is kind ofkind of leading to my next
question is like if we canunderstand social patterns yeah
we can start getting kind ofdoing some root cause analysis
of where we can figure out thosethings and create actual social
(39:22):
you know policies to be able tosupport that, rather than doing
it.
I'm a big fan of Freakonomics.
Have you ever read that book,freakonomics?
No, I don't think so.
Looking at differentphenomenons that happen in the
world and how they werecorrelated, right, they was like
how do sumo wrestlers andstandardized testing cheat?
(39:44):
You know?
What do they have in common?
And so they go through theseexercises of understanding how
little things have thesesystemic entanglements.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Almost like the butterfly effect.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah, almost like the butterfly effect, exactly.
And so you know, if we thinkthat we're individuals, like
those minnows, right, that areevading, or the fish evading the
predator, right, that thetemperature of the water and the
water has influence on us,right, the acidity of the water
and also the predator has aninfluence on us, and then also
(40:16):
the other minnows that we're inor the other sardines that we're
in in the system with, if weunderstand that all those things
have to do, let's start lookingat the elephant and create
social policies or socialmovements towards dealing with
understanding the whole elephantand how to feed it and how to
take care of it and how tocreate more connection rather
(40:37):
than destruction, because ifthat elephant goes down the path
of, you know, going rampant, itcan destroy villages and have
massive effects that createlasting social wounds that we'll
have forever, right.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
Well, I love what you said about intuition as well.
Because that unresolved traumaI get a question all the time of
well, how do I know what's agut instinct and what's a trauma
response?
And they can feel very similar.
Because we're always told totrust our gut and we should
trust our gut because a processcalled neuroception is that our
(41:10):
nervous system is alwaysscanning the environment and
it's sending signals to ourbrain to say this is safe, this
is not.
That's why, when you enter asituation that's sometimes not
safe or a person is interactingwith you and you get that
feeling of I don't want to behere and I don't know what it is
, but something isn't right,that's a gut feeling.
And it's usually thoseunconscious signals that are
(41:31):
saying to you get out.
But you don't consciously knowwhy.
And those aresaving, those areabsolutely life-saving.
But we also have thoseunconscious traumas that it
might say get out, get out, getout.
But it's not life-saving, it'smaladaptive because it's
unresolved trauma.
So it's really important to dothat work so you can learn to
(41:54):
trust your gut.
And there are little things likea gut instinct is kind of quiet
.
It kind of slowly builds andsneaks up on you.
It doesn't have that youabsolutely have to react to me
right now.
When you have that feeling ofreact right now, right now,
right now, and there isn't anevident threat, this is all
(42:16):
about.
You know, if there's an evidentthreat, gut feelings and
intuition are kind of irrelevant.
It's an obvious threat.
We're talking about whensomething doesn't appear wrong
but it feels it, and when itfeels like you have to
absolutely right this.
Second deal with this that'susually a trauma response,
(42:37):
because that's when our nervoussystem is saying it's going AWOL
and saying get me out now.
That's when you kind of have toquestion it of.
This might be a trauma responserather than that sneaky app of
something here is wrong.
But again, unless we do thatinner work and be
self-reflective and try and dealwith those core wounds, it can
become really difficult to trustour gut.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
And that's such a good point.
It's that the trauma muddies upthe signal.
Right, it muddies up the signal.
And the same thing happens withlove at first sight.
You know, you see, you knowlike, oh, I love at first sight,
it's like whatever that thingis that you're resonating with
in that person's system is thething that says I need to grab
(43:20):
this and become like, I need toheal this, right.
And so everything in your beingis saying I logic again, logic
is not present.
Unresolved trauma is and ratherthan building on trust and
building on a relationship andan exchange, it just becomes
this.
You know, just, you get hit bylightning and it's like, it's
the same, it's the samemechanism, right, like what you
were, and I'm making anassumption here, but it seems
(43:44):
like it comes from the sameplace.
The same mechanism that has anegative feeling also has a
positive feeling.
So that can muddy those signalsto say your intuition is is
muddied up and that's why peoplesay I don't trust myself, like
I don't trust my, you can't.
But obviously it's layered withall this stuff that's telling
you to go left when you'resupposed to go right.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
Yeah, and I love that example of love at first sight
because I did a whole podcast onthat, because, as someone who
grew up watching Disney, I wishlove at first sight was real and
you see people that go.
Yeah, but it was love at firstsight with me and my partner and
it worked out perfectly.
So obviously it's true.
Now you can't use examples likethat as why it's true for
(44:24):
everyone.
Just coincidentally or luckily,you met and you developed a
relationship.
That doesn't mean that you arethe rule.
Now.
Love at first sight can'tpossibly be possible because you
don't know that person, youdon't know their character, you
don't know how they act whenthey're angry.
You don't know that person.
You don't know their character.
You don't know how they actwhen they're angry.
You don't know what their corevalues are.
You don't know what theirmorals are.
(44:46):
You don't know their religiousviews if that's important to you
, you don't know their routinesif that's important to you.
You cannot possibly know thisperson in any way, shape or form
by the first meeting.
But you can feel like you doand what it is is just
attraction at first sight,bonding at first sight.
(45:08):
It is not love at first sight,but it can feel like it.
And again those cases of peoplego no, me and my husband were
love at first sight.
No, you weren't.
You were strong attraction atfirst sight and you developed
love from that.
And a lot of that, like yousaid, is we don't trust our gut,
so we're acting on thoseinstincts where our brain is
(45:29):
saying, oh, we like this.
This is familiar, but it'susually very maladaptive.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
You know, that puts into context is like I think
that the people that thathappened with had enough social
infrastructure to help both ofthem grow through whatever.
That is right, because I thinkpeople can process through
trauma, through religion,through, you know, meditation,
through yoga, whatever theirthing is, but that they in some
(45:54):
way were had the tools to beable to process through those
things.
And I would imagine and everygreat leader that I've ever met
in my life has gone through helland they through either a
12-step program, throughcoaching, or through finding
religion or finding whateverinfrastructure that is able to
(46:14):
give you an infrastructure to beable to deal with that trauma
and heal it.
Whatever way that is.
But there's an adaptive skillthat happens that people are
like their resiliency index.
You know I don't know if youknow, some people talk about
grit and I think it ends upbeing like your developed skill
(46:35):
set to be able to deal withexactly what we're talking about
during this conversation.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
I hate the idea of being bulletproof and people
talk about being successful.
Develop skillset to be able todeal with exactly what we're
talking about during thisconversation.
I hate the idea of beingbulletproof and people talk
about being successful.
You have to be bulletproof tobe empowered.
You have to be bulletproof andactually truly successful people
, genuinely powerful peoplethey're not bulletproof.
They have gone through hell andthey have been on the ground
(47:02):
and they haven't just gone no,no, doesn't matter.
Because they have learned thestrength to fight, to get back
up, and it's that strength, thatpower to get back up, that
allows them to be thatsuccessful.
So I say scrap bulletproof.
The actual magic is in beingbouncy.
Yes, so it's.
It's not not falling down, it'sgetting back up.
You can hit the ground but youcome back up twice as hard and
(47:26):
that's the resilience factor andit's, like you said, most
strong people.
They have gone through hell.
They've gone through reallydifficult things because they
have learned that they have tofind a way to get through this
and it's those skills sets thatallow them to adapt to life.
Now, that doesn't mean youcan't be successful if you
haven't gone through trauma, butit just means that people who
(47:49):
have gone through difficultexperiences tend to have more
resilience factors if they havepulled themselves out of it and
then they can adapt that andapproach other difficult
experiences with that same levelof strength.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
And I think it's like you know how pain is relative,
you know, like the worst thingthat's ever happened to you is
the worst thing that's everhappened to you.
I think it's the same thing.
It's the mechanism of how youadapt and deal with it, right,
it's like some people have to gothrough hell a bunch of times
to get there through their, youknow, stubborn head and I'm
talking about me, right?
This is my particular case,right, that I have to go.
I have to hit my head againstthe wall a million times and be
(48:26):
like maybe it's me, not the wall, right, yeah, and through that
process, and some people justlike, oh, walls are hard, so I
don't have to hit my headagainst it, I'm going to learn
from, from the future, right,but it's the same mechanism,
right?
If you have to do it a milliontimes to be able to figure it
out, or you learn the first timethe mechanism exists, right,
that that operating systemupgrade is already in there and
(48:48):
ingrained, and it's just such acool point to look at these
things.
I'm just fascinated by thisconversation.
So where do you see the futureof this work going?
With machine learning, ai, likewhat do you see the future of
this work going with machinelearning, ai, like what do you
see kind of?
How do you see these worldsconverging?
Speaker 2 (49:04):
in some way.
I think most areas willconverge with AI, and it
definitely scares me, but Ithink, when it comes to doing
the inner work, there is noreplacement and we can have AI
help us in terms of okay, createa guide for me, create a
program for me, but the onething that AI can never do is
(49:25):
deal with your trauma.
It can never get in, I mean,unless I say can never get
inside your brain.
But let's see what Elon Muskdoes with Neuralink.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Yeah, exactly so maybe it will.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
It can't do the inner work for you.
Yeah, exactly so maybe it will.
It can't do the inner work foryou.
And it does scare me because,technically, brains are just
electrical signals.
You know, that's how we think.
We just communicate byelectrical signals between
neurons in a synapse.
So technically, it would makesense if we could program the
brain and understand it like acomputer.
(49:58):
And I do think that Elon Musk isonto something incredibly huge.
I mean he's, you know,regardless of your opinions of
the man, he's a genius and Ithink that the work that he's
doing with robotics and withNeuralink truly incredible,
scary.
But I think it makes a lot ofsense when we think about how
(50:20):
the brain works with theelectrical signals.
But I still stick to my pointof when it comes to trauma
recovery, I don't think therewill ever be a full replacement
for just sitting with yourselfreflecting, journaling,
consciously monitoring your ownbehaviors and you doing the work
.
We're always looking forsomeone else to do it for us.
(50:41):
Like I compare when I talkabout therapy, we go to therapy
and say, okay, well, thetherapist is going to heal me.
No, no the therapist shows youwhere to step and you have to
make the steps.
They're not walking for you.
We expect to go and they do thewalk.
No, they show you.
Okay, here's to go.
Go here, go here.
(51:02):
You still have to do ityourself and I don't think
there's ever going to be areplacement so there's um.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Are you familiar with jacob collier?
I'm not very good with names,I'm just like he's he's from
england originally and he's this, just, you know, savant
musician, incredible musician,right, it just comes up with,
you know incrediblearrangementsvant musician,
incredible musician, right, itjust comes up with.
You know incrediblearrangements.
And he does this thing where hehe's.
He's at, I think, the O2 centerin in London, right, so he's at
(51:28):
O2 and he's this.
All the whole audience has hasnever done this before.
And he started doing this athis, at his concerts, and he
started having the concert matchhis voice in harmony, right,
like almost like a choir, right,and then he brings the choir up
and then he brings the choirdown and then brings one side up
and the other side down andthey're harmonizing with each
other.
(51:48):
And these are not trainedsingers, right, approach.
You know this singularity withAI or the, you know general
intelligence or whatever thatlooks like.
We're going to reallyunderstand that we're not just
one individual units, that weare socially connected in some
(52:10):
phenomenological way, right,that the closer we are to that
discovery, the more we're goingto say, oh, there's a part of
the equation, there's a darkmatter, for lack of a better,
better term that we have, we'rejust at the surface of
scratching right now to reallyunderstand how this subconscious
communication works, and yousee it in football teams that
can predict each other'smovements and they create a
(52:32):
synergy.
And where is synergy emergentfrom?
In consciousnesses, you know,in general consciousness right,
that you see, I grew up in, Iwent to a Catholic, an all-boy
Catholic school, and there wouldbe fevers that would happen at
school, right, a kid got a yo-yoand then everybody's got a
yo-yo and then there's yo-yotournaments and there's these,
these like waves of in systems.
(52:53):
There's these waves of resonancethat happen.
And I think that that's aphenomenon that happens in all
systems and that the closer weget to understanding AI and this
technology, that the closerwe're going to become to that
discovery of this hidden, darkmatter that we can't really
understand where it's comingfrom, that presents itself in
(53:15):
all social systems.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yet when we forget, it's not just each other we're
connected to.
We're connected to really theenvironment, the universe, and
that might sound very out there,and I'm probably the least out
there person because I needevidence.
I won't change my opinionunless you give me evidence, and
I think that that's my duty asa scientist.
But you show me evidence, I'llconsider it and then I might
(53:39):
change my opinion on it.
If you show me evidence, I'llconsider it and then I might
change my opinion on it if youshow me enough.
So I've always been againstmindfulness when I was forensics
and then there was so muchevidence and I had to really
rethink my approach because Irealized all this stuff that I
thought was, you know, woohoo,all of you know crazy has a lot
of scientific grounding and wetalk about being connected with
(54:02):
nature.
When we're out in nature, itaffects our hormonal response
patterns, the way that we wakeup, depending on the time.
We talk about early birds andnight owls.
Well, when you go to sleep whenthe sun goes down and wake up
when the sun rises, it regulatesyour cortisol levels and your
serotonin levels.
So it creates the basis ofeither an unhealthy or healthy
(54:26):
living.
So all of these, and there's somany small things like that
that we don't think you know.
We know go for a walk in natureis good for you, but we don't
realize that the way we go tosleep and wake up, depending on
whether it's early or light, orgoing for a walk and being out
in nature and getting sunlightwe don't think about those
things biologically changing us,and that's what they're doing.
(54:49):
They're changing our hormonesand our stress hormones and
whether we are happy because ofserotonin levels and things like
that.
So they're having a realimportant biological change on
us.
So we are connected to eachother, but we are also connected
to the world around us.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
That's a great point.
I know you have a heart stompsoon, so I want to make sure
that I'm mindful of your time.
Dr Abbey, I'd love to have youon again.
This has been an incredibleconversation.
I really enjoyed it.
How do people if they want tofind out about you, how do they
do that?
And I know you guys have someconferences coming up, so if you
can talk about that a littlebit in your books, Yep, so it's
(55:28):
been a pleasure and I willdefinitely be on again for sure.
Speaker 2 (55:32):
You can find me at Dr Abby Official, so Dr spelled as
Dr Abby Official, on Instagramor drabbyofficialcom, and that's
Dr as in D-R Abby officialcomor abbymoronocom.
Linkedin, dr Abby Morono.
All of my books, everythingkind of goes on my website.
So the main thing abbymoronocomyou'll get updates for
(55:55):
everything.
We do have another edition ofthe Human Behavior Conference
coming up and that will be inOrlando in November and you can
find that onhumanbehaviorconferencecom or
socialengineercom, and it willbe a two-day event.
We're not releasing any moredetails other than right now.
It will be two days instead ofone day and it's going to be
(56:17):
amazing.
Speaker 1 (56:18):
Highly recommend it.
I had a blast and got to youknow, up close and personal with
you guys and learned a lot anddid some exercises.
So it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, it was.
It was really highly recommendanybody that's in you know
understanding, want tounderstand further human
behavior and how to interactwith people.
It's it's been, it's beenincredible.
Thank you so much.
This has been, this has beenoutstanding.
Thank you so much for having me.
(56:39):
Thanks for tuning in to theZulu One podcast.
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