# 77 Daniel Maté - The Myth of Normal

0 (0s): Even in the best case scenario, I can't Ima, you know, cuz this book is called Trauma Illness and Healing and Healing in a Toxic Culture. So we put a lot of emphasis on the context in which everything is happening. It's not so, it's, it's not just that a lot more people are sick these days and trauma is rampant. There's a reason for it. We live in a culture that produces it in a sense, not on purpose, but as a matter of course through all kinds of different mechanisms at every different level of, of society from, you know, political to cellular. 2 (38s): Hey everybody, you're listening to Chatting with Candace. I'm your host Candice Horbacz. Before we jump into this episode, if you can hit that like and subscribe button wherever you're listening or watching, that helps me a ton with the algorithm. Thank you very much in advance. Hello everybody, it's Candice Horbacz. We are here on Chatting with Candace. I have Daniel, Mat joining me. Did I say that right Mae? Yeah, pretty much. Okay. I'm everyone mispronounces my name all of the time too, so I always like, is your 0 (1m 7s): Name Hungarian? 2 (1m 7s): It's Polish and it's my husband. So I just took it on. It took me a while, like I didn't take it for like three years cause I'm like, I don't wanna have to tell everyone how to say and spell my name. But then when you have kids it's, you know, yeah, you wanna have the same last name. 0 (1m 20s): Yeah. Well so actually you said it exactly perfectly the way Hungarians would, Mae, we live in Canada where we say pasta instead of pasta. Now I live in New York so I would never say pasta ass kicked on the street, but because of that it's become matte over the years. Just, you know, but, but we definitely answered a Mae. 2 (1m 40s): Okay. Yeah, mine's technically Hoba as a Polish woman told me, but I'm like, everyone says it a different way. So however you say it, I'll answer like I'll get the general idea. Yep, yep, yep, yep. So I'm so excited that you actually came in person for this. I think the conversation is just so much more interesting when you can like sit across the table from somebody and this book that you wrote with your father is a beast. I love it. But I am not gonna lie, when I first came in I was super intimidated. Was it that intimidating to start the writing process 0 (2m 11s): More for him than for me? I mean, look, I have to be clear off the bat, this is his baby and I was the midwife, you know, and together we pushed it out into the world. He's been to push the metaphor one last time, pregnant with it for maybe 11, 12 years. Been wanting to write a book this big in terms of scope. Now believe it or not, our first draft was twice the length. Wow. But for me, the intimidating thing wasn't so much the size of it because when I read his book proposal originally before I came on board, I was excited about how ambitious it was and you know, I would've been happy if it had been longer except no one would've read it. 0 (2m 53s): And also it probably wouldn't have been as well, it just wouldn't have been as tight I think. And I think we said everything we needed to say, say in the 500 pages. The intimidation happened in other aspects of the process. But I don't know that the word intimidated is one I would actually use challenged, pushed, confronted, certainly, you know, the spiritual teacher rom dust said, if you wanna know, if you think you're so enlightened, go spend a week with your parents. If you think you're so mature, write a book with your father, you know, your famous father that you know, it it, for both of us it was a full contact ego cross training and relationship yoga kind of experience. It really took something and we really got through the other side of it quite different than when we started. 2 (3m 39s): So I guess how long was that, that journey? Because I'd imagine it's super cathartic to do with a parent. Like no matter what their relationship is, there's always little wounds that we have from Parenting, especially our generation because they didn't have access to as much Parenting information. Or maybe there also is the, the flip side of that where there's almost too much information, right? So then you second guess your instinct. So it's like this weird dichotomy that we have with Parenting. But I think we could all relate to, if we had to do a project that big with our parent, that it would certainly bring certain things to surface that maybe we thought we had healed. I guess my question is with that, with how long it took, like how long did it take and do you feel like there is a point where you achieve ultimate Healing or is it constantly evolving with a parent? 0 (4m 27s): So fantastic multi-part questions and I'll try and, you know, how long did it take? He had been plugging away and starting and stopping and at one point he completely quit and he sent back the book advance he had because he just was like, I can't do this. It's beyond me. And that had been about six or seven years. And then he had a brainwave came up with a new title. The original title was gonna be Toxic Culture, how Capitalism Makes Us Sick. Which, you know, good luck selling that one. But also it didn't, it it, it was too negative. It didn't point towards the Healing that the book is really about. He got the brainwave to call it The Myth of Normal. That was in 2018. He wrote a book proposal, which he then sent to me for my comments. 0 (5m 9s): That's when I came on board because I said to him, there's a lot of good stuff in here. You need my help to shape this and I can't just be your editor this time. Cuz I had kind of in the shadows before done tinkering with his stuff. But I was like, no, I'm gonna have to come out into the light and actually really help you shape the story of this. I'm a dramatist, I'm a musical theater writer, I'm not a doctor or a therapist. So telling the story and making this argument in the most persuasive way to the most number of people, especially the people who don't already know his work and who maybe haven't thought about trauma in terms of themselves. I'm sure we'll get into that. So that was 2018 and we started writing it in earnest towards the end of 2019 after we sort of signed the contract and took us about two and a half years to write. 0 (5m 57s): Now, in terms of what that did for us, what's interesting is that this book was the first book in a two book contract that we signed with Penguin Random House. The second book is based on a workshop that we had already been doing together quite separately from this since 2016 called Hello again, A Fresh Start for Parents and their adult children. And that's gonna be the next book and we're about to start writing that one and far be far be for me to pretend like Ultimate Healing is something I even believe in much less that we've achieved. I don't know what that means. There's benchmarks of Healing, there's, you know, mile markers you could say. 0 (6m 38s): There's moments where you realize, oh, we we're at a new altitude now that thing that used to be a thing doesn't seem to be such a thing anymore. Or that that pebble in my shoe or that stone in my heart is like, has moved and I have more space to let you be you and allow me to be me. Well that's a sign that some Healing has happened. And then there's the next thing. I don't see how this relationship could be otherwise. And I can talk about what makes the parent adult child relationship so unique, if you like. But for us, just to sort of put a bow on, on this question, it certainly took us from one place and fast tracked us to another. 0 (7m 19s): A lot of Healing happened or at least a lot of growth happened. You know, I'm not particular, I'm not precious about the sort of the language, but it had to, and what was nice was that the professional collaboration, which again, I don't recommend to everybody and not everyone's gonna do it. I mean, maybe you build a fence with your dad, maybe you tend to a garden with your mother or the other way around. Some people don't wanna have anything to do with their parents. You gotta figure out what your Boundaries are. But doing this meant that we had to deal with Boundaries and expectations and points of view about each other that we hadn't had to before. Why? Because otherwise writing was impossible because it wasn't about us. 0 (8m 1s): It was about this and it was about the people who were gonna read it and the change we were committed that the book make in the world. So we had something bigger than our thick skull. Something that was at stake, right. And I think Healing actually responds to turning up the heat a little bit and being like, okay, enough with the stagnation, enough with the same pattern over and over again. There must be a way out of this. Like, you know, in the, in the first Star Wars movie, when they're in the trash compactor and getting, it's getting smaller and smaller and you know, finally they, I figured how they do it, but they, they, they stop it and they, they're able to get out. Like sometimes that pressure makes a diamond. And so this was a case where, you know, there were certain ways that I react to him that just became clear, this is totally dysfunctional. 0 (8m 54s): Even if I have a, a case, even if I have a case that's telling language, right? Yeah. Even if I have a legitimate grievance or am trying to set a boundary, I'm stuck reacting the same way I did when I was six and now I'm 40, whatever, you know, and he's getting close to 80. The absurdity of it shows up similarly, you know, me tolerating, being spoken to in certain ways or me taking on certain stresses that are not mine, that are his, me trying to placate him or him, you know, overriding my Boundaries and requests or whatever he had to for himself. 0 (9m 34s): See if I act, I need this guy to write this book with me. And not strictly because of the professional thing, but it's like the professional collaboration gave us a scaffolding on which to, to grow some new branches of the relationship. So that now without the professional collaboration we have the, those muscles, the, you know, the, the plant is that much stronger as far as what you said about our particular generation. I'm flatter that you consider me and yours. I'm not younger than me. You know, they did have a lot of Parenting advice and a lot of it was very bad. I mean Dr. Spock was the, the go-to Parenting guru of, you know, I don't know when he was writing the fifties, sixties. 0 (10m 22s): And that was, you know, let your child cry it out type stuff. And we write about it in the book and and the lasting influence of that. But there's also another factor about that particular generation is that they were kind of uniquely messed up, you know, through no fault of their own. A lot of them, I mean depends where they were growing up, but they were the children of the World War II parents. So my father was born during the Holocaust in Hungary, a Jewish baby. So that's clearly gonna be a completely abnormal and horrific and very dangerous and he almost died infancy. 0 (11m 4s): But if you were living in the Midwest, if you're living in some corn-fed part of America, you had maybe a father who came home having seen horrors that he'll never talk about, you know, soothing himself with drink. You had a mother who was stuck in very rigid traditional gender roles and suppressing all of her emotions. I mean I'm just being stereotypical, right? But stereotypes come from somewhere. Exactly. And so then these kids grow up in like, you know, the sixties Kennedy's new frontier era, all kinds of new possibilities, cold war instability, the social revolutions of the sixties, all these things, pulling them away from their parents, all these ways to rebel against their parents. 0 (11m 49s): And then they get to the seventies and realize, oh shit, I gotta make a living. So then they do whatever they do do. And everyone, you know, we end up in the yuppy eighties and whatever. What I'm saying is being born in the 1970s and eighties and I can't even imagine what it's been like to be born since we were the inheritors of a lot of shit that was not ours. And that was very difficult I think to sort through. And that was confusing for a lot of us. So we got a lot of mixed messages, a lot of talk that didn't line up with actions. A lot of hidden emotions that weren't spoke, weren't speakable and weren't spoken about. So yeah. 2 (12m 27s): Oh my gosh, there are so many places I wanna go with that. I guess starting with the unique relationship that kids have with their parents. Yeah. So it's almost, it's really interesting because my husband can do something and I'm so much more quick to forgiveness with him than I am with my mother. Yeah. And I've done a lot of work on that relationship and it's continuous. So that's why I kind of asked your Healing question because for me, I don't think that there's ever a point where that relationship is 100% pure pristine and there's like nothing else that kind of needs to be turned over because that Parenting dynamic never goes away. 2 (13m 7s): And there's like this weird shift that has to happen between who's kind of the dom dominant one or in charge or maybe that agency that comes, comes to play and whether you're in a healthy home and that comes later or you're maybe in more of a dysfunctional home and then that agency shows up a lot earlier. Like you have to kind of be the parent because there is no parent, which was my case. Which 0 (13m 31s): Itself is a source of trauma. 2 (13m 32s): Oh absolutely. And I think you can get to a place where I've done a lot of forgiveness work with her, but there are certain things, and I've heard you kind of speak on this, it's like certain things will give me a visceral response and I'm like, something still needs to kind of be lifted and l and lightened up there. So why am I so much slower to forgiveness and so less gracious with her than I am with other relationships? 0 (13m 58s): Well probably cuz she's a uniquely horrible person, 2 (14m 2s): Right? Right. And someone's like, yes, I knew it. No, no. You know what I mean? And at some point that would've been my response, right? Like my anger is justified and it's righteous anger and how dare she? And that is not a healthy place and you're never gonna get Yeah. But 0 (14m 15s): There's truth in all of it there. Everything gets distorted. It's like a house of mirrors and when every illusion, there's some truth hitting in it, hidden in it, my anger is justified. Maybe your anger is out of proportion right now. Maybe your anger has nothing to do, what's going on right now. Maybe your mother is completely incapable of absorbing your anger and the way you are unleashing it on her will not yield any of what you actually are committed to or want. So you could, we could say that your anger is misplaced or misguided or at least kind of out to lunch. Cause it's totally automatic. It's not like, not like you wake up in the morning be like, I think I wanna flip out at my mother today, right? Like a child that said, you are angry about something. 0 (14m 58s): It's just not happening right now. It's a longstanding grievance and underneath every grievance there is grief that we haven't processed and we try to sort it out through the actual, like, we need to problem solve this thing that's happening now. But it's not about this thing that's happening right now. We're seeing what's happening now through the filter of all of the unprocessed emotions. Now why is that the case in this relationship? It can't be otherwise. Even in the best case scenario, I can't Ima you know, cuz this book is called Trauma Illness and Healing and Healing in a Toxic Culture. So we put a lot of emphasis on the context in which everything is happening. It's not so, it's, it's not just that a lot more people are sick these days and trauma is rampant. 0 (15m 42s): There's a reason for it. We live in a culture that produces it in a sense, not on purpose, but as a matter of course through all kinds of different mechanisms at every different level of, of society from, you know, political to cellular. But just take the relationship and put it in like an ideal kind of vacuum. It's really a weird unique relationship. There is no other relationship like this. Think about it. When you two met, there's no one else you can say this about in your life. When you met this person, she was a fully grown adult capable of making choices, who had, had a range of experiences, had eaten many meals in her life, and had seen things and done things. 0 (16m 27s): And she was a person, she had a name, she had a personality biography, all of that. She was in a relationship with somebody who co-produced you or she wasn't in that relationship, but that's still a relationship. She was dealing with her own stresses, but she was a, you know, either an adult or close to it. You were a non thing. I mean, you were at, at, at the very first moment, you were a couple of gummys meeting, you didn't have any choice in the matter. You weren't there to make the choice. In a sense. The parent has the choice to say, I'm gonna bring this person into the world. Obviously there are unexpected babies, but at some level there is volition. 0 (17m 9s): There is saying, okay, this baby's happening. There's an invitation in, in most cases, okay, come into the world. Well the baby doesn't have that choice. That's number one. Number two, you didn't choose each other. Now you could say Cosmically, karmically, sure, we can say that's a nice story and I'm willing to go with that. It has its uses to think of it that way. But also, no, like you really didn't, my dad didn't have any inkling. I turned out very differently than my parents were expecting. And I'm sure they turned out very differently than I was quote unquote expecting, even though I didn't have cognitive expectations. we are all born into the world as an expectation for a certain kind of environment, which is actually an unstressed. 0 (17m 51s): Fully emotionally attuned, emotionally available communitarian. Like not just a nuclear family, but sur I mean, if you look at our evolution, evolution has prepared us to expect to be born in a much larger context where the parents are supported and it's not all on them. And they're not struggling and striving to make a living in a dog eat dog economy. Right? And also, I came into this world probably not expecting that my father would've survived a genocide and be carrying all the stresses and the darkness of that into the very f first moment he held me. I felt it. Mm, I couldn't not, of course I didn't clock it, I didn't have a mind, I didn't have a, I didn't have words for it, but my nervous system was conditioned by his nervous system. 0 (18m 38s): And his nervous system was conditioned by things that happened a long time ago before mine. Plus things that happened before he was born. So there's another unique thing is that one of you didn't only just procreate and create the other, but you conditioned the other. You know, the parent was the, the, the home was the formative crucible in which your nervous system, my nervous system grew. So when you say you have a visceral reaction, you know what the literal meaning of visceral is? No. Or your visceral or your guts. Okay. That's the word for them. The technical word. So a visceral reaction is literally in your guts in which is a crucial part of your nervous system. Which means it's not even about your attitude towards your mom. 0 (19m 20s): It's not even about your, your behavior. At least not primarily. The first thing that happens is your nervous system remembers something, it remembers stress, it remembers anger that you weren't able to express back then. It remembers an intense power dynamic because here's the, here's yet another unique thing about this relationship. For a long time, the power dynamic was completely lopsided. And the responsibility dynamic, the flip side, right? They had every responsibility to keep me alive, keep you alive, shield us against all kinds of dangers, and we had no power. Now that's as nature intends it. 0 (20m 0s): In a perfect world, that's a good thing. And there's space for the child to grow into their own power in a loving home, trusting crucible of a secure attachment relationship, you could say. But most of us don't get that. So we experienced a lot of injustice, at least to our little sensibilities, A lot of indignities. My Boundaries were violated. Things weren't fair words, didn't mean what they sounded like they meant, I was taught that it meant something. But then your actions, your behavior lies that completely. 2 (20m 33s): And that incoherence creates a lot of distrust, 0 (20m 36s): Hugely. And sometimes it can create actual mental dysfunction. The world doesn't, I mean, I have a bipolar disorder, not full-blown like extreme, but like, you know, hypomania, cyclothymia, it's somewhere, it's mild but it's consequential. And I'm clear that that's not genetic. My sensitivity is genetic. But growing up in a home where things could flip from this to this just like that and having to bridge those two and having to always be able to predict and control and whatever, and getting a lot of positive affirmation and validation from a reinforcement, I should say, from being really up and really smart and really excited and really verbal on the one hand to the exhaustion of that collapsing, being depressed, being sad, being sick, being one way I could get taken care of. 0 (21m 30s): Well you're setting the template for a little brain that's still forming. 2 (21m 33s): Yeah, that's so true. 0 (21m 35s): You know, so that's true for all of us. And it manifests in, in very different ways for everybody. And the book I think goes through a lot of the different kinds of pathways and outcomes. But what he, what we have in common is that this relationship, unlike all the others in your life, is where all that stuff happened. It's the room where it happened. You put us on from Hamilton, you know, it's, that's where the action was for better and for worse. So now here you are, you're still the same person, you're still carrying that in your nervous system. Now that stuff can get triggered in your marriage, right? Your fear of abandonment, your anger and injustice, your, all of our issues do get triggered 2 (22m 17s): Around, oh it shows up in your attachment style to pretty much everyone. I can go through it and you'll be like, you'll pinpoint it and say, well that's me. The difference, 0 (22m 24s): That's not the person who started it all. Now when I say started it all, I don't mean to use blaming language, it's not about Blame, it's just a fact. They were there, the forensics, 2 (22m 35s): The 0 (22m 35s): Fingerprints are 2 (22m 37s): On the, they participated. They 0 (22m 39s): Participated, not on purpose, it doesn't require that we Blame them at all. But we do have to cut. It's really about cutting ourselves or break and realize, realizing it's a miracle that can be in the same room as this person. Of course it's hard for me to separate them from now, but the fact is then and now are separated by many decades and I'm a different person. My nervous system has grown and I'm carrying some residue. So that is just one of the many tricky dynamics. And I'm only talking from the adult child point of view. I'm not a parent. So I don't know what it is to have an adult child. I'm sure there's a lot of complicated things about updating your operating system to see your child as not a child anymore. And to let go of that Parenting role and to outgrow some of the stale, dysfunctional dynamics that governed the way you parented them and all the regrets you may have about that, or all the guilt you may have, or all the shame you may have, or all the guilt and shame you're trying not to feel and you're fending off and being defensive about. 0 (23m 37s): So you see it in, it takes all kinds of forms. But the fundamental thing is, you know, Bob Dylan is a great lyric. It's a wonder we can even feed ourselves. And 2 (23m 47s): That's how I feel 0 (23m 48s): About the, the adult parents. It shouldn't work at all. But you know, as Paul Simon saying, the mother and child reunion is only emotion away, which doesn't mean ultimate Healing is simple or even worth framing that way. But it does mean there is like Healing as we, as we define it in this book, is not some ultimate destination. It's not a destination, it's a direction, it's not a point on a map. It's sort of a general line, you know, or even just moving in a certain direction following a certain set of stars. So in any moment, Healing is possible. Cause anyway, I'll, I'll just, I'll just finish that thought that in any moment it's possible to move from fracturedness to wholeness. 0 (24m 34s): It's just gonna look different in every moment and we have to be kind of alive and alert to it and be spontaneous and kind of ask, okay, what is, what would Healing look like in this moment? So, but Tru truly believe me, my dad and I are still figuring it out. In fact, just five days ago we had a two, the second of a two-part, three hour conversation mediated by a mutual friend of ours. And that's what it took is we could not simply communicate. We were at a place and we always get to these places before we start a new phase of our collaboration. We're about to start the second book, 2 (25m 11s): Right? 0 (25m 12s): We needed someone to step in, we could, you know, and there was a lot of yelling and there was frustration and there was old wounds and grievances and whatever. But by the end we broke through to I think a new paradigm and I realized a whole lot of new things that feel really good and, and so that's just how I measure Healing is like, like I said before, there was tension before, now there's some 2 (25m 35s): Peace. Yeah, checking in with your body, yeah, I think is huge. Hey everyone, this is new. So we are taking a quick break for a couple of sponsors. How exciting is that, that we have a couple sponsors for the podcast. So this is new, please don't skip it, just listen, it's cool stuff, I promise. So my first one is a small company called Radner Rocks and I'll make sure I have the link below. 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So as soon as I'm done breastfeeding, I'm doing one of these. And Eric's supposed to be starting anytime now, so we'll see when he decides to start. So I'll link that below. Again, if you wanna try ProLon, you can try it for 150 bucks. Use code Candace and let's return to the episode. Honestly, the thing I appreciate the most about you and what your father are doing is how open you guys both are. Like you, you aren't pretending to be these kind of like sages on a stage where you have everything figured out and you have the idyllic father-son relationship. 2 (28m 30s): Like you're like, no, we're real people and our, we have emotions like everyone else. We've got, you know, little wounds like everyone else, but we love each other and we're just kind of beat by example, showing you that there's a better way and there's a path forward as an adult child and a parent, which is huge because I love that you guys don't use, you avoid, you avoid the Blame game, which I think is a trap. It's so easy to say this is all your fault and no accountability with me and I'm just gonna be here stuck for the rest of my life versus saying I'm also an adult and I can make decisions for myself. So your bad, bad behavior or Parenting or whatever it is, your trauma limitations, can't can't, right? 2 (29m 10s): It can't be an excuse for your behavior at some point, which I love is like that accountability factor. Tell 0 (29m 16s): You a funny story. 2 (29m 16s): Yeah, 0 (29m 17s): Of course. So I was saying to you before the show, and I, I think you've noticed, you said you've watched a few episodes. I have this new podcast called Let's Get Lyrical with Carissa Daniel. Carisa Houton from Game of Thrones is my co-host. And we talk about song lyrics, it's just one of my passions. I'm a songwriter myself and we had my dad on as our first livestream guest and the topic was trauma Illness and Healing songs. So he brought in a few, but we've kind of surprised him to some. And I played him like a Kendrick Lamar song about Healing. This just blew his freaking mind. But early in the show I played him because of you by Kelly Clarkson, which he had never heard and I'd never really listened to closely. Mm. And we had this on camera, like live disagreement about it and I kind of, I got really snippy with him. 0 (30m 0s): I should have just let him finish his thought. But I got really triggered. And of course when you're triggered, who's the one who's carrying the, the ammo, you know, the trigger is the smallest part of the gun. We, we often, we throw that word around not realizing, well if I'm triggered, that's mostly on me. Yeah. But what he said after the song, he's like, wow, that's really powerful. I, I didn't know pop music could handle topics like this. And then he said, well it is kind of a victim mentality and you know the lyrics right? Because of you. I never stray too far from the sidewalk because of you. I always stay on the safe side so I don't get hurt because of you. I not only like distrust myself, but everyone around me because of you I'm afraid. 0 (30m 40s): And he's like, well it is kind of a victim mentality being, it's kind of stuck. And I was like, dad, I'm gonna stop you right there cuz I'm gonna stick up for Kelly Clarkson never uttered that sentence in my life because I think she's at a stage in her Healing and she needs to be there. And I don't think a pop song or anybody even, and I was like, I still have the energy of the, of the, the sort of righteous indignation even as I'm talk, telling the story. Now we don't wanna gaslight ourselves with spiritual like get like reading, like trying to skip to the end of the book. I know I'm supposed to forgive, therefore I shouldn't be where I am. Well she's at a, she's depicting a pop song captures a moment, right? She's depicting a moment where she's probably, as Carice said on the, on the show probably all her life. 0 (31m 25s): She said, it's because of me. It's my fault that I struggle. I'm such a piece of shit. I'm, you know, that's often what we do until we start to follow the trail of traumatic breadcrumbs back to the, the source and realize this isn't me, this is because of something that happened to me or as we say in the book, it's cuz of something that happened inside of me as a result. But it's true in a certain sense that because of who the parent was, including their limitations and the environment in which they were Parenting and all of the trauma they were carrying, I absorbed what I absorbed and I just, I sort of wanted to sort of put a flag in the ground and say, I think it's important to honor that moment and not rush through it when someone can say, it's not me, it was my childhood. 0 (32m 16s): And if they can fully feel that and the anger and the grief of that and really grieve that, then there's a chance of saying, okay, and the past is done and you're not that person now. Or maybe you're still some, you know, cuz it's also a legitimate thing to say, I don't want you in my life. There's nowhere in our work are we telling people you should have a relationship with your parents. You need to have a, a relationship with your adult kids. This is the other nice thing about this relationship. And also it's the tricky thing. It's optional when you get to be an adult, you don't need each other anymore. So if you stay in the relationship now it's on you to make choices to set and enforce Boundaries and to communicate in a way that has the best chance of that other person given who they actually are, not your fantasies of who they should be. 0 (33m 2s): And this is what we adult kids run into, 2 (33m 4s): Oh 0 (33m 4s): My gosh, has a likelihood of being able to hear and absorb and act upon. And that's on me and my tendency is to Blame him if I can't say it the way he'll hear it. But actually that's, I wouldn't do that to anyone else. 2 (33m 16s): 100% you have to, some of the best advice I got was you have to love people where they're at and for who they are, not who you want them to be. So you, I think we idealize the perfect mom or the perfect dad and when they fall short, you're like, why can't you just x, y, z And 0 (33m 34s): You're, that's one of the ways we coped early on fantasizing, 2 (33m 38s): Right? Yes. 0 (33m 39s): I wish daddy would just, you 2 (33m 41s): Know, to escape into, you know, the Brady Bunch essentially. So, 0 (33m 45s): Or the Cosby show. 2 (33m 47s): So when you can, when you can kind of accept them warts and all, then it's a lot less stress cuz you're not constantly trying to fix when you're in a state of fixing and wanting than you can never just appreciate what it is. And it's way more stressful, especially when you have kids and then you're dealing with a grandparent dynamic. You have to kinda let your hands off the ring to some extent. Otherwise you're gonna drive yourself nuts. Cuz there's so many things that you could cherrypick and be like, I don't like how they talk to my kid there. And obviously some things you have to put your foot down and say, no, no, no, we're Parenting in a very different way. Well 0 (34m 19s): That's, I think that's where we come to a really important distinction that I always insist on in our workshop. And I think we talk about it, we do in the Healing section of the book, there's a difference between acceptance and tolerance. So you said you have to accept the morts and all accepting the morts and all just means getting right with reality. Like, like stopping the insane activity of saying it shouldn't be the way it is. They should be different. That's crazy. That's literally crazy 2 (34m 47s): Doing the same thing over and over 0 (34m 48s): Your head against this, but it's brick. Yeah. You know, and then you're blaming them for the headache. Enlightenment is, things are the way they are. It is what it is. I don't have to like it, but it is. And so I'm, let me, let me approach reality as if it is what it is and be responsible for my responses to it and my reactions to it. That's what an adult does. Now, tolerating is different. I could accept, let's say I had a wildly narcissistic parent who still verbally abuses me. Or let's say I'm a parent who has a drug addicted kid who has been stealing from them to pay for their habit or any other situation where you're in a relationship with someone that you love and they behave in ways that are completely unacceptable in this or intolerable, let's say to your Boundaries, they just violate your Boundaries, they make your life miserable. 0 (35m 43s): It's one thing to say, I accept that this is who you are right now, this is how you're showing up. But acceptance is not a half moon, it's a full moon. You gotta accept. And I have limits often when we try to accept, we try to just put it out there, be like, let me accept that I know I gotta accept my, my standards, my responses, my pain, my wounds, my capacity, my bandwidth. And not try to be the dai lama. That's not where I am. And so sometimes for some people that might look like I can't have you in my life right now, that doesn't mean I'm not accepting you. It does. It means I'm accepting that you are who you are and I am who I am and this is what needs to happen 2 (36m 23s): Right now Establishing Boundaries is huge and one of the things I've worked on the most and I feel like became a lot easier when I became a parent was putting concrete Boundaries because it wasn't about me anymore, was about my little ones. So I've like literally put my mom on a timeout for 30 days. She did something and crossed a boundary that I had kind of expressed to her a few times and it was a repeat event and I was like, listen, I love you. I'm gonna block you on all of these things right now. I hope that you can kind of sit with this thing that you have done and when I check back in, in 30 days we can talk about it. But it was, I just knew the conversation wasn't going to happen in a sane place for anybody. And I kind of, there needed to be a consequence. 2 (37m 5s): It's almost like a toddler, right? Like this is my boundary and you crossed it and we'll reconvene after and like give you an opportunity for Healing and forgiveness there. 0 (37m 12s): Well the only thing I'm questioning about that is, and is that there's something telling and they said consequence like a toddler. You already told me that you, there was a role reversal in your relationship. Yeah. So you've been Parenting her for a long time, which was never healthy for you in the first place. For sure. You never should have had to do it. Now it just may be that the state of your relationship right now is that you need 30 days away. That's not a consequence in the Parenting sense of the term. 2 (37m 36s): Right? You would never do that to your kid. 0 (37m 37s): Well you wouldn't. But also it's not your job to impose punitive cuz you're talking about punitive consequences. And it's interesting, you know, another thing I do, which we can talk about if you want, but I, I do these, this mental Chiropractic 2 (37m 49s): Things. I have that written down. I did wanna ask you what that was, what all of that is. Yeah, I 0 (37m 54s): Better, I better shut up and let you ask the question. Yeah. But you know, I take walks with people and I help them unkink their minds. Not kink in that sense, but you know, just sort of straighten out, get unstuck, 2 (38m 5s): Okay? 0 (38m 6s): Where we get stuck in thinking a certain way and we can see that it's not helping the situation. So I was walking with a mother actually and woman in her seventies who was stuck in a relationship with her adult daughters who she said was, were punishing her by withholding the grandchildren. And she just kept insisting, they're being punitive, they're being punitive, they're being punitive. I said, you can insist on that language if you want, but it's not gonna serve you because you're putting yourself in the role of the child. If what they're doing is hurting you, you can assume they're trying to hurt you. Or you could assume they're trying to protect themselves from something and this is the only way they know how. Now it might suck for you, you might think it's not proportional, it's not fair, you might have anger about it, but to say they're punishing me is, is to turn yourself into their victim, which I'm sure is one of the things they resent and one of the things they need to set a boundary about. 0 (39m 1s): You know, so the, the way that we frame things says a lot about how we feel about ourselves. So that's 2 (39m 8s): All. No, no, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. It just, it's been a long time since I've dished out like a quote consequence. She, our relationships been, has been really great. Not to say it's like perfect. 0 (39m 20s): Well I will say this, it's far, I think it's far preferable I think to err on the side of I'm gonna set Boundaries err on the side of I'm not gonna set Boundaries, you know, if, if that's what it takes to, to finally after all these years learn to set them. I don't think anyone should feel, you know, badly about maybe sometimes being a li you know, because you're learning to ride a bicycle and you're gonna tilt to both sides. But that's the side that as a kid, you never got to do. You couldn't say no, 2 (39m 50s): No. I think it's really confusing too to older parents or like now grandparents because the Millennial generation is really focused on introspection and fixing ourselves before we have kids or at the very early stages. So we don't like fuck them up the way that we were fucked up. Right. And obviously awareness, right? It's just like, why, why do I do these things? Are they me are the, the way I was parented? A lot of times they say if you like the way that you react to your kid doing something, if it's this really kind of disproportionate emotion, like your kid, like the dress. The other day my child took a blue crayon and just drew all over the walls and I just came out and I was like, huh, did you do that art? 2 (40m 34s): And he's like, yeah. I was like, okay, well art's for the easel, let's go wash that up. Just like that, right? No meltdown, not like what are you doing my paint? Which is what I would've gotten and probably worse. So, so 0 (40m 47s): You've diffused the the charge, 2 (40m 48s): Right. But if I had reacted like what did you do? Look at my paint. That was because I had probably done something very similar at an age and that was the response I got. It's imprinted. Yeah. So it's like this really cool looking glass that you couldn't have as a parent. 0 (41m 3s): You're talking about the generation gap. How old was your mom when she started looking at her trauma and uprooting these patterns in herself and asking yourself the kinds of questions you're 2 (41m 12s): Asking yesterday maybe? Yeah, maybe tomorrow. Yeah, maybe tomorrow. 0 (41m 17s): Just a different right. Cultural context, which can I'm sure make our generations. Cuz I'm 47 so I can't call myself, I wish I could call myself a Millennial, but I'm 2 (41m 26s): More of a, you're almost there. Gen x x, 0 (41m 30s): The breakfast club is what, how I learned about teenage, that's that's, that's my reference point. We grew up in a world that was a lot more complicated in some ways than our parents, but also especially the Millennial generations growing up in a world where learning about your trauma and doing something about it early is increasingly invited. And this is like one of the good things about the internet. Maybe you know, that this conversation can be piped into homes. You know, like in the 1980s people were watching Johnny Carson and the Cosby Show and, and these days people are much more likely to be listening to a podcast about trauma Illness and Healing or something else that actually touches on something vulnerable and difficult. 0 (42m 12s): Right. Which I imagine for our parents might be kind of difficult. Like these kids these days, they're all about their Boundaries, you know, like what's going on in my day? We just, you know, put up with 2 (42m 25s): Our parents, right? And it's like, well I don't know if all of those things were necessarily good, like telling your kid, unless you're bleeding or dying, leave me alone. That's not a great message to tell a little person. Yeah, 0 (42m 35s): Well there's, you know, there's our title inaction, right? The, Myth of Normal. Things that get normalized become invisible and we just assume that they're natural, but so many of them are not only not natural, they're making us very sick in many different ways. So that's, you know, 2 (42m 51s): One hun. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that's why people, I mean like you and your father and Joe Dispenza and all of this work being done with epigenetics is so powerful because it's like if you aren't allowed to express yourself, which a lot of us weren't feelings were very discouraged because they were inconvenient. Then your body stores on to those things. I wanted to ask you, I mean I've got like pages, but usually I don't even get to them. One of the things I wanted to ask, I was watching this podcast with Jordan Peterson the other day and it was a clip and he was talking with his daughter Mikayla, and they were, was like Jordan, his wife and Mikayla. And I believe the quote was something along the lines of, we never let you behave in a way that we didn't, that made us not like you. 2 (43m 37s): Something like that. And then she, then he's like, oh, it was so great, we could take you to restaurants and you would just sit there. And then Mikayla was like, yeah, you know, my daughter Scarlet is the same way. She can sit at a dinner for two hours and not make a peep. And I was like, huh, what does that mean? Behave in a way that I don't like you. Because certainly if my kid's hitting me, that can't, that's not allowed. That's not okay. So I feel like there's gotta be something in between this Gentle Parenting or conscious Parenting, whereas oftentimes more than not just passive absentee Parenting, like, I'll let you do whatever you want. Permissive Parenting. Permissive Parenting. Yeah. Which 0 (44m 14s): Doesn't help the child 2 (44m 15s): At all. No, because then there's like, there's no bumpers on this bridge, right? Like, where is my safeguard? Who am I safe? Who's in charge? It kind of creates a whole other can of worms. But then also saying, well you little tyrant, I'm gonna go lock here in your room is not good either. So where's that happy medium? Like what does healthy Parenting look like in that scenario? Well 0 (44m 35s): For me, look, I have to be very conscious here that I'm not a parent. Yeah. So, you know, anything I say about Parenting is by definition me talking outta my ass. And I don't love quoting my dad too much because I'm not him and Right. Plenty of God or content on line that people can find. But let me see what I can say about what you said. Jordan Peterson, we take some shots at him in the book, not him, but his, especially his Parenting, we have a lot to say about his particular approach to Parenting. Now I have a complicated, you know, I come from the sort of liberal left side of the cultural divide or whatever. I don't really identify it with any one part of it, but in terms of where I grew up, where I live, who my friends are and all that, and Jordan Peterson is kind of a joke there, right? 0 (45m 22s): And I did, I did kind of impersonate him and did cut his little Canadian Kermit voice on for the audiobook. 2 (45m 28s): Oh did you? 0 (45m 30s): I did it lightly. You know, so that and that quote you basically, the thing he said on the podcast he's written, you know, I would never, you know, and he says at one point we quoted, look, I could, I forget what it is, but like I could, I could, I could shut my daughter up or I could, I could, I'm basically shut her down with a, with a withering glance. And he's proud of that. You know, I think there's probably things about Jordan Peterson that I have blind spots about, because clearly he's doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Yeah. Cause they seem to really find something in him. He's giving people a sense of direction, maybe a sense of pride. I saw someone post a, a meme that I thought was a little reductive, but that like basically juxtaposing my dad and Jordan Peterson and they actually have a lot of overlapping fans, which is 2 (46m 15s): Interesting. I'd love to see them talk. Well 0 (46m 17s): Many people would. I don't know that it would ever happen, but maybe who knows. But that Jordan Peterson is the stern daddy and, and God Mat brings the more maternal energy. I, I don't know about that, 2 (46m 28s): But 0 (46m 28s): Certainly in terms of for adults, clean your room, stand up straight young men believe in yourself. Having something to say about the culture of grievance and an over-reliance on identity and all this kind of stuff. I can see how there, there's validity in that for people. Absolutely. I think he can also be cruel and unpassionate and really bitchy, especially when he is talking about, you know, groups that he has opinions about. But I'm not saying that everything he says has nothing to it. I think the man probably has, well clearly I think he, he sees some things and is pointing some things that are really resonating for millions of people. But as far as the Parenting advice goes, he's going completely against actually what the science shows and what traditional Parenting wisdom shows to say that to train your kids to be likable. 0 (47m 19s): Just think about that. Is that the role of a parent? To train the child to be likable? Well that's the socialization model of Parenting. That my job is to prepare them to be acceptable in the world because that's his rationale for it. That if, you know, if I don't like them, well how is the world gonna feel about people? Well that assumes that that's a healthy goal of development, is to be likable and to fit in and to conform. Now there's ways of teaching children appropriate social behavior that don't involve terrorizing them with the withdrawal of your love and being cold and being punitive and harsh. Right. And emphasizing that you don't like them when they do that, that's not necessary. 0 (48m 1s): That's, that's coming from somewhere else in him. And in parents that's coming from an intolerance of vulnerability or something a child doesn't. Cuz children don't get the, the message of your words. They feel the emotional energy. So if you say to a child, you go to your room until you come back and can behave in a way that I like, the child does not go away and say, huh, I guess it seems that I was behaving in a way that's probably not socially acceptable. And my parent is looking, you know, they got the long view and they're trying to train me to, you know, get along in the world. And I really appreciate that. No, they don't have that capacity. Children are narcissists. Everything's about them. I must not be lovable or even more angry. 0 (48m 43s): Children don't get loved sad children. don don't get included vulnerable children don don't get cared for. So what am I gonna do while I'm in a dilemma? Like we said, I've got no power, I've got no leverage, none. I can't leave, I can't fight back. They're much bigger than me and louder and they know everything. I'm just this little kid. So what am I gonna do? Well, I'm gonna suppress my emotions. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna push them even out of my own awareness. Then I'm gonna become a nice person, a polite person, and I'm gonna get along really well in the world. I'm gonna conform super well, I'll be super likable and then I'm gonna end up with an autoimmune disorder or a mental Illness or an addiction because the energy that I stuffed down inside myself has, has to go somewhere. 0 (49m 30s): And it, there was a fracture in myself. The thing the child needs unconditionally and non-negotiable. This is not touchy-feely bullshit, this is just mammalian nature. You look at any mammal is the attachment relationship with the parent. We need that to survive. We're the most helpless mammal at birth for the longest period of time A horse can run on its first day of life. We're basically in an external womb for the first nine months outside the womb. We're, you know, our brain is still developing at the same rate. You have babies, you know, you know that takes a very safe container and that doesn't stop when you learn how to walk. You know, even into the teenage years, there's still some attachment needs. 0 (50m 12s): And that's when those, you know, cords get finally, ideally snipped. Although you and me know that that can take a lifetime. But if the parent uses that need of mine against me, if they leverage my need for them in order to control my behavior, what they're telling me is my behavior matters more than who I am. And your ability to love and accept me rests on whether I'm pleasing you rather than just me being who I am. Now, it's totally possible. Again, I'm not a parent, so this is much easier said than done. Especially when you're stressed and when those relationship stress, forget about it. Work, stress, societal stress, environmental, I mean anything can, can drain a parent's ability to do this. 0 (50m 56s): But at least it's theoretically possible to say to a child, Hey, you know what? That doesn't work when you do that. And here's why. And I can't let, or I can't let you do that cuz it's dangerous. Or I was really angry when you did that. Now you're teaching them about expressing emotions. But what you do when you're following Pearson's advice on this score is you're teaching children that they are conditionally likable and they're gonna internalize fundamentally that I'm never lovable. And you're setting them up for a whole lot of misas, as we say in in Yiddish. You know, it, it's, I think that's a very Toxic message and I believe that he believes it, you know? 0 (51m 40s): And if you believe that Parenting is about behavior modification and control the authoritarian model of Parenting, then fine. Do what it takes. But there are consequences. And I don't think that's what Parenting is. Parenting is about bringing a child along so that they can mature into their authentic self. And when we do things as parents, again, I'm not a parent That teach the child that part of their authentic self is leverageable and needs to be put away into cold storage. You're setting them up to be very unhappy and very confused and very, probably very resentful of you down the line. Or maybe they'll turn that loathing inward and and harm themselves instead. 0 (52m 23s): Cuz the idea of being angry at mommy and daddy is unthinkable. So. Wow. That's what I would say about JP there. J d p, you know, clean your room. Yeah, clean your room. I could probably read 12 rules for life and get some things out of it. For sure. Yeah. From my mind to it, because there are ways in which I just have never taken care of certain, you know, physical, financial things and I could stand to grow up in that way to sack up and, you know, whatever. That's, so that's good. That's all good. But the Parenting stuff, I think we have a pretty strong, I'll, I'll stand on what we're saying in this book against, you know, his Parenting advice any day of the week. 2 (52m 59s): Yeah. It's really interesting. Your examples ring true to me because when, so our oldest is three, and when there's some kind of behavior or expression that's happening that is not okay, whether it's like throwing, hitting, you know, like these very toddler things that they're trying to explore and cause effect, Boundaries, all of these things he can easily tell when we're pissed or frustrated. And then he'll be like, why are you not happy? I'm, I'm gonna make you happy. I'll do, and I'm like, no, no, no, you can't make me happy. That's my job. And then he'll still be like, I could tell he hates disappointing us, hates making us fr like pissed or frustrated. And he'll be so concerned in that moment and we have to stop no matter how mad we are. 2 (53m 44s): And we say, listen, we are mad, but I can love you when I'm mad. I can love you when I'm sad and like explain to him no matter what my emotional state is, a, it's my, my job and b, I love you no matter what. So you can hold anger and love at the same time. 0 (54m 1s): Look at what you're teaching him. Mixed emotions, complexity, being able to accept, oh, maybe he can be angry and love you because I guarantee there's gonna be tantrums where he's like, I hate you, you know, over some ice cream or some broccoli or something, you 2 (54m 15s): Know? Yeah. 0 (54m 16s): The ability to not, because what's gonna happen in him if he thinks anger and love are mutually exclusive, well imagine the guilt and the shame he's gonna feel at hating his parents. Sometimes we have to hate our parents, sometimes it's just an emotion. But if those, if these emotions get stuck, they, they wreak havoc with our, our physical and mental health. So what you're doing is freaking awesome. 2 (54m 40s): Ah, thanks. I 0 (54m 42s): Mean, take a non-parent. I mean, I would love to have been parented that way. 2 (54m 47s): Yeah. And that's kind of how we try to frame it is. And I don't know if that's necessarily, we take his uniqueness into account, but it's, i i it becomes very obvious where I was la where my parents were lacking in that regard. Because you do think at that young age, like where did the love go all of a sudden? Like, it's just gone. Must be my fault. Must be my fault. 0 (55m 7s): Narcissism, healthy narcissism, children go through that stage, by definition they can't, not everything is about 2 (55m 13s): Them. But yeah. So if I locked him in that room by himself, he would think, I'm not lovable right now. If we didn't take the time to explain, like, yes, I'm mad, but I still love you. In his little brain, he's thinking, mom and dad, don't love me anymore. If 0 (55m 24s): There's anyone who's needs a time out, it's you. Mommy needs to step aside until I can speak to you in a way that feels Loving to you because I don't wanna talk to you in any other way. See, that's what it is to be an adult, a grownup. You don't pawn your, your dislike of your child off on them. Own it. You don't like, well what don't you like about it? What are they showing you about yourself? What's that about? What's that you're judging a two year old for, for not being able to control their emotions 2 (55m 50s): Because you don't 0 (55m 51s): Six month year old for not being able to control their bowels 2 (55m 54s): Because you don't wanna get a bad look in restaurant 0 (55m 56s): Because you don't wanna get a bad look in a restaurant because you were never allowed to feel your vulnerable feelings. Probably, you know, to the people who don't wanna be therapized. But it's only the emotions in ourselves that we can't tolerate or that we're punished severely that we need to suppress in others when we have power over them. And that's one use of power. Another use of power is to empower. And I will quote my dad here cause I think this is a particularly nice little turn of phrase. He said, if you wanna learn, if you wanna discipline your children, make them your disciples. That's where the word discipline comes from. Now, who would a discipline, sorry, who would a disciple wanna follow, you know, imagined if Jesus had been like, I'm not gonna let any of my disciples behave in ways that make me don't like them. 0 (56m 48s): Did he ever not love people? That was the point. And that's what had people want to follow him. So I think that's great advice that I wish someone had told him when he was Parenting me, but I'll take, I I'm very happy to see him, you know, giving that advice to parents now because it's, I think it's a really important distinction. Cause we, we get these, we get so many ideas, confused and conflated, discipline, punishment, consequences. We use these words, we don't really think about what they mean and we don't think about the emotional energy with which we're dispensing them. And what I love about what you're saying is there's just clearly a lot of conscious awareness and responsible choice making with you and your husband and partnership too. 0 (57m 34s): Cuz you need each other to be able to do that. You know, and that, you know, that has, you be just aware in a way that so many parents historically, especially in stressful times, I've had a hard time doing, 2 (57m 47s): Imagine if we had different parent, like vastly different Parenting styles or philosophies or disagreed on the basic principles of how to raise a child or cultivate a child. I don't, I don't know how that would even happen. Like Right. How, how would the household even function? So you have to start there. Absolutely. Be on the same page. 0 (58m 7s): Like that old dude in Indiana Jones said, you you have chosen wise. 2 (58m 12s): Yes, yes we did. I I agree. I there's not another one like him. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Oh my goodness. So when it comes to honoring like Authenticity within ourself, obviously there is a, a very real reality that the world does exchange with us. And certain behaviors have almost a predictable effect. So it's like, where is, where are the bounds? Or how do you define my true Authenticity, but also being able to function in society? Sure. 0 (58m 49s): Well look, and again, I talked about balancing on the bike, right? Right. So you could tip over to the side of suppression, you could also tip over to the side up, well I'm just being authentic. So what are you complaining about? Head up? That was my authentic impulse punch you in the face. 2 (59m 4s): Right? That's not good. 0 (59m 6s): You know, 2 (59m 6s): Like, yeah, 0 (59m 7s): No, Authenticity has nothing to do with doing whatev. Whatever your impulses tell you to do. Authenticity as we define it in the book and you know, is my dad's definition. I, I think it's a good one. Number one, being in touch with our gut feelings and it's also a survival need, just like attachment is. And we have a whole chapter about what happens when those two needs are pitted against each other. You know, attachment always wins cause the child needs to be connected with the parents more than they need to be fully themselves. But, but it's also an important survival need. Imagine being one of our prehistoric ancestors out on the wild plains and there's a leopard grazing somewhere and we don't know how to sense it. 0 (59m 49s): We don't know how to trust our, any animal would be dinner. So we have to know how to trust our gut feelings and Authenticity also. And then learning how to honor them in a responsible choice based way. So I can honor my, if I'm angry at you, well yet, one thing to do is to punch you. Right? Another thing to do is to yell epithets at you. Another thing to do is to take space for myself. Another thing to do is to say, I literally didn't like that. I'm gonna walk away. I mean this, we have choices. Authenticity also, in fact, probably the more authentic choices are gonna be the less reactive violent ones. Because Authenticity also means knowing our values, knowing what we stand for. 0 (1h 0m 33s): What kind of person do I wanna be? What, you know what, and I think Jordan Peterson would like this word character. Like, I wanna be a person of integrity and character. Right? Which means how would I want to res, so what does it mean for me to respond with integrity in a challenging situation? Well that's part of Authenticity too. Authenticity also means being able to feel the range of our emotions fully. And if I can't feel it in this moment, then in the next chance I get, I'm gonna go process it. You know, at least allowing myself to say, yes, I'm angry, yes, I'm tired. Yes, I'm excited, you know, yes, I'm sad. Yes, I'm, I've had enough, you know, and then to say, no, Authenticity means the capacity to recognize I'm done. 0 (1h 1m 16s): No. And then to find a way to communicate it that is, you know, effective. And usually that's gonna be the most respectful way. The cleanest way, right? Usually when we, when we behave in shitty ways, we're not really resolving. We're we're putting more, we're like keeping the toxicity going and we're gonna have to deal with those consequences too. So I think it can be kind of a false dichotomy between like, should I be authentic or should I be respectful and kind? No, you are both. You can be both. You know, that's what we would all want for ourselves, I think. I think alignment means keeping, and I, I use the concept of alignment in my mental Chiropractic work. 0 (1h 1m 58s): You know, the metaphor of Chiropractic, the mind is like the self is like a spine, you know? And we have our thoughts and our feelings. We each can be aware of them and we can honor them and listen to them and consider them. But really our intentions and our our values are the things we want to align with. But not at the expense of like, I'm not gonna feel what I feel or I'm gonna pretend all the time, or I'm just gonna act out my emotions instead of, because often when we act out our emotions, it's a way of not feeling them. We just outsource them onto everybody else. This is what abusers do. 2 (1h 2m 33s): Oh, interesting. Yeah. So it's like instead of me feeling scared, vulnerable x, I'm gonna inflict that on you almost. Wow. Yeah, 0 (1h 2m 43s): Yeah, yeah. Well I mean you could look at it a number of different ways. I hate the vulnerability in myself. I see the fear in your face makes me wanna smash something. Well I'll take the nearest available breathing thing. Wow. 2 (1h 2m 57s): You know? 0 (1h 2m 58s): But also just on a more kind of, just on the level of physics, I have energy. I don't know how to contain, I hate how this feels. You are the closest thing to me. I'm gonna call you the cause and I'm gonna get it out of me through you. Like, you know, I'm gonna, I'll be the lightning and you be the tree. Well you do that. But a, you're gonna damage people sometimes badly, sometimes permanently. And your relationships, you're not gonna resolve the self-hatred. In fact, you're gonna hate yourself more and it's probably gonna happen again until you deal with the pain underneath. So yeah, everything we're talking about in this book, the toxicity has to do with separating ourselves from the ability to sit with our own pain. 0 (1h 3m 47s): Authenticity is also the ability to say, ouch man, fuck, it hurts. And so many of us lose that ability. We learn to overcome it or be better than it or push it away or deny it or amplify it out of all proportion and try to get pity and sympathy and all that. But that's not really vulnerable pain that's looking for fortifications because we don't have them in ourselves. 2 (1h 4m 10s): No, and I think that touches on something that you said a little bit earlier, which is Respecting, the Journey of Healing and not trying to skip straight to, to healed. And being able to appreciate that transition from, it's about me to no understanding. Like, this isn't my baggage, like that song. And I think that those steps are crucial because if you introduce material that people aren't ready for, then they don't see it the same way. It's like, you can watch the same movie, but you weren't like, it's how did you get this from that? And I've done that with certain book recommendations specifically on epigenetics. Like, it didn't start with you or the body keeps the score. And someone who wasn't ready for that material just kind of took it as, okay, I'm healed because it's not mine. 2 (1h 4m 51s): Like my, you know, my grandfather was in the Holocaust and that's why I've got crippling anxiety and that's it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, just jump to the end. Yep. So you have to let people process it at their own speed and then invest in the Healing themselves. So you can't buy the book for them because they didn't invest in it. It's all of these things you want to help. And if you are at a different place, like almost a different, if you look at it like a video game, you're just at a different level and you're looking down and you're like, I've got got all the cheat codes, lemme give 'em to you. But then you, you're missing the whole point. So you can't, you're gonna 0 (1h 5m 23s): Get their asses kicked when they meet the final 2 (1h 5m 25s): Box. Exactly. So you can't do it, you just kind of have to just patiently wait. 0 (1h 5m 29s): Yeah. Well, you know when, when it's happened that people have gotten people like, but other people as a gift, I walk with me, you know, because literally I walk with people on the phone. I'm walking in Brooklyn or wherever I am, I was in Europe in January and I was doing walks with people there, but they were all over the world. We do it on the phone. So someone will say, I'm, you know, I'm going to give this to my wife or her birthday. Well if it's her birthday and she had asked for it, fine, but if someone's like, I wanna give this to my son, I'd be like, okay, your son's chipping in 20 bucks. 2 (1h 6m 0s): I like 0 (1h 6m 1s): That. So your, your friend is gonna put up some, an ante. You gotta have skin in the game. You gotta say, I want this. Because otherwise you might be doing it for somebody else or you might be doing it in the, in in with the attitude of the of, okay, well let me just see what happens. Or, oh, I need to fix myself or something of that. No, it takes us Healing. You know, what we say in this book is that Healing wants something from us. It requires something from us. We're not doing it. It has a logic of its own. It's like a river that's flowing out to the ocean of wholeness and truth and peace and the universe or whatever. Like it's, it's going there. We can either get on board or we can clinging to a log, try to swim upstream. 0 (1h 6m 44s): But you gotta get in, you know, and you gotta, you gotta, you gotta participate in a certain way and it takes something. And what you're saying is you can't do it for anyone else. And actually, I mean, anytime I have wanted to, to make someone else heal or transform or change their minds wasn't about them. I wasn't doing it for them. I was trying to make my life easier or I was pushing away something in myself. It, I was trying to live vicariously through their transformation. And that's fucked up. And that doesn't help friendships and that doesn't, you know, and people can feel it when you're doing that. So yeah, you have to honor where people are, listen for what are they hungry for. 0 (1h 7m 26s): And you know, there's a million books and courses and things, you know, for anyone at any stage. I hope that this book has a lot of different entry points for 2 (1h 7m 37s): People. It's very, yeah, curious 0 (1h 7m 39s): About society. You could be dealing with a life-threatening Illness, anything in between. Hopefully it makes things more coherent for people in terms of understanding the connection between the world we're living in and the things that so many of us, if it's not ourselves, it's someone in our family or workplace or friends are dealing with. 2 (1h 7m 56s): I wanted to ask, so it, it kind of ties into the Different Modalities of Healing. So your dad's been open about psychedelics 0 (1h 8m 6s): And 2 (1h 8m 7s): You're interested. Yeah. I'm so interested. So I had a guest on Matt Zieman and he's in that space. My husband's kind of working in that space a little bit. Little bit as well. So he was super excited when he heard you were coming to town. He's like, oh my gosh, they're doing such really, they're doing such interesting things up in Canada and obviously maps is up there. So have you used that modality? Are you open about that psychedelics? Can you kind of share your experience? 0 (1h 8m 32s): Yeah, well my story with psychedelics is a little bit complicated. Okay. In that I married someone and then got divorced from that same person within a two year span who was essentially my father's apprentice in the ayahuasca group therapy world. 2 (1h 8m 51s): Oh wow. 0 (1h 8m 52s): And in fact, she and I led a retreat together down in Peru at Ayahuasca Healing Retreat Center. I've done probably 40 or 50 ayahuasca ceremonies. 2 (1h 9m 0s): Holy cow. 0 (1h 9m 1s): I've done MDMA in a psychotherapeutic context. I've done ketamine once. 2 (1h 9m 6s): Okay. 0 (1h 9m 7s): Intramuscularly. Which just took me, it was the most psychedelic thing I've ever done. I mean there was no me, it was just, just a space trip. I'm not even sure what happened. Maybe some neurons got rewired, it was kind of cool. But I'm, I don't really know how to talk about that experience. I'm no longer doing that. Not forever necessarily. I have nothing against it. And I certainly would speak and will right now speak highly of its potential. And I think for anyone who's curious about it or called to it, there's something there for you for sure. Ayahuasca in particular is a very demanding teacher and healer. 0 (1h 9m 47s): Talk about Healing wanting something from you. Ayahuasca is not a passive, it's not a drug. You do not consume it and wait for it to do something to you. Ayahuasca is a living plant spirit. Now I'm saying this as someone who doesn't particularly have any particular spiritual beliefs. You know, my scientific mind is kind of agnostic on the idea of gods and spirits and whatever. But having experienced what I've experienced it, I don't think it's too much of a stretch for most of us to imagine that plants have intelligence. 2 (1h 10m 17s): Well yeah, we know that almost now. Yeah. 0 (1h 10m 20s): We know that they have different qualities and different medicinal properties. It turns out that when you interact with some of these ancient plants that human beings have been learning from and working from, you really get that they know something we don't, and then they can unlock not, they don't know it in the same way that we know it. They're not like little, you know, it's not like the human mind. It's a different way of knowing. But they can show us things that we can't see with our regular minds. And ayahuasca is a real kind of truth serum, but it's also a hall of mirrors because you know, sometimes people will say, I had a bad Iowa Oscar trip. 0 (1h 11m 1s): No you didn't. You had a trip that you didn't know what to do with it. And it wasn't, I don't like to even say trip. You had a journey. You had a, what's it synonym? Trip journey. You had a ceremony that was, you know, now some people, you know, you, you, first of all, you, you have must absolutely have to do ayahuasca in the right context. There are charlatans out there, there are pseudo shamans who are, you know, giving people ayahuasca in lofts in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and putting on like deep house music or, or EDM or whatever the fuck. And then like leaving the room. That 2 (1h 11m 30s): Does not seem like a good 0 (1h 11m 32s): Idea. It's not, it's not a party drug. Now some people you can turn anything into a drug, you can turn anything into an addiction, you can turn anything, anything can man healthy depending on the relationship to it. You know, so some people keep going back and back and back to the psychedelic world because they want to be in that peak state of oneness with everything. Well, sorry man, you're supposed to actually, I think the curriculum is, you're supposed to learn how to do that with the mind. God gave you the plant's trying to show you something, not become your new crutch. If you do it with people who are really trained in the ancient medicinal ways, you're training, you're, it's a medical system. These, you know, the ESE mode. 0 (1h 12m 13s): It's an intricate complex, very detailed, rich tradition of working with plants to help clear people's energies to help locate in the body and the mind stuck points, blocked areas, kind of black holes of trauma. And the shamans who, and of course with the way Western capitalist culture has treated and continues to treat indigenous people, these ways of life are threatened in these ways of knowledge are threatened. So it's a compromised thing. And now that, you know, us Westerners can go and like have an ayahuasca holiday, you know, go on an ayahuasca spa retreat or whatever, you know, in a way it's good, but it's available to us in another way. 0 (1h 13m 3s): We have to be mindful that even the way we approach the medicine is gonna affect the way we experience it. But in the ideal circumstance. And there are really good places I think, and even people here in North America doing it responsibly. And I've had many, really many incredible ceremonial experiences. And some of the hardest moments of my life were in ayahuasca ceremonies. You're gonna see things about yourself. And I heard one of your guests say that you have to have a strong intention going into a ceremony. I think her name was, was it Mia? Yeah, that's absolutely true. Something to bring yourself back to. Why am I doing this? Because what's gonna happen is that you're gonna be thrown into a space where all of your reference points are scattered. 0 (1h 13m 49s): It's very hard to locate sometimes yourself. You're gonna be remembering things, seeing things, hearing things. The chanting is going on. It's esthetic. You're seen colors, you'd be going through intense body sensations, sometimes purging, vomiting beyond, you know, you cannot control it. And you know, I heard her and you talk about, you know, having a fear of loss of control. Me too. And one of the things Ayahuasca taught me first off the bat and my first two ceremonies was that's how you live your life buddy. And school's in session. Wow, you can fight me if you want, but I'm gonna make you suffer. Not because I hate you, because I want what you really want for yourself. 0 (1h 14m 29s): I want it more than you do. You're trying to have it your way. You're trying to have it be comfortable and nice. I'm showing you what's in you so that you can get it out of you. And so learning how to vomit even was a big learning for me. Actually learning how to let go and let blah, you know, like just like trust actually that that on the other side of that and the i I and you, you know, I notice the way I hold onto my pain. It's a metaphor for that. Not even a metaphor. It's literally that I keep down things that are Toxic. If I don't wanna let go of control, well that's my mind running my life. And you really get to sit with yourself in a, in a very clear mirror. 0 (1h 15m 11s): And then sometimes you have nights that are totally confusing and it takes some conversation, maybe some group therapy or some integration. That's the I was gonna ask about the integration process. Integration is key. It's key. You know. And I would say that maybe that was something that was sometimes missing in my experiences with it, especially during my marriage where I got kind of swept up into the culture of it to kind of keep up with the woman I married. And I lost touch with myself in some ways. And it was especially complicated because she was a disciple of my father's and apprentice, an apprentice of his. Can you imagine some, you know, Robin thick got nothing on these blurred lines. 0 (1h 15m 56s): So it was, you know, so that left me with a certain taste in my mouth of, okay, I'm, I, I need to step away from that because that medicine taught me a lot and I've been enjoying since then. And I, you know what, it's actually the time since then, I haven't done it in three or four years. I'm still integrating it and I'm learning how to have these realizations and remember what would the medicine say in this moment? Cuz it stays with you. It's not like I'm high and then I'm not high. No, it's a presence. It shows you something you can't unsee. Well you can cultivate that. You can be like, okay, well I, part of me woke up there, can I marshal that? Can I bring that to bear in this difficult moment? 0 (1h 16m 36s): And the more I can do that, the more I feel like, yeah, the next time I meet ayahuasca I'm gonna be much more like, you know, you know, like an avatar. I see you like sort of like being able to connect with it rather than like prey and, and, and begging for help. And although there's nothing wrong with that either. I don't know. I'm kind of going off here because you know, that was an upsetting part of my life and I don't know that I've fully healed from that. And maybe it'll take me going back to Peru and doing an ayahuasca ceremony at the scene of the crime to fully resolve it. I'm not there just yet. But I will say that, you know, among the most powerful paradigm shifting things I've ever done has been those things. 0 (1h 17m 22s): So if someone feels the call, I would say follow it. If someone doesn't feel the call, forget it. It's not something to force yourself to do. It's not something to evangelize about for other people. 2 (1h 17m 35s): No, I, I couldn't agree more. I think as we see it getting more and more popular, that's the concerning. But for me, so I've only done psilocybin one time. It wasn't as life changing and visual as I've heard other people. But I truly believe everything happens as it's supposed to happen. So I got what I needed out of it. What 0 (1h 17m 55s): Was the context? Recreational or 2 (1h 17m 56s): Ceremonial? Ceremonial. So that's the other thing too is I think that there context is huge. And I've said this in other podcasts, I think that doing something like you're in a loft and putting on house music and you're just like, just free for all. I don't know that that is necessarily going to do more good than harm, but I don't know. Cause I've never done ayahuasca. I just make 0 (1h 18m 17s): Someone some money, 2 (1h 18m 18s): Right? So you kind of have to look at all the cues around the context and if this is like an authentic experience that you should be having or if this is something else in, you're just trying to be able to post it on Instagram and be like, I'm this really cool InTouch, enlightened person. I'm gonna go see God, God tonight. It's the danger 0 (1h 18m 36s): Of the whole Instagram Healing world, isn't it? Because it turns into a new brand. Even Authenticity can turn into a new flavor of Coke. Mm. Now we wanna be like that person. We won't wanna be able to post that story of triumph and whatever. And it becomes, our Healing becomes something for other people to consume so that we can now feel better about ourselves. And of course the flip side of that is how did you and me even meet? Cuz we're both on Instagram talking about things that are aligned and compatible and we're having this conversation. So the, you know, the social media and themselves are neutral, but with psychedelics, with Healing, with anything question is who's doing it? 0 (1h 19m 17s): What's the context? Who's running the show? Is it the ego? Is it the profit motive? Is it you know, my public image? Or is it following that inner call towards what's going to, what's gonna help me take the next step towards my own wholeness? 2 (1h 19m 31s): Yeah. Like what is your specific goal? Yeah. But I've seen people that try to coax other people and they're like, oh, you've gotta do this, you've gotta do that. And I'm like, if they're not ready, that is the last thing you wanna do is send them there. Which is interesting cause I have some family members that are getting curious about it and I always, I'm like, they're like, can you introduce us to your shaman and all of this and I'll just ignore 'em. And it's kind of like certain religions where you kind of have to beat down the doors several times before it opens. Cause they're like, how bad do you actually want this? You have to prove that you actually want this. And then I'll give them a docu-series. I'm like, well this'll give you more context. And I mean, it's been probably over a year and I still haven't given them what they're asking for. 2 (1h 20m 13s): And I'm just like, I, I just don't know. I I really wanna know that you're ready because it can be a very big deal. And with this example, one of the partners is kind of trying to pressure the other one into doing it. I'm like, that's not good. And like she's gotta be ready and it's gotta be her decision to do it otherwise that you guys are not gonna make it after the ceremony if you 0 (1h 20m 32s): Live in a culture that's always trying to sell us the next answer. 2 (1h 20m 37s): Yes, 0 (1h 20m 37s): Ayahuasca is not gonna solve shit 2 (1h 20m 39s): For you. No, it's 0 (1h 20m 41s): Not. It may dissolve some stuff I call, I don't call myself a problem solver, I'm a problem dissolver. 2 (1h 20m 46s): Maybe 0 (1h 20m 47s): I learned that from Ayahuasca. You have to be able to see through the thing. But we always want to just, let's just get rid of it. You know, if someone's gonna go into ayahuasca with the intention of, you know, one of the nice ways that people sometimes frame their intentions in an ayahuasca ceremony is show me X, Y, z or teach me about like actually kind of a request, a humble request takes a lot of humility of the plant, of the spirit or whatever your higher self you could, anything you wanna call it. So let's say someone says, show me about, you know, the pain underneath my addiction. Well it's very different than saying cure my addiction. 0 (1h 21m 27s): If you go in saying cure my addiction, you're gonna have a miserable time. You know, it's not about cure, it's about Healing. It's about understanding. And then you get to integrate that and then the behaviors will, you know, your, your physical life can alter, but you have to, you can't. There's no meme. It's not a meme. Healing is not something you can screen capture and reshare to your stories. It's visceral to use the word you used, it's full contact. It's unpredictable. It's beyond the human and you know, but part of our humanity is being able to tap into it and, and, and find out what it's, where it's trying to lead us. 2 (1h 22m 16s): Yeah, I I agree. And there's multiple Modalities to get to the same place. So you can do different forms of Meditation to still have a psychedelic effect and to still kind of create that fresh powder on your brain so that you don't have those deep habits and mental habits that we have negative self-talk, all of these things. And 0 (1h 22m 34s): I've had people tell me at the end of my mental Chiropractic sessions with them that they felt like they just took some kind of cleansing drug. And I said, good, I just brainwashed you, but in A good scrub. You know, and I, when I had this conversation with my father that I mentioned the sort of paradigm shifting one, we all felt like, whoa, we just sat through a ceremony because something came out of, like, I realized I had gone through like such anger and grievance and it was just so, and then shut down and then I, and then something crystallized with such clarity that I didn't even, I just kind of channeled it and I was able to speak in and it was something that needed to be said between us and he needed to hear it. 0 (1h 23m 16s): But I hadn't had the language. And all of a sudden I had the language and it was about, he had been angry at me, just a bottom line. And he had been saying, I'm not responsible for your wounds, Daniel, you know, I'm not responsible. Like, I'm sorry, I wish I'd been a better father, but stop making me responsible for your wound. I'm like, dad, I I know you're not, I know you're not, you're, you're missing my point. And he just kept hammering on this cuz clearly his experience is he has this toddler who won't, you know, in a grown man's body. And I was able to, you know, sitting with myself, I realized, no, you're dad, you're not responsible for my wound. But you are connected to it in a way that no one else in the world is. And that's just the way it is. 0 (1h 23m 57s): It's just the physics of it. You were there, like I said, and when you are around, it's harder for me. It's more confusing for me to know what to do with it. So if you want to be in a close relationship with me, I just need you to know that. And you don't need to be responsible for the wound. You don't even need to help me. But you could try not to make it worse. And you could, you could get off your defensive high horse and just be empathetic. Even park the sympathy. Like, I'm so sorry for you. No, just be curious cuz I'm, I'm really trying to own it. Yeah. And I want to have a relationship with you where I can see you for who you are now. 0 (1h 24m 37s): But if you are gonna see me for who I am now, know that I'm someone who's dealing with something that will never not be connected to you. It's not your fault. And somehow, and there was a bunch else, but, but that was the essence of it. And when things get that crystal clear, we all, the two of us and our friend who was mediating all felt like so long way of saying psychedelics, like you're saying and just agreeing with you are one avenue to that kind of clarity. And for many people it's an important jumpstart because sometimes our minds get so stale, so locked in patterns, so in the groove that it takes an external intervention really to, to break out of it. 0 (1h 25m 23s): But at a certain point I would think that the goal for us, especially us westerners who are not living in a cultural context where, where we really had a deep relationship to these plants, I think at a certain point we really wanna export their lessons into our everyday lives rather than continuing to rely on them and making it about the plant and about the psychedelics and about the thing and about the product and this and that. It's about us. 2 (1h 25m 48s): Yeah. And avoid being the the tourist. 0 (1h 25m 51s): Oh yeah. Well, or if you are the tourist at least admit it and, and see what you can do to be the most conscious, responsible, humble tourist possible. You know, 2 (1h 26m 3s): Because that is one of the consequences that you do see is from the tourists is the super ego that comes in and then it's you're all knowing and then that's a really unshakable personality and kind of place to be. 0 (1h 26m 15s): Well, and of course the flip side of that is, you know, all the sensationalist headlines about abuse happening at these retreat centers and tourists getting played and taken advantage of. Well that's what happens in the free market. You know what I'm saying? When, when something gets des desynchronized, when something sacred gets turned into a commodity, right? There's gonna be room for all kinds of mischief, you know, and it happens with everything. So it's not like indigenous people are like saints who would never, you know, there are some shady practices down there, but it's, but they're working within the system they're working in, you know, it's like, like my favorite show The Wire, you know, like the game is rigged. 0 (1h 26m 58s): Everyone's playing the game in inside the game of global capitalism and exploitation. And we have so much more than they do. And we're going down there and saying, Hey, please give us your most sacred teachings. I'm gonna be here for a week and then I'm gonna go home and go back to being a CEO of the company that's like raping your rainforest or whatever, you know, just kind of riffing here. But yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like it's a, we have to, this, this book is all about the relationships that the, the web of relationships that we're a part of. And we don't often think about that. But we in the west are in a relationship with the rest of the world. And we, me who lives in a coastal liberal city is in a relationship with the people who live in North Carolina and West Virginia. 0 (1h 27m 40s): The people who, you know, the parts of the country we like to call flyover country. You know what terrible the phrase that is. You know, I think we ignore those relationships at our own peril and detriment to the detriment of the world for sure. 2 (1h 27m 54s): Yeah. It does a really great job at high highlighting the interconnected interconnectedness of everything. So whether it's, you know, your childhood, the society, culture, diet, your health, all of these things are one, one container. Yeah. You know, and if one or multiple facets are off, then everything kind of ends up in disease or you know, lack of mental clarity and unregulated emotions, all of these things. So you guys kind of hit a, as you can see with the thickness, you guys, you guys hit all, all the, all of the buttons in, in my mind. I guess one of the questions that kept coming up for me is you seem to have like this freedom in being able to express your story and just like this raw honesty that I think is beautiful. 2 (1h 28m 40s): Do you have conversations as to how, how much is allowed to be public and how much is just for your guys' relationship to kind of be sorted privately? Or is that just you can kind of gauge that internally and know the bounds? Or are there bounds? 0 (1h 28m 55s): Well, it's been trial and error I think between my dad and I. There's a fairly open channel. I recently on a live stream, actually a live stream on like a political podcast that a friend of mine has. And we were talking about the book and he was talking about his Parenting and, and i, I said to, I said, dad, I'm this close to revoking your license to talking about the specifics of my trauma in public. And I was half joking, but I was, I was serious. It's not that I don't want him to talk about his Parenting, that's his Parenting. But the things that happened to me, the specific incidents, the moments, like there's this story that, you know, he, he's often told, it's the one he always goes to where he hit me across the face at age three because I wouldn't sing him happy birthday in front of the entire extended generally. 3 (1h 29m 42s): Oh, we're not 0 (1h 29m 43s): A family, we were hitting happens. 3 (1h 29m 45s): Oh, that makes me so sad. 0 (1h 29m 47s): Completely beyond the pale. And it was the one time he ever laid hands on me. Yeah. And there may have been some spanking, but that was the one time there was ever that kind of hitting. And I was humiliated and I was shocked and I was terrified and I was furious and I was very heartbroken. And the whole family was just, it was just horrible, you know? And you know, imagine what it's like to, like, I'm on Instagram, I'm like scrolling and a real pops up that's, you know, nicely edited and clipped together of my dad telling that story like on my phone there, you know, in between some dude playing the clarinet and you know, a chicken dancing with a squirrel. 0 (1h 30m 31s): Like that's that's that's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot. And I, I think for a long time I was sort of like, oh, ha ha ha isn't the matte family amusing? Like, oh, it's so interesting being me. And at a certain point I was like, fuck this. Like this is too much. Like I have my limit. So yeah, I, I, there are certain stories that I'm like, dad, that's not yours to tell anymore. You're gonna have to, you know, do your mea colos without dining out on my pain like that so specifically, you know, and he got that and so that's fine in the other direction. He's never asked me not to say anything. I mean, I think, I think what's incumbent upon me, and you can maybe see me doing it in real time, trying to, you know, stay, keep the balance, is to not use my public platform to like puff myself up at his expense. 0 (1h 31m 27s): Which, if you look at our videos from our Hello again workshops, there are moments where I'm clearly enjoying the fact that people are now watching. Because when I was a kid, I would've loved if there were like bleachers around the kitchen table. They're like, are you guys seeing it? But now I can kind of do that, like a little wink wink to the audience, whatever. Now that's fine. It's gonna happen when we're together. It's part of the workshop, it's part of the dynamic. It's okay. It's, it's, it's pretty benign. But in interviews, you know, it's probably part of me that wants to go off on him. You know, so I, I need to be responsible for that. That's not co that's not content. That's context as far as the rest of the family. Yeah. That's off limits. I'm not gonna talk about my siblings. I'm not gonna talk about my mom in the same way. 0 (1h 32m 8s): I think I do have some leeway from her to talk about it, but I'm rarely asked about her, which is interesting. But that's cuz my dad and I are the ones who are, who have made a, who have made a little business out of putting our stuff on front street. Like showing people what is up with us and like you said, hopefully doing people of service by and now it, people talk about our courage for us. It doesn't take courage. We're both exhibitionist. Like we both like it's easier for me not to hiding. I love creating a context for myself where I don't have to, where people want to hear about it. I truly love it. You know, the challenge though is not thinking that the Healing is gonna happen. 0 (1h 32m 49s): You know, when I'm Chatting with Candice or when he's on the Joe Roben show, right? No, the Healing happens when we're off camera. But us sharing about it, I think we've learned that people get a lot of value out of it. What's amazing though, I dunno if you've seen the comments under some of these videos and reels, a lot of people react very intensely and in very, very different ways to the same clip. I can be talking about accepting that our parents may never change. And I got some people being like, who is this spoiled entitled brat? Do you know how much good your father's done in the world? Maybe he wants you to change. You ever thought of that? Hmm. I got someone else being like, you're being way too easy on parents. 0 (1h 33m 33s): You know, you're saying I have to have a relationship with my mother, whatever. Under our videos on YouTube, some people are like, Daniel is a spoiled brat. He clearly hates his father. I don't know why Gabor puts up with this. This is beneath him. Other people are like, I'm never gonna read another Gabor Mat tape book again. Look at what he just did to his son and they give the timestamp, you know, of some look he gave me or something he said to the audience. And you know what Candace, the truth is, they're all correct. Everyone's picking up on different things through the filter that they're listening through. And that's the great thing about it. So I don't actually have to take it personally. I'm glad people get so much out of it. But I mean we may have just stumbled into the biggest niche in the world. This topic, everyone deals with it. 0 (1h 34m 15s): No one's talking about it. There are new books about it. Very few at least. How many Parenting books are there? Countless. How many books are there about letting go of your dying parents? What about all the decades in between? We don't think to think about it because it's optional and it's kind of just in stasis. It's an a holding pattern. We're fully cooked, whatever. I'm an adult. You did what you did. I'll see it Thanksgiving. But what if we were to examine it? And just to be clear for people, our book and our workshop and the book isn't written yet, but our work on this topic doesn't require that people necessarily have a willing partner or cohort. So like if you're not in touch with your parents, I want you to still be able to get something out of this. 0 (1h 34m 57s): Because ultimately the relationship is only about 20% about what's happening between you and me. 80% of it's happening in here. In here. Yeah. And we're there. Right. So my relationship to the relationship is the thing that I can work on. 2 (1h 35m 12s): Yeah. 100%. I think it's gonna be a really interesting moving forward for a lot of people because of this content economy. Like so many people are, you know, creating businesses out of essentially themselves and their, their identity and their brand or their family dynamic or whatever it is. And I think we have these new questions that we have to ask, which is how much, how much am I allowed to share? Like who makes those rules? What's within the what, what's within the bounds? Yeah. And I just like selfishly, I, I wonder that too because I'm always trying to figure out how much of my life do I get to share and about my kids and all of that because I don't want them to get older and like, man, that wasn't yours to tell. 2 (1h 35m 54s): Right. Right. Yeah. So I mean I don't even post their faces online bec and people are like, who do you think you are? It's like, it's not about me at all. I don't think that I'm Kim Kardashian and you know, stop the paparazzi. By no means do I think that your herring on the side, right. Of their integrity. Right. And then I want that to be their decision if they wanna be on social media, like a simple thing like that. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I think there's, there's so much nuance to how we parent right now and how definitely what we share. So I'm just so curious how that's gonna unfold in the future. 0 (1h 36m 23s): Definitely. And if I was to by some miracle and I really, I think I've come to the place where I can admit that I want to have kids. Although, you know, at age 47 I'm like, well if I take this long to do, is it gonna happen? But, and you know, it's scary. It would totally change my life in ways I'm, I can't even imagine. But if I had kids, well there'd be a whole new wrinkle, you know, about my public profile. You know, it's what's amazing is I never ever expected to be out here in public talking about this stuff. This collaboration has opened that up and it turns out I like it and I have a lot to say, but I'm still writing musicals and I'm still doing these mental Chiropractic walks. 0 (1h 37m 7s): And so I don't know how long I'm gonna be, you know, a content creator or influencer, which are words. I just, 2 (1h 37m 17s): I hate the word influencer too. 0 (1h 37m 20s): Was an 2 (1h 37m 20s): Influencer. Oh God. Yeah. We have to figure out something else. Yeah. Another descriptor. Yeah, yeah. Content creator, digital creator, something 0 (1h 37m 31s): Person with a platform. Yeah. Person talking. 2 (1h 37m 35s): Well, before we get to these SuperchatsThe, this was awesome. Do you wanna tell everyone where they can follow you? How they can support you? Anything you're working on? Sure, 0 (1h 37m 43s): Yeah. Yeah. So my mental Chiropractic service is called Take a Walk with Daniel and the website is walk with Daniel dot com. And I do like a free consult if wants to ask questions about it cuz it's kind of a weird concept, mental Chiropractic walking, you know, but I can, I can break it down for you real easy. And the idea is if something in your life is stuck, we have a walk that takes an hour and 15 or an hour and 40. It's not therapy. I'm not trying to see you next week, we're gonna get unstuck today. So it takes a lot of intention, which gives me a lot of license to be very straight with you, very, you know, direct, which I like. I'm not gonna sit there and be like, oh, okay, tell me about your childhood. I'm like, no, I get it. You were traumatized. So was I. All right. 0 (1h 38m 23s): Now how is that showing up now? So that's just a little taste of what that is. If people are curious about my songwriting and my musical theater work, Daniel Mat dot com has Links to all my, you know, my YouTube channel and lots of great Broadway actors singing my stuff Oh. And my podcast. Yes. Let's get Lyrical with Carice and Daniel. Not to be confused with another podcast called Let's Get Lyrical, which is total, well it's also about lyrics, but I only, I only found out that they existed like the night before we dropped. So I had 2 (1h 38m 53s): Our names, 0 (1h 38m 54s): But they were very nice and they didn't, they didn't make a fuss about that. But yeah, me and Carice Van Howton from Game of Throne, she was also in, she played Tom Cruise's wife in Valkyrie, ands, done a lot of great stuff, great Dutch actress. We just nerd out about song lyrics every week from like Slayer to Joni Mitchell to De La Soul, to, you know, whatever. And, and we have a live stream coming up on the 28th. Maybe I'll drop, maybe I'll, maybe I'll tease this now. Maybe I'll actually say we have Leanne Rims. 2 (1h 39m 26s): Oh, I love her. Yeah. Cool. 0 (1h 39m 28s): Because of the book. 2 (1h 39m 30s): Very cool. 0 (1h 39m 31s): So excited to do a, a stream on lyrics, Leanne loves and find out, you know, what, who, which lyricists really turn her crank. So that'll be on Tuesday, February 28th. So yeah, just you can follow us on Instagram that show. The Instagram handle is at Carice and Daniel get Lyrical. And my Instagram handle is at Daniel, B as in Brooklyn, matte, m a t 2 (1h 39m 57s): E. Awesome. Again, thank you so much. My pleasure. Yeah. And what a unique, unique podcast. I love that idea. 0 (1h 40m 4s): Well, it, it's just, it's something that we're both passionate. Yeah. We can talk about song lyrics forever. I'm constantly quoting them. Always free associating. Yeah. And it contains so much. And I think one of the, if I have an activist cause in the world, I wanna create a world where no one has to say, oh, I don't listen to the lyrics, I'll listen to the lyrics. There's something in it for you may, it might ruin the song for you, but you might get even more out of it. And there's, you know, like I said, when, when we played like played Suzanne Vega, my name is Luca, you know, from my dad, he was like, this was a pop song on the radio when you were a kid. Did you understand it? I said, yeah, that I knew what physical abuse was. You know, like pop music is layered and complex and what's crazy is, you know, I could say okay, boomer to him, but okay Exer, I was all ready to write off Bailey Eilish, but then someone sent me a song of hers, I forget what it was called, but it was a breakup song. 0 (1h 40m 57s): I was like, geez, this is layered this that, that surprised me. You know, every generation has things going on in their lyrics that are teaching them about themselves and that are, look, there's some Toxic shit in pop music for sure. But there's a lot of really healthy self-expression too. And I love the innovations and, you know, I'm huge Hiphop fan. I'm a former finalist for the hiphop karaoke championship of New York City twice. I was a finalist. 2 (1h 41m 21s): Oh wow. 0 (1h 41m 23s): But I, 2 (1h 41m 23s): I wasn't, you can throw down, 0 (1h 41m 26s): I can throw down if you wanna, and here's another 2 (1h 41m 29s): Thing I do wanna see, 0 (1h 41m 31s): Go to YouTube and search hiphop karaoke New York City Rd. And can you guess what Rd J stands for? It was my stage name 2 (1h 41m 38s): Robert Downing Jr. Yeah. You, you look a lot like him. They, they 0 (1h 41m 41s): Came, they bestowed that name upon me the first time I came. So yeah, I did Jay-Z, I did Wutang, I did Buster Rhymes. I, you know, I, it was a great, great time back when those events existed. But anyway, lyrics, I love lyrics and I write lyrics and we love talking about it in Increase. 2 (1h 41m 58s): Awesome. Jamie, do we have any SuperchatsThe? 4 (1h 42m 3s): No, just some chats 2 (1h 42m 4s): In general. Just chats in general. Did you see any questions that you wanted to hit? 4 (1h 42m 8s): Yeah, my father left my mother last week after 37 years of marriage. What can you say to help her? 2 (1h 42m 16s): Whoa. 0 (1h 42m 16s): To help her? I wouldn't presume to say anything. I don't know anything about the situation. I would just say I'm sorry that, that's really rough. Yeah. I mean, I would have to know so much more to know how to say anything remotely helpful. And I would say to the person who wrote it, you know, I hope you're doing okay. And even if you're not, even if you're a grownup and not living with them, that's a, that's a shock to the family system, you know? And I, I just, I hope it's for the best. I hope that some Healing comes out of it. That's all I can say. 4 (1h 42m 51s): All right. There's a guy named Mountain Climber. He says this whole conversation was therapy for him. 2 (1h 42m 57s): Oh, I love that. That's good. That's why I like these lives is sometimes you get like, live feedback and you don't feel like you're shouting into a void. You're like, no, someone's listening and really getting something from this. So I, I appreciate that. Thanks 0 (1h 43m 11s): Mountain glamor. I'm really glad. Yeah. 4 (1h 43m 12s): Make sure you guys shut out. Georgia and Guang both are watching. 2 (1h 43m 15s): Hey, Georgia. Hey, 0 (1h 43m 17s): You mean the 4 (1h 43m 18s): Geograph location? 2 (1h 43m 19s): Oh, well that too. Guam 0 (1h 43m 22s): In the house, Georgia in the 2 (1h 43m 23s): Building. You can go to Chatting with candace.com that has all the socials and previous episodes. I hope that you enjoyed this. You can also go to buy me a coffee.com/candace. If you want to contribute to the podcast. You can help me buy plane tickets and get amazing guests like Daniel again. So thank you everybody. If you did not hit like and subscribe, make sure you do that before you sign off and we'll see you next time. Well, that's it for this week's episode of Chatting with Candace. If you enjoyed the episode and the conversation, make sure that you hit the like and subscribe button. And if you have a moment, please leave a five star review. It helps me to break the algorithm and if you wanna support the podcast, you can go to Chatting with candace.com, and from there you can click the link that will take you to Patreon or the one that says, buy me a coffee. 2 (1h 44m 12s): It's cold out there, folks buy me some coffee. All of that directly goes back into the podcast. I've got Jamie over there helping now, and it'll eventually help us get some more in-person guests. So please, if you enjoy the content, show your love. I'll see you next time.