ADD, Addiction and the Amazing Power of Authenticity (Selden Beylouni)

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Right. John Wood here, the founder of Ray. I’m here with Seldon Bay, Looney, one of another student from the training we’re both doing with Irene, but as I’ve been doing in past episodes, I’m not doing big intros or anything. I just want to start off at the most interesting, sensational, craziest part. That was the question I had for seldom was, yeah, what is the most exciting, sensational, most interesting part of your story? Let’s start there and then just see where we

Speaker 2 (00:00:28):
Go. Oh my gosh. I mean, look, I think that, I don’t know if everybody’s going to feel like this is the most sensational necessarily part of my story, but because I’ve been through so much stuff. But I would say growing up, I would say the most sort of shocking part of my story that people would maybe not assume for me is how addicted I was to stimulants when I was growing up. So I had a lot of dissociation that started for myself. By the way, hi. Thank you for having me. I’m like, wait, you gave me the intro, but you’ve started straight out with the question, so I just wanted to make sure I said that.

(00:01:18):
Yeah, so I started dissociating when I was really, really young and just was kind of left my body that was safe for me to not be embodied as many of us experienced adversity and trauma that adaptation. I think now that I’ve kind of worked with more and more people, I’ve realized not everybody has that exact adaptation, but I certainly did. And so from a young age, I kind of was able to astral project type stuff and had a very easy access to the dream world and daydreams and just floating out of myself and then through, as I was growing up in a very conventional setting in public school system and where everyone’s expected to be and function the same, I was very, very different. And I knew that pretty young. I knew that when I was nine, 10 years old. I was like, I’m not like everybody else.

(00:02:33):
And so by the time I was 13, my parents sent me to a psychologist and I was diagnosed with a DD at the time. They had different diagnoses for people like me. I mean, I was experiencing extreme fatigue as well, but certainly cognition and the ability to concentrate and comprehend things, even comprehend just things in school, but also just things that I was reading and this kind of thing. School was not easy for me, lots of school trauma. So anyway, so they were like, oh, let’s put her in this box, this attention deficit disorder box. I did not fit the typical script of the hyperactive part. So at the time they had two different diagnosis for this. I don’t want to say it’s a condition, but maybe for lack of a better word, it’s like a DD for the people that aren’t really hyperactive but still can’t concentrate.

(00:03:32):
And I think honestly it was like, oh, stimulant drugs are going to help them. So that’s how they kind of just make that claim or that label. And then you have these people that are more hyperactive and the stimulant medications for whatever reason, still help them concentrate and focus and narrow in. And so those medications helped me kind of be more normal. It helped me function kind of like everybody else. So I really clung to that label for a long time and in clinging to that label and being like, oh, this is my identity. This is who I am, this is the box that I fit into and this is the medication that I need because I have this chemical imbalance and I was born this way and I just bought into that narrative, which is not something I buy into now at all. So, so from that point, Ritalin opened the door to cocaine and crystal meth, and by the time I was 17, I was exploring, not exploring.

(00:04:37):
I was diving deep into these types of drugs and from an even earlier age, experimenting is a good word, with marijuana and LSD and mushrooms and those types of drugs, which didn’t ever really do it for me. Once I got ahold of the stimulants, I was like, oh, this can help me be smart. This can help me be like everyone else. This can help me function. This can help me not be tired. And it relieved me in so many ways. And then obviously over time, it challenged me in all the ways that substances do. As I became more and more dependent on them, I became more and more restricted in my own authenticity. Obviously, I started to realize as I got older and more evolved, I started to realize how much it was limiting me to stay in that box and to stay in that label. And then I started really questioning obviously everything from that point forward.

(00:05:58):
So I would say that’s the most sensational part of my story, but there’s a lot in that journey of addiction and dependency was a lot of trauma. I lost my brother to a heroin overdose. Oh, I’m getting emotional today and a lot of separation from my family in that time. And I moved to New York and was a hair and makeup artist. So I was living a very fast party lifestyle in that world, in the fashion world in New York, and it was fun. It was what I did. It was my journey, but obviously it was limited. It was not sustainable, so, so I moved back home. Atlanta is my home. I did open a salon here, but my lifestyle went to drinking lots of alcohol, still dabbling in powders, not really crystal meth anymore, but more cocaine and those types of things.

(00:07:21):
And I think it really was definitely, again, it’s that part of identity where we start to identify with labels and even identify with substances. And I was talking with somebody in Instagram recently, and she said, stimulants have just been such a part of my life. It’s a relationship now that I’ve formed with this. I don’t know how to let it go. And I was like, oh, I so get that because it’s becomes your best friend. It’s like your most valuable resource if we were going to put it in nervous system terms because it helps us to be, again, it distracts us from who we really are, but it makes us think that it is just tricky. It’s manipulative in so many ways. So yeah, it’s like when you decide to come off of those types of drugs, in my experience, it was like letting a big part of myself go. It was ending a relationship and I did it pretty fast. I was like, oh, I’m done with this now. And it was just like boom, and then just done. It was wild. I don’t recommend that obviously for everybody, but that was how I did it. So yeah. Do you have any questions?

(00:08:53):
I started with a bang.

Speaker 1 (00:08:55):
There’s so many directions to go in. I mean, I wanted to ask about disassociation. I think part of my role is just clarifying things. So for someone who doesn’t know what is dissociation or disassociation, I think it can be either one, but what is that?

Speaker 2 (00:09:11):
I think it

Speaker 1 (00:09:11):
Can, and how does it show up for you?

Speaker 2 (00:09:13):
Yeah, so dissociation is when you are just not fully here. I mean, that’s kind of the best way to describe it. I feel like dissociation and brain fog or very closely intertwined, I think that brain fog would be maybe a more broad recognized term that people could understand. But I don’t think every person who’s dissociating would maybe describe or I don’t think that everybody would, brain fog would describe exactly dissociation. So dissociation has a little bit of a different flavor, although that fogginess is there. So the fogginess for the here and now and the present is there. It’s that here and now being present, being here in this moment environment, people that’s safety that we’re building in this nervous system regulation world that’s not really there. It’s not on board. And so with dissociation, it’s like our mind takes us somewhere else. So we are in That’s survival, survival pattern, and it is that hight tone dorsal.

(00:10:32):
When we look at it from a nervous system perspective, it’s definitely the hight tone, dorsal part of that shutdown response of the parasympathetic. So that’s definitely online, but what’s interesting is that somebody can be dissociative and function in life kind of normal to everybody else. So even when I was discussing with Irene recently in one of our practices, I was like, oh yeah, I was totally dissociated. And if I ask my peers, or even Irene I think notices it, she knows me pretty well and she’s got a keen eye, but other people wouldn’t notice it necessarily. And so it’s where you’re just kind of almost, your mind is almost in a little bit of a dreamlike state, but people who, or I’ll say from my experience, because this was my state as such a young child, four or five was when this started for me, I became really, really good at masking.

(00:11:43):
So I grew up just pretending I wasn’t in this state because I didn’t know any different and I had to try to pretend I was everybody else for my own survival or all the things. And so it’s kind of a tricky thing to be able to recognize in people. I often wonder and kind of question in my own current reality, what’s the percentage of time that I’m still kind of dissociative and how much am I really, really here? When we first hopped on the call, I had a little more sympathetic in there, but that dissociative quality was still there. I was kind of scattered and I was like, oh, I need a minute. I’m not here. And so I think it’s that quality of just not being here and present.

Speaker 3 (00:12:45):
Do you dissociate?

Speaker 1 (00:12:49):
I don’t know. I mean, I’ve never been one to, you talk about astral projection or leaving my body and being able to observe my body. I’ve heard that. I’ve never experienced that, but I do remember before I got into this nervous system work, I used to meditate a lot and I always felt like something was missing. When I look back, how I compare it to now to then, it was almost like now, well, back then it felt like living in black and white almost.

(00:13:23):
Not exactly brain fog, but not, I was probably, I could be present, but I think maybe with the meditation had learned to keep a lot of stuff locked down. I go have a fight with my girlfriend at the time and I’d be so proud of myself for how present I could be, and I’d just calm and I eventually realized that I was just keeping everything on wraps. So sometimes I’m not sure whether the disassociation and then shut down collapse. They seem to be slightly different the way Irene talks about it, but it’s a kind of disassociation if the feeling’s there, but I’m like, well, no, I’m not angry. I’m just really calm. It’s like, well, are you sure? I guess that would be a kind of dissociation.

Speaker 2 (00:14:05):
Yeah, I feel like it’s kind of weaved in there a bit. I think whenever we’re in shutdown, I think there is a little bit of a quality of disassociation or dissociation, right? Because we’ve detached ourselves a bit and with dissociation, that’s kind of the element that’s always there is that detachment from what’s happening or whatever.

(00:14:36):
And detachment from self too or from authenticity, right? Because we’re scared to show up in that way. Yeah, it’s interesting and it’s such a familiar pattern for me that I go into it very easily. It is the pattern that I go into the most. If there’s stress or whatever’s happening or the pattern, I kind of always have to keep my finger on, Hey, am I here? Was happening? I have to always check in with myself in that way. But one thing that I did notice that I think can be consistent maybe with this quality, but not always was when I started to learn to get into my body or I started to do these neurosensory exercises we’ve been taught and became more aware of what was actually happening. I always had this floating sensation in my body, so I would sit here, and I even said this on a call.

(00:16:01):
I think when I would tune into the chair underneath me or the floor underneath me, that potent posture, I couldn’t really feel it. So I felt like my body was floating about six inches above it above. So it felt like, yeah, I still feel that sometimes I have to be like, oh, wait, go in. I have to intentionally sometimes be like, okay, I have to bring myself back in. And the way that I’ve really dissected this as a very intuitive person, and I consider myself quite a psychic person too, although I didn’t know that I had these abilities when I was young, but is I feel like because that root chakra, when we think about it from the energetic perspective, the root is what’s really affected with the early stuff. And so when that root chakra isn’t safe or isn’t online or it’s weak or however you want to call it, it’s kind of like the energy body floats up a little bit.

(00:17:11):
So we become more dominant in that seventh, even eighth chakras, the third eye. It’s almost like the energy just goes and we’re up here. It’s like that saying, just being in your head, not being in your body, and I think essentially that’s what disembodiment means. We’ve just left our root system, we’ve left our feet, we’ve left our anchor. And so it’s been an interesting thing for me to understand energy from this nervous system perspective to feel it that way and to understand it that way. And it’s weird because, but not weird, as I’ve gotten more embodied, intuition has gotten stronger in some ways and also sometimes harder to access in other ways. So it’s become more of a embodied experience where I’ve just a, knowing that I know what direction I’m supposed to head, I know what my spirit guides or my ancestors, I know where I’m being guided.

(00:18:22):
It comes more from here, from heart, from the body rather than information or images that I’m receiving, and the images can come too, but then I always try to direct it to feel that what does it feel like? Images have been always quite easy for me to access and then sensation harder for me to access emotion, very easy to access, and then always physical sensation, very hard because the body was something that I wasn’t safe in, and it didn’t feel good for so long that I was like, oh, I’m just not going to feel this anymore. It said freeze quality. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:19:14):
I remember when I first, I think started doing one of Irene’s courses and just look around, feel the ground, notice your breath. I don’t remember exactly what the thing was that I did something like that. And I think for the first time it was feeling this sense of, as in my soul or something, my consciousness was entirely focused up here. And then as I started to feel the ground of work with that, I could feel it’s like, oh, now I’m inhabiting my entire system. My body is what it is, a physical sensation of from there to something land something, let’s go

Speaker 2 (00:19:50):
Something lands. Exactly. Yeah. I’ll never forget when I first started feeling my feet again, and it always would happen actually when I was on a walk because for whatever reason that just happened to be when I would go outside and I would walk, it was like I could just direct my energy back down to my legs, to my root, to those steps on the pavement. And I remember when I literally felt energy go from here down and I was like, boom. It was just this density of my body that I felt for the first time, and I was like, whoa, this is wild. And then I had to always, and I still do this question, what does everybody else feel like? Do they feel like this, all this, somebody who’s really grounded or someone who has great attachment or a healthy nervous system or just someone different than me, someone and even someone in fight, I think fight flight, you kind of leave your body too. I don’t think it’s always just that freezy energy, but yeah, so I’m always like, what’s it like to be in somebody else’s body? Because if somebody else has felt this amount of gravity, literally that’s what it felt like. I felt gravity for the first time in my body. They really have had a very different experience in life than I have had.

Speaker 1 (00:21:36):
When I think about it, you get these moments, I get these glimpses of something like a different level of embodiment. It’s beautiful. And I’ll be, sometimes it’s like, is this what healthy people feel all the time? Is this what most people? Is this how they engage with the world? And then I think about just how, I don’t think maybe some people, maybe some really healthy people, but the whole world is a distraction. It’s all about distracting you from what you’re feeling the entire thing. And so it’s like whether it’s alcohol or substances or movies, not that any of that’s bad necessarily, but most people have no idea what it even means to feel their body. It’s like going to the gym. That’s the extent of it. That’s not really it. That’s not what we’re talking about is doing some squats that’ll maybe help, but this is a different thing.

Speaker 2 (00:22:27):
Absolutely, and I think you’re right. I think the majority of the population, unless they’re doing this work, I mean I hate to be like, oh, this. I don’t think that’s the only thing necessarily, but I think it’s such an important piece that it has to kind of be there if you’re doing other things. That’s just my personal, what I’ve seen and my own experience for sure. But I do think, yeah, unless you’re doing this work, don’t really, you’re not really in your body. You’re not really present. There’s some pattern, some thing that is affecting your biology and your ability to be present with yourself and your environment, and I actually would go so far as to say someone with less adversity or less trauma, it’s harder for them to recognize than someone who has had to have this journey to come back to self, because I had to, I didn’t have any other choice.

(00:23:26):
I didn’t get into this, but my condition led to autoimmune and really complete shutdown a diagnosis of lupus, and honestly, now that I know more about complex PTSD, I definitely suffered with some of that, some behavioral type stuff, similar to bipolar and those types of things, but again, for me, I had to get, they didn’t have any other choice, especially after I had kids. For me, it was like, oh, I have to figure this out. But for someone, when I look or observe people who say they had a perfect childhood and they don’t deal with any kind of chronic stuff and they have seemingly decent, healthy relationships and they can hold a job together, to me, that person ends up being a little bit more disconnected from themselves because they don’t actually see sometimes the areas with which they can grow emotionally or there’s a lot of blocks to somebody says they have a perfect childhood, I really question their level of denial or I question their level of reality. Yeah, I’ve just noticed that. I’m like, oh, you sure about that? You grew up in the nineties like me, and I’m pretty sure your parents didn’t know anything about being regulated and attachment and all the things we know about.

Speaker 1 (00:25:01):
I get what you’re trying to say though. It’s like I haven’t had any autoimmune conditions, but I do have this very, very persistent OCD, which is not enough to be overwhelming, but it’s enough that it just grates on me like death by a thousand cuts. There’s aspects of things I deal with where I’m like, for me at least it is like that. It’s like there’s no choice. I’m not spending the next 50 years dealing

Speaker 2 (00:25:22):
With,

Speaker 1 (00:25:23):
I’m going to resolve this. I’ll go through whatever I have to. I feel whatever I have to feel. Absolutely. If people are more like there’s nothing, maybe that’s not perfect, they’re not in bliss or anything, but they’re also, it’s not that bad either. It’s a lot easier to be like, yeah, this feeling thing, what’s the point? I don’t need that.

Speaker 2 (00:25:41):
I’m doing right, exactly. My question is where do they end up? Do they float through life or does it eventually? I mean, I think 20, 30 years ago, yes, you could float through life and you could maybe be okay, but right now there’s a collective evolution to humanity that’s happening that is so clear to me. I know there’s normies out there that just stay in the 3D. It’s really wild to me that this still is happening, so maybe there are people that can just sail through life and float through life and not ever have to go deeper or question things or want to heal and all that, but I think it’s harder now because of the state of the world and because of the state of consciousness that we’re going into and the gap between, for lack of a better way to say it, like five D consciousness and 3D consciousness is so wide, it feels so different. When I go, for instance, to my kid’s school and I’m just hanging out with people that do normal stuff,

(00:26:54):
Are normal people and they’re not talking about emotional healing and regulation and spiritual expansion and being psychic and all this stuff, I’m just like, whoa, you guys are in a completely, y’all feel like you’re in a completely different dimension than me. It’s so different. I have to kind of shapeshift back into just being a normal person, just being like, oh, hi, and small talk, and then I leave and I’m just like, whew. It’s effort. I can’t say to you that none of this matters. All the politics that you’re freaking out about right now, it doesn’t matter. I mean it matters to you obviously, but the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter who’s in power and all that, but yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:27:47):
All that stuff, yeah, I live in Peru. I’m surrounded by people who all kinds of crazy shit goes down here with plant medicine. Aya was in San Pedro and stuff like that, so I’m in a more grounded area where most of the people here, you wouldn’t know of what they’re into. They just look like normal people. They’re not like the hippies with feathers in their hair and they’re flowing robes and all

Speaker 3 (00:28:06):
That stuff,

Speaker 1 (00:28:08):
But there’s a lot of crazy, I mean, it is that it feels like a different parallel universe, and then I think about people back home or the traditional, you watch the news and I don’t know, you go to a normal job in an office tower somewhere and sit in a queue. All that stuff just sounds

Speaker 2 (00:28:27):
Foreign

Speaker 1 (00:28:27):
Bizarre.

Speaker 2 (00:28:28):
Yeah, I agree. It’s really foreign. Yeah, I know. I look at my ex-husband, the father of my kid, so this person will be in my life forever. I love him, but he’s so stuck in that world and just grinding it out and I’m just like, why are you working like that? We are leaving that paradigm. But then I realized, well, not everybody is, and I really wonder what is our future going to look like with these two, almost really different realities, parallel realities happening here on earth. But I was curious when you were mentioning your OCD and yeah, I can relate to that as well. I definitely had some of that tendency, but I would be like all or nothing, so it would be like OCD and crazy about whatever it was that I was doing at the time or just complete shut. It was like it oscillate between those two. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:29:42):
Did you have a question about it?

Speaker 2 (00:29:43):
Well, yeah. How does that affect you? Well, I was just thinking through it. How does that affect you day to day?

Speaker 1 (00:29:50):
I mean, right now it’s one reason it can be so frustrating is I’ll feel like I’m getting somewhere with it. I’m not checking this thing, whatever the stove now, but it’ll show up somewhere else as if I have a daily quota of checking to fill and get it. So it is

Speaker 2 (00:30:06):
Checking stuff. That’s how it shows up,

Speaker 1 (00:30:08):
It’s checking. Well, I have noticed recently actually, because I mean my regulation or my system where I’m at, I am a lot better at not checking things,

Speaker 3 (00:30:17):
Which

Speaker 1 (00:30:17):
Has been great, but then it’ll come out, I’ll be like, I really need to wash my hands. The mind will spin something about, oh, my shoes are dirty. I touched my shoes. Now I’m saying, oh, this is how people, it’s almost like whatever it is, it’s seeking expression somehow, somewhere, and if it can’t get it through checking, it’s like I could see why some people get compulsive with OCD about washing their heads. I’m like, oh, this just moving around. And so it’s playing. Sometimes it feels like playing whack-a-mole never enough to the point I can leave the house. It doesn’t control me in that sense. It’s more like just the thorn in my side that I can’t get out and I’ve tried for so long and it’s gotten to the point where I’m just to a place of surrender, I think because you try everything, and I even realize now that any attempt to fuck with it or to get rid of it in any way feeds it because it imply, it seems like it’s almost like a perfection thing or a need for control, and so if there’s any control in the process of trying to peel it or fix it or resolve it, it perpetuates the same thing, the same system that it’s coming from. So where I’m at with it, I’m like, all I can do is all this somatic stuff. It’s cultivating a sense of safety

(00:31:34):
And being present, and then what happens from there? It’s just like it’s up to the universe or guard or whatever, but yeah, it’s checking things. It could be the stove, the fridge, other windows shut. When I leave my office, I can go around in loops if I’m not paying attention.

Speaker 2 (00:31:49):
Do you just check it? You just check it if you’re hanging out at home, or is it just come up if you’re needing to leave or you’re leaving that room or?

Speaker 1 (00:31:59):
I think it depends how stressed. The more stressed, the more activated I’m, the more likely, it’s like a defensive management strategy I think would be the technical word for it. So the more stressed out or activated I am that I can’t regulate just internally, that’ll be the external resource that I use, and so I can look at the stove and I know it’s off. One part of me is like, it’s fucking off and yet there’s something in me that’s like, you better look again, and it just goes around and it’s infuriating. It’s funny, but also infuriating.

Speaker 3 (00:32:28):
Fuck, huge

Speaker 1 (00:32:29):
Motherfucker. And so this is what’s been unraveling, I think for the last, while you’ve heard a bit about what’s been happening through the training we did with Irene, I think it’s almost partly a soothing mechanism, and so as I’ve gotten better at not doing it, there’s been a lot of shit that’s been coming up in the space that creates, and so what I think is that as that eventually there’ll just be nothing left for it to, it’s purpose will be complete,

Speaker 2 (00:32:59):
But I’m not

Speaker 1 (00:32:59):
There yet.

Speaker 2 (00:33:00):
Yeah, I think eventually you’ll leave the house, so I feel like this is, yeah, it’s going to happen where you’re just going to leave the house or you’re going to go somewhere, you’re going to meet somebody or whatever, and you’re going to be like, oh my gosh, I just left the house and I didn’t have to check this or that. Wow, that’s

Speaker 1 (00:33:22):
Interesting. It already happens like that, right? So I do have, it doesn’t been happening. It’ll go away. The moment I realize I wasn’t checking something, it comes back.

Speaker 2 (00:33:30):
Then you have

Speaker 1 (00:33:31):
To, so it’s right. It’s in that weird zone where it’s like the system’s, it starts to feel safe enough to not do it, but then when I realize I’m not doing it, then feels it’s like, oh, I can’t let this go yet. I’m going to keep doing it. So it’s trying to notice it out of the corner. I’m barely noticing it. I notice it, but I don’t think about it. I’m like, oh, I didn’t check, but no, I’m not going to think about that right now. Hopefully to try and get the system and was to fall asleep.

Speaker 2 (00:33:56):
That is such an interesting coping strategy. What I really find interesting is I used to do that a lot more when I was a kid, and a lot of kids do that, but they grow out of it. So it’s like what happens where they can, then they have it and then don’t have it. I mean, if they’re not working, called it. It’s really interesting. I remember you having to turn the door handle a certain way

Speaker 1 (00:34:25):
And

Speaker 2 (00:34:26):
I would count and I would say like, oh, I have to do this. If I don’t do this, I might die. I used to have those stories. It felt very similar to a psychic attack. Have you ever heard of psychic attacks? It kind of felt like a bit of infiltration type energy. I don’t know that it is obviously in every case, but that was in my reflection on that. It felt similar to that kind of energy where it was like, this isn’t me making myself do this as some other entity or some attachment or something. And I always think that those types of things happen, those attached to our trauma, so I feel like they’re very intertwined with whatever adversity is linked to.

Speaker 1 (00:35:16):
I mean, I went through a period thinking that it was something like that,

(00:35:20):
And what stopped was I went to drank ayahuasca with someone here and asked them to look at it because part of the point of the ayahuascas, and they can sort of do an x-ray of you and see what’s actually going on, and according to him, and he’s pretty trustworthy, he’s like, yeah, it’s just you created a thing when you were really, I don’t know, at some point in your life, probably when you were very young, that creates physical sensations in your body, so it’s almost like a, you could say it’s like an entity, but an internally created maybe something like that, but it does feel that, have that sense of being possessed. I know this is off and there is something in me that’s like, you better fucking check that thing,

Speaker 2 (00:35:57):
Right? I’m

Speaker 1 (00:35:58):
Like, no, and it’s like, yay. It’s trippy. It’s bizarre.

Speaker 2 (00:36:02):
No one really

Speaker 1 (00:36:03):
Gets it.

Speaker 2 (00:36:03):
The little angel like that.

Speaker 1 (00:36:04):
Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:36:07):
Oh, I know, and I know this psychic attacks are brutal. I’ve had them many of, many experiences with that type of stuff. It’s not,

Speaker 1 (00:36:18):
Yeah. What has helped has been, has helped a lot. We talked about the touchworks. I went up to see Seth in Canada a month or two ago, and that has given me a deeper, a more, I dunno, a more sensitive awareness of how I’m bracing. I’ve realized how often I’m like, my pelvic floor is tight and the muscles around my eyes are tight and the shoulders are tight, which to me, it’s all survival physiology, so it’s like no wonder my system thinks something’s wrong and it needs to scan for threats and the stove or something. I’m hundred percent, I mean, there’s chronic, not overwhelming, but a low level chronic activation all the time.

Speaker 2 (00:36:58):
All the time,

Speaker 1 (00:36:59):
And now I’m just practicing relaxing and relax, become aware of it, relax it, relax it.

Speaker 2 (00:37:04):
I feel we’re getting

Speaker 1 (00:37:04):
Somewhere saying, but it’s slow.

Speaker 2 (00:37:06):
I know as you’re saying that, I’m like, oh, pelvis, I haven’t checked in with my pelvis in a while. Like, oh yeah, it’s tight. It’s interesting with the pelvis, I notice when I’m sitting here, if I focus on it, what happens is it almost widens when you soften it, it really opens. That’s the sensation that I notice. It’s like,

Speaker 1 (00:37:26):
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:37:27):
Right. It’s almost like with that adrenal work, it tightens and goes up. It’s like the pelvis kind of does the same thing. It kind of goes tightens and Yeah. Yeah, man, there’s a lot in that pelvis, but I know too, the more freeze that I lift, the more activation. I realize I’m men and I always think like, oh, I’m almost through with this, and then it’s like another layers under there. I’m like, shit. Oh dude. Now it’s like this other thing. What I noticed is I got through the major parts of my jaw stuff, but now it’s really deep in there. There’s these little areas of whatever tension that are inside, deep inside that I can feel, and as I’ve been exploring my tinnitus, which is a lingering symptom that I have, I realize how deep that tension goes. I soften it and open it. That’s what gets really cool about this work is how deep in your body you can get.

Speaker 3 (00:38:41):
Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:38:43):
Right. You’re like, oh my God, these parts didn’t even know were there. Yeah, tension.

Speaker 1 (00:38:50):
The little tensions you can Well, I was playing with the brain stem where you relax the muscles around the eyes.

Speaker 3 (00:38:57):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:38:57):
But then I’m like, well, what about can I found this in Chatt? He’s like, well, what about the I think orbital socket or you go behind the eye, can I relax inside? And that’s a more subtle,

Speaker 2 (00:39:09):
You’re in your brain basically. You’re in your brand,

Speaker 1 (00:39:13):
And if I’m really quiet and paying attention, I’m like, oh my God, it takes a focus, but I can, and then of course in that space things, it seems like that’s the game now is all that relaxes. That’s what then creates space for things to stuff comes up, energy that then shows up in my dreams usually

Speaker 2 (00:39:31):
Second that it opens and softens the thing that was keeping it clenched down for so long comes up or out, hopefully.

Speaker 1 (00:39:42):
Yeah, it seems like a little, if you had a pipe or something, it’s a pressure valve. It lets a little bit out and then I guess when it feels like it’s too much, just, I dunno. I wonder what it’d be like to get, can you really get to a point where it’s just all 80% of the time, maybe you’re in stressed out, cool, but you could just sit down and it just all, and it stays that way without effort. I’m like,

Speaker 2 (00:40:04):
Or can it be like that? Even when you’re not sitting down just walking around, can you be,

Speaker 1 (00:40:11):
Yeah. How deep can you take it? Right. It’s fucking exciting. How relaxed can you be? That’s why

Speaker 2 (00:40:15):
I want to go into Peter Levine’s body for a day and see what it feels like. He would be the one that I would say is pretty close. He’s been doing this work since the seventies, created

Speaker 3 (00:40:29):
It

Speaker 2 (00:40:30):
Mostly. So yeah, I’m like, what is it like to be in your body?

Speaker 1 (00:40:35):
I mean, one, what I imagine, I don’t know if this is it, but what I imagine it might be like this is two ayahuasca times. I’ve had ayahuasca where it’s like I’ve had experiences with psychedelics where I’m out of my body. It’s bliss, but I’m in, I dunno, some other dimension. That’s incredible. But is it incredible? Well, it has been for me. Some people, it’s terrifying when I’ve been there within those spaces, I’m like, this is fantastic.

Speaker 2 (00:41:05):
Interesting. Yeah, I think it’d be terrifying personally. I can fly around, but I don’t leave the planet.

Speaker 1 (00:41:14):
Yeah, I guess it depends. Yeah, it depends on the person,

(00:41:19):
But this feeling that I’ve had a couple of times is where I describe it. It’s like on a curtain blowing gently in the breeze. My body is so soft. There is no tension anywhere, not in a frozen shutdown, collapsed, disassociated state, but I’m still fully here. I could have a conversation with you. I’m so present, and yet the body feels like it could just blow away in the breeze. And I’ve felt it standing up too. One time I was lying down one time standing up. I’m like, and I’ve thought about it so many times since it hasn’t happened in years now. I’m like, is this just a nice thing that the plants are doing during a ceremony or is this a clue of like, Hey, this is possible for a human being. And obviously it’s like you don’t have to resolve everything to get to that. There’s plenty of stuff still unresolved at that point. But that feeling I’m like, is that, and I asked another friend here, I don’t know, I can’t get into his body, but one of the other guys I work with here, I told him about that feeling. He was like, oh yeah, I do that all the time. I just go stand in the wind and I just, oh

Speaker 2 (00:42:22):
Yeah, I remember you saying that.

Speaker 1 (00:42:23):
Right. And so it sounds like something

Speaker 2 (00:42:27):
Stand in the wind might, do you think that’s really interesting? Because when I experience a blissful state, my body feels heavy, my body doesn’t feel light, I feel more dense. I feel my body more like what I was saying, that embodiment piece. So when I would experience feeling light or not feeling my body, I would think that that would be more disembodied, more out of your body. So it’s an interesting thing to ponder.

Speaker 1 (00:43:04):
Well, this feels, I’m still in the, I can feel the body, the body’s there, the sensation’s there. It’s a very,

Speaker 2 (00:43:16):
What is the lightness? Is it just emotionally light?

Speaker 1 (00:43:20):
Imagine my body feels solid and not stiff, but it feels solid. My arm is just there. It’s not moving. Whereas the sensation in that moment was, imagine a curtain just swaying in the breeze.

Speaker 3 (00:43:34):
So instead

Speaker 1 (00:43:34):
Of my body feels like it’s barely solid, so it’s still there,

Speaker 2 (00:43:41):
But it’s just soft,

Speaker 1 (00:43:43):
So soft throughout the

Speaker 2 (00:43:44):
It. You’re in it

Speaker 1 (00:43:46):
And the feeling was like, I dunno if you’ve had this with some of the things you’ve been into, but I’ve had moments where I’m like, oh, this feels like, is this what I’ve been searching for just to feel this?

Speaker 2 (00:43:57):
Right? Is that the goal?

Speaker 1 (00:43:59):
I don’t know. That’s why, I dunno, I question maybe not. Maybe it’s just another trip, but part of me holds out hope. Like man, if even a fraction of that is possible, what you could just do that for a little bit each day and not all the time. It might be that you do it for 20 minutes, you’re like, oh, I’m good now. I got what I needed out of that. But it feels so dramatic to me because generally there’s a constant tension and harm in my system. So maybe it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just the contrast between where I usually live that’s making it feel like this big crazy thing. And I’m like, is this what a healthy person feels? We’re back on that topic. Is this what a healthy person just taps into? That’s just what it means to feel relaxed.

Speaker 2 (00:44:46):
I mean, what I would wonder and see if you could do, so, you’ve only reached that state twice and both times you were on ayahuasca. Okay, so my curiosity goes to can you be in that state and really be in the environment, in the present moment, engaged with a person. To me to be all of those things, you have to be sober to really be connected in. So that would be where I would go with that. Can consciousness, can our human consciousness hold both things? Can we hold the lightness of just no tension in the body but still remain connected

Speaker 1 (00:45:34):
Here? That feels like the pelvic floor thing and the muscles and the eye. You mentioned the jaw, all of that. What gradually working through that is that that feels like it’s going in that direction. I don’t know what’s possible if we’re having a conversation, but I mean maybe if that, it seems like at some point think it’s possible. Me too. I like to think it is.

Speaker 2 (00:45:55):
I dunno. Yeah, I think it’s possible, but I think that I feel like it’s clouded because of the ayahuasca. So the experience that we would have not on ayahuasca and feeling that lightness wouldn’t be exactly the same. If you’re still connected here and you’re connected with each other and you’re connected to your body, I don’t know that it’s going to feel that light. I think you’re going to feel the ground more. Like I was saying, there’s still going to be more of that heaviness, but then the tension is gone. So that’s kind of a mind puzzler for me to be able to hold that of no tension where you feel so soft that you could just blow in the wind, but also simultaneously feeling the density of your body, feeling the connection of the earth, feeling the connection with whoever you’re with. That to me sounds, that’s almost like a juxtaposition in a way. It’s almost opposites. I do think it’s possible

Speaker 1 (00:47:03):
To be soft and here at the same time connected with someone, right?

Speaker 2 (00:47:08):
Yeah. Because I’ve been getting really into the relational stuff, as you probably remember, maybe from Whistler. But what I realize when I’m, for me personally, not everybody’s like this, but when I’m with other people, that’s when the tension comes in more and that’s when the chafe chitting or the fawn or the functional freezy stuff or the flight pattern have a big flight pattern. And actually as you were talking, I was thinking back on the dissociation, it’s not just high tone. There’s a flight energy in there too, of leaving, right? It’s like combo. But yeah, I think I lost my train of thought. What was I saying?

Speaker 1 (00:48:00):
Well, I don’t know what you were going to say.

Speaker 2 (00:48:02):
Well, anyway, I think that just the combination though, back to what we were saying of being here, being embodied, being able to feel everything, oh, the relational stuff was what I was talking about. Being able to be with a person and be fully authentic. I mean, to me that is so deep, that deep. I almost can’t fathom what that experience is going to be like. I hope it’s this mix of feeling yourself, feeling your connection, and also simultaneously the absence of tension.

(00:48:43):
That’s what we’re talking about. Yeah. Is that the goal? Is that what regulation feels like? To me? Again, I can’t fathom what that’s like because I still think I’m pretty far from it, especially because now I feel so much more so in this healing process. When that freeze lifts and we start to feel more, that’s like a whole big deep layer of like we were saying, then you feel deeper and deeper, and then you notice the subtleties of the ways that you shift when you’re relating to different people or the ways you shift when you go somewhere. And is there a point with which literally there’s no shifting happening. We are just who we are, and then how can we be that authentic in this world that we’re living in? For a lot of us, we’re kind split between two worlds. Like I was saying, I have to shift a little bit when I go to my kid’s school or when I’m with my kid’s dad or relating with somebody who doesn’t fully align with all my belief systems. And so I am really curious as to how deep we really get in this human body with this stuff.

(00:50:02):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (00:50:04):
My buddy Chase here in the valley, he talks about, you knows, we talked about jujitsu, I think at Whistler once, maybe the first time. So Hickson Gracie, have you heard of him?

Speaker 2 (00:50:16):
No, it sounds familiar. Hickson Gracie.

Speaker 1 (00:50:19):
Yeah. Some people would say he is the best fighter who ever lived, or at least in the modern day. He’s a jujitsu guy. And to his family, the Graces, they pioneered a lot of the Juujitsu stuff in Brazil. So anyway, chase reckons, my buddy Chase has talked about, he’s met this guy Hixson, and one of only two people. There’s one other guy he mentioned, and he only met this other guy recently, but this guy, Hickson was one of the only guys that he’s ever met where he walks into the room and he can feel this guy. The truth, the way he described it was like the truth embodied, which that was his word for what you’re talking about, that whether it comes from above or inside, whatever, there’s the authentic impulse and then all of us, it gets kinked because of these tensions and what we go through. And then we have the personality and it’s like then we spend the rest of our life, I guess, trying toink it. So we, there is no hesitation, no gap, no, we just are ourselves all the time. And so the way he described this guy, Hickson was like, that’s where he is at. He’s like, you can feel it. You can feel his presence in room. I was like, that sounds fantastic.

Speaker 2 (00:51:25):
I know, right? I mean, I have to say I follow a couple of Instagram accounts and obviously starting the sentence that feels like it shouldn’t even be true, but there are a few people that I follow that when I hear them speak, they have these posts where they’re just speaking to somebody. They’re not necessarily speaking to the camera. It doesn’t feel performative when I watch it, but I’m like, whoa, this person is present. I mean, it is just so felt when you’re experiencing what, obviously I haven’t met some of these people in person, so I can’t say that that’s how it is for sure all the time, but there is definitely a presence that is, it’s pretty remarkable. I kind of felt that way. I went to go speak a went to go speak. I saw I didn’t speak. I saw Eckhart toe. Do you know who he is? Yeah, yeah, I’m familiar. I dunno. Years ago I went to hear him speak here and he had that, but he almost had a bit of an otherworldly energy. I was like, this feels like an alien. I was like, he is from another planet. That’s the sense I got. But just so next level presence, and he was speaking to an auditor. Sorry, have I gotten too weird for your podcast?

Speaker 1 (00:53:00):
This is great. I love weird. I’m all about the weird,

Speaker 2 (00:53:02):
Okay, cool. Yeah, his presence though was really, it was so fascinating. You’re just kind of in awe when you watch Wow, speaking to auditorium full of people and just unfazed, just present. Still slow there. Yeah, we’re on our way. John

Speaker 1 (00:53:32):
Bit by bit. It’s all relative. I have people when the irony is right now, I’m like, I have days. I’m like, man, I feel like I’m more present than I’ve ever been. And yet the stuff that keeps coming up, I guess is some of the darkest shit I’ve ever had to work through, which I, one the sense I’m like, it makes so much sense. I’m like, oh, of course. Because there’s so much space. The system’s like, oh, John’s ready for this. Let’s give it to him in another way. I’m like, how? This is ridiculous. How can I be so incredibly here, more here than I’ve ever been, and yet just have, it’s just an odd, it makes so much sense on the one hand, and yet it’s also strange to experience it to be going as your presence or as that increases, creating the capacity or the space for

Speaker 2 (00:54:21):
Things

Speaker 1 (00:54:22):
To come up.

Speaker 2 (00:54:26):
Those things always come up when you notice that presence, because that would be pretty interesting to track. You’ve just expanded and like you said, you’ve grown capacity and then boom, something comes else, comes up,

Speaker 1 (00:54:42):
It ebbs and flows a little bit. If I’m tired, grumpy, haven’t slept well, stressed out, it’s much louder. It gets my attention a lot easier. But if I’ve had a good sleep, I’ve had some exercise, had some good food, I’m relaxed. I have good days too, where it’s just not as loud. It’s still there if I really pay attention, but it’s a bit more in the background. So it goes from the background to the bit more in my face where it’s like I’m trying to talk to someone. It’s like, I’m like,

Speaker 2 (00:55:14):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:55:16):
Man,

Speaker 2 (00:55:16):
Totally

Speaker 1 (00:55:17):
Look later.

Speaker 2 (00:55:18):
I know I have the same experiences. I also noticed there’s just a huge shift for me when I’m with my kids and when I’m not here.

(00:55:30):
I was telling my friend today, man, my capacity just goes whoop right back down when they’re not here. I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m doing it. I’m happy and healthy and I’m living this amazing life, and everything feels so good, and I feel like I have space and I still have things come up or I’m working through things or whatever. I’m having my sessions usually when they’re not here. So I’m still working through big things, but just I feel so much more capacity. And then they come and obviously I love being with them and they add a whole nother layer to my healing and it’s very powerful. But my capacity just shifts. Everything shifts my whole being shifts because all of a sudden it’s like, and this is true, even when they’re not physically with me, but it’s like I’m not the most important person for me anymore. It’s like these little humans I’m responsible for. So I really notice a lot now this shift. And even again with the relational stuff when I’m with, like you mentioned when you’re talking to somebody, so I always, my kids, this could be anybody else, I’m just like, oh, am I shifting right now? Who am I with? Who is it that I can be with that I don’t shift or that I shift way less? And that’s been an interesting observation for me too recently.

Speaker 1 (00:57:04):
Who can you be just yourself around? Is that what you mean? Myself?

Speaker 2 (00:57:08):
Yeah. There’s only a few people. There’s only two, really two of my close girlfriends.

Speaker 1 (00:57:15):
What do you mean by that? What does it mean to you to be yourself?

Speaker 2 (00:57:20):
I can still feel my body

(00:57:23):
In conversation. I have access to my feet, my body, my breath. And I would say the biggest thing is I can express how I feel about something. Even if I know they might not agree, we can have a hard conversation where I can reflect and say exactly how I feel about something, and there’s not that lingering in the back of my energy or psyche. The fear of abandonment or the fear of rejection or the fear of being canceled or I would say that’s kind of the biggest thing. One of my girlfriends, she’s going to start helping me out with work stuff, and she was like, well, I have some trepidation about this. And I was like, what is it? She goes, well, I find it hard sometimes to set boundaries with you. And I was like, oh, that’s really interesting. Will you come over and let’s have a talk about this?

(00:58:41):
I want to talk about this. This is the first time I’ve ever really had such a healthy conversation with someone I love dearly. I mean, this person is my sister. So sometimes I think in the past, someone that close to me, I would fawn maybe more because the fear of leaving them is so great or them leaving me is so the impact of that would be so significant for me, but I was really confident like, oh, this is something we can work through. I felt really confident in that. So she came over here and we talked about it, and I noticed in my own very consciously, I was like, okay, look out the window. Oh, I noticed an uptick a little bit in my heartbeat, and can I still feel my body? Ah, look out a little bit? I needed to resource myself kind of farther away outside the window as she was talking. Not in any kind of disrespectful way. I don’t even think she noticed it, but it was something that I was like, oh, bring yourself, everything’s cool. And then I came back to her in the conversation. Anyway, we talked about it in such a great way, and she was able to be authentic, I think, in her concerns. And then I was able to address those things and hear what she was saying.

(01:00:07):
And then we worked through it and I was like, wow, that felt safe. That to me felt like what a relational experience is supposed to feel like when there’s safety in your own body, in your own way, that you’re showing up and there’s safety in the relationship because me and this person have the foundation and she does her own work too, so she, she’s coming with substance as well. And then I compare that to, I know he’ll never listen to this. I guess it’s okay that I say it, but my kid’s father, where it’s always heated and it always seems to be where there’s not a resolution and I’m always trying to get to some sort of resolution. So it’s important to me, but doesn’t really seem important to him.

(01:01:00):
And that’s always like, whoa, what are the ways that I’m shifting? What are the ways that I’m maybe leaving a hundred percent authenticity to please him or to keep him in this? And that’s a really unique situation. Again, this is a person that’s going to have to be in my life forever and for the sake of my kids and their emotional wellbeing, it’s better if we’re on good terms. And so how do I shapeshift to make that happen even when the other person isn’t doing that or doesn’t seem to care about that as much as I do, and he couldn’t care about it as much as me. He doesn’t understand the importance for them as much as I understand it. So yeah, so how I show up in those two different scenarios, I mean, it really is quite different. And also I’m really proud of myself for being able to still show up in conversation with my ex and handle myself and not lose my shit and all these things, but it’s, to be able to have at least an example of what it should look like is really nice. I don’t think I ever had that before. Really?

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
What’s the point of this? I’m just thinking, I get it. I’ve had enough experience with this where I’m like, this to me is the game. The point of life is to be more ourselves and just whatever happens out of that. But for someone listening, I just imagine some people, if they’re really skeptical, they’re like, yeah, but I don’t get it. What’s the problem? Maybe you have to be a little bit different when you’re around your ex big deal. What’s so important or great about this being yourself thing?

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
I think

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
There’s so many different ways I can answer this, I feel like, but when we talk about just from a physiological standpoint, when we shift outside of ourselves, there’s a tension. There’s a, you’re pulling energy. It’s not a direct line. The most authentic we can be is the most direct way to relate to someone else and the world around us. When we shift out of that and we have to go into another performance or almost another part of ourselves to be able to show up in that conversation that is pulling our resources, it’s pulling our energy, it’s kind of draining us. So there’s some depletion, but we’re also overriding how we really feel. And so that is part of that high tone stuff. It’s part of that freezy energy of just not, there’s a veil still because we’re not able to show up as ourselves. So there’s this veil, and I think mean if you want to get to the universal point, I mean the more collective point, I think we want unity.

(01:04:20):
We want some sort of collective coherence. We’re all co-creating this existence together, this world, no matter how much we want to say, I don’t have anything to do with the wars that are happening in other countries. We all have a role. We all have a responsibility. So I think in the really broad sense of the question, why does this matter? I think it matters because there is a potential for us to truly be in harmony with one another. It feels really far away because we’re all obviously so different and seems like we experience different upbringings and all these things, but when you get down to the nuggets, it’s pretty much the same. We’re all experienced some sort of trauma, some sort of adversity, some sort of separation from ourself. I think the only way that we can come back to each other is to come back to ourselves. And once we come back to ourselves, vent fully, wholly, then we can bridge the gap between us and everybody else and us and each other. That answer?

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Pretty much. It may have brought more questions for other people. They might have more questions from that. But yeah,

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
I’ve thought about this a lot recently where it’s like, if I am, like what you said, if I’m disconnected or if I’m divided, maybe that’s a better way to put it. If I’m divided against myself, there’s one part of me that I like, another part that I dislike. These different parts are, I don’t even like the word part. It can make it seem like we’re fragmented. We’re really one whole self, but there can be a sense of division, whether it’s like the mind divided from the body or different aspects of the body fighting against each other, whatever it is. I feel like the outside, this is pretty meta almost. I don’t think this is too woo, but as long as there’s division in here, it’ll keep expressing itself. It’s the outside. It’s just a reflection of this inside. Until we heal this division in here in ourselves, we’re not going to be able to find it out there. So all these people trying to fix the world, it’s like, have you done your own work yet? That’s where it starts.

Speaker 2 (01:06:49):
Exactly. And when we are in the presence of somebody who has done their own work, like this dude Hixson you were talking about, it makes us really understand how important it is. Because when we are in the presence of regulation or whatever you want to say it, somebody who has that real sense of wholeness us, it becomes something that’s like when a person has reached that potential, then everyone kind of gravitates to him. It pulls people in. And when we see that that’s possible, obviously then we want it for ourselves. That’s what makes it grow is when we see these people like, whoa. Or maybe people see me and they’re like, oh, wow, you healed from lupus. I didn’t even know that was possible. So it shows up in all these little ways, but we start to see the potential in ourselves in each other as well.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
I mean, it sounds like the interesting thing here is being yourself is kind of put forward as this. It’s this nice idea, be yourself, whatever. But I feel like we’re dancing around it a bit where it’s like being yourself. You mentioned how it chews up so much energy if you’re not yourself. So much constriction, tension, holding, all of that chews up energy. That energy is no longer available for more critical functions in the body, rest and repair and all of that. Exactly. So now we’re saying the less you are yourself, the more likely you are to get sick. Whether it’s a mental thing, hundred

Speaker 3 (01:08:27):
Percent

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Or a physical lupus, it’s like, could be like OCD or lupus. It’s going to fight. Something’s going to break if you are chewing up all that energy being someone else.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I do think it’s a fragmentation, actually. I really do. It just pulls us away from that wind. Yeah, right. And I think, I don’t know. I really think it’s interesting people who just don’t really care about it so much. It’s like these people might be blessed that they never had to deal with anything chronic. But then I do think it’s even more interesting when I get down at, oh, I don’t really deal with anything chronic. Oh, really? Do you sleep well? Oh, you’ve never experienced anxiety. It’s like, oh, oh yeah, I take Ambien to sleep every night. Or, oh, yeah, I have anxiety. I’m like, well, that’s chronic symptoms. What do you mean?

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
It’s normal though, I guess so many people have something like that, right?

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Yeah. I think some people are just waking up to the fact that you don’t have to live this way. You actually have a choice. You don’t have to live this way. And for some people, that’s enough. For some people, maybe it’s not. It’s hard work. I mean, it really takes a willingness to look at your own shit, and some people really don’t care to do that. I just wonder if those people are going to last on the planet and what’s happening right now. I do think there’s a really big shift in consciousness happening.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
Let’s bring it back to a DD, radi, HD you said you had as far as a more specific thing that shifted, how did that change or how do you understand A-D-D-A-D-H-D now, and how has that changed as a result of doing all of this work?

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
All this work? I noticed the ways in which I get distracted way more so I can stay focused on things better. So it’s helped to heal it. And also there are ways that I might function or do things that I’m also kind of like, it’s cool. I’m not going to beat myself up about the fact that I may get distracted with my phone when I’m, whatever it is. The way that it’s changed the most significantly now as opposed to when I was growing up, or even in my twenties and thirties, is I can stay focused in, I can be work every day, and I do something now, obviously in this work that I love, that I want to do every day and I’m passionate about. So I think even choosing and getting out of the beauty industry and into something more aligned is representative of this work and healing parts of the A DD, and dropping the medication that helped me grind and function outside of what my biology even wanted me to do.

(01:11:46):
So yeah, becoming more aligned with my mission with what I’m doing here. And then as a result of being more aligned, having more presence, having more focus, and being able to show up every day for my clients, for my kids, consistently. Before, man, I couldn’t do anything consistently. It was like one day I would be laid out on the couch. The next day I would be so scattered and fight flight and trying to do all the things. I don’t know when I’m going to have energy again, and then laid out on the couch again. And then so scattered in conversation, and even in my posts, it’s interesting, in my writing, I stay on topic more than I used to. I remember being, when I first started, my Instagram account still in my writing kind of veering off from what the point was a lot. So little things like that have really shifted. And that’s not to say that sometimes I don’t sit down to write something and then I reflect back and I read the beginning. I’m like, oh, I didn’t complete that topic or that point that I wanted to make. So there’s still things, it’s not perfect, but man, I used to not even be able to just be consistent in how I function day to day at all.

(01:13:17):
Yeah, take care of my household things, keep a clean kitchen, all those different things. It was just so hot and cold, so gas and break, so much gas and break, and now it’s just little gas, little break, right? It’s like this. So everything feels more balanced. I mean, I think a DD is just a term. They be put for dysregulation, and I find these labels and these diagnosees so interesting because it’s really just the same thing, which is like you’re dysregulated. You’re in survival, stress patterns. You’re functioning this way because you’re trying to survive. You’re not in any kind of place where you can actually thrive. And that’s where when we see those autoimmune conditions, it’s when gas and brake is on too much. And so that’s why we often see autoimmune with a D, D or multiple autoimmune diseases or autoimmune with OCD or some of these behavioral things because it’s going to show up in the psyche.

(01:14:31):
I mean, it’s going to show up if it’s showing up in the body, it’s showing up somewhere emotionally, somewhere in the psyche. And I think, so one behavioral pattern gives them, oh, it’s this. But honestly, I could have been diagnosed with borderline. I could have been diagnosed with bipolar. I was certainly diagnosed with insomnia. I mean, at one point I just stopped going to, so I was just like, I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere. But had I continued on that path, I think I would’ve could have had a plethora of different diagnosis. And again, when I see people, or now that I have some experience with complex PTSD, I’m like, oh my God, this person reminds me of me. But it’s interesting because there was certain days, just like you were saying, certain days that OCD is really hot, and then some days it’s just, or you might have a phase where you don’t notice it at all.

(01:15:31):
It was like that too with these a DD type things or some of these different behavioral patterns, whereas there’s chunks of time where it was just really so significant and high. When I look back on those periods, it’s like there’s a big hormone change or there’s a big stressor or something else was happening in my life, and I could see those peaks and valleys a little clearer now. But yeah, I mean, I think that I don’t get too caught up in the labels and stuff. I mean, I think if somebody comes to me and they say, oh, I’m a DD, there is a certain behavior, a certain look, a certain thing I might notice that’s maybe consistent, but it’s just dysregulation. At the end of the day. It’s a way for them to be able to diagnose and prescribe.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
That’s what all these things are. That’s what I heard to describe. You’ve got your DSM five, whatever the manual is that they use for insurance purposes. So they have to call it something

Speaker 3 (01:16:45):
To

Speaker 1 (01:16:45):
Be like, you’ve got a d, d now, we’ll give you this thing, and now the insurance, blah, blah, blah. It’s not really about this is how we help people,

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Right? No, and a D, D and bipolar are very similar. All the people that I know that have bipolar also have been diagnosed with a D, D. And it makes sense because again, the gas and brake is on, it’s showing up emotionally in the psyche, maybe more so than the physical body, but eventually a lot of those people end up with autoimmune, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, dah, dah, dah, all the things. And it’s just, yeah, I don’t know how they do those diagnoses, but some of the holistic psychologists that I know, some of the people who have stepped out of the allopathic world in terms of psychology, I don’t know if you call it allopathic psychology or if allopath just refers to medicine.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
I know what you mean. The traditional,

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
You know what I mean? The traditional psychology path, conventional psychology path, it’s even more, it’s just as corrupt. Even more just crazy than allopathy, just with the diagnosis and the prescriptions is wild. And then at the same time, I’m like, if somebody needs a medicine to help them on their path, it’s okay. Obviously, that’s not the end goal for a lot of people now, which I think is good. Those medicines, they don’t heal anything, obviously, and then end up with a whole nother thing of symptoms that then they have to diagnose and treat again. It’s wild how many pills people can take with all the different stuff, but

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Yeah, right. They fix one symptom. They’re not dealing with the underlying issue, the dysregulation, the survival physiology. They’re just like, let’s just mask this symptom with a stimulant. And then it’s like, well, eventually there’s going to be another one. You haven’t dealt with the shit that’s causing this. So eventually that’s going to express a different way,

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Which

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
Is like, because that’s the autoimmune you’re talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
Well, yeah. I mean, if we go psychology, it’s like, well, I’m going to give the Adderall or the Ritalin or the whatever, Vyvanse, whatever the new medications are for them, that now, but then you have an insomnia because you’re jacked up on stimulants, so then you need a sleeping pill, and then all of a sudden, my mood feels really unstable, and I’m having periods where, oh, so then you need an antidepressant, right? I mean, it’s just like, this is literally what happens. And then, oh, well, my joints hurt and oh, go to a rheumatologist. Now all of a sudden, oh, you need steroids. You need this, you need that. Oh, you have rheumatoid arthritis, or you have fibromyalgia or you have lupus, and I mean, they all just run together. I mean, I remember a doctor telling me like, oh, autoimmune begets autoimmune, and I was like, well, that sucks.

(01:19:35):
So I’ve been just been diagnosed with lupus, and now I might also have rheumatoid arthritis, and I might also have celiac, and I might also have IBS and I. It was like I probably did have all of those things at some point, and I remember thinking like, oh my God, this is terrifying. What if I end up with MS or can’t walk? And then that’s really, I think what keeps people stuck too is there’s, there’s no answer, and then there’s no end to all the diagnosis and all of the labels and all of the medications. I don’t honestly know how some of these doctors sleep at night. Maybe they’re taking medicine

Speaker 1 (01:20:19):
Possibly, maybe they don’t even know that’s what they’ve got. They’re not even aware that there’s a different option. They’re like, well, I don’t know what else to do. I can give you this pill. And that’s what I’ve been trained to do. I don’t know. Sometimes, I guess it depends how much of a conspiracy theory mood I’m in, but I generally think people, they’re just not aware. They’re not thinking in that way. They haven’t been exposed to

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
It. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. At some point though, I think there was a question of like, well, is this the right thing? I don’t know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:46):
I’m sure some people are aware of it. I’m sure some know exactly what they’re doing and they don’t give a fuck. They’re like, well, I’m making money here.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
Exactly. I just don’t think that’s the, not I’m going to be, they’re take my license away or whatever, but start to say, I don’t agree with this or that. I mean, I think that psychiatrists, I should say psychiatrists, the ones that diagnose or prescribe medications, psychiatrists, I think they have to prescribe a certain amount of medications if they’re not prescribing medications. Yeah, I think they have to.

Speaker 3 (01:21:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
Anyway. Yeah. But I think you’re right. I mean, I think some people are just completely unaware and they’re like, oh, well, the symptoms are going away, so they’re getting better. And it just sucks because there’s no way that this person can heal. And they might just believe that. I mean, I have to say, I did see some pretty decent doctors. Most of the doctors that I saw were okay with me doing my holistic stuff, and they were a little bit more open-minded, and they definitely, definitely were in it to help people. So I know that that is true as well.

Speaker 3 (01:22:06):
Good stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Yeah, really good stuff. Wow. We branched off into a lot of different areas. We could just

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
Keep going. I feel like we could talk for another three hours.

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):
I know. I feel like we could too,

Speaker 1 (01:22:15):
But maybe we’ll make it, we can just save it up for next time we talk about the lupus or there’s so many different directions we could go, but

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
I know there is.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
I’m going to wrap it up, so if people want to learn more about you,

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
They want

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
To check you out. Where’s the best place?

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
So you can find me on Instagram at Somatic Intuitive, and my website is seldon integrative healing.com. And yeah, maybe you’ll provide the link in the show notes, but

Speaker 1 (01:22:45):
It’ll be in the show notes at Rage Heart. It’s like Braveheart Rage.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
I like that. I like that a lot. When I saw that, I was like, oh, right on. That’s good.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
Or you can just press your iPhones backwards 32nd button and just listen to it again. That’s probably a bit easier.

Speaker 3 (01:23:01):
Either or.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
We could do that. This is Seldon Baloney, John Wood from Ray Chart, and thanks for listening. Thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:23:11):
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.