EPISODE #1017: How to Reclaim Feminine Divine Power – Kelly Brogan, M.D

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Today's episode is with a second time guest on the show whose name is Dr. Kelly Brogan. Kelly came on episode 635 and we talked about depression and how that works. She's a holistic women's health psychiatrist and really thinks very differently about depression, depression than you might think. She's board certified in psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine and integrative holistic medicine. And it's a very, very interesting character. So we could talk about depression, but that would be boring. Kelly, what do you think we should talk about today?

Let's see. Pole dancing.

All right. If you're not following Kelly on Instagram or on social media, was it Kelly Brogan or Kelly Dot Brogan or what do you go by?

Oh, my handle. It's Kelly BroganMD.

Yeah, Kelly Brogan MD. I knew there was something on there. You've been stirring up a lot of shit lately.

That's what I do.

Let's talk about the masculine and the feminine. What do you think?

Yeah, well, I. I got to the point where I recognized that it was not going to come from the outside in through relationships. And after I ended my second marriage, I got down to the business of healing that inner polarity. And it took me to some pretty interesting places. Not like I am healed. It's a journey. It's unending, probably, but yeah. So I've become really interested in polarity dynamics. And you can call it whatever you want, yin yang, dom, sub penetrative, receptive. But it's these. The ways in which we imagine there are irreconcilable forces that come together in complementarity to create something larger than the parts.

I make it a practice when something doesn't work out the way that I expect to just go in and say, all right, how do we deconstruct it? How do we figure this out? It sounds like you went through something similar. That's good. You're a psychiatrist. I would hope that you would do that. What did you believe about polarity.

Before.

You went through this recent upgrade? And you've been very upfront on this on Instagram about this, but what was your position on the masculine and the feminine before you had this recent change?

I think it was more about the role that a man would play in my life. Right. Like I imagined that it was a partner's job to make me feel safe. And there are all sorts of, you know, polarity teachings out there that would validate that and support that perspective and So I found all of those. I said, you see, it's your job. And of course, when we don't have that inner safety cultivated, we choose partners by virtue of the fact that we're not safe with ourselves. Our compass is sort of, you know, askew, if you will. And we end up choosing partners who are going to invite us into the process of finding that safety within. So, you know, after. After my breakup, I began the process of. I mean, it's like the worst news, right? All we want to hear as women is that there are good men out there who are going to show up fully baked and they're going to know exactly how to hold space and be that strong, confident, unflappable presence. And the uncomfortable, inconvenient, and frankly, annoying truth is that until and if that inner masculine is cultivated and matured is the language I like, there's no way I could even discern who that is. And all I would ever choose is a trauma, bond, relationship. Like, all I would ever choose is the familiar field of my abusive upbringing, so to speak. And so the process of coming into, honestly, the very mundane, small ways that I can access safety in my nervous system, in my body, on a daily basis. And whether it's literally as I'm talking to you, being just a little bit aware of the air coming in my nostrils, my back against the chair, my foot on the ground, and just taking like a quick glance once in a while around the room to orient to the here and now. I mean, these simple practices are the bedrock of what I have come to really explore as my responsibility to offer myself. The container is the word I like to use for every single experience I choose to enter into. And you know, I think, okay, well, would my man, right, this fictitious man, like, would he put me in this situation? Like, would he send me to dinner with that person? Would he set me up with this interview with you? And so I'm always living through self husbandry, right? Like, so I'm like becoming in many ways the husband to myself that I would like because I'm assessing conditions, I'm seeing if my needs can be met, right? So a phrase that I like to use is buying eggs from the hardware store. That was like the big epiphany, you know, for me was to. To. To see, wow. All of human suffering stems from the intention to source the impossible from a place, you know, that is not offering it. Whether that's health from the allopathic medical system, you know, whether it, right, Whether it's, you know, the meeting of Basic emotional needs from a partner who is not wired to deliver on that promise, right? But we do this, we get in these kinks where we just want it to be different. And, you know, in the past couple of years, so many in the activism community have been like, stomping their feet, like, insisting, you know, that the government be different, that systems be different, when, of course, that is needing something outside of yourself to change so that you can feel okay, so that you can feel safe.

We all know that complaining always changes other people's behavior. Right?

Right, exactly. But it's, it's addictive, right? You get into this habit of victim consciousness, and then you, you collect people around you who fetishize it with you, right? So you're colluding constantly recruiting that support against the enemy. And, and it becomes this like, obsessive, erotic caress of the enemy where you're so fixated on that which you say you hate, needing it to do different, needing it to change. And this becomes really the dynamic in so many dysfunctional relationships where you stay and you stay and you say, when the evidence was probably there from week two, that your basic needs were, you know, there was a conflict around your basic needs, and that's called incompatibility. And of course, we, we are attracted in polarity to these incompatible folks for very complex, you know, psychospiritual reasons. Um, and I believe that we get to a point in life where we can choose with sober eyes, you know, or we can choose and say, okay, you know, what you have to offer is what I need, and vice versa, and let's just experience and enjoy each other. I don't know. I'll let you know when I have, I have some experience in that realm.

We, we have this idea in the west that if you feel romantic attraction and you feel passion and desire for someone, that means they're a good partner. And if you go, say, to India or somewhere, it's like, actually a good partner is someone whose family is aligned to come from a good family. They have the right aspects. And then people who know you better than yourself, they match it up and they're like, hey, there you go. There's an arranged marriage. How would you go about teaching a Western young adult who's looking at these longer term relationships, whether it's, you know, a marriage or just, you know, cohabitating, whatever you want to call it, how do they sort out the drunken passion where, oh my God, this is the best thing ever from a good partner? Because we were all taught if the passion is how you judge how you pick a partner, but it's not. How do you as a psychiatrist tell young people whether they're men or women? It may be different. How do you tell them? Here's how to know if it's compatible versus if it just looks really juicy, right?

So I really like the Imago framework, which basically speaks to the fact that we are attracted specifically to partners who hold positive and negative qualities of our primary caregivers, right? So if I have a dad that's super punctual and a mom who used to beat me, then I might find myself with a partner who's super punctual and slaps me around or whatever. And the more erotic tension that you have with this partner, the better a match you are. And so you become almost foils for one another. And this kind of erotic energy which I have personally experienced, it's like a lightning bolt to your life, the first awareness you have of this person. And I would say if there is any counsel I could give, it's the lightning bolt is, you know, it's a particular path. I don't believe that there's such a thing as mistakes, right? But it's a particular path that is rife with struggle and suffering. And there is no possibility that you can achieve intimacy with that person unless both of you are willing to change, guided by the sensitivities of the partner, right? So, like if I am super, super sensitive to the fact that my, you know, my partner is always flirting with other women around and it just, it just tears my heart, you know, open, then his willingness to honor my sensitivity and to evolve that behavior would mean that he would need to meet the need another way. So he would evolve his own, you know, self integration by meeting my need. Now that willingness to change in that way for another person outside of the realm of appeasement, right. Has to come from a place of seeing like, wow, this is a teacher for me in this lifetime. This person is like a guru and I'm going to use them as a sentinel, you know, for my own evolution. That Imago framework, like there are ways that you, you move through conflict together, like it's the whole thing. I haven't honestly seen it in real life, although I'm sure it exists where people can be incompatible and transform that into very specific maturation. But for the most part, there is, like you said, there is a sober self possession that can accompany the early interactions with somebody so that you can feel literally in your body, you can start to feel the beginnings of those no's Right. So the beginnings of I don't like that, or that didn't work for me. And you can almost, like, keep a list. Right. You can keep your little red flag list so that as you're focused on all of the incredible traits that this person has, you're in what psychologists call the mixed object of, you know, the sort of thought process of holding all of their qualities and perceiving all of their qualities without focusing simply on the ones that fit a narrative of, you know, projection and idealization, but which, of course, on the other end, comes to bite you. And the signs are resentment and disappointment. So when you start to feel resentment and disappointment, it's because you have needs that are not being met, you haven't expressed them, and. Or your partner literally can't meet them. So that, I mean, how many couples do you know, Right. Who live in a realm of disappointment and resentment? Like, as their baseline romantically? It's very common.

It seems like it's more than half.

Yeah.

Is that what you see in your practice?

Yeah. And even life, you know, I. I can count on one hand how many healthy, erotic partnerships I have exposure to on a daily basis.

I definitely know the friends I have who have achieved that because you can see it when they look at each other. Like, it's painfully obvious. Right. And there are a lot of people where there's. There's something that's not right, but they don't know what it is. And I thought that, you know, you've been posting such interesting and differentiated stuff lately. I'm like, we need to catch up on. On this topic. You said a couple things so far that. That caught my interest. You said that. That if there was that strong erotic tension, it. It sounded like you said strong erotic tension means you won't be able to evolve because there's such a strong connection there. Did I hear that wrong?

It's just a symptom. It's a symptom. You know, some. There's like. There's a teacher called Robert Augustus Masters, and he introduced me to a phrase early in my process called the eroticized wound, which is the tendency that many of us have to be attracted to the qualities that have actually, you know, hurt us the most in childhood. Right. So how. How is it that, like, you know, we, you know, I could fall for, like, a very passionate, emotional man because I have very volatile parents. Right. And that. That actually could be, like, hot to me versus, like, a very stoic stayed man who's probably a way better fit for me temperamentally and because of my emotional needs. Like, I wouldn't choose that because I would say, oh, that's boring. Right. So before we have integrated and met these parts that we're projecting onto our partners, we often find boring that which would be a healthy match. And so we are specifically attracted to that which is going to bring to the surface, you know, these. These wounds. And that's why these relationships, you know, save for frank abuse, are extraordinary crucibles for change and evolution. I mean, the ways that I've. Everyone can see it. I have a public platform. And the ways that I've grown in the past and changed in the past eight years have been largely because of the challenges that I experienced in and through, you know, my relationship.

There's this old joke, and I actually met the guy who made it from Boston Consulting Group, and it's called the Crazy Hot Matrix. Do you know the one I'm talking about?

No.

It's a famous trope, but it basically is this four quadrants that says the crazier a partner is, the hotter they are. Right? And it was one about, like, how would you ever find a wife? Because, you know, like, there's no solution to this. Because. And what that is was a management consultant's view of what you just described, which is that, you know, you know that, oh, my God, this is the hottest thing ever, but I know it's probably not good for me, but I'm just gonna have to do it anyway because same reason, like, you had to eat the all of the Ben and Jerry's, and the same reason, like, you followed the other meat operating system things that your body made you do kicking and screaming, but it felt really good.

Right, right.

And so you're saying if that's there, that that might actually be a red flag. Well, then you might want to play with it.

Yeah, exactly. Can you consciously play with it? Because, you know, if you followed. I'm a huge David Data fan and if you work, then you know how he talks about the dark side, right? And how essential it is for men and women to be in contact with what society would call the dark side. Right? So the. The messy, gross, violent, you know, aggressive, predatory, you know, sort of teeth gnashing, hair pulling, you know, fluid spraying, you.

Know, that good heart date I got you. Okay.

Got it.

Right.

And so he says, you know, that if. If the, you know, a woman and a man are not in touch with their respective dark sides, they will seek it elsewhere. They will seek that level of stimulation elsewhere. So, you know, some crazy is a. Is A wonderful alchemical tool, right? Because otherwise, you know, that's why people sit and watch, you know, Fox News and all of the CNN and the ticker tape of, like, all of the horrors you know, that have occurred. Because we have an attraction to this part of ourselves that we don't have an intimate relationship to. So, you know, I call it, you know, wearing your villain crown. And it's a practice that I've gotten into in the past couple of years where, you know, every time somebody criticizes me for something and it hurts, you know, it hurts because there's a part of me that agrees with it, right? So if somebody says, you know, you're a narcissistic, attention seeking slut, not that anyone has ever said that to me.

But if they did, wouldn't that kind of be a little bit sexy? I mean, just a little bit, right?

And can I try it on and see? You know, like, oh, what if I am? Like, what if. What if they're right? Right? Because then I'll meet the part of me that agrees with them. And it may be that I try something on and it, like, just doesn't do anything. It doesn't matter here or there. And that's probably because there isn't a part of me that's holding that secret belief. So the ways in which I can hold myself when others see me as bad and wrong is how I grow the fortitude to develop intimacy with the parts of myself I would otherwise be ashamed of. The inclinations. I mean, that's what BDSM is, right? The whole kink world is like, attraction to that which is taboo, right? This is like a huge domain of human sexuality to simply acknowledge that there are things we are not supposed to be because we were enculturated around Good Girl and Good Boy, and we hid all of these. And it's different for a lot of us, but there's some archetypal elements. We hid all of these other dimensions that would have garnered rejection or abandonment or punishment. And so how do you bring those out and hold them so you recognize that you're this circus, right? Like, you have all of these different parts. And I will tell you, it's become clear to me that one of the major reasons I went into psychiatry is because I have a huge crazy part of me, right? Like, and the crazy part of me is probably still afraid, you know, that I could lose it and get locked up forever, right? So look at what I did. I created an entire professional, you know, sort of sanction where I never had to interact with that part. Because if I'm on this side of the desk, I'm the not crazy one, right? Obviously, I'm the not crazy one. But how am I actually the crazy one? Right? Afraid of those who are, like, more, you know, potentially wildly expressed. So when you get into this practice, obviously it's called, like, shadow work. You sort of, as you get through the first couple of, like, experiences of it, it becomes kind of, like, funny, you know, like, yeah, oh, yeah, I do that. I do that, too. Yeah, I'm also that, you know, and these. These hidden motives that we have for, you know, why am I even showing up on this podcast to talk to you? Is it to, like, help the people, right? Is it to, like, gain your approval? Is it to, like, grow my career and my, you know, exposure? It's good. It's a good practice for me to have, like, you know, a degree of inquiry into that. Because otherwise.

Do you know the answer?

Yeah, I mean, I think on the surface, right, like, as an activist and as somebody who is, like, very identified with, like, spreading the good word, I have signed up to basically say yes to most people who ask me to speak on their platform just so that I can reach more people. But the truth is that there are some people that I make more time for, and that has to do with their power, right? And so I like to be in the field of people I experience as powerful, whatever that means to me on a given day. And then it's also. There's also a part of me that's like, wow, you still want to talk to me, right? Like, because I have experienced, you know, so much marginalization for many different topics, you know, that I've chosen to express myself on. There are. I mean, I can't even get a book deal anymore. Literally. I was at, like, million dollar advance New York Times bestseller, and I literally cannot get a book deal. So I, you know, I was in my angry bitch activist mode, like, years ago. I probably started 10, 15 years ago and ran my mouth about, you know, the CDC and, you know, pharma and all these things. Publish a book with an exploding pill on the COVID Like, that was very, like, 2014 to, like, let's say 2017. And then I really kind of was, like, bored of that, right? As you. As you get, right? It's like, no daddy, no mommy, stop doing that, right? And everybody kind of got the point. And I published a bunch of papers. And then I thought, wow, this is a fun, you know, what a fun game is to, like, play in Their sandbox. And that's when I started like publishing all these papers. So I published a bunch of case, case studies, a case series, and then I even published an IRB randomized placebo controlled trial on my program, Vital Mind Reset for Depression. And I was like, this is fun. It was like a sport for me, you know, like, kind of like playing the game with them, so to speak. And you know, then when everything sort of went down in 2020, I was one of the first people to run my mouth about germ theory and, you know, the beliefs that I had come to around infection and contagion and that I didn't think this was about what we are being told it was about. And, you know, that got sort of picked up and I got like sucked right back into that, you know, angry bitch activist mode. Like, let me tell the people the truth and if they don't hear it from me, they might perish, you know, like, whatever. It is that my responsibility to like, caretake the masses, which is, you know, is something I talk a lot about in the shadow of activism, you know, is like this idea that people can't help themselves or save themselves without my, you know, good word or whatever. And, you know, so then I spent a lot of 2020 in that space and it put me on the disinformation dozen lists. But I wasn't even, you know, that vocal right about, because I was like, much more interested in. Honestly, I started doing deeper shadow work at that point. I started to see, okay, so I feel there's a totalitarian takeover happening. Like, I don't like that. And. And so I'm like, judging that, right? So if I'm in a practice of like, investigating and interrogating myself for that, which I judge, then how in my life was I acting like a totalitarian dictator who knows better than other people what's best for them? And I surveyed my life and I made a lot of changes, you know, from little things like telling my kids to clean their room, you know, all the way to the way I ran my business. And I re recorded all the videos in my program from like, a Different Energy. So I was really focused on, like, this is a spiritual war and the way out is not demanding that they change, right? So, like, what is the way out? So I really, like, yeah, was not even super interested in, you know, debating a lot about, you know, the interventions and mandates. Somehow I still ended up on that. That list. And I think it's probably because, you know, somebody really liked the way my lipstick look looks or Something, you know, like, it was, like, so random and. Yeah. So whether it was that. And then I brought a whole nother wave upon myself when I started to post my body on the interwebs, which I had never done, meaning, like, in, like, you know, bikinis, dancing or whatever. It's my chicken. And there was. It was like a witch hunt, you know, and so there are a lot of.

Hold on. I must have missed something. So you actually danced in a bikini on Instagram? It's shocking. But what happened? Why did people complain about that? It seems like that's what you do on Instagram, if you can wear a beanie.

Well, you don't do that if you're a doctor, you do that. If you are, you know, a dancer, you do that. If you're, you know, Mama Gina, you do that. If you are somebody who that. For whom, that is their lane. But socioculturally, we have a lot of trouble when people try to ride different lanes. Then it was my own inner shame and my own inner judgment that was being reflected back to me because it was a very, you know, it was several months of, like, it was really difficult, you know, like, the criticism that I'm harming people, that I'm damaging people, that I am supporting the porn industry. And, you know, dance is, like. Is one of my passions. And it's. It's so joyful to me to, like, learn or make up a choreography, put on a cute outfit and pick a song and, like, create the video and whatever. The whole thing was, like, a creative expression for me. But I also knew that it was, like, de. Secreting my sexuality and that people were way more comfortable when I just talked about health and whether or not, you know, how many servings of, you know, this to have and how bad gluten is and, you know, just stick to what I was doing. And I think it's because change, like, literally change. And I don't know if you've experienced this or even if it's different for men and women, but that we have coupled change with admitting that you were bad and wrong before. You know, and that's not necessarily true. Right. Like, I was somebody who prescribed psychotropics to pregnant and breastfeeding women. That was my specialty. If I see that woman as bad and wrong, then I'm rejecting a part of myself that I'm then going to judge on the outside instead. Right. So I am still that woman. Right. And I'm also many other kinds, you know, of woman. And I have changed. And it doesn't mean That I was wrong before, because the. The experience, even somatically, of being wrong and bad is so intense for most of us that we would rather just stay the same and be really right about all of the ways, you know, that we are living our. Our life. And ultimately, that keeps us kind of stuck in a victim realm where we end up being right about how wronged we are, because the things we don't like about our life, our relationships, our illnesses, become our victim. Stories like, oh, I'm so wronged in all of these ways, but at least I'm right about it. At least I'm on the side of right. And that's a small comfort relative to the pleasure and exhilaration, really, of changing your story. But I recognize how people don't want us to change. They don't want us to change, right? They want us to stay consistent because change itself is threatening. It's like a threatening concept. And if it's. If we all embrace change, then we're all constantly having to, like, recalibrate around other people's trajectories, and we have to see other people as separate on their own journey, having their own experience, you know, and really let people live their own damn lives, which is something that we're not really that accustomed to. I can't tell you how many women feel that they need to tell me how to live my life.

Is it just women?

It's mostly women. And that's why I came to this conclusion. I was like, wow, the world would enter a dimension of healing that is so transformational if women would just stop offering unsolicited criticism, feedback, and advice to other women, period. Let's just do that and see what happens. Including our daughters. Because I have two daughters, I made a commitment a long time ago never to tell them negative things about themselves that they didn't ask me for. So literally, like, if my daughter goes out in booty shorts and I'm like, oh, my God, you know, I don't say a damn word. Because I am committed to allowing her to organize herself around her own preferences, her own sensibility, and ultimately what works for her. And to insinuate that she should change because of something that would make me more comfortable is, of course, the wound that we come from in our experiences as children. That our parents know better for us, that government knows better for us, that our doctor knows better for us than we possibly could for ourselves. And so if we just stop doing that. Right, because that's what so much of social media is. It's like, let Me tell you how you should be doing you. But if we stop doing that, then we have to sit with our own discomfort about how somebody's being and it's like a rich terrain to explore.

You mentioned a little while ago that, that being bad or believing that you were bad was just so incredibly triggering for people, they almost couldn't handle it. And here you're saying sitting with your own discomfort. It seems like at the heart of a lot of the practices in BDSM and kink is actually learning to be comfortable with feeling bad or being bad or being uncomfortable just so you realize you're not going to die. Is that an accurate assessment?

Yeah, I think so. Creating a safe container with agreements that allow you to visit with the parts of you that are holding the shame and the fear around punishment. That is why, you know, actually I, I'm right now with a researcher friend of mine writing up a blog post on the scientific research supportive of BDSM as a trauma intervention, because it must speak to creating safety where formerly there was not right. It's like for so called alcoholics who go to aa, they have an experience in the AA meeting of belonging. They have an experience of safe, organized human interaction. And for the most part, those of us who are attracted to substances and alcohol, we don't feel safe in human interaction. So how can that be created and structured so that you can store, start to unwind that and meet the gem in the cave? Because there's always some gift that is lying behind your shame wall. I mean, every single time there is like a part of your self expression, there is a dimension of your, your child self that wants to come forth with play and, you know, creativity. And you're not going to access that if you're, if you're keeping it all under wraps.

I actually recommend when people come to me and say, Dave, I want to go do ayahuasca, like hold on a second here. That's probably the last of all the plant medicines you might want to try before you do that. Have you tried emdr, which is a trauma resolution method just for Lucia? I know you know what EMDR is. And have you tried deep breathing, like holotropic breath work or something similar? Have you tried tantric sex? Have you tried bdsm? And after that you get into the legal things like ketamine that are relatively safe and well understood before you. And then MDMA and then mushrooms and then lsd. And then maybe if you still need to do it, you find a really powerful shaman. But a lot of People don't put eroticism, whether it's tantric practice or king practice, into the realm of psychotropic healing things. But that's what they are from everything that I can understand about them.

Totally. I mean, I. There's a psychiatrist who wrote a book called Fear of Life, and his name is Alexander Lohan. And I really love this book because he framed for me the origins of sexual shame. And we think like, okay, I don't have sexual shame. I have a healthy sex life, whatever. But when you look at sexual energy or Eros, or vital force energy as the animating force of the human body, you recognize, wow, this starts in infancy, right? So this is like, you know, the. The nursing infant who bites the nipple. You know, like, it is that. It's the. It's the predator, it's the. I want this. I will grab this. It's like the. The. The forward contribution, you know, to the space. And it can look like singing and playing and jumping on the couch. And we are divorced from that energy very early on. When we are told how to behave and comply by our parents, when we are told that we are okay when we're crying and we're clearly not okay when we're told to calm down, when we are told to be some other way than how we are being. And that's not to say that, you know, proper parenting is to just let your children be feral, but it's to validate that there is sense, there is meaning, and there is rightness in the energetic state, you know, that this child finds themselves in. And then he talks about, of course, the classical Freudian triangle, right? When you're in this first triangle of our lifetimes with our mother, father, whether they're living or there, it doesn't matter. And you're in this triangle and you develop, you know, a certain kind of attraction, a certain kind of erotic connection to your opposite gendered parent, just to take a heteronormative example, then that is typically threatening to your same gendered parent. And this classical Oedipal dynamic, you know, I kind of threw it out when I became more interested in Jung's work, even though I was trained in a very, like, Freudian program. But it's very real because that triangle then gets replicated throughout our lives where we are pitted against ourselves. And one of the most powerful examples is with health, right? With the medical system. My body is doing a symptom thing that I don't like. And because I don't trust my body, I've been told my body does gross things. I've been told I don't know how to operate my body. I have to be told when I can pee. I have to raise my hand. In school, I'm told when to eat, when not to eat. I'm told farting is wrong or whatever. All of this confusing messages about our bodies. So my body, which is not me, is doing this scary thing. So I'm going to collude against my body and subdue it with what? A doctor? Right. So that's a triangle. It's just that the, you know, the villain in that triangle, if there's a villain, a victim, you know, and a rescuer, the villain is the body. Right? So these triangles get set up all over the place and we're turned against ourselves, our energy, our, you know, embodied expression. And this is how we end up struggling and suffering with shame. I think that shame is the most expensive emotion there is because it's. The drain is immense. And that's why, you know, after my patients would get off these meds, I mean, the first thing that I would encourage them to do is like, take a survey of all of the dimensions of your life where you're holding secrets. You don't gotta come clean about them immediately. But, you know, I went to this Adyashanti silent retreat a couple years ago, and he said this one sentence I'll never forget where he said, imprompted us. And he said, what is something that you deeply know that you wish you didn't know about yourself? Right? So there are a couple of things, you know, that can come to mind. Whether it's about how you're eating or something about your partnership or something about your pain. Parenting, it's like a. It's a direct conduit to your shame spaces. And you don't have to tell anyone, but once you know it, once the light of awareness has been, you know, cast on. On those issues, that's when the process of walking towards them can begin. And it can take years, but that's that. That shame catacomb is essentially the understanding that you will be experienced as bad and wrong if this is ever known and how dangerous it is to be bad and wrong.

The interesting thing about shame is that when people are experiencing a lot of shame, they'll have shame about having shame. So it's like this endless loop of that. And I know that because that's something I dealt with many years ago. There's a book called Healing the Shame that Binds you by John Bradshaw. This was like 20 years ago when I did all my work on this stuff and I come across it all the time at 40 years of Zen, when high performing executives are upgrading their brains and all of a sudden they come into this big wal fall of like, something's holding me back. I'm like, well, yeah, you might have to deal with that, right. And there's, there's various techniques. But when I started doing transpersonal psychology, I had no idea that I had any sort of shame or anything in there because it was just so part of reality. And then of course, if you'd have told me, I'd be like, well, having shame would be wrong. Therefore I don't have shame because I can't possibly be wrong. And it gets really messy really quickly. What's, as a psychiatrist, what's the fastest way that people could like, know whether they have shame or how severe it is because it hides?

Well, one of the. So I relate to that completely. Like I don't think I had any awareness that I had anything hiding behind spaces of shame because I had so curated a life of mastery. Right. I only ever did the things I was good at. I never had to even experience, you know, sort of, I don't know, like learning how to do something I might be mediocre at. Right. And this is very typical of, you know, people who are very well defended, you know, like me. So one of the points of inquiry that I find really helpful is, you know, to consider somebody that you're intimate with in your life, whether it's a family member or a friend. And it has to be somebody that you've had like some conflict with. So this is where a relationship and a challenging relationship is the perfect, you know, playground for this inquiry. And you can ask, what is it that I am most afraid they could be right about? Right. So it has to be, you know, like whether somebody says you're so embarrassing or, you know, you're this or you're that. It could be an infinite list. What is, you know, so maybe it's not one person, but what is something that someone has said and you're just like, literally make sure nobody ever finds out that they might be right about it. And there is a part of you that, that agrees, that is holding tremendous energy and to be in. Right. So you mentioned a lot of modalities to be in dialogue with this part of you and to not coerce it, not to convince it. Right. Because in spiritual bypass, a lot of what we do, like I could feel lonely, let's say I feel lonely and then I'll say to myself, why do you feel lonely? You have kids and cats and friends, like you have it all. Why? You just be grateful. Okay, so that kind of bypasses like a subtle way of coercing, dismissing, or otherwise negating the part that feels lonely. So, you know, a lot of the healing work is simply around like giving enough of a shit to listen to actually listen to these parts and what they have to say without needing to convince them that they're wrong. And so to the list that you offered, the pre ayahuasca list, you know, I would add probably my two favorite modalities and the ones that have changed my life so measurably. One is parts work or internal family systems where the idea is simply to, you know, meet these different parts by identifying how it is that you feel about a given feeling. Right. So you mentioned that compound emotion of shame, the shame about the shame. So you'll have a feeling, you locate it in your body, you meet this part and what they have to say, and then you'll have a feeling about that part. Like, so annoying. I wish I would just like stop being so anxious. Now you've met another part, you know, and they kind of like multiply out in this way. And then the other one is family constellation work. So, yeah, and I. I've done a great number of group family constellations. You can participate as one of the people who is exploring an issue in your life, or you can participate just, you know, to support other people. And honestly, you get almost the same amount out of it. And you can also do one on one family consolation work. And it's difficult to summarize, but there's a Turkish Netflix show that, that does a really great job called Another Self. And it's actually also depicted on God. I remember it's like love, sex and goop or something. It's like this another Netflix show because it's. It's in the Zeitgeist, you know, that people are recognizing that we hold unfinished business, you know, from our mother line, father line, and that these patterns in our family of origin, especially around excluded family members, miscarriages, abortions, these elements of our family system that are not being accounted for in our consciousness can actually be responsible for these patterns that we get stuck in. Especially if you feel like, God, I've done all the things and I'm still attracting this kind of partner, or I'm still in debt, or I'm still struggling with, you know, this substance. You know, it's probably one of the first stops that I would Recommend is actually family consolation. So you sort of organize what isn't yours and you get back in your position.

What, what powerful knowledge to share with people. Thank you. If I'd have known what you just shared when I was in my 20s, it would have been a lot easier because I remember the first time I was working with a psychologist and I understood anger as an emotion pretty well. And she said, well, you're feeling something. What is this? Yeah, I'm actually feeling pissed off. This whole thing is dumb. And she said, well, do you feel something in your body? I said, yeah, there's a weird feeling in my stomach. She's like, there's a name for it. And I said, what is it? She said, it's fear. And I looked at her and I said, oh, it can't be fear because there's nothing to be afraid of. Spiritual bypassing right there. And it's when you use your brain to try to think yourself out of an emotion. And her answer to me was, fear is an emotion. It doesn't have to be logical. And I was like, oh my God. Mind blown. Like, where is all this crap coming from? It's coming from in the body.

Yes.

And when that reflects up into your relationships. Right. You talked about, at the very beginning of our interview, you talked about women healing their inner masculine so that they can show up differently in relationships. Does the inner masculine live in the body or does it live in the soul or in the heart or the emotions or this, like, I don't know, the fifth dimension. Like, where's that thing?

That's a great question. And I can so relate. I mean, it's amazing. I don't think I felt an emotion literally until probably like six years ago. I mean, when your defenses are that effective, you are literally unaware. However, those buried states and also the somatic storage, you know, I mean, we've, we've heard about like molecules of emotion from Candace Pert and this idea of like stored trauma from all of the somatic experiencing world for a long time. And it's not like new age mumbo jumbo, it's very real. Right. So all of that stored energy is influencing how you can feel and navigate through that felt sense. Right. So I'm like really into watching all of these like Viking shows recently. I don't know what's up with that, but like I am really enjoying like Last Kingdom and Vikings and whatever. And I'm watching these warriors and how they attune through their body without their mind. Their mind is like literally not even involved and they can feel when somebody is deceiving them. You can tell within seconds, even if it makes no sense and it seems like they're telling a pretty good story, they can feel it. And they're so embodied that of course they can fight on the battlefield in these extraordinary ways. That is so attractive to me. That is so exciting, what it is to be that embodied. However, if you can't get to know your default state, right. What does my body actually feel like at this moment? When I started doing somatic experiencing work and I would sit in these sessions with people and they'd be like, tell me about a sensation in your body. Okay, let's track it. I was like, there's nothing. There's nothing going on. It's just dead.

What are you talking about? Like, shut up, you're bothering me, right?

Yeah, it's dead space. That numbness is also a somatic experience, right? And so as your body comes online and you start to feel, feel what is already present but was not available to your awareness, then you can start to get to know how your body tells you. No. How your body tells you. Yes. And it's like a subtle sensation, you know, like, no, not this restaurant. No, not this podcast. No, not this partner. Right? And often there will be a whole bunch of mind nonsense, like a mind yes pile that's like, oh, well, come on, what's the big deal? It's fine. That piles on top. And then the opposite is also true when something is like, you know, yeah, go there, explore that. And then it's like, no, I don't have to. I'm not going to be good at that anyway, forget. So there's just a subtle little, you know, sense that your body can convey to you. And the reclamation of that is essentially coming into trust and safety in your body. So when I think about, you know, this masculine container for my body, for me, there's like a meditation that I often do where I imagine this masculine energy up my spine, like from my feet up my spine. And it's this like. It's like. It's like in my head even like looks down. It's like this encompassing sort of embracing but strong back body energy. And then the feminine is like whatever is swirling around. So then I attend to whatever it is that is the emotional state in my body, right? So the, the tingling in my stomach or the clench in my chest or my throat or whatever it is and go into inquiry around that just being present to it. So, yeah, the masculine for me lives in the back of my Body and the feminine is whatever is moving around, you know, internally. And that is a, is a very simple practice, you know, that anybody can engage. Anytime you want to sit with an emotion, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a sensation, you just first connect to that energy of like strength and that spine behind you, feeling, you know, the back of your chair. And then you just bring your attention and that awareness to whatever it is that is alive, right? Whether it's, you know, discomfort or an excitement or whatever it is, just so that you can be with it. Honestly, I had to start with like 10 seconds, 20 seconds. And there's a somatic experiencing practice called pendulation where you just visit with it for like 10, 15 seconds and then you go somewhere else in the body that doesn't have any sensations, like a point on your thigh or something like that, and you just swing back and forth so you can sort of like ease into it. It is way harder than it sounds to just sit with a sensation for like seconds. You know, we weren't taught this and we were taught quite the contrary that our sensations are problematic, you know, as kids.

Yeah, it's a very common thing if feelings are annoying and they get in the way of behaving, so you should just kind of like smash them down. And it doesn't create happiness and it also doesn't create high performance. And a lot of listeners are like, look, I want to kick ass. I don't just want to be healthy. Maybe I'm not healthy now, but my goal is not. I just want to be enough. It's like that I want to be so much more than enough that I can change the world. Right? And like that's why you drink danger coffee instead of like boring coffee. Like, like you, it's built into us. Like we want to be better than average. Um, so that said, the amount of energy like electricity from mitochondria that goes into all of this garbage, suppression of emotions, all of the bypassing all the stuff that we do automatically without any choice, it's all unconscious. It's all pre programmed until you go in and you hack it. It's, it's a large, large percentage of your energy in your brain every day. And that's why you aren't doing all the things you wanted to do or experience all things you want to experience because you are throwing away stuff on useless either notifications, like being anxious all the time because everything in the environment's triggering you and you don't know why and you think it's you and well, maybe you could Work on, you know, having less bullets in your gun to be triggered. Right. So I, I appreciate that you're sharing. You're sharing it the way you're sharing it because that's. That stuff has been difficult for me. But the thing that unlocked it probably the fastest was, was feedback systems. And that's why I brought him into the world of quantified self. And why, when I started the biohacking movement and like, feedback is part of this, because I wasn't good at feeling my body or my emotions. But when I learned how to do heart rate variability feedback, I'm like, oh, my God, like, if I make the light go green, I feel this weird stuff in my chest. And now I can consciously open my heart and I can, you know, do forgiveness. I can move energy, I can do all this crap. But it started with a computer showing me, hey, dummy, here's what's going on in your heart. And now, you know, I've created the tech for 40 years of Zen. So like, the, the spiritual states, I know how to turn them on without the technology, but I just feel like to do forgiveness without having first done heart rate variability, it would have taken like a lifetime sitting in a cave. So I'm hopeful that tech is going to help people realize that there is a signal in the noise of their body. Do you like tech or are you more like, you know, give me flowers and a paintbrush kind of like.

So I am, I am all of it, right? So I, I clearly espouse a lot of spiritual concepts and I'm very interested in, you know, like right now I'm looking at my chickens and my almost an acre and my garden and my cats and iguanas, and I love it all.

And no, that's not your pets. Those are just natural because they basically are.

Because I feed them every day.

They're like years dragon older. Oh, my gosh. Okay.

And you know, but I'm also, you know, I have hot pink long nails and I love makeup and I love fashion. You know, I'm all of it. So I am not like for or, or, or anti. And I'm fascinated by what you just said. You know, I've been a heart math fan since, for many, many, many, many years.

Oh, my gosh. I was an advisor to the company in 2008.

That's amazing because it makes so much sense what you're saying that for. And I'm sure that's why it helped me. For the same reason as. As it helped you is because there was no other way for me to actually begin the process of introducing my embodied experience to myself. Right. And so it absolutely can have that impact. You know, I have struggled publicly with my phone. I got off my iPhone a couple of years ago because, you know, because of what was going on in the world and the tacit connection.