Decoding Trauma’s Blueprint: A Journey to Emotional Resilience with David & Paige Lea

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral. I am your host, James Barry. All right, everyone, are you ready? We are gonna dive deep into trauma, a very ancestral concept, healing. David and Paige Lee are not only co-owners of their business, but also partners in life and love. They're married. And as trauma-informed coaches, speakers, and teachers of masculine and feminine polarity, They bring a unique healing perspective to their coaching approach. They prioritize individual healing by helping you identify and address energetic imbalances within yourself and in your relationships, and to guide you on a healing journey towards experiencing a relationship of deep love, trust, satisfaction, and connection. I'm very excited for you to absorb this episode. And now David and Paige Lee. I want to preface, you know, Dave and I met through Strategic Coach. I'm just meeting you for the first time, Paige, but he and I were articulating this the last time we saw each other. I don't think he came into my life randomly. I don't think it was random that he and I found each other in that room and the topic of trauma, which you guys very much have centered your entire practice around it. It seems it's been coming up a lot. And so I would love for you to initially just share what is trauma for you and how does it show up in how you work with people?

Well, you just opened the can of worms, James. Thank you. Appreciate that. That's magnificent. And it's interesting. It's, you've just tapped into the reticular activation system is now that you have been spending time with me, suddenly there's so much trauma that you can identify or certainly see within your immediate purview. For us, trauma is actually very simple. It's an identification of an overwhelm of the nervous system. It's simply when the nervous system is unable to process and release negative energy that is originating from when something is disruptive within our lives, physical, emotional, spiritual. That's as simple as it gets. It's not the big bad wolf. It's not the Torrential catastrophe that can happen. And certainly that is trauma, but it's when the nervous system is simply overwhelmed. We often explain it this way. It's when we experience too much too soon, or we experience too little for too long, and that affects and dramatically affects our nervous system. And so when we are affected by trauma, it then resonates into our nervous system forevermore. We believe that trauma exclusively happens in childhood. And we carry those wounds into adulthood. Most of us unknowingly and unwittingly have this unprocessed, unresolved trauma from childhood that's now carried into our adult lives, and most notably in our work, into our adult relationships in marriage and partnerships. So trauma is something that every single one of us experiences. Every single one of us on the planet, all 8 billion of us, experience this unresolved, unprocessed childhood trauma. inside of us. We're walking around with unprocessed wounds, but it's really important to understand that it's a very simple definition. Again, it's the overwhelming of the nervous system.

Do you want to add to that, Paige?

A big part of our message too is to make trauma be okay. Trauma doesn't have to be this big, scary monster in the closet to be feared. Honestly, just by bringing some more acceptance to the word trauma, like, If there's anyone listening right now that is already like, eek, trauma, I don't want to talk about this, or this word alone feels really triggering, I just want to encourage you to just take a deep breath and it doesn't have to be as scary as it seems. So just as David mentioned, it really is just this pent-up overwhelm that happens inside the body, an emotional recoil that happens in response to something that feels overwhelming in real life. And the reason why it feels overwhelming is because when we are evolving as young little children, we don't quite have the emotional flexibility or capacity to manage that level of overwhelm. And so that's when it begins to kind of pool in the body a little bit, and then that energy has to go somewhere. Out, if you know how to express that, which in early ages we are still learning how to do that, or it stays in. And it gets stuck in the tissues and begins to then inform the nervous system and the brain of different choices and different actions to take so that we don't find ourselves in similar experiences or threats of overwhelm in the future. So trauma's not bad. Trauma's really amazing. I feel like it's the portal to a super free, peaceful, loving life. And often when we show up in our adult relationships, that's when the trauma begins to come forward as triggers. Now we're feeling triggered by something our spouse is doing or something our neighbor is doing or our kids or our parents, et cetera. And the way we choose to cope with those triggers tells us a lot about the original incidences of those experiences of overwhelm that are still trapped in our nervous system.

Is all trauma from childhood? Or if you haven't learned how to release the trauma, you're just constantly picking up traumas throughout your life, or is the root from the childhood, and then that becomes the trauma tree and there's just branches and, you know, it extends out further and further.

That's exactly correct. So the origination, the wound that we want to address, does originate in childhood. And then as we describe it, what you experience in adulthood and forevermore are echoes of that original wound. So we're just on repeat. So when people say, well, I experienced trauma in adulthood because of this experience, We help them navigate and negotiate the understanding that that is a simple echo. You've experienced that type of trauma before, and its original wound can be traced back to a moment, to what we call an original incident somewhere in your childhood.

Paige, you explained trauma in one of your podcasts that I listened to where you talked about the tunnel is our body and that the vehicle is the trauma, and it comes into the tunnel and it just gets stuck midway sometimes. And We then start to interpret it as though this car that's come into our body, this trauma that's come into our being is now part of us when it never was and never needs to be. I definitely would love you to expand on that here, but the question is, can that trauma be a bus instead of a car? Or is all trauma a car? And then it's our interpretation or our storytelling that turns it into a bus Or into a little matchbox car? Do you know what I mean? Like, are we controlling the size of that trauma and that really all trauma is just, it's just trauma?

Oh, such great questions. And I'm excited for this conversation to expand on this a little bit. Would love to hear David's perspective on this too. The way that emotions and trauma has been described to me is imagine you are traveling through a mountain and to get to the other side of the mountain, it's easiest to go through a tunnel rather than trying to drive the car up the mountain or down to the other side, that might not be available and takes forever. And so going through the tunnel is going to be your best bet to get through the mountain. The mountain represents life, or the body, I should say, and everything that your body is experiencing in life. And the car represents emotions, feelings, experiences, memories, anything that crosses your path. It could be triggers, et cetera. And say, for example, you're driving the car through the mountain, you're in the middle of the tunnel now, and then the car dies. The car gets stuck. Either the headlights goes out, you can't really see how to proceed, or there's something wrong with the engine, etc. The car just stops. And ultimately, the person driving the car, you, you do too, because you need the car to get to the other side. The car represents the emotions, and this can then cause a bit of a traffic jam, especially if you have other cars behind you, other emotions trying to come into the body or flaring up in the mind or fill in the blank. This is where we have a bit of congestion, accumulation beginning to build. This is what we call emotional burdens, if you've heard of that, or feeling emotionally overwhelmed or emotionally numb. It's a good indicator that we have quite a bit of congestion happening inside of the body, the nervous system, And right now the body is trying to figure out how to just simply stay safe and stay alive. It's not going to prioritize digestion and play and having fun and joy and building healthy quality connection because it quite literally is functioning at the most basic level of keeping you alive. There's a lot of weight on the emotional body. So what we would like to happen is to build the resilience, the emotional flexibility, and the tools to help you process these emotions as they are happening. That way, your car, once it enters the tunnel, it can be in the tunnel, the emotions can be in the body. That's a part of life. That's humanness. We want to experience and feel it all, but also we want to feel it to completion so that we can see the emotions through to the other side of the body and they don't get trapped there. That's what typically happens when we are growing up and we don't really understand how to process our emotions. We have this accumulation that's happening on the inside of our body. Our body begins to respond, whether it's with negative thought patterns or unhealthy behaviors and patterns in real life, habits, et cetera. And then that becomes our emotional leverage to change something, make some different changes to focus on the results that are unwarranted, the ones that we don't want. And what often happens is it takes quite a bit of time to get to the root, to understand that the body trumps all. We can't just change our mind into doing things if the body is not on board. To answer your original question, I think it could be a bus. It could be a car. It could be a matchbox. I think it depends on the varying degree of dysregulation that whatever event happens in front of you or experience. causes to your body. So it could be anything big, small, medium, grandiose, miniature, anything goes. And your work, the empowerment here is to build the reciprocal level of flexibility and resilience in the way that you show up for your emotional body and your capacity to process the emotions that are coming forward.

The traumas though, that people have taken on is so varied. I mean, I was just listening to the author of the book Glimmer. Are you familiar with that? The stuntwoman, Hollywood stuntwoman who wrote the book Glimmer. And I guess Glimmer is the antithesis of trigger. Kimberly Shannon Murphy, that's her name. And she mentioned, you know, for her, her trauma was sexual abuse, incest from her grandfather and her maternal grandfather. And it happened between, I think, 3 and 11. I mean, so that's a very different type of trauma than let's say someone who— what's the example David gives a lot? He talks about someone skinning their knee or something. So very different. Of course, there's way worse stories of trauma that I'm sure we've, we've all heard in the past. How do you guys look at the differences in trauma from, you know, that sexual abuse or extreme abuse to, I skinned my knee when I was on my bike and my parents didn't act the way I wanted them to when I did?

I think David and I might say the same thing, but our response to that is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma is trauma. It is all the same. And yes, there are varying degrees and it certainly doesn't discount or minimize the individuals that have experienced the big, the violent, the earth-shattering trauma, but trauma is trauma. It comes into the nervous system the same. It affects it the same, and we can heal the same too. It will just be in our own unique ways that are aligned for what we need.

I remember our mentor taught us this, that Because it's trauma, trauma, trauma is all the same. It doesn't recognize whether it's acute or severe. It all puts us on the same playing field. We're all navigating, negotiating trauma together. And so it allows us to not compare. Well, my trauma is worse than your trauma. We have enough comparison and contrast in our world. So it allows us really to have this beautiful level playing field to know that I experienced trauma. You experienced trauma. We all experienced trauma. Let's all get on the healing train together and let's begin that healing process.

So let's talk about the process. So someone comes to you and if trauma is trauma, so you probably have a very similar path that you take them on, but I imagine what they get out of it is very different.

I'll provide some clarity there, James. What everyone is getting is peace, purpose, joy, playfulness, happiness, if you will. But ultimately the opposite of trauma is peace. We're all looking for a nervous system that's regulated. And so people come from all variants in the levels of, of unprocessed childhood trauma, but ultimately we're leading them through the same process. Now, how they negotiate that process and how we lead them through that process, yes, is very different because people will be ready to help process their trauma. They'll be ready to navigate, negotiate, and identify those original wounds from childhood. And some will be a little bit more resistant. Their nervous system may be resistant. We often have folks come into our purview and they'll say, I don't know if I have trauma. I don't have a lot of memory from childhood. And that's okay. That's the very nature. That's the very evidence of unprocessed trauma is that it strips our memory. It helps our nervous system or our parts of our nervous system not to remember, actually. So we take those types of situations and scenarios with those clients very delicately. with a very, very understanding and compassionate and direct approach. But ultimately, we're taking everyone from a lack of understanding, a lack of peace, a lack of purpose, a lack of happiness, and move them through this process to really begin the identification and the validation process to know that their issues, their challenges, the reason why their nervous system is dysregulated here in adulthood, the reason why they're having marital problems, has everything to do with an original wound. And we want to take them through the process to first identify where that wound came from. And we do that identification process through recognizing the behavioral triggers and the behavioral symptoms of what they're experiencing in life right now. I say this to clients all the time, James, I love this work because I get to be a detective, because all the clues are there. There is nothing missing and we don't have bonus clues that we have to sift through. Everyone possesses everything that they need within themselves. We're simply the guide. We're the expert guide. We're the expert leader and support system for them to realize what's going on inside of their marriage really has nothing to do with their marriage. It has everything to do with their unresolved childhood trauma that's in contrast and in conflict and fighting with the wounds of their spouse. So it's really the same process, but how they're navigating and negotiating that process, of course, is very different.

Do you find that when people are drawn or come to either of you that they are aware of the trauma before they come in, or they just have a symptom going on? Like, as you said, my marriage isn't working, or I'm angry all the time. And then through the work, you identify the trauma.

Yeah, that's a fantastic question, babe. Do you want to address that?

It's really both, but I would say the vast majority of individuals that come to us have had this little voice in their head that has nudged them towards their trauma. Like, yes, I know I have trauma. I know I have trauma, but I don't know how to heal it. That ultimately is the vast majority of the individuals that are coming to us now. They know their childhood is directly affecting their relationship, the problems and struggles that they're experiencing with their partner, but they don't know how to heal it. They don't know what to heal. And they need help.

They're recognizing very quickly that the negative patterns are on repeat, James, and they don't know how to stop the train. So it goes back to Paige's illustration that they're all stuck inside that tunnel, but they don't know how to get off the train. They don't know how to get out of the bus. They don't know how to drive the car. In order to interrupt those behavioral patterns, they need a way in which to guide them to the original route. More often than not, James, people come to us because they've tried everything. They've gone to couples counseling, they've gone to therapy, they've done all types of different healing modalities and they've scratched the surface, but they really haven't gotten to the root. That's why we're so super hypervigilant on equating their behavioral symptoms today to the root cause from childhood.

Most people that fall into health sciences, whether it's food, relationship, psychological, emotional, there's usually a reason for it. They don't just kind of wake up, you know, at 7, go, I want to do this. It's like, no, it's usually because it's part of their journey of discovery. Have you both had an experience of trauma that kind of was that voice for you that led you to this path?

How much time do you got, brother?

Let's take it. 'Cause I do find that's one of the things I have to admit, I love to talk with people about, because to me, we can all talk about what we do, but it's how we got here that makes us human. That's the part that inspires me to then go to someone like you or to follow someone's food advice or to buy someone's product like mine. Right. It's because they hear my journey of why I created it.

Just like you've shared with me in our private conversations, James, you knew at a very young age that you wanted to be a chef. You wanted to cook, you wanted to provide sustenance. for people. Now look what you're doing. It's the very same thing. Now, did I know at 7 years old or 8 years old that I wanted to work with people with trauma? No. Yeah, you're not going to find that memory necessarily. I knew at a very, very young age that I was destined and I was charged to help people. Now, how that came to fruition wasn't until many, many decades later, but I knew that my story was going to help frame that. So I lost my mother when I was 2 weeks old. I was just 2 weeks old. My mom died tragically. 2 weeks after my birth. And I know that that set the tone for my life. That was a dramatic trauma with obvious recourse, with obvious consequences. And it's really helped shape my life unto this point. And so I didn't realize that that trauma and many other experiences with trauma within my own childhood would lead me to this work. So it really wasn't until very recently, in relative terms, over the last several years, that Paige and I discovered together what this trauma and the effect on what it had on us as individuals and then as a married couple, and then translated that into our work. It was really, I wouldn't say by accident, but we certainly began to hear voices from mentors and experts in the field in trauma. And that is what led us to truly understand, wow, I think this is what we have experienced. What I experienced as a little boy and what Paige experienced as a little girl, and I'll let Paige talk about her journey, most notably about her health journey, but certainly from my experience, it was the vast expanse of trauma and experiences that I had relationally as a little boy growing up.

For me, I didn't either have a vision that I would be helping people heal their trauma being a little girl. I did always know that I was going to help people. One of my parents growing up would jokingly call me Mother Teresa just because I was always giving, kind, and really overgiving from such an early age, and very empathetic, always thinking about other people before myself. And that is something that I've had to really harness coming into adulthood is to find that balance, strike the balance of being generous and giving to others while also not overextending myself. And having boundaries for my energy and my time. I started in all of this work in more of the, I call them the external levels, the entry points when it comes to bettering yourself. So I started eating better. I started moving my body and really started working in those ways, mostly because in my early 20s, right after college, I experienced like a health crisis. My whole body just started shutting down on me, essentially seemingly out of nowhere. So I had anxiety so bad I could barely catch my breath. I had digestive issues, food sensitivities to every food under the sun, quite literally was just eating vegetables and animal protein for 7 years, 8 years. Like that's it, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which became challenging and super defeating when it came to finding answers. I went to the traditional medical world, tried everything, went to every doctorologist specialist. Worked a couple of different jobs to foot all the bills and do all the testing and the blood work and the supplements and everything. And it was not helping. I was not getting anywhere. And in fact, I was getting a lot worse. I did all the non-traditional stuff too. Like, I felt like I exhausted everything. And ultimately, something changed for me when I felt the effect of yoga. Yoga actually was providing a little bit of relief to my anxiety. It was calming me down a little bit. And so that was enough to keep me hooked on that.

What aspect of yoga was it? You think yoga can be sitting still, but it can also be active. So what aspect of it do you think it was?

It was a little bit of everything, honestly. So I've done a variety of different yoga practices and lineages over the past 13 years I've been doing it. I'm certified in a couple of different trainings with that. So that was kind of like my path that led me to falling in love with this particular modality. And then I quickly realized that yoga wasn't healing me all the way. It was like, just like the tip of the iceberg that was giving me enough hope, like, all right, this is possible. You can get better. You are improving. Let's stick with this and we'll keep going. So that's when I really was called to really step up and take accountability for my health and what was going on with my life. That was a 10, 12-year struggle of just trying to learn more about the body, learn more about me. And I feel like I turned over every rock, every stone of learning about the types of fats and carbs and different diets that are great for the body and intermittent fasting and when to eat fruit. So the sugar content, blah, blah, blah, like every crevice I feel like I went down into and learned a lot about. And I feel very grateful for that experience. And when I felt like I had many of the different links lining up and progressing, I still was pretty far off from feeling how I wanted to feel in my body. I was still feeling more miserable than good.

What shifted?

The last place I looked, James, was the emotional body, because I didn't think I had trauma. I thought that was some big, scary thing, much like what we've talked about at the beginning of our conversation here. And I didn't feel like I experienced any of that growing up. So I didn't think that it applied to me. I didn't necessarily believe that diving into the emotional body was going to help. So I didn't, so I went everywhere else. And when we finally, David and I discovered one of our very first mentors together, his name was Mastin Kipp. He introduced us to the concept of the deeper concepts of emotional healing. And trauma. And something clicked for me then. I thought, all right, I'm at the end of my rope. What else can I possibly do here? Well, there's one more door to walk through, and I'm going to do it because I am committed to feeling better. And that's what opened the journey to Daring Deeply, honestly, and the work that we do with our clients. We learned about masculine and feminine energy along the way, and then ultimately found our very specific crossroads there with trauma healing and masculine and feminine polarity. And that has brought me to this whole new level of healing that I could never have accessed alone with just diet, nutrition, positive mindset, et cetera.

You guys both did this separate from each other and then came together through the work with your mentor. Let's start diving into that because I really want to get to the masculine feminine. And I think this is a really great gateway because how you talk about marriage and relationship, David, and I'm assuming you as well, Paige, but I just haven't talked to you about it. You talk about it, how we're not here to fix each other. Can you dive into that?

That's an incredibly powerful and what sets us apart pillar to our coaching practice is that this is an individual journey. And even though Paige and I discovered our mentors together, it was an individual and continues to be an individual journey. We do not heal, fix, mend, or save a marriage. You don't work on a marriage. You don't work on a relationship. You can only be responsible for your healing. And that continues today. In fact, James, what I said to Paige on our wedding day was this vow: Babe, I commit to my healing, growth, and transformation on a daily basis so I can then consistently support you who has committed to do the same. That's the only vow I will ever make to Paige. I'm not committed to Paige. I'm not committed to our marriage. I'm first committed to me. And when I am emboldened with my own healing, growth, and transformation, I can show up as a best version of a man for me first, and then as a husband and as a father to my children. So it's this understanding that we must take extreme, radical personal responsibility For our own wounding. That's the only course that makes sense. We cannot heal a relationship. I'm not responsible for Paige's healing and she's not responsible for my healing, which is really counterintuitive to so much of the marriage dynamic, the marriage narrative that is out there. That's what sets us apart. Do we work with married couples? Yes, we do. But we work with them individually. Independently, because as we've mentioned earlier, everyone has their own tunnel trapped with trauma. And so if we were to put 2 cars in there, oh my goodness, suddenly we're in deeper trouble than we were. So we want to work with each individual because every individual's course is uniquely different and they are worthy of having their own journey. They're worthy of having their own space in which to heal their specific wounding. And this is incredibly new. It's incredibly nuanced. It's incredibly fragile. And what we believe, what we're bringing to the healing space is incredibly unique and incredibly impactful. And the evidence is with our clients, which we have seen transformative, absolutely off the chain, otherworldly, magnificent. In fact, people have called it miraculous. They've called it supernatural. This transformation that they're feeling And what the bonus is, James, with these married folks is, oh, and by the way, their marriage is getting better. Not that their marriage is getting better first. Oh no, no, no, no. We are very candid at the beginning when someone comes to us. We say, we are not here to fix your marriage. We can't. It's impossible. No one can. But what we can promise, what we can guarantee is that if you do this work, you will heal. Now, will your marriage then get better? Not necessarily. We will not make that guarantee because then you're trying to control your spouse, which is at the heart of trying to do couples work, is in essence, you're trying to navigate and negotiate your spouse into the same healing journey as you are. And that's impossible and incredibly ineffective.

Healing is ancestral. Healing is modern. Healing is life. It's a part of this, of our life. And it has been for a long time. If anything, I think healing ancestrally was possibly shamans, right? I think it showed up in that way tribally. A lot of healing lately, a lot of modern healing, and I'm using quotations in my head because technically it's what is our definition of healing? And maybe that's something I should ask you, and I will, but a lot of Modern healing is now being focused towards medicine experiences. So, so ayahuasca, MDMA, something like that. But from my talks with you, David, that discourages you a little bit. That's my interpretation of it. Like, I feel like you get a little discouraged by that because you, I think you have a different perspective on that. So would you share what is your kind of take on healing in that way versus what you guys do? And is there a place for both?

I will start by this, from our perspective, our commanding timeless narrative, James, that says you have everything you need to heal internally right now without any external force, period. You are wonderfully and beautifully crafted just as you are, and you possess everything within you to do so. I can't wait to hear my incredibly brilliant wife who is so So natural, so organic, so much about the body and knowing that everything— that's why she struggled so much in her 20s. What she was mentioning earlier is she was trying to tap into so many external forces to try to save her internal wounds. And that simply is ineffective. Now, are there numerous modalities, numerous tools and processes in which to help prepare us? For the work that Paige and I do, without question. Paige and I have regular meditative practices and journaling practices and yoga practices and working out and eating nutritious foods, energy work, et cetera, et cetera. But none of that will heal your trauma. It can prepare your body to be receptive to this work. And so we highly encourage— we are a proponent of somatic healing, of preparing the body, and Paige can speak to this. more in just a moment, but it's super important to know. And I think this provides so much encouragement and empowerment to our clients, James, is that, wait, I don't need to engage in this and this and take this pharmaceutical and engage in this medicine. And I don't need to do this and sign up for yoga class and go to energy work and Reiki and transcendental meditation. And no, no, no, no, no. That perhaps can help prepare your body, for the work that we do, but it's really encouraging to know that you have everything within yourself to do this healing work.

I agree. I believe in the body so much, and we were all just designed so beautifully and innately to heal ourselves. And the best example I have of that is whenever we get a paper cut, we get a paper cut on our finger, and then we go to bed and we wake up And the paper cut is already healing. It's in the process of healing itself. And you didn't stay up all night saying, paper cut, please heal. Come on, paper cut, please heal. Please heal. Please heal. The body just knows what to do. We just have to stay out of the way. My encouragement, my perspective for the individuals that, you know, feel called to try some of those plant medicines, Do it. Just go do it. I want them to gain the experience and contrast that they need about them and their body because there's 8 billion of us on the planet. I have no idea what it feels like to be you, James, or you, David, but I know exactly how it feels like to be me. And it's because I've tried a lot of different things. I've tried a lot of different things and what works for me might not work for either one of you. And my blanket overall statement is I do believe that many of those plant medicines and experiences like that, I believe that they are used potentially to be a magic bullet, the quick fix, the ticket to the end, the shortcut. That just doesn't work with healing. There are no shortcuts. We have to take the long way, the real way. We have to go through the tunnel ourself. Sometimes too, those experiences can be dysregulating for the body. They can be like a form of avoidance or override, perhaps when the body is saying, no, I'm not ready to go there. No, I'm not ready to look at this particular experience of the past. And then we're trying to get there anyway by going through these ceremonial experiences. That can be incredibly disrespectful to the body and the body can respond in very, very violent ways to re-overprotect. So I don't know. I think the answer is quite nuanced depending on who specifically is showing up to lean into those types of modalities and tools. But my encouragement is you have to listen to your body. You have to be so attuned to what is happening within you before engaging in experiential work like that, because that is considered advanced from my perspective.

This is a beautiful segue because much of what I hear you both talking about is, well, A, you're dispelling that trauma is trauma. That's our portal into it is by not making it more or less than what it is. It is, it exists. And yet at the same time, We have to honor our journey with that choice of trauma or our journey to release it, or the journey in preference of how to discover the path that's going to most heal us. It's fascinating though, because we live in a political world right now where the conversation is talking about letting kids who are 9, 10, 12 transition. to a different sex. There's androgynous kind of like energies, you know, like where we're almost like trying to support kids in not being masculine or not being feminine, but just being kind of some, somewhere in the middle. And so in many ways, that seems to contrast what I think you both have found really works. So can you talk about these archetypes of feminine, masculine, and how they play into Trauma and healing.

Many, many, many folks come to us, James, because they're having relationship problems, because they want to fix their marriage, because they're tired of having these patterns repeat over and over and over again. They simply are pursuing something that is ancient, that is ancestral, that is timeless, and it's love. They want to find peace and purpose within their romantic relationship. Many people are drawn to our teachings, our coachings on masculine and feminine energy. What's really important to understand is that energy is timeless. It is ancestral. It's everywhere. We can feel it. We don't necessarily see it, but when we're open and we're in tune, we can understand. In fact, it's based obviously in science. If we don't have polarity, if we don't have opposite poles of energy, we literally fall off the planet. Without the South and the North Pole, We see this in magnetism. We see this in opposite poles attracting one another. We often hear that opposites attract. So we have come to understand and to know to be true that every soul on the planet possesses these 2 opposing poles, what we refer to as masculine and feminine energy. Every single person possesses both. I'm going to say that again. Every single person possesses both masculine and feminine energy. Now, what we've come to understand is that we must identify— each of us must identify what our core energy is. Now, I have masculine and feminine energy, and so do you, James, and so does Paige. But I am more at home. I feel more in my purpose, in my power, in my strength, in my knowing, in my conviction, in my confidence when I am far more in my masculine than I'm in my feminine. And Paige, and so she can tell her story, Paige feels far more radiant and beautiful and arousing and sexual and sensual and creative and ideative and brilliant and bringing her femininity forward when she's more often in her feminine energy. Now, what's interesting, James, is when Paige and I met, we were inverted. I was more in that feminine energy. She was more in her masculine energy.

Let's go back because I was actually going to ask this question of like, who was David before this work and who was Paige before this work. And I love that you just went there. So what does David being in his femininity look like? What, what are outward traits that others can that way identify? Oh, this is someone who could be in his masculine, who's not. And then Paige, same question for you. If you were in your masculine before, and then now how you're in your feminine, what is, what does a masculine woman look like? What does a feminine man look like?

So because I'll tie it here, because of my unresolved childhood trauma, it led me to want to find familiarity in more of a passive and appeasing state, which is wounded feminine energy. Okay. Which is my particular story. And we see this in the vast majority of men who come to us is that they're more in their appeasing, passive, they're in codependent, they're in people pleasing. They're desperate for love. They have a fear of being alone. They cannot stand up for themselves. They lack boundaries. This is wounded feminine energy. And that transcends to all of us. We all carry those energetics. For me though, as a man, I was in that wounded feminine energy far more often than I was in a healthy masculine energy. And so I was the appeasing, I was the nice guy, I was passive. I was overly emotional. My feelings got hurt. I took everything personal. I would complain without a purpose or a plan. I would then, because of the law of polarity, I would attract women more in their wounded masculine energy and what we refer to as an inverted marriage or relationship dynamic. It's opposite poles, but it's inverted. I was more in an energy, more in my wounded feminine energy that didn't feel right. It wasn't, it was off-kilter. It was misaligned.

Why?

Because of my unresolved childhood trauma. That's how we connect these 2 ideas. That's what makes our process proprietary. That's what makes our process so powerful and unique. It wasn't until I realized, wow, I am far more in my feminine energy and it doesn't feel right. I am out of power. I am out of my decisiveness. I am out of my directedness. I'm fearful of making decisions. I'm fearful of being rejected. That's wounded feminine energy. But it wasn't until I discovered, oh, I want to be more in my masculine, decisive, powerful, direct, co-creative energy that can then match with Paige's feminine energy. And that's what we went through, that journey. But when we first met, I was attracted to her boss babeness, James. Oh my goodness. Holy cow. I was so attracted to her directedness. her masculine energy. And so again, we were drawn together in that inverted relationship and inverted marriage dynamic for some time until we began this individual work to where I then began to step forward in my masculine energy because of my trauma work. And Paige did the same for her. And I'll let her tell her story.

I love reflecting back on the beginning of how we met just because It makes sense. The attraction was there, but that's what we actually call a trauma bond.

Exactly.

Because my trauma was attracted to his trauma. It worked. It was technically magnetic, but I was not living from a place that felt authentic to me. I felt like I was living in survival mode. And so often we live in those wounded energies as our form of protection. These are coping mechanisms, coping strategies. And ultimately we find ourselves backed into a corner Until we realize, wait a minute, why am I like this? I don't like being like this. How do I want to feel instead? Just as David mentioned, I was all the way in my boss babe era. I even wrote a book called The Boss Babe Blueprint and never published it because it didn't feel right. My heart, something was telling me like, wait, hold on, pause. This does not feel like this is what I'm going to be about or what I need to be about. Paused on that. I still have my author copy here, which is a beautiful reminder on my journey of just who I've been and where I've been and everything that I've healed through. But I was making all the plans. I was making all the decisions. I was super decisive. I was leading teams at work. I was leading in volunteer organizations. I had so much on my plate. I thought I was really important and special to have my calendar completely booked out, like booked to the brim. It just made me feel like I I had excitement in my life. I had purpose. I had things to show up for, people to rely on me, and all of that fed these internal voids that said, I am needed. People like me. People love me. People need me. And so the more I showed up and gave, the more I thought I was winning. But really, I was exhausted. I was so, so tired. I was so disconnected from me, my body, my heart, my past, present, future. I had no idea who I was. And I was just smiling my way through it and like grinning and bearing it almost because I didn't have the resources or the tools to help me find a different way. Because showing emotion or expressing feelings felt super vulnerable. Emotions growing up weren't really embraced. In fact, you know, I heard many of the common phrases of, you know, brush it off, don't be such a girl, stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about, things like that. And I never saw anyone in my family really cry. We didn't even have tissues around our house. I didn't even know what those were for until I met David. I found myself in this, you know, recurring cycle of relationships where I felt like I was wearing the pants in my relationships. And I kept wanting my partners to step up, step up, come on. Like, I don't want to be doing all of this. I need you to like be on a team with me. I need a teammate. That longing is ultimately what continued to drive my exploration forward, to learn more about masculine and feminine energy and heal my trauma, and then quickly realizing that all of it's related. So my wounded masculine energy that I was so strong and prominent in, that was my body's way of adapting to exactly what it needed to do in order to fill these voids, these emotional internal voids. When I started healing my trauma is when it felt safe to come back to my heart. Is when it felt safe to be more genuine in my expression with my feelings, when it felt easier to laugh and to play and to smile a little bit more, because before that felt too showy or like I was going to get judged for fabricating happiness. You like couldn't be too happy growing up, you know? Otherwise it's like, ooh, what's wrong with them? They're trying to show off. What do they have that we don't? And so you quickly became an outsider just for like simply being happy. I would kind of suffocate that and make sure that I wasn't too pompous, overly expressive in any way. I was very even keel, super calm. People told me I was cool as a cucumber because there was very little that would ruffle my feathers. I just took it and figured out how I was going to navigate it. So I was super attracted to David's bubbliness. He was so playful. He was so just free feeling, like outgoing. He didn't care what people thought about him. And here I was like completely pressurized by every little thought that people around me could be interpreting of me. And so like I had this attachment to perfection and people pleasing. And so that's what I loved about him and felt super, continued to feel inspired by him to this day. And it's really brought a lot of permission to me to access these more vulnerable, feminine, intuitive, creative, expressive, feeling parts of me. And so that's when this transition kind of to our own home, our core energies began to happen just through our own healing of the trauma, the trauma that has kept us stuck in the opposite energies.

It's fascinating. Because a lot of people, to your point, what you've, you've made is that a lot of people think exactly what you articulated, Paige, which is, I just wish the man would step up. I can feel cared for by them. When it goes back to what you already brought up earlier, David, which is, well, if she had just worked on her trauma around masculinity and she stepped more into her feminine, then The masculinity in the man would come out more. They would almost serve each other, but not because he did something to please you, but because you individually took care of yourselves around that trauma.

That's precisely the conundrum that we face with so many people across the planet is they ask the question, so who goes first, chicken or the egg? Does the man step forward in his masculine and that puts his wife in her feminine? Or does the wife need to recede and surrender and soften into her femininity so then he can step up? And the answer is neither and both. The answer is that's why it's an individual journey. So it's my journey to heal my masculine and my feminine, but to step into that more powerful, decisive force of masculinity. And so then if that helps Paige step forward, or in this case, surrender into her feminine energy, all the better. But it's— I'm not doing it to perform so she will respond and vice versa. It's really, really important and it's nuanced and it's tricky because often people will say, well, wait, he needs to do it first. I need him to put me in my feminine. And that's unequivocally, without question, incorrect. Each person is responsible for healing their— both their masculine and their feminine energetic wounding. From their unprocessed childhood trauma to become regulated on their own first. You are to be whole first. So God bless Tom Cruise's character, Jerry Maguire, but you cannot complete someone else. That is a myth. That is evidence of codependency. So it's my responsibility to continue my healing journey on my own. And the bonus is that I can show up as a better version of a man, first for myself, but then for Paige and for the kids and for everyone else. But my healing is not dependent on Paige, and Paige's healing is not dependent on me.

Are we ever healed, or is it always a healing process? And what does a healed or healing person look like?

The answer to your question is we're always on the healing journey, James. Always. To reach this absolute all-nervonic state of I am healed is a myth because we're always on the journey. We're always processing. What we've come to understand is that there are wounded parts of us that are resonating inside of our nervous system forevermore. We are on this journey. That doesn't mean that, oh, well, cynical and we're never going to heal and it's never going to feel good. Rather, it's just the opposite. So to answer your question, and I'll let Paige answer her side as well here in just a moment, how do I resonate with healing? How do I know I'm healing? How do I know and feel that our clients are healing? Is because they represent an energy of peace, purpose, and passion. I'm going to say that again, peace, purpose, and passion. The triggers that have so violently and so obtrusively come forward in their life, The negative relationship patterns, the feelings of shame and humiliation and guilt, the feelings of not feeling good enough and not feeling worthy are far less because those wounded parts of them that have come forward so obtrusively in their life are now quieting because we're actually addressing those wounded parts and actually building a new relationship with the wounded little boy or wounded little girl within our lives. We can sense and we can feel that we feel more at peace, more grounded, more regulated, that when things happen to us, we don't catastrophize. We don't go down the deep, dark tunnel and say, woe is me. We're no longer blame shifting. We're no longer threatening. We're no longer worried about what other people think. These are all just a handful of the reasons and the evidences of how we begin to heal.

We had a client recently provide a testimonial, and I loved the way he put this. And he said he knows he's healing essentially because the things that used to trigger him and stress him out, he now finds amusing. They're amusing. They're a part of life. They're speed bumps. He can now see the lessons in each of those experiences, rather than allowing these experiences to completely consume him. And dictate the way he is feeling as he's navigating his day-to-day life. So, to answer your question, like, can you ever truly be healed? I think it's both and. Yes, I think we are always healing. There's always something else to learn about ourselves, and with that comes new opportunities for evolution and development and healing and releasing and shedding and letting go, but also rebirthing something incredibly spectacular within. And at the same time, I feel like you can fully heal from very specific triggers. Like, I feel like I do not feel triggered by many of the same things that used to trigger me 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and beyond. Now I'm just working on different triggers now in this season of my life. So yes, I think we can be fully healed in the nuanced departments of healing, but healing in general, we are always on that journey should we choose.

David and Paige, it has been beautiful talking to you. I've so enjoyed this conversation and I am so excited for others to find your podcast. So please share where they can find that.

Yes, we are on Apple Podcasts, James. We're on Spotify, or as they say, anywhere you find your podcasts, we can be located. And if that's a little too complicated, you can always follow us on YouTube. So our podcasts are simulcast over there on our YouTube channel. You just need to search Daring Deeply. Daring Deeply, James, is the name of our coaching practice. I'll say it again, Daring Deeply. So you can search Daring Deeply on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. We're all over the socials, so you can come and find us there on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook as well. So we look forward to having the masses come and join us, certainly on our new podcast and throughout our social media.

And of course, people can apply to work with you and they can go to that daringdeeply.com, correct?

Our website is daring-deeply.com. You got to have the dash, James. I don't know where daring deeply is going to send you.

Where, yeah, where is it going to go without the dash?

I don't know. I'm not responsible for that. It's some dark web situation, but it's daring-deeply.com. And so come and find us. We have a brand new website that we're super excited about. So we're, we welcome people to come and find out more about us and potentially work with us. We're excited about that opportunity.

Well, it's been a joy getting to know you, David, and truly lovely meeting you, Paige. Your femininity— David has shared with me a little bit of your journey before we met, and it does, it comes right across the screen. I just want to honor you for stepping in that because it really is, as a man, it's like, I feel it. I feel the openness that you're presenting. And I can say this to David as well. I feel his masculinity. And what is beautiful about both of your, your femininity and David's masculinity is that none of it feels toxic or limited. You're still strong in your femininity. He's still compassionate in his masculinity.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's, there's no strict, you know, walls and tunnels, like, kind of dictating what masculinity is like. He's— My experience with David is he's still very much a very full male human, you know, that he's, he's not hiding his emotions. He's not pretending he doesn't feel a certain way. He checks in. He's very present with that. And I'm feeling that from you as well. And it's just so attractive, so attractive as a human being to visually and physically experience it. So way to go, David and Paige, for—

Thank you.

Not only speaking your truth, but modeling it.

Thank you, James. What a terrific compliment.

Thank you for joining me. And thank you all for listening or watching. Please, if you've enjoyed Everyday Ancestral, follow us, like us, whatever, whatever you do on your platform, just do it because I am having such a good time with my guests as I did today with Paige and David. And I hope you are as well. And we'll keep doing this. Just communicate to us that you're loving what we're doing by Subscribing. Thank you all, and stay curious. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K dot com. And hey, if If you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.