91. How To Heal From Trauma And Move On With Maximum Control -Shalev Amar

You are listening to the Wealth Without Bay Street Podcast, a Canadian guide to building dependable wealth. Join your hosts, Richard Canfield and Jason Lowe as they unlock the secrets to creating financial peace of mind in an uncertain world. Discover the strategies and mindsets to a financial future that you can bank on.

How to process, release and heal trauma. We are very, very grateful to be joined today by Shalev Omar, who's been an attorney for 17 years and he's literally spent thousands of hours over the last nine years studying trauma psychology and emotional healing methods. Now, Shalev is passionate about this topic because he himself and his family have suffered through generational cycles of trauma. And Shaleb and I met each other through the Genius Network, which we're both proud members of, a wonderful community of established entrepreneurs, some of the most caring, gracious people. And I was really touched, you know, by what he shared and spoke to Richard, the co host here of Wealth Without Bay street and said, listen, we need to have Shalev on our program, especially during this pandemic and being so committed, you know, to breaking that cycle. Shalev's mission is to teach people how to overcome their trauma so they don't suffer and pass it on, which we see so often in situations where it manifests itself in addictions, whether it's, you know, gambling, sex addiction, addiction, alcohol, drug abuse, et cetera, domestic violence. The next step in Shalev's life after he transitions from his practice is to teach people how to process, release and heal trauma full time. But he wants to share the methods he's learned with others right now in the meantime. Now, before we begin and officially welcome Shalev to the show, we're going to include in the show Notes where you can connect with Shalev via his YouTube channel. We'll include his LinkedIn profile as well. And so you'll have everything you need at your fingertips to stay tuned to his message and what he's teaching. You'll be glad that you did. Shalev, welcome to Wealth Without Bay Street. It's a pleasure to have you.

Great to be here, Jason.

So walk us through, share your story. Give our listeners a glimpse into what inspired you to want to help people in this area of their lives.

Well, like a lot of people who make progress in a certain area of life, it really came out of desperation.

I had various sources of trauma mainly in my early childhood, even, frankly, before I was born, which is what a lot of people don't realize. Before I get into the detail of my story, this is not meant to be a bash fest at my Parents or anybody else, people do the best that they can with the level of consciousness and awareness that they have. If that awareness was higher, they wouldn't have done certain things. And oftentimes I'm a parent now as well. Oftentimes as a parent, you might do something and not realize that you might somehow be harming your child. I don't think any parent intentionally does that. I think a lot of the time, like I said, it's just lack of awareness, lack of understanding, inability to control emotions when triggered by misbehavior, things like that. Oftentimes our parents had it way worse than we did. So again, they're doing the best that they can to do better. But.

Without that increased awareness, these cycles of trauma just keep going from one generation to another. And that is one of my missions, is to break these cycles so this doesn't just continue, like I said, one generation after the other. So what am I talking about? I was even traumatized before I was born. They've done studies now that babies in utero, when they're exposed to their parents stress or depression or anxiety, the baby is basically soaking up all of the mom's neurochemicals, all, all of the mom's hormones. So if mom is very stressed out, going through a lot of things, depressed, anxious, whatever it may be, guess what? The baby's experiencing that as well. And so if there's very high levels of stress in utero, that can actually make the baby's nervous system overactive. That's one of the things that can cause an overactive nervous system, which then during life can make the child more prone to trauma and also have some issues with over emotionality, anxious attachment types, things like that. Here's the other thing. My mom also had a very difficult labor.

Actually had a traumatic birth. I was stuck in the birth canal well over 24 hours. So what's happening during that time? Mom is being flooded with stress chemicals, norepinephrine, adrenaline. And guess what, my nervous system is getting flooded.

With those biological chemicals as well. And so that can also, the same as in utero can cause a more or more overactive nervous system, even some level, low level or higher level, depending on how traumatic the birth was, of generalized anxiety. And then after that. And so those are two large causes of anxiety and trauma that most people are not even aware of. They have no idea. Not to get too deep into the weeds, but even early surgery can be traumatic for a baby. The baby doesn't know what's going on and it's going through all kinds of pain, that even includes circumcision. So I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but just people should be aware that if you're doing a major surgical procedure that's very painful for a baby that can have lifelong effects. It really can, believe it or not. And so it's just kind of a buyer beware type thing because I think the misconception is, oh, it's a baby, it'll just resilient, they'll overcome it immediately. And it's actually the opposite. The younger you are, the more prone you are to trauma, and especially babies, your brain is basically, it's like a sponge at that young age. And it's the most, a sponge the first two years of life. So anything that happens is extremely magnified. So moving on from that, I also grew up in what's called a kibbutz, which is basically a communal farming town in Israel. And they actually don't do this anymore. And again, going back to people had more awareness, they wouldn't do certain things. But what happened to me is at a year old, I was taken away from my parents and put into these little children's homes, like children's dormitories. And that was extremely traumatic. I would wake up in the middle of the night. They were supposed to have rotate parents and other members of the community watching the kids at night. But of course, people are humans, they would fall asleep. And so I would wake up in the middle of the night, not be home, be terrified, and just go running around this little town of 300 plus people trying to get home. And they would find me. Yeah, they would find me in the middle of the night just screaming and crying. And my earliest memory is running around like that, feeling terrified, feeling abandoned, feeling like I was going to die. So that was very traumatizing and a big parallel to that. Although there's very few communities in the world that do something like that, where that can happen is orphanages.

So kids who have been orphaned, it's extremely important that toddlers have not just affection, but physical touch, being held, being hugged, being consoled. And if that doesn't happen again, causes major, major trauma, lifelong problems. These are not minor issues. These are major issues. These are some of the biggest, biggest issues that somebody can go through. So that was the other major cause of trauma. And finally my father had borderline personality disorder. And what that is is it's basically a disorder where a person cannot control their emotions and can fly off the handle at little provocation or even no provocation. Because sometimes the no provocation part is they might remember something even though it's not happening in the moment, and that could set them off. And so that was challenging as well. And back to what I said, I don't want to bash my parents. My dad was, was severely traumatized himself. My grandfather, who is a Holocaust survivor, was an alcoholic and he really traumatized his family. My dad went through some very, very difficult childhood. Unfortunately, he didn't get help. But there was also, we have to look back to past generations. There was also a lot of stigma back in the day about getting any type of psychological help.

Very true.

Considered potentially to not be manly if you need any kind of help. And so there are a lot of people who were just suffering in silence and they just feared being ostracized. And that's one of the reasons they didn't get help. And part of it is just socialization, you know, the belief that a real man doesn't need help. A real man doesn't have emotional problems. Real man just stuffs it down deep inside.

So, you know, interesting that you mentioned that because it's not, it's not geographically limited, that concept or that idea and that it was, you know, exposed to it in Israel as much as it would be here in Canada or North America. I'm sure most places in the world it's been consistently that that's the case. So it's not a, that's not a geographic issue. That's a societal kind of a standpoint that's more global on, you know, that, that, that manly pressure to, you know, push it down sort of a scenario. So it's interesting to hear you say that.

Yeah, correct. I mean, it's worldwide. And.

Look.

There'S nothing wrong with masculinity. Part of it is.

Being direct, persisting, persevering, overcoming challenges. Those are all positive aspects of masculinity and they're great. The issue though is that some of the negative aspects, the toxic elements of it is, you know the saying, like, don't be a baby, don't be a pussy. Man up. Yeah, things like that. And that's basically saying, repress your feelings. Don't try and talk about anything, don't try and process anything. And the ironic thing is, is it takes a massive amount of courage as a man to, to do that kind of work because of the societal pressures, because of the judgment. And for a long time, what held back my healing was just the shame about having severe generalized anxiety, being emotionally triggered, having difficulty controlling my emotions, having anxious attachment Type in relationships, a lot of self betrayal where I would put others before me because that's what I had to do as a child to survive in the environment that I was in. And I didn't even realize that I was socially programmed, but I was. And a lot of times as an adult, we beat ourselves up for feelings and mindsets that we had no choice in when we were growing up. It's what we had to do as a child to survive. But as an adult, those beliefs and those feelings are maladaptive because they're basically an overreaction based on the past and overreaction to the present situation where your ego and your self concept is just trying to protect you. But again, it's maladaptive and can lead to all kinds of problems.

Sometimes it's easier to face. Face a situation that might create fear that's external versus what's going on, you know, mentally. Because your story inspired me so much. You know, having gone through, you know, trauma myself and being in a situation where, you know, both my parents passed away prematurely and, you know, growing up in our home was just my parents arguing all the time and my, my dad, you know, having just a temper that would, you know, is really just. It was terrifying. I mean, I don't know how else to describe it. And when they passed away, I had thought, okay, I'm just going to, I'm just going to put all the, the grief and the anger and the, the. The fear and the. Just the emotion. I'm just going to try and file it away. And then when my wife, Rebecca and I started to have children, every special occasion, I was just an emotional wreck. And she. Sometimes. What I'm trying to say is that sometimes you just need to hear from someone who cares about you and loves you what you already know to be true, which is you need help. And Rebecca said to me, I think you need to go talk to somebody. I knew that it was hearing it that somehow triggered me doing it. And I'm not sure why that is. But by the same token, I can be reckless from the fear side too. Like, I can rush into a situation that most people would be probably terrified of. But I have that reckless kind of. I'll just. You know what I mean? Because I've got issues with how all those events unfolded in my life. And so you're. I mean, you're absolutely right. Being able to process it. I think what you would say as well, Shalev, is that it's not something that can be done on your own.

Yeah.

Because you don't have all the perspective of how to go about processing it, definitely.

And it's. Yeah, that's really challenging. How old were you when your parents passed?

My dad passed away when I was 24, and that was in October of 1998, and my mom passed away in 2006. And both of their deaths were sudden and unexpected. And, you know, when you look at the medical examiner's report, you know, cause of death was listed for both of them as medically undetermined. So people die suddenly, but to have both the patriarch and matriarch of a family go like that, really unusual. But their relationship, all they argued about was money. And my dad had alcohol abuse issues and a severe temper and took it out primarily on me. My sister could do no wrong in the eyes of my father, but I got the wrath of it. And I, in my own household, in my own home, I've never laid a hand on my children. And I've learned through grief counseling, and I've learned through counseling on how to allow myself to feel what I'm feeling so that I can process it in a responsible way. And it's not easy.

One thing that comes up too, based on what both of you gentlemen said, is that, you know, the, the. You identified, Jason, the, the financial aspect and being a leading indicator or cause of that stress. And I think that that's common. We've mentioned that on our show before. You know, often when you ask people what's the leading cause of stress in the household, you know, very, very frequently the answer is money or monetary related issues, how are they paying the bills, et cetera. And, and then I think, you know, the, the, the. These traumatizing events, these emotional, you know, the, the, the. The baggage anchor that we're walking around with that we're hauling around, and it's like, you know, it's literally like a boat anchor. We don't know when it shows up or how it shows up, other than that it shows up through an emotional experience, typically. And I think that that gets correlated often to the financial aspect of the household. And it's either limiting what we can do financially, or it's adding distress, which is then materializing in some kind of a emotional type outburst often seen in households. So I think the necessity of understanding levels of these trauma and when it appears for people is important because when you know, when it appears, you recognize that this might be something that's tied to a past event, or that's when the realization happens. And through realization now you can recognize it's Time to maybe go and get some work done on that.

Correct. And the number one cause of divorce is monetary issues. So it's a huge problem. At the same time, I think kind of like you were alluding to the monetary.

It's not the source, it's kind of the symptom of the problem. It's the fact that people are traumatized and they have from childhood, oftentimes limiting beliefs, sometimes maladaptive behaviors that were programmed into them, trauma, emotional control issues, all of those make it very challenging to deal with an emotional issue like money because it's basically tied to your survival.

Right.

And so.

What I believe though is if you do heal, process and release your trauma, then you can address emotional subjects like money in a more logical, rational manner rather than flying off the handle about that. And that goes really to any subject.

Yeah, it's so true. And the same applies to having an abundance of money because we share with our listeners. It just amplifies more of who you are. And I've talked about this many times, Rich can attest to it. It's that.

If you believe that wealth in the form of a lot of money is going to make you happy.

I can tell you that there isn't a single person that I know.

Who'S wealthy financially who would say, yeah, having all that additional money is what truly made me happy. It didn't work for me. I thought, gosh, hey, when I become a millionaire, all the world's problems are going to come to an end. I'm going to be happy and not a chance. It just amplified more of who I am. I'm a very kind hearted, I believe, generous, grateful person and I try to please other people and always want other people to be happy and fulfilled.

At the expense of my own emotional well being. Sometimes.

That is typical with people who've been traumatized. And again, what it comes back to is in your childhood you had a chaotic environment. It was very similar to mine by the way. Although my dad was non alcoholic, he was basically a dry drunk. He had all the behaviors of an alcoholic without drinking because again, it was programmed into him in his childhood. Plus he had a bunch of unprocessed trauma. And yeah, he would just fly into rages like an alcoholic would. And he had, you know, some really nasty behaviors like an alcoholic would calling people out, being nasty to people. He was kind of a big, imposing, intimidating man. And I just remember in my childhood everyone, it just me that was terrified of my dad. Adults were terrified of him.

Yeah.

And he would, you know, kind of bowl people over with, with his yelling and, and just being dominant and domineering. And in any event, back to the effect of that is. So in adulthood, you want to do what you can to have some kind of control in your life. Because as a child, you have no control over this. You're walking on eggshells because you know, anything can set the parent off. And so that's why.

I'm not saying that people like you and I are not empathetic. We are. I mean, I consider myself to be an empath. But beyond that, I have. And it's been some of the hardest work that I've done. Just as hard as the trauma release is.

Kind of being okay with not being overly nice and overly accommodating. Like, no matter what I do, never start or stop being a kind person and start being a nasty person. It's just not me. But the key is to set strong personal boundaries because.

There'S basically three types of people in this world. And there's givers, there's matchers, and there's takers. Thankfully, majority of people are either givers, which means they give freely, they don't expect anything in return. Then you have matchers. They're basically reciprocators. They'll reciprocate what you do. If you're a giver, they'll give. If you take, they'll take or even punish the taker. And then you have takers and takers. If I had to quantify it, and I don't have some kind of double blind, scientific placebo controlled study, but if I had to quantify it based on anecdotal personal experience and just what other people told me, I would say probably 80% are givers or matchers. And then the remaining 20% or so, give or take 5 or 10%, are takers. And the problem with takers, you know, they tend to be sociopaths, narcissists, psychopaths. And takers are almost like human parasites and they don't care. They will take from you till you have zero left to give. And takers, you know, they prey on empaths. They prey on givers. And so I used to be very naive. I just thought, I thought most people, I just thought everybody was a giver or a matcher. I didn't even like the concept of a taker. Didn't even cross my mind. And after doing the work and learning so much about psychology and social dynamics and things like that, I realized, well, you know, there are takers. And I've Actually had several of them both in my personal life and in business. And I was just not aware. I kept mistakenly. And you know, they can also be highly manipulative as well. Very Machiavellian.

Yeah.

So they'll gaslight you and make, make you think that you're crazy. But. But yeah, once you learn that, that there are takers, then you have to protect yourself. It doesn't mean don't be giving, don't be a giving person. But it's kind of like that old Reagan quote, trust but verify. Like give people the benefit of the doubt, but don't listen to what they say. Watch their actions, watch their behaviors.

Totally.

Those don't match up with what they're saying because that's the other thing about givers. They tend to be very, very honest. They'll do what they say they're going to do for me if I make a commitment or I have an obligation I have to be close to near death or have a massive family emergency to not abide by that commitment.

Yeah, it just feels like you just feel like you wouldn't be able to just carry on with anything if you didn't honor that commitment.

Correct.

I know the feeling.

Yeah. So what's very important for givers and just people in general to be aware of is that you can be kind, you can be empathetic, you can be understanding, but you must have strong personal boundaries. And if those boundaries are crossed, you can give people a chance. I have a three strikes and you're out rule with the one exception. If it's like just something absolutely just outrageous, then it's one strike and you're out. You know, when people. I forget who to attribute this quote to, but when people show you who they are, you have to believe them. You can want the best for them, but some people are not good to have in your life. So, you know, if they violate the three strike rule or even one strike rule, if it's something very major, like outrageous, like they steal from you or something, or physically harm you or something like that, you know, you give, you give people, you give people a couple of warnings. And if they keep, if they keep doing whatever it is that they're doing that's violating your boundary, you have to cut them out of your life. You have to be ruthless about it. And it's very hard. It can actually trigger a lot of anxiety and a lot of feelings of separation and abandonment. But you have to do it or else these people can wreck your life. And then they still, despite all that, it's still not enough. You still haven't given them enough. They don't even appreciate what you did give them. So you want the kind of people in your life who are givers or at least matchers and that appreciate what you do for them and how you give to them and also frankly reciprocate.

Yeah, and it sounds like, you know, through your life because, you know, you run a successful law practice and been in business a number of years as well, while also going through this work, learning these incredible skill sets, doing this research, doing the hard work to understand and get passionate about this, this deep knowledge that you've taken in and to learn a ball about how to understand and process trauma. But it also sounds like you've had some experiences in business. And so what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, Shalev, is that these traumatic experiences, these things that have happened over time, they've developed into shaping habits that have occurred in your adult life and then they interact with the relationships of all the people that you're with, which includes the people that you might be in business with, whether it's employed staff, business partners, or perhaps collaborative engagements you're trying to do with other businesses, you know, professionals. And so maybe could you give us an example of how maybe not, whether it's for yourself or just in general where you see that maybe play a role for people engaging in business and business partnerships, how do you see that manifest itself where it doesn't perhaps work out well? And then how would having this work that you are talking about be able to perhaps change the game there for people had they done it a different way?

Yeah, well, look, there's definitely several ways where I've been burned in business and had to learn some very painful lessons, again because of the background of trauma that I had. So for example, giving people the benefit of the doubt, putting others first, that led to me getting into some bad business deals that were not win win or were not equitable. And that can take months, sometimes even years to extricate yourself from. And so a tip is to your viewers is if you are a very empathetic, kind person, have a member of your team or a good friend or a family member who's, shall we say, more of a matcher or before you agree to some kind of long term deal, have them look at the contract and have them bring up red flags to you. Because a lot of times our minds were we won't even because we want the best for the other party, we assume they want that for us. As well. And so we might just disregard or overlook red flags. So having that third party, sometimes if you have multiple team members who are like that and have them all look at the deal as if you're the business owner still ultimately going to be your decision. But at least get that feedback, get that outside perspective because that will help you see things that your particular activation system, your selective focus might miss. So that can be very helpful to overcome something like that. Other challenges that trauma can cause because you realize so many people are traumatized. Again, I don't have specific statistics, but just based on the news and everything you see here and read and people in your life, I would say at least 70 to 80% of people are dealing with some level of trauma, some major, some more minor, some in between. But because you have that awareness of trauma, you can have team members, for example, who might have an outburst or do something inappropriate and you want to help them. You want to basically, you know they're traumatized. That's not the event in the moment, it's their trauma being triggered. You don't want to fire them immediately. You want to give people a chance. But again, I've learned the hard way, you have to give written warnings. You cannot allow any inappropriate behavior to continue because that's something that also can threaten your business because a toxic element can alienate your other team members. People will quit or cause all kinds of conflicts in the firm. And frankly, drama costs you money. Having to spend hours dealing with drama, massaging egos, fixing blow ups. And.

I have a family environment in my firm and it's taken a lot of hiring and firing to get there and some, some very painful situations to go through where again, you're trying to help the person and at the end of the day, you can't do it for them. People have to be willing to help themselves. And also at a certain point when it's a business and they're hurting your business, there's only so many chances you can do so again, I think the three strikes you're out rule is good for that. And then lastly, it's just again, you can be naive. I've had former business associates who frankly stole from me and.

Again, very painful lessons. But I'm not as naive as I used to be anymore. So what I believe now is give people the benefit of the doubt, do the most you can to help them, provide warnings. Don't have a quick trigger finger with firing people. But in the same token, if somebody is not accepting responsibility for their behavior, then nothing can be Fixed, because that's a predicate to anything being improved, anything being fixed. If they don't even admit that there's an issue, that should be an instant cause to fire somebody. And again, I've learned that the hard way.

Yes.

Financially painful way. And you know, sometimes life is the best teacher.

Absolutely. And when you create that, you know, that family environment that you described that you have in your practice and that we thoroughly know that we have here on our team, you got to protect it. But it's everybody's responsibility to protect it.

Correct. And also requires open communication between the team. They can't always expect you to run in and be the therapist and fix everything. Like people have to talk to each other. That's important as well.

Yep. And you know, for, for our viewers and our listeners who may be again, dealing with, with trauma by not dealing with it and not addressing it, trying to suppress it. What would your, what would your good guidance be in terms of the first step to getting better?

I think the first step is self compassion. You need to be your own best friend, champion and supporter. There's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not your fault that these things happen to you. And what your nervous system and your ego, which is construct of our minds, all they're trying to do, they have a positive intent. Even though feeling anxious or depressed, depressed is just feels terrible or overly stressed or emotional. All of that is really done to protect you. And like we talked about earlier, these, these ways and feelings did protect you in your childhood because you're here. Otherwise you'd be dead. I mean, imagine, imagine. I can't even imagine the situation where if I was a little kid and every time my dad would fly off the handle, I would try and fight him. I mean, he was triple my size.

And that could have led to either more severe trauma or who knows what. You can't beat yourself up for what you had to do to survive in your earlier life. Or even as an adult, if you have a major trauma happen, like you're assaulted by somebody way bigger than you again in the moment, which you're not cowardly. Your brain is trying to keep you alive. And sometimes if you fight in a certain situation, you could be killed. And so the key is not to shame yourself, not to beat yourself up. I mean, there were times where I was like, why didn't I stand up for myself more? Especially in adolescence or even in college? You know, I was kind of out of my social group. I was like the punching bag that everybody would come down on and Talk crap to. Because I would just take it. You know why? Because growing up, I had to take it from my dad and the process. And not just that. At the same time I'm like, well, I could say something back, but I don't want to hurt their feelings. So I care about their feelings, but they don't give a shit about my feelings. You know what I mean? At the same time, it was even worse because it was triggering that earlier trauma. But again, doing the work. And over time, I just learned people will only do what you allow them to do to you. And so if it's not a situation where your life is at risk, you should stand up for yourself. Just practice it. Even if it's, even if it's something as simple as just saying, hey, I didn't like that you said that to me. That was a nasty thing to say. There's nothing wrong with saying that to somebody. Yeah. And they can end up being.

And being clear and saying, don't let it happen again.

Exactly. Like, I'm not okay with being talked to this way. Yeah. And the person has two very easy choices. They could keep doing it and the friendship or business affiliation or whatever relationship or whatever it might be is over. Or they can say, accept responsibility. And a lot of times people will be like, oh, gosh, sorry, I didn't realize that was having that effect on you. I won't do that anymore. Most people are decent and will do that, but if they're not, if they start gaslighting you and saying, oh, you're just too sensitive and stuff like that, gone out of your life, you don't need people like that in your life.

It's interesting what you're sharing with us too, because this ties into most of the business books I've ever read, which says you become a bit of a makeup of the top five or six people you spend a lot of your time with. And so getting rid of negative energy and people that might hold you down, or whatever name call, whatever that is, where it impacts you in some way, you get some energy, you can feel it. And instead surrounding yourself and immersing yourself with people that rise you up and help you become a better person, whether it's, you know, a better relationship person, better financial person, better business owner, whatever those things are, but being around the right group of people and it's like a self selection mechanism, it's tied to a lot of things I think that you've identified with us today. So, you know, I think, I think the importance of having the ability to see when that's happening and recognize, is this a person? Although they're in my life, do they need to be in my life to the degree that they are? And can I, you know, go find some new energy to be around?

Definitely, because people can lift you up and energize you, or they can just bring you down and drag you to the bottom. We, we are social creatures. We're, we're. Unless you're a psychopath that doesn't have mirror neurons. Like, we pick up on other people's energy and, and how they feel about us and talk about us. And frankly, if somebody is a negative Nelly, why do you need them? What are they doing for you? I would rather be alone than have a bunch of negative people in my life. And that was hard for me to come to that point. And I have had to cut some people out of my life. It was hard for me to come to that point from the abandonment issues from my childhood. But I just realized I'm not abandoned. I had myself. And as I was saying before, you must be your biggest champion, supporter and friend. The most important relationship that you have in your life is the relationship with yourself. As long as that relationship works, all your other relationships will improve. If that relationship is not where it needs to be, then your other relationships will not go well either, because again.

People will. Nobody will say or do anything worse than what you do to yourself either. So if you're constantly beating yourself up and being hard on yourself, other people will be that way too. Like your inside is a mirror, the outside. And so if you're not feeling well and you're having a hard time. And by the way, I'd like to give a plug to the holistic psychologist. She's on Instagram Shop. She has millions of followers. I don't agree with 100% of what she says, but she has amazing insights on trauma and self compassion and healing and highly, highly recommend that you check her out. Okay, but that's one of the big themes that she talks about, is re parenting yourself. Give yourself that emotional support that you felt was lacking. And when you don't feel good, think back to when you originally felt that way and just visualize it. And if you're a child crying instead of berating, what people often do, which is self abandonment and self betrayal, is they just try and avoid the feeling. Instead of that, go into it, hug that child, tell that child it's going to be okay, it's not your fault. I understand that this hurts. I understand that this is hard But I'm here with you. You'll never be alone again. Things like that speak to yourself compassionately the way you would to your own child. As you do that, you'll see your self esteem improves, you feel better. And those moments that could trigger painful memories, they become less frequent and also the intensity goes down. So it's a practice. It's not something where you can snap your fingers and then you're there. It's kind of like working out. If you go to the gym once a year and do a few curls, they'll do absolutely nothing. You have to go consistently a couple times a week at least. And so that's what it's like with this practice. It's just a practice like anything that can be learned, it's a habit that can be built. And if you forget sometimes, don't beat yourself up, just remind yourself and do it again. And another technique that's not very common, that very few people have heard about is it's, it's kind of a reframing technique that I came up with in my own. Because part of my challenge is I would hear my dad screaming in my ear. It was like playing in the background and it would drive me freaking crazy and also infuriate me sometimes, especially once I had my own child. I don't know if this happened to you, Jason. You see how innocent they are. They're naughty, they misbehave, their children, their brains aren't developed, they don't have self control. But you also see how innocent and fragile they are. And that's why I, like you, have never laid hands on my daughter. But also when she was born, it just infuriated me when she reached certain milestones, certain ages and like did things that I obviously did as a little kid and like that I was emotionally abused for and she was not and made me really angry what I went through. But you know, that's just part of the healing process. You can't stay there. You still got to go back to the fact that like, hey, it really was not intentional and hurt people, hurt people. But back to the technique. So what it is is when I would hear the yelling, I would just change it.

I do impressions, a lot of people don't. But I would just like mock it to myself to the point where it start to be funny. I even had a cockapoo, passed away last year unfortunately. And I got mini labradoodle. But one of the things I would do to just reframe it and make it funny to me is like one of the things my dad would do is he would say always and never. So if I'd, like, spill something, be like, you're always spilling. You never pay attention to anything. Blah, blah, blah. So like, with my dog Teddy, and he's a dog, he loves me to death, I would be like, teddy, you're always wagging your tail, and you're never not wagging your tail. No, it's just silly. And it would make me laugh, and.

I think that would make anybody laugh. Yeah.

I can tell you our viewers and listeners are exactly laughing. I would even do it with friends, joking. Like, first I tell the story about my dad. I would just do it jokingly and be like, you always wanted to come over and you always want to hang out, and you never don't want to hang out. You know, the Israeli accent. And it's silly. But look, here's the other thing. At the end of the day, when you're traumatized, everything is very, very serious. And one of the keys to healing is, is stop taking life so fucking seriously. Excuse my French. Yeah. Like, life is not meant to be suffered through. You're meant to actually enjoy parts of your life. And then there's parts of your life where you got to just grind and, like, get things done. And there's emotionally challenging parts. But it's the whole spectrum of reality and existence. And the problem with traumatized people is we're too much in that pain and serious part, and we're not enough in the joy and laughter and just enjoyment part.

Well, because sometimes. Sometimes you don't know how to.

Yeah, right.

Like it. Like you said, practice. I mean, you've got to. You have to be able to do that. You know, I didn't know how to nurture my children. Nobody nurtured me. My mom did when. When she could, but I didn't know how to do it. There was no. There were no courses that I took on how to, you know, be a nurturing father. I had to. I had to learn. I had to ask. I had to talk to people. I relied heavily on my wife Rebecca. And I learned.

Yeah. And that's great because we.

And I practiced.

Yeah. Our brain, we have neuroplasticity. Yeah. The childhood wiring. The challenging part is the childhood wiring is the strongest, deepest wiring. So it takes. Just takes time. That's the other thing. You have to have patience with yourself. What happened to you didn't happen overnight. Especially if it's childhood. Repeated childhood trauma, kind of the small T trauma. The big distinction. The small T traumas Are more minor traumas like being yelled at, being neglected, things like that, Big T traumas, huge traumas like witnessing a murder or being raped or severely assaulted or surviving death and war and stuff like that. But the effect, what people don't realize with ptsd, the effect is exactly the same. What I had is called complex ptsd. The only difference is the source. Both, both of the sources are trauma. It's just different types of trauma. And you know, complex PTSD is coming more and more widely known about. It's ridiculous that it's not in the dsm, but I believe it will be. But I can tell you that the effect, and there's a lot of people that, that have compassion for those for like veterans who have ptsd. And we should, of course. So it's not either or. I'm just saying that one of the other parts is people say, oh, just get over it. You were just being yelled at. Well, being yelled at at 5 years old or 4 years old or even younger, it's not the same as being yelled at as an adult. Not at all. As an adult you could just tell yourself, okay, they're having a bad day and whatever. I'm not going to take this personally. I'm going to let it go. Even if it was unjustified.

As a child, you don't have that level of awareness. You think that everything is about you, so you're being yelled at. What story do you tell yourself?

Something's wrong with me.

Exactly. Yeah, something wrong with me. I'm bad, I'm not worthy, I'm unlovable. All not true. But that's all the 3, 4, 5 year old brain can come up with because it can't understand how the person you love most in the world can be treating you like this, other than if there was something truly defective and deficient about you.

And so the notion that certain types of trauma can't result in the same type of problems is just frankly false. Completely false. And I think as that understanding expands, there'll be a lot more compassion for, for the challenges that people are going through even if they weren't severely abused. Because it's kind of a stair step method. If you have low level abuse and traumatization that happens over many years because of this stair step. So let's imagine a severe assault. Let's put that at this level. Okay, so the lower level trauma starts here. But if it's happening day after day, all day long, year after year, over and over again, guess what? It can even be more severe than this very high level, one or two time traumatic events and for sure. And that's one of the things that I want to increase awareness about so people have more compassion for other people and aren't thinking like, well, you know, nobody put you in a hospital. Get over it. It's not like that. Like, again, the drama's repeated. It could be even worse.

Shalev, this was amazing, a great conversation and I think, you know, we're going to plan to have you back. And again, we want to point our viewers and listeners to some really valuable resources that you've provided to us as well. And it was just a pleasure having you. Thank you so much. And I look forward to obviously continuing to connect with you, you in genius and to serve you or help you in any way that we can as well. And Rich always does a great job taking us home in each episode. And so Rich, take it away.

Well, thanks again, Shalev. This was awesome. I want to make sure that everyone checks out Freedom from trauma at the YouTube channel. And so when you're doing this work with everyone, you're sharing the message like you've done with us today. You may not think of yourself as a superhero, even though when you talk about your dog in the voice that you use today, for a lot of people you may come across as a comedic superhero. And so what, what we're, we're wondering is who is it that you would most want to be a superhero to?

Well.

Basically anybody who's suffering with trauma.

To be trapped in trauma is to be trapped in a living hell where you're constantly in fight, flight or freeze, you have difficulty breathing. It's a feeling of somebody's constantly trying to swing at you from behind or you're almost being hit by a car. You're stuck in that state literally 24 7. I have immense compassion for the millions, if not billions of people who are going through that because that's been most of my life until the last couple of years. And it took me nine years of work to get here. But I've learned some things over the years and I want to dramatically speed up time for people because if you just know what to do and you do it, your healing can happen much, much faster. It won't need to take years. I mean, look, it'll take some time. I'm not going to BS anybody and say there's a magic pill, but if you're consistent and you have a whatever it takes attitude, you 100% can heal and you don't have to keep suffering through your life. You don't have to pass this on to future generations. Stephen Covey would say, just because you were abused doesn't mean you have to abuse others.

Absolutely.

So I'm all about breaking that cycle so people can just enjoy their lives and be happy and again, not pass it on to others.

Shalev, thank you. Thank you sincerely for being generous with your time. And we know that our viewers and listeners are undoubtedly going to get enormous value from today's episode. And so we, on that note, we'll say to all of our viewers and listeners, make the rest of your week great. And if you are in trauma and need some help, then please, please, please take that very important first step that Shalev shared with us here today and get the help that you deserve so that you can, you can release it and you can move on and live out the rest of your life without that being, you know, holding you back or suppressing you. And what you'll see over this shoulder, I think, is a playlist of additional videos that we would recommend that you continue watching so that your journey of learning can continue. And social EV, thanks again. We'll have you back. And gentlemen, it was a real pleasure being with you both today. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Richard. Enjoyed it. And by the way, there were a bunch of techniques that I didn't have a chance to get into, but those would be on my channel if people were interested.

Awesome.

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