Changing Our Narrative Stephen Rowley

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Stephen. Stephen, really looking forward to our conversation today, Stephen.

Me too, glad to be here.

Yeah, so Stephen is a, uh, an adoptee. He's also an adoptive dad, and you're a psychotherapist as well, right?

I am currently, yes. And, uh, but I was in— I was in education as a teacher Uh, principal, school district superintendent, uh, 3 college faculties, uh, included in that time. So it wasn't until my mid-60s I made the, the big leap and went back to school and became a psychotherapist then.

Yeah, wow. So, uh, I had this thought about healing that I've been chatting to a couple of people about, right? So we think about healing, it, it, it presumes, uh, it presumes a wound, right? brain. Uh, and the, the first person to draw attention to this prime— primal wound was Nancy Verrier with a book of that name. And it strikes me that's, that's a third— that's a third-party view, because as an adopted parent, she's an adopted parent, not an adoptee. And, uh, do, do we want, uh, to what extent do we want to create our own our own narrative based on our own kind of terminology and, and topics. So I guess my first question for you is, um, what, what do you make of, of all that? And, um, uh, this, this, this, this word—

Yeah, the, the, the awareness of a primal wound, uh, of course doesn't come until much later life. And, and frankly, even until I was in, uh, went back to school and did a lot more extensive reading, could I find a more robust language about psychology and psychotherapy, about the nature of psyche to be able to be more definitive about that. But I think you raised the point about a life narrative. I think that narratives, if they serve us well, change. So, and I've said for families who have adopted children when they're young, the mom and dad ideally will have a narrative for them. It helps explain what adoption was, why they wanted to do that. But then at some point by their teens and later, That narrative has to be taken over by the by the child or the young adult, and I think depending on what we find out in terms if we are looking for our birth parents or more information about our background, or we wrestle with some of the other feelings that may be related to that primal wound as time comes on, then that begins to take a different shape. It has a different narrative, but the narrative the narrative itself, and writing a memoir as I did, also is its own form of healing, and it doesn't have to be. So if I asked you, give me 5 minutes to tell me your life story, and I talked to you tomorrow and said, give me 5 minutes of your life story, it'd be a little different. Okay. So, and I think that's only natural, but I think it's that narrative that helps us put the pieces together in some kind of more coherent form. And as I say, it changes, but it, and it could, even in terms of what the, the role that the wound played, those who have any kind of wound, adoption or not, you know, If they stay with it and only with that, they could end up being— have a victim mentality and never move past it. Others will have a way to incorporate what they've learned around that, or maybe how the wound itself has served as a guide or an ally, a teacher, if you will, in time. And that changes your narrative considerably about fate and what turned out to be the destiny you were supposed to live that you'd never had a clue about at the beginning of your life.

Wow, some big themes there. Um, the, the first one that popped into my head was actually I was talking to a, a grandma, um, at the swimming pool, uh, whose, uh, granddaughter is, is adopted and she's 12. And, uh, they went to see her last, last week, uh, to take her out. Um, and she said that something had changed. She could, she could sense a change in her granddaughter. And it was actually to do with her granddaughter being showed, shown some details about her birth mother and birth father. And this had, this had lightened the 12-year-old girl's emotional load, I guess. And it, and the, the grandma Um, the friend that I know, I've been swimming alongside her for 20-odd years, she says, um, she, she's obviously tuned in and she could, she could see and feel the difference in her granddaughter, right? The fact that she was starting to get a little— she, a little bit more information was being shared with her.

Well, that age group, 12, 13, and 14, that's also, uh, At the time, adoption notwithstanding, we begin to get something we consider our identity. We become self-aware. Before that, we're, you know, we're just kids and live life. But so it's an interesting juncture for that to happen for that particular time. So it's good to— that's a good example of one kind of response that people can have when they get information that sheds more light on who they are and where they came from. It's not always the same reaction by other people. Some people don't want to know, or sometimes that information is not always the most pleasant to hear, and that can, that can do something to, you know, throw you off, off course, so to speak, for a while. But it's a good— I'm glad to hear it's a good story.

Yeah. So does the word healing resonate with you, Stephen?

Well, uh, you know, we've— you and I have talked about this. It does, but I have to say, after really thinking a long time about this, and it's actually It may— this may— my thinking may roll into my next book. I come to the conclusion that healing really is an ineffable— it's the one word that describes what healing is to me, ineffable. There are dozens, 10 or more primary different modalities of healing that range from physical to psychoemotional. Marvin Gaye had sexual healing. But I also realized that most— across most of these modalities, they all have certain elements in common. Ritual is one of them. Oftentimes, although some people can do, quote, self-healing, usually there's a third party. You know, in indigenous tribes, it's a medicine man. In our day, our times, it can be a psychotherapist. It can be a good friend who's along to help that healing. So from a Jungian and depth psychological perspective, what trauma, what that primal wound creates, is dissociation. And we respond to dissociation in a couple different ways. One is through aggressiveness, anger, fighting the world. The other is pulling within, being defensive, shutting the door, not letting anybody— either way, you don't want anybody else to get close to that wound. Even if you're not thinking of it that way, it's just sort of a defensive reaction. But in time, with that scenario, that dynamic, what healing then means is actually a form of reconnection. It's the opposite of dissociation, it's reconnection. That can be emotionally, it can be psychic. They can— I can get into neurophysiology and what reconnection can mean in terms of how the brain works and so forth. Um, or it can be in terms of adoption. Sometimes that reconnection, like it is in my case, uh, was actual reconnection with my birth mother, who I had— she gave me up when I was on my 10th day, and it wasn't until I was 40 years old that we Reunited, we were reconnected, and we were reconnected in a very powerful way. So that's a form of healing.

So when you say disassociation, you mean disassociation from others, or do you mean it—

I would say kind of, uh, it's a good question. It's hard to answer exactly. Yeah, it's a dissociation from others. You're dissociated from life. There's a distance. It's sort of like, you know, somebody who's dissociated may seem like they're not connected to others. They may be a little bit spacey. They may not be very engaged with others or frankly sometimes even within looking within. It's just sort of, you know, kind of like you got your bell rung and you're kind of, you know, it's not unlike having physical trauma of a concussion. I mean, you're dissociated. Your brain, if you've ever had a concussion before, even a minor one, you realize that something's not quite right. But psychically that creates that separation from others Who we know, that we work with, our loved ones. That wound is deep down in there and it's well protected, but it means I'm not gonna let anybody close to it because I don't want to feel this. I don't want to be hurt this way again.

Yeah.

And we don't think those thoughts often in those particular terms, but I'm sort of trying to give language to what that, what that may mean. Of course, Psychically, we can't, you know, we fall short being able to describe what psyche does with our own words. But that's sort of an approximation. Yeah.

So what you're saying is that— oh, sorry, is what you're saying that is, is that it's, it's subconscious that's happening?

Often, certainly in the beginning. I also want to mention, I mean, what I was just saying, stealing anybody's ideas, I can get my hands on marvelous book by Dr. Donald Karlshin called Trauma and the Soul. And he outlines in the first chapter, which is a must-read for any therapist, but it's a— I don't think every therapist reads it, but certainly people in my field have or should. But it's a recitation of how— yeah, how— what we do in— well, let's say, get this right. His argument, it's not the trauma, it's the response to trauma. So the response is either one of hypoarousal, being closed off, shuttering ourselves off from the world, or hyperarousal, where we're hypervigilant, we're pushing people away all the time. Either way, there's two sides of the same coin. So that is inherently— the irony is it's a defensive mechanism. It serves its purpose for keeping us consciously or otherwise, being hurt again. Oftentimes it is unconscious. The problem with it— this is the, this is the, this is the conundrum of trauma— is that although while we're self-protecting not to get hurt again, we're also— we've put ourselves in sort of a glass cage. Now we're sort of— we're kind of trapped. Our little safe little room, our safe house, which protected us, now becomes more like a prison. And so part of the healing process by whatever means, uh, then begins to lower those barriers or begins to— let's stay with the metaphor— open the door very slowly so it becomes safe again to walk, walk in the world again without a fear that something bad is going to come our way.

Yeah. So the, the trauma then is, in some senses, it's— and in some instances, it's, it's blocking us from other people.

Right. There's a visual— I mean, there are a lot of other newer technologies, neuroscience tools where you can actually measure and see what is going on inside the brain, including a traumatized brain. So think of it like in the old days when cars had carburetors. If your car was not in tune, you had to adjust the carburetor. Otherwise, it's clunking around, it's never hitting all the cylinders, it's making a lot of noise and stuff. Or if you drop your computer or your phone on the ground and it doesn't work, that's dysregulation. It's not regulated. And so that neural dysregulation is in fact the antecedent, it's underlying, it's under the hood of emotional dysregulation. So if you find somebody who's emotionally dysregulated, for example, if you're stuck in hiding from the world for the rest of your life, that's a form of emotional dysregulation. Or if your moods are going up and down without any control, that's a form of emotional dysregulation. But the corollary to that, you can actually see and measure through different scientific techniques. You can actually see that the antecedents are in fact physical. They're physical, you know, with brainwaves and other parts of the brain that are or are not in tune with one another, either overstimulated or understimulated or even disconnect. I mean, that's, that's, you know, that's the neuroscience terminology, uh, in a rough sort of way. But you get my point, I think, that there's that— that, uh, this isn't just strictly— the, the trauma isn't strictly psychological, if you know what I mean. So we, we examine— people like me look at the psychological end of these things, or in my own case, examine my own life through writing a memoir and so forth. But I, you know, I've got— I've gone through this myself, but we have to realize that if we're looking for If the cases are severe in terms of the trauma and medication is only, for example, only helping quell some of the symptoms, those— that will not cure or create actual healing. Things like neurofeedback, as an example, has a much greater potential to actually heal by actually restoring neural regulation in the brain.

Yeah. So, um, sorry, listeners, I left off the fact that, uh, that Stephen is an author as well as these— as well as being an adoptee, adoptive parent, and a psychotherapist. He's an author. And that's one of the things that we're going to be, I guess, talking about today. And there's, uh, there's links in the show notes. Every time we do an episode, there's links in the show notes so that people could find more about the guest, uh, look, check out the website, check out the book if they've got one, um, as Stephen has. So, um, I think, I think if I remember something from, from looking at your website, our conversation that we had last time, is that as well as this kind of hard edge, um, the Jungian stuff, you're also into— you've also explored some Eastern ideas as well. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been— I've had— I can't say that I'm a card-carrying Buddhist. I'm not sure most Buddhists carry cards anyway. But I've been tremendous influences. There's one of the chapters in my book is called Sharon Stone, the Dalai Lama, and Me. And that came out of a 3-day teaching I was with the Dalai Lama, then I was in a private reception with, with him, and Sharon Stone happened to be there. It's a— it's pretty— I think it's a fairly funny chapter in the book. But then also I've had— there's a number of other different Buddhist lamas who I've been involved with. There's another chapter. I played golf with a Buddhist lama in Carmel Valley one time. But the thing— the Suzuki Roshi, the beginner's mind, I think is almost a central precept from— in terms of what I'd call Zen approach to therapy and how we begin to understand the mind and begin to have a self-awareness of the mind. So when our thoughts are running away from us, We don't just jump on and cling to them. We learn how to let go and be able to just watch what the mind does. So my the end of my book, the book comes from a Zen koan, which is it isn't really, but it's like a puzzle. Like the the most common one is what's the sound of one hand clapping? It's kind of hackneyed by now, but it's almost a trope. But but the in my case, I had a as I was trying to get the ending of the book, the last three. weeks. I had one more chapter to go and I just couldn't get it. And I had the Zen koan on my computer, and that was, uh, the coin lost in the river is found in the river. The coin lost in the river is found in the river. Now, certain, certain Zen traditions, lineages, will take a koan like that and give it to the student, and they have to stay with it for a month. And you do that every month for 2 years, so you get 24 major league koans. You asked to wrestle with. You go back to the teacher and say, is this the answer? They go, no, try again. And so at some point you realize these are not puzzles to be solved, but they're tools by which we begin to examine the mind and how the mind works. So in this particular case, if you take it literally, if you drop a coin into a river and you look down in the water, you go, well, I can see where it is. But of course, refraction of light, it isn't where you think it is. And of course, if you drop a coin into muddy water, you don't have a clue where it is. So there's that element to me that the koan, in terms of my own— my memoir, elicits the idea of mystery in life. We don't quite know how the things in my particular case— why was I so lucky in life? Was I lost all the time? What was— did I find myself? Have I still found myself? I'm not so sure. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And it's that— that's that another— using that word again, ineffable, a certain element of mystery. So a lot of people's narratives, a lot of people's memoirs, as an example, race to a kind of stunning conclusion, a resolution to the problem. And for me anyway, I can only say that I found that less satisfying than to keep the door open with some of the mystery of life. I mean, why do the things happen to us as they do? I mean, we can have some kind of causal explanation, but why did I end up with the parents that I had when I was adopted? Why did I meet my wife when I did? Why did our 4-year-old little boy come to our house on a certain day? My wife and I were devoutly— because we were both in education, surrounded by kids, like We don't want kids at home. We do it, we see them all the time at school. Why would we want a kid? He walked in the door, we fell in love, he did with us. And why did that happen? I can only say that's the hand of fate right there. And I take it as that kind of a powerful, ineffable, and mysterious element that's in our lives the more we examine them.

Yeah. There's loads there. The first thought that came to me is, you know, the word wonder. And we say wonderful, but, you know, but are we wonderful? You know, are we full of, full of wonder, or are we desperate to get the, uh, get the, uh, get the answer? You know?

Yeah. And I'd say it's an acquired taste, the way the curiosity is. People like me, I think by my nature, I'm curious, maybe even snoopy, but curious for sure. That's why I think I went into psychotherapy because there's so much to know and to try to learn that we can't possibly— in fact, here's one of the mysteries. The more we learn, the more we realize how much we don't know. So there's a conundrum right there. But I think that the sense of wonder, the sense of curiosity, that's, like I say, an acquired taste. And I think it's not for everybody. Some people don't— in terms of birth parents, some people don't want to know who their parents are. They could care less. Other people like me spent my life looking for them, and so that's just who I am. But the more I talk to people at different engagements and so forth, the more I hear that. I mean, I hear that quality of wanting reconnection, sometimes the ecstasy of finding a birth parent, sometimes the enormous disappointment of not finding one, and in some cases the utter surprise. I've got a client right now who I think is— it's quite clear that he's a very close blood relation to the former drug czar Pablo Escobar in Colombia, South America. Well, there were reasons of his own story. That's somebody— well, he's not alive anymore. You don't want to meet that family because they don't want to see you. You know what I mean? So sometimes it's like you got— sometimes that the universe says, no, you cannot do this. You should not do this. So that's again a disappointment, but we're left— going, well, how come? Or why, why don't I get to do that? Or why did I get to do that? So we're all over the map with, with those big questions, but they're— to me, they're, they're— they fuel a deeper, uh, what, a deeper, uh, yearning to know more about these ineffable qualities of what life is composed. Um, and I think in that way, that primal wound we referred to earlier and the separation of mother and child, that sense of yearning, sense of wanting to be connected. There were times I'm sure I felt really miserable with it and frustrated, but in the long run I realized that has been a primary teacher. My life would not be what it is today without not only the circumstances of my upbringing by my parents, but also that other inner psychological dynamic that keeps me curious, keeps me wanting to know, keeps me a little off balance sometimes, keeps me, you know, I've turned into a polymath in my old age because I'm so interested in so many things. And that's why, you know, I chose at age— well, I just turned 75, so, and I've got another one in the hopper. And it's because that's who I am. I mean, other people are like, forget it, you're supposed to be retired. It's— well, I don't think I would be this way if I didn't have that. strong emotional dynamic, both unconscious much of the time and then later it came to consciousness more. So I can do nothing but say I wouldn't want to have it any other way.

Yeah, I knew this was gonna be a fantastic conversation. 2 things I see from from this to, to things, and perhaps ends, ends of the same spectrum. On one hand, we've got the mystery of healing. And on the other hand, at the other end of the spectrum, we've got the frustration. I just want to heal, right? So that's how I see it. And that's just That's just popped, literally just popped into my head. So how do you see those 2 things, like the, the, um, the mystery and, and, and frustration? Or do you see mystery and impatience? Or do you see, you know, how do you have a go at that?

Yeah, um, I'm gonna pull up, um, a quote that I think is a marvelous quote by James Hillman, who was the— who succeeded Carl Jung at the Advanced Institute in Zurich. Now, it isn't quite the same. He's using the word depression, but depression— let's take the depression out of the frustration of not knowing, of running into Dick Ralston. Here's his quote. This is from his famous book, Revisioning Psychology. Depression is essential to the tragic sense of life. It moistens the dry soul and dries the wet. It brings refuge, limitation, focus, Gravity, weight, and humble powerlessness. It reminds of death. The true revolution begins in the individual who can be true to his or her depression, jerking— neither jerking oneself out of it, caught in cycles of hope and despair, nor suffering through it till it turns, nor theologizing it, but discovering the consciousness and depth it wants. Discovering the consciousness that it wants. So begins the revolution on behalf of the soul. So you see how he takes what I have clients talk about— depression could be related to adoption or not— there's something, there's something in the depths of that, of that despair that Hillman is directing our awareness to, saying that awareness brings— it's not that what we're bringing to it, it's what it's bringing to us. So sometimes, like we say in these cases of mystery, or maybe when we do or do not find our birth parents, it's bringing something to us. Sometimes we can't be We can't think that we're masters of our lives and we're going to go out and conquer and find all everything we do. We're going to heal ourselves. Sometimes they come to us in very mysterious ways at very odd times. Sometimes those ways they come to us can be painful and tragic. And we wonder, well, I didn't deserve that. But so there's a quote in my book by a Zen priest, everybody gets what they deserve whether they deserve it or not. I love that. I mean, that happens to us all. We all— we're going to get it wherever we come.

But I—

but his thing is that with depression, so begins, begins the revolution on behalf of the soul. What's the revolution of the soul? On behalf of the soul, what, what purpose does the depression serve? So that's in therapy, but in my own life and by writing this book, it takes some time to dig down into where is this coming from? What are the themes? What are the the people? What are the instances that I'm depressed about? Plenty of people I know who have searched for birth parents the better part of their lives and had no success, forever frustrated, and they're depressed. All I want to know is who I am. Who are my mom? Who is my dad? Where do I get my birth certificate? And I've been there and done that, so I know what that feels like. But the impetus behind that depression is coming, I think, from some, some other deeper spark down And this is where depth psychology and other kinds of philosophy come in. But that if we're patient enough with ourselves to allow the— this revolution, this, um, this revelation as well come to us, this, this waiting for an answer or waiting for life to, uh, come to in its own way, I think is a form of, uh, spiritual maturity. That patience, because we're so— my— I'm short, uh, You know, I have a short attention span anyway. Let's get the answer. Let's get something done. I want an answer. Let's go do things. And when life says, no, that's not happening, that's not happening. For so as I, your young friend at 12 years old, she finds out something at 12. I've thought, what about what if I would have found out when I started looking that all of the records for my birth parents were handed to me? What would have? What would I have done? What would have happened to them? They were both alive again.

time.

I can't imagine what a, what a, what a train wreck that probably would have been for everybody. Instead, I had to wait till I was 40 and my birth mother a little over 60 to find each other, which was exactly the right time. And then I never did meet my birth father. That ends— the book ends with that. It was just about 2 years ago that I got contacted by 23andMe. He'd been dead since 1985, uh, and one of my new half-sisters said, it's a good thing you never met him. would have never gotten along. You're complete opposite except for the athletic ability. You know, you're like, you would have been at loggerheads. So, you know, so I dodged a bullet on that one. So yeah, I'm a little off course, but I think that's that thing, get coming back into why we take life circumstances, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and begin to make, if we want to, make them into something, uh, in terms of raising our consciousness And we do so by curiosity, by persistence, by looking for other signs in the world that are telling us something. That's, I think, what Hillman refers to, that revolution on behalf of the soul. That's where we— I think that's for some people, maybe many people, what does it mean to be in touch with soul? What is soul? It's another word like healing. It's inevitable. But still, there's that something we understand about our nature, I think, if we are mature enough and patient enough to really understand, to be in touch with those higher powers that are both, whether they're inside, outside, or both, take your pick.

So the thing that's popping into my head is, um, I think you used the word diving in and in the depression when you were reading the quote. So it— and so in, in that instance, we're talking about diving into the depression. In, in our case as adoptees, perhaps we're talking about diving into the wound or exploring, exploring the work, exploring the wound.

Um, right.

And, uh, and, and obviously the exploration is fueled by our curiosity, right? So the curiosity is Um, so we're exploring the wound rather than trying to push it away, right?

Right.

So we're trying to— we talk about— we hear so much about adopt— the number of adoptees in, um, uh, in addiction, right? Um, and, uh, I've had Pamela Karen over on the show talking about her, you know, the end of her 27-year— 20— I think she had 20— the end of a 27-year relation 27-year-old relationship with alcohol was when she— at the pivotal moment was when she realized that facing her feelings or exploring her wound was— it was time to do that rather than numbing out. Through the booze, right? So exploration and numbing out or suppressing or stuffing or anything like that seems to— it's kind of— is it about us going through the barrier rather than being stopped by it? I don't know.

Yeah, it's coming out of the The, uh, you use a telomere for— it's how some people can persevere and come out of the dark night of the soul. Because when you're in there with addiction, as an example, or other kinds of, of trauma, you're, you're in a, you're in no man's land. You don't— you're, you, you know where you left. You think you're headed in a direction that you want to be. Like, if you thought I left this piece of the mainland, I want to get to another continent or another island to be safe on, you don't know whether you're 5 feet away or 500 yards away or 500 miles. You just don't. That's why guides, either in terms of psychotherapists, although sometimes you can do it solo like you're— you're the woman you mentioned, or, uh, as I mentioned in my book, shamanism is particularly suited to this. Uh, there's a book in this country named, uh, Sandra Ingerman called, uh, It's a certain kind of shamanism. I'm seeing this same woman today, actually. Now they have a way of literally go— you don't have to do much of anything as the recipient of it. You basically, they go down into you after some different ritual exercises and so forth, but they can go down and find those places where those wounds exist, where those shattered pieces are. And as I mentioned in my book, it was a source of a, Of a healing, if you will, since we're using that word today, of a rift that I had from my mother from the time that she yelled at me when I was 13 and said I wanted to know more about my adoption. And she said, what's the matter with you? What's wrong? Don't you think we love you enough? Then I ran out of the room, slammed the door, and swore I would never talk to her about my adoption again. And I didn't, much to my embarrassment today, but I never did until I had the session, until I was able to go down, find those wounds again, and also— I have my shaman friend, uh, Shamanista Keeler, uh, tell me more about my own mother. My mom I grew up with totally changed my life, totally set my head completely differently. She was 100 years old at the time I— this event happened, and a year later she died. But I saw her before, uh, she died, and, uh, she burst into tears when she saw me. This is about 2 months after the session. I'd never seen her cry. Burst into tears, grabs my hand and just shakes. And I knew what was going on. It's like it was as though I had gone down with my friend the shaman into this form of healing. I had completely found her as she really was, more as the student with me as the teacher in this life. And I think she got it somehow. That got to her in some ways that I can't possibly rationally defend or explain, but I'm quite sure it was true. So, but that going down deep— there's lots of ways to go down deep. By definition, depth psychology, you go down deep. Dreams are a marvelous way to learn how to go down deep. You're getting dreams all the time. They're coming from down there. Now, what they mean and what images come with them, that's a podcast for another show. But surely, as Freud said, it's the royal road to Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.

Yeah.

So all those things, whether it's the creative impulse, the, uh, where our wounds are stored, where our talents are stored in some ways, uh, where we have the— what, uh, Hillman would call the bud of the acorn, our predestined, uh, self in its way of expanding and exploring its own destiny as we get older, that's coming from someplace. You know, we look at the oak tree and kind of go, you might have been an acorn one day. You don't look like an acorn today. You're, you know, your programming was from a long time ago and you were just tiny like this. We see that. So I think those are all those marvelous ways we can look at how we become who we are and what role that certainly our parentage, of course, but also the wounds we acquire, particularly when you're young, not only just adoption and that type of primal wound, but Uh, um, I use the word— it comes from Winnicott, the British, uh, uh, psychoanalyst— uh, primitive agonies. Primitive agony to me is like something even deeper. Primitive agony, I think, is what, uh, something that's so deep within our individual and collective psyches that it defies description, but they have to do with Terror, fear, fear of abandonment, as an example, would be a primitive agony, left alone. I had— I interviewed students who want to go to Stanford. I got my PhD there. And this young lady who's absolutely a gorgeous young woman, she was Chinese in terms of her nationality, but she was left in a box on a—

Oh, no.

at 6 months old at a train station in remote Mongolia, left. Now talk about a primitive agony. I mean, and of course then she got adopted and then she, she by her parents here. And, uh, she turned out to be— she said, well, I want to either be a brain surgeon or major in fashion or both. So she had that kind of level of talent. But talk about the hands of fate that delivered you from that obscure, wretched beginning into— I think she went to— she went to— didn't go to Stanford, she went to Dartmouth. But anyway, that leaves your mouth hanging open, like, by the grace of God, by the grace of some power, look where you ended up.

Yeah.

Just, it's, it's beyond the word luck. That's— I use it in my book. I use the word both fate— well, adoption and destiny. There's something about destiny in this, something about how these events Our traumas play a role in taking us to our ultimate destiny, if we're lucky, if we have support. Because if we don't, oftentimes those traumas can leave us severely damaged. We have a president of this country whose horrible father— that guy was traumatized from the day he was born. Look what happened. You see those pictures of— I'm putting these 2 together. Let's just let that stand anyway. You look at what happened to Adolf Hitler when he was, you know, young and, and how he turned out. I mean, you're talking about impact to children who, I'm— well, arguably say it, they would all say, are born innocent, so to speak. They're not born evil. And yet by that kind of trauma can really distort, at their extremes, horrible people. And what's that also is the hand of fate. How did that happen? I mean, not everybody who had horrible parents turned into Hitler, but, uh, or Trump. But, uh, it does happen to some. And why some and why others, we don't know.

Yeah. So do you, do you think we take a too narrow approach to, uh, to healing modalities?

It's a good question. I, I don't— I think Those who have expertise in some of those areas we mentioned, I mentioned before, traditional, you know, alternative medicine, bodywork, nutritional stuff, herbal stuff, other things called holistic plant medicine. I mean, what my— I'll call it my problem. What maybe irk is a little too strong, but what I get a little frustrated with is the kind of myopia for people who are only in that lane. It's only in that, you know, I can only see the world or in terms of my particular specialty rather than having a much broader perspective where you can see your own talents especially lie in that. There's that old joke, it's a Buddhist joke about the pickpocket who meets the Dalai Lama and when he does, all he can see is his pockets. So you've got that element that sometimes we only see what we are looking for. So when you do run into people who have much more broader curiosity, a multifaceted sort of sense of what they are. Now, I may have to stay in my own lane with what I know I can do, but it doesn't mean I can't really appreciate, for example, what acupuncture does. I've had it, but I couldn't do it. But I know what its capacity is, as an example. And I also know that if I have a broken, arm, I probably don't want to go see the— I don't, as a Western guy, I don't want to probably go see the acupuncturist. I want to go see a regular orthopedic guy and set my broken arm, you know what I mean? So, uh, it's sometimes it's okay to, to, to fall back on orthodox methodologies where they work and, and stay with it. So, uh, but, uh, yeah, I think so. Those are— but, you know, it seems as though there's always, uh, for commercial reasons and other reasons, these fields seem to like they expand all the time. There's a new variation of this or that. I mean, I, I'm sure you have since it's of interest to you, but all the things, uh, journals I get, books I read, uh, things that come online, uh, listservs I'm on, uh, book lists about the newest, newest— what would I get the other way? Uh, it's in the other room. 20, the 30 steps just to, uh, 30 Steps to Becoming More Authentic.

Yeah.

I don't think I'm going to sit down and read the book and become— even though there's exercises and stuff, and some people it's probably really right for, but it just seemed like this is such low-hanging fruit that it doesn't really— for, I think, more mature adults, it doesn't really— something happens in my world, I think for others in their areas, have to grab you.

Yeah.

Maybe you do become a true believer, and that's okay. I mean, I have things I, I don't want to give up in terms of what I believe and what I know works, and, uh, um, and I don't, I don't feel I need to go looking at some other specialty. But like I say, in time I've dabbled a lot in different kinds of therapies and, uh, different body, bodywork kind of things. And my friend Michelle, who does, uh, shamanistic healing, I, you know, I've, I've seen her I don't know, 7 or 8 times. Every time it's a marvel what happens. And I'm just sitting there. She does all the work, comes back up and tells me what she's seen and what she's done while she's down there. And I— it's not like I feel radically different, but, you know, a few weeks later, a month later, it's like, yes, something shifted. Or like the word you use with the 12-year-old, something lightened up. Something as though it either got left behind or re-healed itself. There was some other kind of integration. I mean, that's what Rolfing as a body type of work, or structural integration, reintegrates a twisted body. It takes— there's a methodology to that, but you're reintegrating. I think that's why another word for what happens with psychotherapy, or this idea of reconnection, is in fact a form of integration. It doesn't mean perfectly symmetrical shape. It just means that, that whatever shape you were meant to be— I mean, so you might end up— your perfectly symmetrical self might look like a, uh, like a Picasso, uh, you know, Cubist painting with 3 eyes and arms coming out of your head. And I know what I mean. It's like— and for some people, that's the way they are. And that's, you know, they've self-actualized, to use Maslow's thing. That's who they are. So May not be my cup of tea, but it doesn't really matter what I think. I mean, that's that kind of how we find ourselves glued together. And for some people who have endured enormous amount of psychological stress and trauma and terror in their lives, you know, they're probably just happy to have the glue holding together. You know what I mean? I'm, you know, I'm living, I'm living a life. People say who struggle with schizophrenia, uh, live a life, or people who are living on methadone are living a life. It may not be the ideal life, but you're, but you're, you're living it. You have something you've pulled together enough to, to make it work.

Yeah. So you, um, you, you said a phrase a couple of minutes ago that really struck me, and I scribbled it down. Um, you said, uh, setting, setting your head differently. Use this word, this phrase, setting Setting your head differently.

Fucking way.

No, I said that setting, setting. So you said something like, um, uh, something happened and it, and, and it, and it, it set my head differently. So to me, like, it was like an insight you had. You had an insight.

Oh yeah, yeah. Like, maybe when I was talking about my, my, my event with my mother. It just, it did totally, totally change my head. And that's a dramatic way, a very emotional way. But there are other things I mentioned in the book that were more studied and more subtle, but it's still the same thing. At Stanford, I worked with, took a couple courses with Jim March, who anybody who's gone to Stanford in that era will, in the '80s, and will know exactly who he is. He taught a course on leadership by teaching Don Quixote. And he actually made a film of it, went to Spain, filmed where Cervantes lived and so forth. You think, wait, that's crazy. Like, he was a delusional fool. He was like, you know, this dusty old knight who didn't know, you know, Dulcinea, he thought was the most beautiful woman in the world. You know, thought he saw armies that were just sheep and so forth. But what changed my mind in Jim's class, among other things, was that he That the way he taught it was that— in Spanish, it's yo sé quién soy, I know who I am. So despite all the humiliation and degradation that came from other society for being this old gasbag, you know, out in the countryside in Sancho Panza, he knew who he was and what we in today's terminology would call a champion for social justice. That was his romantic ideal. That was chivalry in his part. So he knew who he was. He was not going to be budged. And I think that's why it was a mind changer for me, because you take a counterintuitive example of a leader— mostly think of heroics and all this stuff, you know, enormous mental and physical powers and so forth— and here you've got a guy who just defies description, and yet he becomes, in his heart, I know who I am. And so that's a That, that is a, uh, that I think is one of those challenging kind of, uh, ideas that should spur us on to say, do we know who we are? Well, in some ways, yes. Do I know myself today than I did 10 years ago? I don't think so. Uh, better or worse, I don't know, but different. Um, but there's something I— that it's It resonates with me as a core self-understanding. I know who I am. So it could be— It could be one's place in the world, what I do for a living, or what I do when I'm not making a living, or how I conduct myself, or what causes I believe in, and so forth. That I know who I am, that's where I— it's a powerful love. So that's an example of more of a subtle But I like those. Those are— that's kind of a Jungian concept of synchronicity, when suddenly the, uh, your, your idea of what you thought was, was changed. In the book, I talk about meeting friends of mine who were camping in western Colorado. Uh, we picked up a hitchhiker, a guy our age, and when he left us the next day, he gave me some yarrow sticks and said, do you know what these are? I said, no. He goes, well, have you ever heard of the I Ching? And I go, well, yeah. He goes, He says, you take these sticks are yours as a thank you for the evening. Go to the bookstore in Boulder, Colorado. Buy the book, the Book of Changes, Yi Cheng by Wilhelm, and take these and roll one and see what happens. So I did. Ironically, I put it in the book. I was my friends and I were staying at the at the home, the former home of Robert Arper and I were involved. So I did. I did. I did. This thing, like what you do with the yardsticks. And, uh, I came up with the number 50, the cauldron, which really, really spoke to me about what had happened the evening before. And it helped really change my mind where I was going in life. And I was— soon after, I came back to Seattle, quit, uh, being stoned all the time in Colorado, came back and became a teacher eventually. But, but what was more uncanny was that, uh, as I was thumbing through the book, marveling at it's just what I had learned. I noticed there was an introduction to the book. It was by Carl Jung, which was like— I knew something about Jung. I— he's in part of a thesis I wrote for my undergrad years in psychology. But then, then as I was reading it, he talked about his first time with the aura sticks. And what do you think he got? Same as me, or I got the same as him. Number 50, the Cauldron.

Yeah.

I mean, it was like, it was like, it's still— it was just spine-tingling. It was like, holy cow. So that's That's a good example of synchronicity. That's not a book reading. That's a lived experience. And kind of like, well, what does that reveal? Synchronicity means it's as though you're parting the veil on our own rationality, our explanations for the world, how it works. And then we get a glimpse of what's going on. It's asynchronous. It's another— we have to— we can only understand through intuition, not through our own thinking.

Yeah.

And that was at the time was a revelation. I think today still, Um, uh, I find myself, even as I'm writing again right now, uh, I really have to sleep on some things to wake up and kind of wait for the— how that deeper, from the dream world, the unconscious, something. I wake up and go, oh yeah, that, that's what I was looking for. I can't, I can't make it happen. I kind of can't like think my way through it. I have to rely on something coming from below to shed a little light and kind of give you those aha moments. Like, oh yeah.

So, uh, interesting talk about making it happen. Um, it— I, I often came up with this a while ago, you know, like, we, we can't make healing happen, we— but we can, we can hang out. We can hang out at the bus stop. Um, so what, you know, I use the word insight, you used, um, a changing in your head. You also said you know, changed my mind. Like, to me, healing moments are those moments when our mind changes, but we don't make that happen. Something else does.

Right, right. I'm trying to pull this quote up. It's on my website. Hold on. Yeah, I think, and sometimes we, I hate using the word because it has all kinds of political connotations with anymore, to be woke or to wake up. But what that means is that we begin to pay attention. That's not a very fancy word. That doesn't have a lot of, you know, esoteric, you know, Christmas bulbs lighting up. So this is on my website from Adyashanti, who is a spiritual teacher here known throughout the world. And his quote that I have, I think it really says a lot about For time, it says, pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you. Say yes to its fierce, ruthless, and loving grace. Just in itself, pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you. I mean, that's a big question. What's it trying to reveal to me? What is it trying to reveal to me? And then the topper is, say yes to its fierce, ruthless, and loving grace. Well, loving grace is a great thing. It's like The big birthday package. It's like, oh yeah, love and grace, grace from God. How cool, great, wonderful. But the other 2 are fierce and ruthless. When you're going to get your ass kicked, it's going to be like, it's going to, it's going to waterboard you emotionally where you don't know where the next breath is going to come from, where you are in a dark place. And people go, that's not a place of grace. Well, if you're not paying attention to what it's trying to reveal to you, you're right, then you're really trapped. You're trapped in the water, you're going to drown. But if you're paying attention, this is like the Hillman quote. If you're paying attention to what it's trying to tell you when things get rough, we understand, oh yeah, this ultimately is a moment of grace in terms of my own understanding, what this taught me, what this brought to me that I was otherwise removed from. So that kind of paying attention to the world is a Um, what life is trying to reveal is a, uh, it's a, it's much more of a prosaic way of talking about enlightened enlightenment and higher levels of consciousness, all that stuff, which all have its place. But I, I'm, I'm a little bit more drawn to stuff that are, that are relatable to every person. Pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you.

Yeah.

When your, when your car breaks down on the road at the side of the highway, You're swearing like, oh God, I'm stuck. It's the night. The car— it's like, well, what's life trying to reveal to you? Well, life's trying to reveal to you that you're a knucklehead and you didn't take care of your car in the first place. That's what it's trying to tell you.

Yeah.

You know, or that it will reveal to you by the end of the night you're actually much more resilient than you ever thought you would be. You'll find a way to flag somebody down or get some gas or whatever you need, and you'll be on your way. So those are little moments, but they're— sometimes they can be A little, sometimes a little unpleasant, but reminders nevertheless, ones we need to, we need to have come our way. Yeah.

And, and so often it takes a challenge to, to change our mind.

Yeah, I think it does. That's that, again, back to your thing about Buddhism, Dalai Lama's thing is that, you know, that adversity is our greatest teacher.

Yeah.

How else would we learn? How else would we learn? If we don't fail, we're just not gonna learn or some other form of frustration with it, whatever. So yeah, a challenge for sure.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you a question, but that feels like a really good spot to bring this one in and I'm sure we'll We can dive into another one sometime soon.

Be happy to do that. It's fun talking with you. Yeah, you have a good question. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. Yeah, I knew it was going to be a fascinating conversation. Anybody that's into the Dalai Lama and Jung is going to be, um, you know what I mean? I, I, you use the word polymath, um, and, uh, I, I, as you said that and you talked about medicine, I heard something recently about it in, uh, in physical medicine that there's a massive drive for specialization. And that, you know, so polymathing is multi-skilling and, and, and specialization and, and the further people, people are driven by this need to specialize further and further, but they get, they go deeper and deeper in just, in just one area and they don't, they lose touch with the rest of what's going on.

Well, you know, educational systems are major culprits in all that. And all the, you know, as I said, I interviewed high schoolers who were going, who applied to Stanford. And most of them are really bright kids by definition. They wouldn't be applying to go to Stanford if they didn't, but they're already in that— Washington Post called it that they're being branded by the time they're in middle school. You know, you want to be a doctor? Okay, decide now. Then we're going to build everything else around you, your resume around that one thing. Instead of saying, you know what, as I had one kid who got into Stanford said, and I asked him, what do you think you want to major in? He goes, I have no idea. That's why I'm going. Which I thought was a great answer. He got it. So, so we, we need to be, uh, more disciplined about not exacting, uh, fealty to certain disciplines, if you know what I mean.

So yeah. And, and I think there's a loop back there to the, um, the, the breadth of our, uh, the, the breadth of our healing approach, right? So for me, I, I think that, um, Kirsten Atteberry wrote The Primal Wound, and I read the follow-up book as well. And it seems like in the first book, right, she talks about— I said I was going to bring this in, but anyway, we're off again. Um, in the first book, she talks about the, the, the, the primal wound being a wound to us, you know, like psychology, spirits.

When she—

it's really broad. Um, and, and yet her healing book seemed to me to be totally about psychology.

Yeah.

So she, she identified a broad problem, and then the book that she wrote to, uh, ostensibly to, uh, to, to fix a broad problem was itself very narrow. That's just kind of— that's just my opinion. And, and yet I think that that Um, in, in the same way as you talked about the education system setting up for specialization, we, um, our, our healing, our healing strategies aren't as diverse as they could be.

Yeah, it's like, uh, therapists that do— who are specialists in cognitive behavioral therapy, uh, they're the hammer and everybody that comes in is the nail. This is what you need because it's what I've got. Or, you know, it's the old joke about surgery. That's what they do. They cut people. I mean, if you've got a good one, they'll say you don't need it. And that's good. But, you know, that's what they do. So, but that narrowness, it can be— well, if I need to have a brain tumor removed, I want to have a surgeon who's damn good at it. Okay? So I don't want a polymath for a brain surgeon or an airline pilot. I want somebody who's really schooled in that particular discipline. But Uh, in terms of becoming a, a learner in this life and having the aptitude and energy and curiosity to expand. It's, it's nothing but an invitation to expand our, our interests, uh, and let them take us where they, where they will. I mean, I, I have a whole— I listen to most of my book— books I read are— I actually listen to on, uh, on, uh, on audible.com. And so when I look back at the ones I've they're all over the place. You know, I just got through with the David Sedaris book and now I'm listening back to the short stories of Ernest Hemingway. It's sort of like that. So yeah, and I— another one I recently listened to was Black Elk Speaks, which is a marvelous book. So anyway.

Thanks a lot, Stephen. And, uh, I'm, I'm going on holiday in, uh, in the next month and I'm going to be downloading you Because I'm, I'm all right in thinking you haven't got an Audible of your book, is that right? Do you—

have you done it again?

Have you done an audio version of your book yet? No, no, not yet. So I'm going to be downloading the, the Kindle version, and I'm interested in, uh, especially in the Sharon Stone bit. And I was going to ask a rude question around that, but that's for a different time, right? Thanks.

I never laid a hand on it. I never laid a hand on it. No. But when you're with this tape or whatever, this stuff, if you send that to PJ, I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, will do. Take care.

Great.

Thanks a lot. Bye.

Okay. Bye, sister. Bye-bye.