Healing At Every Level With Theresa Knorr

All right.

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

It's so cool to be here, Simon. I love what you do.

Yeah, I, I love it too. Good. It too.

That puts the right energy right out there then.

What's the right energy? Yeah. So what does healing mean to you?

Yeah, healing is a process. And that's one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately, that every time I think I've found it, you know, the method, the insight, the aha moment, There's always something else later, you know, that, that we are healing on a continuum, that one modality that we're using at one point in time will lead me to another one, that it's not linear. It's not contiguous. And you, and you, you know, you can go back and forth. You know, something that worked for you can stop working for you. And then maybe later you pick it back up. And it works again. So, I mean, it's messy. Healing is messy. That's the other thing. Like, life is messy and healing is messy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what are the steps in the process then, if it's a process?

Well, so I think for adoptees, we do have to go through that, you know, what we used to call coming out of the fog moment, you know, where like it hits you like a ton of bricks. Like OMG, oh my God, I'm adopted. I mean, I actually went through that because you know I'm an LDA late discovery adoptee, which means you know I found out that I was adopted when I was 19. So I was super super in the fog from you know birth to 19, and then at age 19, I. You know, walked around for about 6 months after I inadvertently found out that I was adopted, going, oh, who are you? And, you know, being confused and angry. And, and then I promptly suppressed it for another 40 years, literally. People would ask me, you know, like, did you ever think about finding your biological family? And I'd be like, no. So that tells you something right there. You know, the how emphatic I was about how I no, it's not. It's a non-issue. I mean, even I was went to therapy and therapist would ask me, you know, like, do you think being adopted is an issue? And I'm like, no, I'm pretty well adjusted with that now. I don't have any curiosity. Oh, really? So at 58. When I— when New York State opened up their adoption records and I got my OBC. So I mean, you know, like that was the volcanic eruption of emotion was, you know, when I actually got an email from my biological sister after I had searched for her saying, we've been looking for you for 40 years. And that ripped the scab off. So I had to go through those emotions, you know, and they were volcanic. I mean, literally, I thought I was having a psychotic break. I remember just feeling like I was out of my body, you know, being in the shower sobbing and just looking in the mirror going, you're adopted. And the weight of that Was enormous, and I and I feel like that was part of what started my healing.

So you came out of the fog at 19 and then jumped back into it. Do you think?

Well, I mean, I I wouldn't say that I jumped out of the fog at 19. I found out I was adopted at 19. My um my adopted brother came to school and said I was at way at college, and my brother had um. found our birth certificates. He needed his birth certificate for something. He's like, you know, these aren't real birth certificates. And I was like, what? You know what? You're crazy. You just, you know, you're just unhappy. You don't like our parents. You want to think, you know, he's like, we're adopted. I'm like, no, we're not. Like, just stop. You know, like, literally, I'm like thinking he's lying, right? You know, you're just making this up. My brother had a lot of mental health issues and, you know, whatever, just In and out of institutions for most of his life, so I thought he was just looking for something. And I didn't really know why we didn't have much of a relationship, so why he came to my school to tell me this? But that was real to him. But I didn't believe him. So I confronted my mother. Well, I didn't even confront my mother. I shared it with my mother. I'm like, yeah, you know, my brother was here, and he, you know, said we're adopted. And I'm like, you know, and she's like, oh, I meant I wanted to tell you. She starts crying, telling me, "Oh, I wanted to tell you it was your father who didn't want you to know," and I'm like, "Excuse me? What? What?" But then, being the good adoptee that I am, because she was crying, I promptly started to take care of her. You know, like because she's crying, and so I was like, "Oh." It's all right. And, you know, and then we, I think we maybe had one more conversation about it in our lives. I think we had maybe one. I think I asked her, you know, like my story and I wanted to know like if there was any background information and, you know, she told me some things. But so, I mean, I don't think I really fully came out of the fog at 19. I think that I just found out I was adopted at 19 and the enormity of that. I mean, like I said, I walked around for 6 months. I boycotted St. Patrick's Day. Because I'm not really Irish. You know, like that was the extent of my rebellion about being adopted. But, you know, but I didn't really come out of the fog.

No. But you came out of the fog at 58 then, would you say?

Yeah. So I had, I had been on retreat with Dr. Gabor Maté in the jungle of Peru. And We were— I don't even remember exactly how it came up in conversation, but you know Gabor's story, right? So, you know, Gabor had kind of mentioned it to me in our compassionate inquiry processing that I might want to see what kind of impact that relinquishment had on me. And not only that, but, you know, he's like, I think you got a double whammy because not only know, um, where you relinquished at birth and you have that trauma, but you were lied to for most of your life. And that betrayal, you know, quote unquote betrayal, or, um, you know, that dishonesty, I mean, that, that gets in too. Like, how can I— because my body knew, right? You know, my body knew I was an alien, knew that I was You know, not part of this family. I always felt different and like I didn't fit in, whether it was with the family or with school or whoever it was. And like, so I knew that something was off, but I didn't know what it was. And so I didn't trust myself. I didn't— I never developed that trust of myself because, I mean, literally, not only was it a lie of omission, there were things that You know, my family said to confirm the lie. You know, you have the bump on the back of your head like your grandmother, or you inherited this you know trait from whoever. Yeah, so that's so after that experience with Gabor, that was in 2019. I started you know thinking about it, and then of course you know the universe lines up right. And so New York State, in their infinite wisdom, in 2020. Opened up adoption records, and you know, in the past I had searched a little bit. I had like gone on some of the you know websites to see if I figured when I was on the New York State Registry adoption registry, I thought if they're looking for me, you know, I put my name in there. If they're looking for me, then I'm looking for them, and we'll be matched up. And it never happened. So I just figured it wasn't my time, you know, to to meet them. And I had done that probably in my thirties. Put my name in the In the adoption registry, and no one ever contacted me. So I just let it go. Was curious on my birthday. I wonder if my birth mother's thinking about me because you know she was there for that, and you know that's impactful to have a child. So, but then when the the records were opened up, I applied. So January 15th, 2020, myself and 15,000 other New Yorkers hit send. 12:15 AM and, uh, you know, paid my $50 and waited and waited and waited and got my OBC maybe about a month later. And that was easy, right? You know, so as soon as I got the OBC, it's still like ripping off the scab, you know, was not like what happened when my sister emailed me. This was just like, you know, I had some feelings about it. I saw the OBC. I saw I was pissed off because my name wasn't— my My name was Christine Ann Smith, and I was like, Smith. She had to give me a generic name. You know, like why didn't she give me? I was mad. Why didn't she give me her real last name? Well, actually, that was her real last name was Smith, but that was her first husband's name, so that she had her first husband's married name. I thought I saw her name was, and I thought maybe, you know, like I should have had her name, but it was actually her her. First husband's name, but anyway, so get the OBC, find her name, quick Google search, found her obituary. Right? You know, so easy these days to find people. So in her obituary is where I got my sister and my aunt. And her two children, and so I just Google searched them, and then you know found a couple emails, sent off an email, and then got that email back from my sister. And that's what really started my healing was experiencing. And the the moment when I got that email from her saying we were looking for you for forty years, it was like every hope. Every sense of sadness, grief, horror, relief. I mean, there were so many emotions that erupted. And literally, I was like hyperventilating, sobbing on my bed in a way that I didn't even know was possible. It's like, so all of that crap's been inside of me? For all these years. So yeah, back to healing. That's what starts the healing is getting that up and out. And I think it's different for everyone. You know what rips that scab off, or you know whether it's in a volcanic eruption or whether it's little tiny spurts here and there. I think it's you know it's it's different for everybody.

So I mean, I'm intrigued, um, because I know you would do this work in, uh, tai chi for people in recovery, right? Um, and I'm thinking, you know, if, if the body keeps the score, which it does, yeah, then basically we— that then, um, Healing could be taken to be the, um, the alleviation of the— or the, um, what's the word— the departure of, of, of that stuff out of the body.

Yeah, yeah. And, and the Tai Chi for Recovery Or, you know, most, whether it's my form or Tai Chi in general or yoga or much of the somatic work, trauma-releasing exercises, there's all kinds of things that people can do to move that energy through the body. And I've seen it in my work with recoverees where people will do a particular Tai Chi move. Especially ones that are related to the heart, because in Chinese medicine, Tai Chi is based on traditional Chinese medicine. And so each of the organ systems is correlated to a different emotion. And so there's— I was working with a woman one time and she was doing this move that was correlated with the heart and the lungs, and the lungs store grief and the heart is either anxiety or joy. So there's a positive and negative emotion for each one of the organ systems. But she was doing this move and all of a sudden she just started crying. And she was so shocked by the emotions that were released from her body just in doing this simple move because, well, she was someone who had been in recovery only for a short amount of time and sort of had fell out of touch with her own body.

Yeah.

And I know, and that's, you know, Gabor Maté talks about that a lot, that recovery is returning back to, you know, recovering our true selves, recovering who we really are, getting back in touch and inhabiting our actual physical body. Because oftentimes through trauma, we are suppressing our authenticity, you know, who we really are, which comes through in sensation and emotion. And oftentimes people are just divorced from how they really feel and what's going on inside of them. They just either push it down, which I think I did for, for decades, especially on this topic. I mean, I always felt like I was with it, you know, like I, I was in touch with my emotions. I can cry. I can, you know, tell you how I feel. But there were certain topics that were, you know, off limits. But yeah, so the healing. Definitely, for me, is biological, psychological, emotional, social. You know, I mean, we're multidimensional and spiritual. Don't forget the spiritual. You know, like we're multidimensional beings, and so trauma affects us on all those levels. So our healing has to incorporate. All those levels. So my my Tai Chi for recovery form does incorporate all of those things. Actually, we try to do it in groups, so it's sociological. We there's a recovery concept that corresponds to each one of the moves. So there's a psychological component. It's certainly you're moving, so there's a physical component, and it's moving chi. Which is energy that moves through the body. And so, um, and so it moves emotions that are correlated to each one of those movements and organ systems. So there's an emotional component. I mean, it's, you know, I think healing has to happen on all of those levels.

So did you say 4 or 5? I've got biological, psychological, emotional, and spiritual. Or was there another one that I missed?

Sociological.

Oh, sociological. And sociological, I mean, would another word for that be relational?

Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. Yeah, relational. Yeah. We are interdependent beings and our trauma is relational. I mean, think about our trauma, right? Being an adaptee, totally relational. We were separated from the person that we should have had the most intimate relationship with in our lives. So of course we're going to have issues related to that in our lives.

Can I, uh, can I just throw, um, a strange thought that I've had, that I've had on this subject in? And it's, and it's not meant to, uh, demean or criticize your answer to that, to any question whatsoever, right? Just want to be clear of that, right? I had this strange thought came to me. What, what if, what if everybody has a— every— everybody's umbilical cord is cut?

Yeah.

That's true. What if that is the primal wound in another— it, it, it, it, it— well, what if that is the, the, the, the first primal wound? And then having your umbilical cord cut, and because that's a separation, and then we have, we have another cut, which is obviously that physical, because it's You can talk about, you can talk about physical stuff like physical separation. Um, our physical separation is clearly far more extreme than that, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think a lot of people have birth trauma. Um, you know, whether it's the— everybody's got their umbilical cord. cut. And we all need to differentiate from our parents, from our mother at some point and separate from our mother. But it's a gradual weaning away. I mean, I just, you know, like, yeah. So, so when we talk about trauma and healing, I don't, I mean, I've been through enough healing programs. I don't think anyone's trauma is any worse than anyone else's, you know, like, I have a friend who used to say the worst pain is the one you're having.

Right.

You know, like we're all married to our pain in some way, shape, or form. Right. But I think because, and you know, we were talking about this earlier about the thriving adoptees, the way that we need to learn how to thrive and get there is to first and foremost acknowledge what our trauma was. Because for me especially, it was pushing it down and not even acknowledging it or not even knowing that it was trauma. I mean, I've been in and out of therapy for most of my adult life, 12-step programs, residential programs. And no one ever addressed relinquishment trauma. No one ever touched it with a 10-foot pole. And everybody asks you, are you adopted? You know, like, does your adoption bother you? But then it was like, no one ever educated me about that or had anything to say. So acknowledging that that is the core issue. I mean, I thought it was I'm codependent. My grandparents were alcoholics. My brother was abusive and mentally ill. You know, Like I had all these layers of things that I thought were, quote unquote, wrong with me. And come to find out that the, you know, the base of all of it is this relinquishment trauma. That was so freeing for me to go, aha, I finally understand, you know, myself and what my issue— what the core of my issues are. So that, you know, everybody has to come to their, you know, understanding of what their core issue is. For us, it's relinquishment trauma. And, you know, I don't want to say ours is worse than everybody else's because everybody has got their own thing. But for me, understanding that was part of the key to my healing. And going to spaces, talking about sociological or relational healing, going to spaces where Everybody else in the room understood that and are bobbing their head up and down when I'm talking on a Zoom meeting. I attend adoptees and addiction on Saturdays, and it's I found my tribe. These are people who are shaking their head up and down and go and get me when I'm talking about whatever it is that I'm talking about, and that is healing, feeling understood.

Accepted. There's, there's a huge— my relief was in a different environment, but it was just on my own. It was reading the Nancy Verrier book, and there was a relief in the diagnosis. Yeah, me too. Relief in the diagnosis, and then a sense of being stuck with it, right?

And that's the problem.

And being stuck with it. And, and I often, when we get close to this subject, what I, what, what scares me is I did a, I wasn't in the adoptee community at that time. But if I had been, would that have kept me stuck longer? Would the diagnosis have been— the diagnosis would have been more pronounced, you know? Um, who— I, I will, I will, I will never know because we were, we were talking about this before we hit, hit record, you know, like how many would, would fat people listen to a podcast called Thin People? You know, and would, would people in pain, um, listen to— would adoptees in pain listen to a podcast called Thriving Adoptees? And they're not going to identify with it. And I'm thinking, ah, so there we are. Um, hopefully get people get past that. Some people get past that, that name issue.

Right. Yeah. Well, I think that whatever, you know, language is powerful for sure. And that, you know, what we call something certainly has, has an effect. What I've loved about my adoptee community, which is very specific to addiction, is that we're all about recovery. That, you know, whether it's the 12-step model or fitness model or whatever mode People are striving to thrive, that they don't want to stay stuck in their diagnosis, whether it's being addicted or being relinquished or whatever your diagnosis is. We're motivated to change. We're motivated to move out of that. And, you know, I started this conversation with the acknowledgement of the pain, but the goal is to move past the pain. And in my community, I see people growing and moving past it. And I do see people in other adoptee spaces staying stuck in it. And so to go back to your question about, you know, if you had been in the adoptee community, you know, when you read Nancy Vernier's book, would you have stayed stuck longer? I guess it would depend on which community you found, you know, and I have found wonderful shining examples of people who are thriving. In, in their lives, whether it be in recovery or from addiction or from relinquishment trauma or whatever you're in recovery from. I mean, take Danielle Gaudette's wonderful work, you know, like, God bless her. She is just the shining example of someone who is thriving as an adoptee and helping other people along. But a part of her method too is about acknowledging where the person is at. And not moving them beyond that until they're ready. You know, you have to— you can't be somewhere else, you know, until you acknowledge where you are, whether that's in the fog or in pain, you know, wherever you are. And then we move beyond it, you know. So yeah, I don't know, back to what, what, what do you want to call it? Moving towards thriving, striving to thrive. I like that.

Yeah. Have you read the follow-up book, Nancy's follow-up book?

Uh, which one? What's it— what's the title?

It's called, um, Coming Home to Self, I think.

I have it on my bookshelf somewhere, but I have not— I, I read The Primal Wound and, um, I have Coming Home to Self. I think I started somewhere and then I, I don't know, for whatever reason I didn't finish. I have a lot of books like that on my shelf. That I start and don't finish. But why do you ask?

Why do I ask? Because it has far less reviews on Amazon. So the numbers are huge and I'm sorry, I can't remember them, but I think it's something like, I could just check, couldn't I?

But, you know, the whole thing about what we title something, so the primal wound, you know, it's actually a very sexy title, right? You know, like, we're intrigued by that. We want to know, you know, what is that about? And I have the primal wound and I relate to that. And, you know, I think sometimes we do get addicted to our suffering, you know, and we want to, you know, acknowledge that pain. But then it's really hard to move beyond it because it's all we know. And when I say addicted to it, I don't mean like, you know, we love it in terms of we love our suffering, but we get neural pathways carved in our brain. It's a survival response, right? How we think, and it may be in negative thinking is actually a survival response. And so we get stuck there because our body thinks and our mind thinks that we're doing something for ourselves when in fact we're just kind of ruminating and staying stuck in that pathway. So did you find it?

The book, The Primal Wound, has got 1,700 reviews, and the follow-up book, Coming Home to Self, has 195.

Oh my goodness.

So what struck me is— so I've read them, I've read them both, and, uh, the follow-up is pretty much purely psychological, in, in my opinion. And it's also about 10 times thicker. It's not, it's not 10 times, that's an exaggeration. It's at least 5 times thicker. There's 5 times as many pages to read.

Maybe that's, maybe that's why I didn't get through it.

Maybe, yeah. But it is, it is psychological. It definitely doesn't do the biological stuff.

Right.

It definitely doesn't do the physical stuff because it's reading, you know, your Tai Chi is somatic healing in a different format. Is it? I don't know. That's what it seems.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, you know, like I said earlier, I completely believe with my whole body, mind, and soul that you need to heal body, mind, and soul. And And so it's really funny because in the class that I teach, I teach a Tai Chi for Recovery class for coaches, a 6-hour class for credits for recovery coaches and clinicians and social workers. And the first thing that we talk about is, why is talk therapy and mutual aid meetings not enough for healing from addiction? And I would ask the same question for relinquishment trauma. Talk therapy and mutual aid support is not enough. It's a, it's a good start, and we can see each other and we can bob our heads and we can say, yes, I know, I understand. But you said it earlier, the issues are in our tissues, right? The body keeps the score. So our trauma is biological. So we need to be doing something to address that. And everyone's going to find their pathway, whether it's Fitness, yoga, tai chi. I mean, I've also do one of the most healing things I've ever done for myself in this is by neurofeedback. I mean, I am singing the praises of neurofeedback because it is so it's basically monitoring your brain while you're you know breathing and it's monitoring your brain waves and when you get into the optimal. alpha brainwave state, when you lower your beta. So beta, high beta is that anxiety overthinking, right? You're in high beta and you're overthinking and worrying and anxiety. And if you lower that into beta and you bring up the alpha, which is, you know, much calmer brainwave, the machine gives you a beep, gives you a little reinforcer. So your body goes, oh, I like that. You know, I like that. And so it learns how to bring your stress level down just by listening to these beeps. And so I did alpha-beta training, and now I'm doing alpha-theta training, which is training my brain into almost a meditative state. So theta is more that in the hypnagogic— when you get into the, um, the right theta brainwave state, you're in sort of hypnagogic or hypnopompic, that state right before you fall asleep or right when you wake up in the morning and you're not really awake. and you're not really asleep. And that's where creativity comes from. And that's, you know, like a meditative state. And in 20 sessions of neurofeedback, I got a 56% increase in neuroplasticity, which I think also because I've been meditating for 30 years, that that's why I got such an average improvement is they said like 25 to 35%.

Wow.

But that— and so now I recognize it when I'm starting to ruminate, when I'm starting to go into panic, when I'm starting to get into that emotional state of anxiety. I can lower that myself now. I know how to bring that down with this, with, you know, breathing, which is somatic. Actually, my next incarnation, I think I'm going to get a breath coach certification, is teaching people how to breathe properly because you always have access to the breath. Easy, right? You're here with me right now. You can breathe. I can teach you some things, you know, to bring your anxiety level down and regulate your stress hormones and get you to calm down. That's biological. It's hard to do that with talking. And I mean, you can— some people can, you know, regulate their emotions with talking and certainly hugging. But that's body, you know, like increasing your oxytocin level and Being around people has been shown to, you know, really help regulate people's emotions as well. But it's not one thing. It's all of the above because we're not one thing. Right? I'm not just a head walking around, you know, walking and talking head. I have a body. I have emotions. I'm interconnected with other people in the world. We have to have that holistic approach to healing.

You tracking?

I'm tracking. I know.

So what's wounded?

Yeah, right. So what's wounded? The body? It's certainly not the soul, which I know you talk about a lot. So what's wounded is the body, the emotions, the mind, which is not who we really are anyway. It's part of who we are because we're here, right? Physical body. I'm actually in it. I can feel it. I can tell you I'm here. I'm on the physical plane temporarily. You know, spiritual being having a physical experience. So I have to contend with all of it. But what's wounded is those things, the body, the psyche. But not my essence, not who I really am, not that spiritual part of me. And that's what other modalities— so like through meditation. And did I tell you I went to a Joe Dispenza retreat?

I think you might have done. Yeah.

Yeah. So I just came back from a week in Cancun with Joe Dispenza. And he talks about when you regulate your brainwaves to the point where you reach gamma, So gamma wave is what the mystics describe as a mystical experience. When someone is out of their body, you know, their personality, they're beyond space and time, and they are connecting with source, the source of who I really am. That's never wounded. That's completely whole. That's completely happy. And there's nothing— you can't touch that. So to You know, through whatever mode you use to get there, prayer, meditation, mindful walking. I mean, I feel like when I'm walking on the beach, I'm in touch with God, good orderly direction, nature, higher power, whatever you want to call it. That's where a lot of my healing takes place as well, because that part's not wounded.

Yeah. So I heard that yoga means union the other week.

Yes, yes. Union with what?

Exactly. But my favorite, uh, teacher says, uh, that, that there, you know, that, uh, well, he's a, he's a non-dual teacher, so he's saying that we're all one. So if we're all one, you can't— there can't be a union. Right.

Well, we have an illusion of separativity because we're in a physical body and we're on the physical plane. There's the illusion that we are separate from the one. So yoga wants us to reunite us and religion too, religare, right? That's from the word to, you know, of reunion. You know, it's religion is trying to reunite us with God. Yoga is trying to reunite us with oneness or wholeness or whatever it is.

But isn't that a lot easier? You're going from— I wish I could put this more precisely. Seeing through the illusion takes you from 2 to 1.

Yeah. Yeah, seeing through the illusion takes you from 2 to 1.

So I have multiple. I haven't used this metaphor for a while, but I used to use it all the time. So I'm a swimmer and around Christmas time I often go to a different swimming pool because mine is shut for cleaning and it's a 60-yard, 50-meter pool, right? And it's a big one. So it's got 12 lanes. It's an Olympic Pool. And there is a— at the base, in the, in, in the floor of this swimming pool, is a wall that comes up to divide one big pool into 2 little pools.

Mhm.

And then they press the button and then it goes down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's one pool.

It's one pool. But that is a— that, that is a— so I'm using a physical metaphor to describe a non-physical thing, like an, an insight and a feeling. So my big moment was— your big moment was, or one of your biggest moments was reading this, uh, getting this email from your from your biological sister. My big moment was, or one of my big moments, was reading this letter from my birth mother. And it—

in—

as I read that moment, as I read that letter, I cried like you cried reading that, um, uh, yeah, reading a letter from biological sister. And it was a kind of breakdown to breakthrough moment.

Yes.

And, and I felt, I felt at one with her.

Wow, beautiful. That just gave me chills.

Yeah, literally.

Yeah, that's— that's—

but, and I wasn't just— but looking back on it, I wasn't just at one with her, I was at one with everything. So we've just had the So we're recording this day after Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and that was a Sunday this year. And on the Saturday, it was the last of what's called the Six Nations rugby competition. So each year, the Six Nations— so England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and Italy— they they play each other over a couple of months. I've been, I've been to watch these, a few of these events, and when they're singing the national anthems, I cry and feel at one with everybody. And as I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about an American equivalent. And, you know, and so in— we're doing this obviously in March. In February you have the Super Bowl, and in the Super Bowl they have a superstar on, don't they, to sing it. So it was— was it Rihanna last year or something? I can't remember who it was this year, but there is a union. There is a— there is a moment that touches us.

Yeah.

At the back of the neck where we feel at one. That is what the song— that's what the song catalyzes within us, I think. Yeah, but nobody's ever told us that.

Well, and the thing of it is, it's not even— I mean, it might be partly, you know, nationalism, and you're psychologically somehow attached to that song, but I think it's actually deeper than that. I think it's vibrational. I think that when people— well, there's evidence, right? When people move in unison or when they are singing together, there's a vibration, right? And we harmonize, literally, we harmonize with the people that we're singing with. And when we feel that in our bodies, we— I remember being— I was in a monastery once and we would be like having chores and conflict during the day. And then at night we would sing together and it didn't matter what, you know, how mad you were with each other during the day. At night, when you got together and sang, all of that fell away. You just fell in love with people because you were singing with them. You were harmonizing, literally. So there's something about movement, synchronistic movement, and singing with people that brings us together. And I, you know, when you were talking, Simon, I was like, isn't this what we all want? So I feel like, you know, people who have trauma, who have the connection survival style, I don't know if you've read, you know, about the different survival styles. There's connection— survival style is a, you know, a pretty common way that we want to— we're striving to feel connected, you know, to each other. But I think all humans want to feel connected and one. We want to feel that oneness. That's why we have all of the methods that we have that try to bring us that, whether it's religion Or yoga or movement or, you know, like, look at people do the wave at the rugby game, right? You know, like, whatever it is we want, you know, dancing together, moving together, drumming together. We want to feel that connection with each other because there's this illusion of separativity that we know is not the truth.

I'm That's what we have. Uh, that feeling of separation is clearly not unique to adoptees, right? We just have it amplified. Amplified.

Yeah, times a lot. But times a lot.

And until We feel it. It's not a seeing thing, it's a feeling thing.

So feel it to heal it?

Well, the feeling is the healing.

Yeah, and we allow ourselves to feel it.

Well, it's not allow it. You know, you talked about Is it, is it nationalism? Okay, so at these rugby matches, well, I, I'm— I was watching, um, Scotland because my wife's Scottish versus the, uh, um, versus France. I'm not French, I'm not Scottish, and I'm not French, and I still feel that thing.

So beautiful.

It's not a nationalism. thing. And it, and it, but it's, it's a space that takes us to, you know, like, like you said, it's the tuning forks. You know, the tuning forks.

Yeah.

But it's, I don't, I don't allow myself to feel that. I just feel that. But that's, that's the end. That's Love is the felt sense of oneness.

Yes, but unfortunately, or, and unfortunately, there are a lot of us that have a hard time tapping into that. And so that's why I use the word allowing, because I think sometimes we have to recognize that, you know, there's, there's a letting go or a peeling of the onion or whatever you want to call it, that we have to move into that deeper space within us. And that sometimes is scary. You know, people have a lot— we have a lot of defense mechanisms out there in the world. So, you know, I work in the addiction world. So, you know, not feeling is a big thing. You know, Gabor talks about, you know, don't ask why the addiction, ask why the pain. Because using substances is incredibly effective at killing the pain, at not feeling, um, and not feeling bad or good things. You know, people numb out with substances, and I think there's lots of ways that we numb out, um, which—

That's what the drugs are designed to do. I'm talking about not the— I'm talking about the prescription drugs, drugs as well as the As well as the, um, non-prescription drug. But that— so what's the— going back to the swimming analogy, the swimming pool analogy, right? What, what's that, that I told you about, that, that the wall?

Yeah, what's the wall?

What's the wall?

So the, the wall can be any Number of things for people, I think. So no, you've got a different— just coming into creation is the wall, you know? No, keep going. Well, you're shaking your head at me, Simon. What do you think?

I know. What's the wall?

What's the wall?

In one word. In one word. Trauma.

Okay. Yeah.

So as I read that letter, the tears, the tears put away— I use that volcano, you talked about volcano, volcano, volcanic eruption of emotions. I, I, in that moment, my tears stop, stop the eruption. They, they— that the— like, it was like, um, you know, when they, when they're putting out a forest fire, a helicopter will come overhead with a big, with a big canvas bag of water, right? And then they, and they, they drop the water on the forest fire.

Yeah.

So, and the fire, if they've got— if the— as long as the fire's not too big and there's enough water, it works. It puts it out, right? The water extinguishes the fire. The tears extinguish the trauma.

Wow. Yeah.

That was my felt experience. uh, uh, re— re— refigured out 8 years after it happened on the back of the conversations that I've had with fellow adoptees and the conversations with you.

Yeah, tears are incredibly healing, uh, and necessary in this journey. And, uh, so let me ask you, when, when you Felt that immediately, you know, when you were reading that letter and the tears came. So that— does that wipe the trauma out completely? Like the trauma's gone now? Or is that, you know, the beginning of a journey?

I would say you started off by saying this is a process. I would say it's a big step on the process.

Yeah. Yeah, agreed. And so same thing for me, that when I read that letter from my sister, you know, like, and the volcanic eruption of emotions was a big step. But I still, you know, so we're coming, you know, full circle. So it is, it's a journey. It's a process that I keep finding more and more things to look at and methods to heal and new insights. And yeah, the volcanic eruption of emotion was the beginning of that. Catharsis has its place too. But, you know, I certainly— it didn't erase the trauma. It uncovered it. Which is the beginning of the healing.

Yeah. Do other— any other big healing moments come to mind?

Um, well, like, I think tapping into that connection to source is, uh, for me, and connecting with my heart. So just recently, this is you know my my new kick is you know heart mind coherence and tapping into gratitude. And I know adoptees hate that word, but gratitude is yeah absolutely has the highest vibration and. Is part of my healing, that I tap into my gratitude every day now for, and even for things that haven't happened yet, you know, like things that I want to manifest in my life, I'm going to be grateful as if they have already happened, and I'm going to call it into my life. So walking on the beach in Cancun, I literally tears, you know, It was interesting because the Dispenza retreat, you have your headphones on and you're listening to his voice and this music and you do a walking meditation on the beach. And I couldn't, the first day I did that and I was kind of walking around, I'm like, this is, I was being judgmental and goofy and like, this is stupid. I don't want to do this. And I was looking at people, what are they doing? Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, not all that into it. The second day I went to do it and my technology wouldn't work. So I actually walked the beach without the music, without the instructions, just watching everyone else having their experience and connecting with the waves and connecting with the trees and connecting with the sand under my feet. I was being mindful and present and at one with everything and everyone. And I just like was watching people and the tears were coming and I was sending out love to my partner and to everyone in the universe and really felt that was a very powerful moment of healing for me to experience that feeling of oneness with the people on the beach, with the nature, with my higher power, with myself, and just let that in, let that flow.

Have you done parts work on the talk? Therapy stuff side, the parts work.

I am familiar with parts work. And I think the spiritual tradition that I follow does a lot of parts work. But I haven't done the formal, you know, internal family systems work. I'm familiar with it. But yeah, that definitely sounds like something I'd be interested in looking more into.

The reason I was asking is You meant that— you mean the uppercase S Self when you said self, connecting with yourself?

Exactly.

You mean the uppercase S Self?

Yeah.

The essence of who we are, not the—

Yes. Right. That's beautiful because all those traumatized parts and coping mechanisms and defense mechanisms, those are not who I really am. I need to recognize them. I need to know about them. I need to find out what they need and you know move through that. But yeah, connecting to uppercase S self, higher self, essence, whatever you want to call it.

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

I love that. I knew this was going to be a really cool. Cool conversation.

Yes, I've enjoyed it immensely. Thank you for inviting me.

Thank you, listeners. Speak to you again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.