Pulling The Thread with Elise Loehnen

“I often ask, ‘so how beautiful are you when you need something?’ I call this the beauty of needs. And it's amazing how many of us don't feel beautiful at all when we need something. Like all kinds of other things come up: I'm needy, I feel ashamed, I feel young, I feel afraid, I feel whatever, I feel ugly. Sometimes a hundred people raise their hand and say, I don't feel beautiful at all. But I think given what you said with the anger and the need, I think also the quality of shame, that we feel ashamed to ask because so often that wasn't appreciated and couldn't be contained and that we don't feel beautiful or we don't feel our dignity when we need something.”  So says Thomas Hübl, who you’ve likely heard on my podcast before. This conversation actually happened on his podcast, The Point of Relation, and we went so deep, we decided we needed to do a Part Two, which is coming to you next week. Thomas is the author of two excellent books on collective trauma and resonance: Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World and Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He does work all over the globe in geographic pockets where a lot has happened, helping people create containers to move the energy up and out. In this conversation, we talked about locating “bad” feelings in our bodies—specifically in the context of On Our Best Behavior—though the practices we discuss here are applicable to anything.  MORE FROM THOMAS HÜBL: On Pulling the Thread: Feeling into the Collective Presence” On Pulling the Thread: “Processing Our Collective Past” Thomas’s Podcast, Point of Relation Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds Thomas Hübl’s Website Follow Thomas on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“When you have a feeling, you can recognize when it's a feeling, when it's a knowing, a lot of knowers, especially automatic channel writers, are like, did I write this? Was I channeling? Did Mary Magdalene write that, you know, where is this coming from? And so they do have the tendency, knowers, to really second guess themselves some of the time or to think I probably made this up or it was a mental thing or primed in my brain. And so with knowers, I really work on helping them to trust what is coming to the surface and not only to trust the knowing, but also to express that knowing. And so one of the qualities of intuitive children, if anyone listening has ever had a child that is just playing, trucks, Barbies, whatever, just playing and then turns around and just says the most profound, wise thing you have ever heard in your life to the point that you're like, are you like Buddha? You have a knower child”. So says Carissa Schumacher, who long-time listeners will recognize from this podcast. Carissa is an incredible forensic medium—which means that yes, sometimes the police call on her for assistance in solving crimes and yes, she also talks to people on the other side. But as of the end of 2019, she’s also a full-body channel for Yeshua, or Christ Consciousness. This might sound wild—and it is wild—but what’s expressed during these transmissions is also incredible. It’s deeply resonant, lyrical, and profound wisdom that feels so true—and sometimes counterintuitive—that it doesn’t really matter who is its author. Carissa and by extension, Yeshua, have been guiding lights for me in the past four years bringing me ever closer to myself. If you have an opportunity to go to one of Carissa’s journeys and you feel called, do it. They can be life-changing, in both overt and slowly unfolding ways.  I asked Carissa to join me for this special series on GROWING UP because I wanted to ask her about highly sensitive children, empathy, and intuition—both its presence in all of us, and what happens as we grow up that causes it to shut down. For highly sensitive people—of which I know there are many who listen to this podcast, hopefully you’ll hear your own experiences reflected here. For parents of highly sensitive children, I hope what you hear will help. Conversations with Carissa are never short though, so we cover a lot of other ground from recent transmissions—the “in-reality self” versus “the in-theory self” and so much more.  MORE FROM CARISSA SCHUMACHER: The Freedom Transmissions: A Pathway to Peace Carissa’s Website Energy Healer Uta Opitz’s Website  “The Codes of Anger” PREVIOUS EPISODES WITH CARISSA: “Yeshua: Integration not Eradication” “Understanding Spiritual Power” “Why Do We Suffer?” “My Spiritual Teacher and Yeshua Channel” EPISODES IN THE “GROWING UP” SERIES: Niobe Way, “The Critical Need for Deep Connection” Harvey Karp, M.D., ”The Long-Term Implication of Sleep” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“The real meaning of ‘remember’ is to put the members back together, to make whole. So a lot of times we go back in time to a special time or a special moment and nostalgia is wanting to go back there, as if there's something there that we lost. And the true value of memory is to touch that moment and see where it lives or is dormant in me or you now going forward. That was one form or expression of it, not the only. And that touches on, I think what friendship helps us remember is that life is always where we are. We suffer greatly this–and it has always been, but more so in the modern world–this menacing assumption that life is other than where we are. If it's over there, if I could just get over there, even with a dream, or if I could just accomplish this dream, then. And I think one of the things that almost dying taught me was that there's no there, there's only here.” So says poet and author Mark Nepo, who has now written nearly 30 books, including mega-bestsellers like The Book of Awakening. In this latest book, You Don’t Have to Do It Alone, Mark explores the power of friendship to lend life both vital energy and more meaning, likening friends not to the boat, but to the oars that can help you reach the other side of the water. I’ve been thinking a lot about boys and men lately—including the ways in which they suffer under patriarchy too, sometimes in more devastating ways. I’m grateful for people like Mark who are insisting and modeling that to care is to be human—and that intimate friendships are vital for all of us who hope to lead long and meaningful lives. Women have an easier time of this, though we can all benefit from reminders.  MORE FROM MARK NEPO: You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: The Power of Friendship The Book of Awakening Falling Down and Getting Up Mark Nepo’s Website Follow Mark Nepo on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I remember a wonderful psychologist was talking about, we shouldn't, should on ourselves. Don't should on yourself. And it's all of what I should do. And there's a big lie for new moms, which is that when the baby is born, you should take care of the baby. You're the best person. You're the mother. There's no one else who's going to take care of your baby in the same way. And of course you should be holding skin to skin, have the opportunity to breastfeed. But there was never a mother who was expected to take care of her baby without the help of her aunt and her grandmother and her sister and things like that. And if you think about it, in the hospital, there's only one place where we make patients take care of other patients, right?” So says Dr. Harvey Karp, author of The Happiest Baby on the Block which has Bible-like status in the world of parenting. As a beloved Los Angeles pediatrician, Harvey punctured the mainstream with the 5 S’s—swaddling, shushing, swinging, sucking, and holding the baby on its side—all simple interventions that helped parents help their newborns sleep. This was revolutionary—and certainly changed my trajectory as a new parent, as getting five straight hours instead of three can have a huge impact on your mental health. Harvey then codified his findings into “The Snoo,” a bassinet that functions as an extra set of hands: It swaddles, swings, shushes, and keeps the baby safely on its back while it sleeps. In today’s conversation we talk about what it would look like to institutionalize support of new parents, what Harvey’s trying to do about this, why it can be so awful, isolating, and hard to have kids, along with the advice most parents frequently seek. I’m lucky to call Harvey a friend and to be able to turn to him over the years—in fact, Sam slept in a prototype Snoo—so I’m thrilled to share some of his wisdom with all of you. Let’s turn to our conversation now. MORE FROM HARVEY KARP, M.D.: The Happiest Baby on the Block The Happiest Toddler on the Block The Snoo Follow Happiest Baby on Instagram EPISODES IN THE “GROWING UP” SERIES: Niobe Way, “The Critical Need for Deep Connection” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“One of the things about practices that I love is this notion of it's not perfect. I haven't got it mastered, just by the very word, it's implied that I'm working it into my life and out of my life and through my life, almost like in my mind, I'm picturing like a woman who's like kneading it into bread dough. And so then there's the room. There's room to play. There's room to set it aside for a time. There's room to reimagine some of these practices. There's room to expand our notions of belonging and spirituality and faithfulness of our place in the world. And then that to me then opened up and almost reintroduced some of those things that maybe I had once rejected. And thought, well, there's no room for me here. And whether it's prayer, or generosity, or whatever else, it's like, no, I think that there's some good practices here. And I think there's a way to do this in a way that looks like being for things instead of just against things like we already talked about. But then what does it look like to have some room for mistakes and for learning and for humility? And even some play, I think.” So says Sarah Bessey, the author or editor of five books, including Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith. Sarah writes most prominently about leaving her evangelical upbringing and working through the deconstruction of her religious beliefs to create something that feels more true to her in its wake—as part of this, she co-founded the Evolving Faith community with some of her friends, including the wonderful and late Rachel Held Evans. Bessey writes prolifically about what it means to connect with her idea of God in a bigger and more expansive way—one that has moved from Simplicity, to Complexity, to Perplexity, to Harmony. In addition to Field Notes for the Wilderness, Sarah is also the editor of the New York Times bestseller A Rhythm of Prayer and Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women. In today’s conversation we talked about ideas and processes Sarah holds tenderly, including a shift from peace-keeping to peace-making and trying to articulate a vision of what she is for rather than who she is against. There is much in this conversation to which we can all relate. MORE FROM SARAH BESSEY: Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible’s View of Women Follow Sarah on Instagram Subscribe to Sarah’s Newsletter Evolving Faith Sarah’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“You can't be independent if you're not deeply connected. So what happens to a child that's not deeply connected? What actually happens? Guess what happens? They don't feel the confidence to be able to take risks. They don't feel the confidence to go out and be self-sufficient. They don't feel the confidence in doing it. So we're actually backbiting, right? We're kicking ourselves in the asses when we just focus on independence. Because we need to give them the skills to be able to be independent, which are relational skills, which is knowing that when I need help, I can turn to you and you will help me and I will help you when you need it. So then you can go off and take a risk or go and live in a new city or go have your own apartment and know that you can lean on me when you need to. And so to me, the attachment story that comes out, at this point, almost a century of research on attachment is a gorgeous, gorgeous story.” So says Dr. Niobe Way, an internationally-recognized Professor of Developmental Psychology, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity (PACH) at NYU, and the Director of the Science of Human Connection Lab. She is also a Principal Investigator of the Listening Project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative and the Rockefeller Foundation. When she was a student, Niobe studied with Carol Gilligan—if you read my newsletter or listen to this podcast, you know Carol is a hero of mine and will be wrapping up this series as a guest. Niobe has done for boys what Carol has done for girls—and their research intersects and Venn diagrams in fascinating ways. While Carol’s research shows that girls come to not know what they know, Niobe traces how boys disconnect from their caring and often enter a period of irrevocably devastating and dangerous loneliness. Niobe is the author of Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection as well as the just-released, Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture, which offers fascinating insight into our culture at large. Along with historical context, Niobe offers beautiful case studies from her research—following and interviewing boys as they grow up—along with notes from boys who have gone on to wreak havoc on the culture, in homicidal and suicidal ways. These notes speak to disconnection, extreme loneliness, and feeling like nobody cares. As I talk about my book in living rooms around the country, I often cite Niobe and Carol Gilligan, specifically the insight that at a certain point—around 8 for boys, and 11 for girls—the word “don’t” enters children’s vocabulary. For girls, it’s “I don’t know.” For boys, it’s “I don’t care.” And of course, girls knows. And of course, boys care. We need to repair our culture so it’s safe for them to stay connected. As you can tell, I’m very excited for this conversation. MORE FROM NIOBE WAY, PhD: Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection The Crisis of Connection: Roots, Consequences, and Solutions Niobe Way’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Our anger is “I'm angry because something happened that I feel was unjust or unfair” And if it continues, then I want my justice and you know, our injustices from childhood turn out to be society's burdens because I want payback here, even though you had nothing to do with it. So, hate and love go together because they're both strongly bonding connection, right? But really bond us in order to hate you, I've got to feel a lot about you, right? You did something to betray me, to violate me, to say, no, I can't do this, whatever it is. And so both are really strongly bonded, you know, just like anger is bonding. When we're angry with each other, it's a way to stay bonded and connected, even though it's unpleasant.” So says Stan Tatkin, an author, therapist, and researcher who guides couples toward more durable relationships. He developed the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), a non-linear approach that explores attachment theory to help couples adopt secure-functioning principles: In short, Stan and his wife, Tracey, train therapists to work through a psychobiological lens. Often, our brains get away from us when we’re in conflict in our relationships—we lose ourselves to our instincts. He has trained thousands of therapists to integrate PACT into their clinical practice, offers intensive counseling sessions, and co-leads couples retreats with his wife. Tatkin is also an assistant clinical professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.  Stan wrote Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship more than a decade ago and it became an instant classic. It was due for a refresh to encompass the wider range of relationships we’re now experiencing and it’s just been re-issued, better than ever. In today’s conversation we talk about the table stakes of a good relationship: Nobody cares about your survival more than your partner, something we easily forget. As it were, we get into a fascinating sidebar on Pre-Nuptial Agreements, which in Stan’s estimation cause many relationships to founder. I’ll let him tell you why. MORE FROM STAN TATKIN: Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship In Each Other’s Care: A Guide to the Most Common Relationship Conflicts and How to Work Through Them We Do Wired for Dating Stan Tatkin’s Website Follow Stan on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, It’s Elise, host of Pulling the Thread. Starting next Monday, I’m doing another special series—this one is about growing up, and no, it’s definitely not just for parents. It’s mostly about re-parenting, or understanding the driving factors of how we all come to understand the world. You’ll hear from four very different voices about childhood, social programming, and development. Two are pioneers in gender development: One of my all-time heroes, developmental psychologist Carol Gilligan, who I write about in my Substack all-the-time who wrote In a Different Voice in the ‘80s, is joining me on the show, and so is Niobe Way, who does for boys what Carol Gilligan does for girls. I’m also talking with legendary pediatrician Harvey Karp, creator of The Happiest Baby on the Block, the founder of the Snoo, and an ardent and early environmentalist—and Carissa Schumacher, a full-body psychic medium and dear friend who is going to talk to us about what it’s like to raise and be a highly empathic and intuitive person—and how you can retain and develop those abilities. Or shut them down. It will be a great series, coming every Monday for the next month. I’ll see you every Thursday for a regular episode. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“So when we think about this, what is the aura? Many people have an idea of the aura as something that is around you and a lovely bubble or sphere of energy. Maybe you've seen pictures of an egg shape, but what's really important to understand about the aura is that it comes from inside you and it's only as strong as your vitality. So you can think about the aura as essentially being a vibrational field that is being vibrated out of your cells. So now how are your cells? Are you eating in ways that really activate your body system or not? Are you living in ways that support your vitality or not?” So says Prune Harris, who has been able to see, study, and shift energy fields since she was born—a gift she didn’t fully realize she didn’t share with everyone else. Prune is an incredible teacher—I’ve been lucky enough to work with her—because can take esoteric and complex energy systems and distill them into metaphors, concepts, and practices that are both easy to understand and easy to do. She has taught me so many simple holds and gestures that have had a direct impact on helping me calm myself down and feel more contained and grounded. She’s the author of a great guidebook, Your Radiant Soul: Understand Your Energy to Transform Your World, and she has an incredibly comprehensive Youtube channel where she teaches simple practices. She’s wonderful. In today’s conversation we cover a lot of ground—from basic holds and energy systems to why most of us need to also ground up. We also discuss the auric membrane and what happens when it gets punctured, by other people, the energy of the world, and psychedelics. MORE FROM PRUNE HARRIS: Your Radiant Soul: Understand Your Energy to Transform Your World Prune’s Website Follow Prune on YouTube Follow Prune on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“What optogenetics does is it's an engine of discovery. It helps us identify what matters, what's causing things to happen in the brain. And we know now the cells and the connections make these powerful motivations and drives manifest. That opens the door to any kind of new treatment, right? If you know the cells, then you can look at the DNA and the RNA in those cells. You can see what proteins those cells are making, and that gives you clues for medication targets. You can say, okay, this cell has these proteins on its surface, that would give us an idea for a pill, for a medication that might act specifically on that cell that now we know for the first time is causal. It's not just correlated with, it's actually causing these symptoms or the resolution of these symptoms. And if we can now design a medication that targets that cell, we might have a treatment.” So says Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist, neuroscientist and bioengineering professor at Stanford. Karl is also the author of Projections: The New Science of Human Emotion, which is a beautiful revisitation and exploration of his time as a psychiatry resident, where he encountered all sorts of people who didn’t quite understand what was happening to their brains—and by extension their minds. In the book—and in our conversation today—Karl explores mania, autism spectrum disorder, eating disorders, borderline personality disorder, psychopathy, and dementia, all in gorgeous prose. Karl runs a lab at Stanford that focuses on optogenetics, mind-blowing science that can pinpoint where adaptive and maladaptive behaviors begin in the brain. He’s won the Kyoto Prize and Heineken Prize for his research, which is not surprising—it just might change the entire world of psychiatry. Today’s conversation is far-ranging and it’s also surprising, including a conversation about how some of these disorders—like eating disorders, which can be deadly, can also be strangely adaptive. Please stick with us.  MORE FROM KARL DEISSEROTH, M.D., PhD: Projections: The New Science of Human Emotion Follow Karl Deisseroth on Twitter To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“All growing up stages are the product of scientific investigation of the stages of growing up that people go through. And those are all defined in third person terms because they're the person or thing being spoken about. When we talk about the archaic stage or the magic stage or the mythic stage, if you look within right now, you can't see any of those stages. As a matter of fact, before we had this conversation, you had no idea that you had all these six to eight stages of growing up that you will go through. You didn't know anything about those because you can't see them. They're not first person or even second person phenomena. They're third person, the person or thing being spoken about.” So says Ken Wilber, whose work and intellect is difficult to describe. Throughout a long career—and the authoring of 20 books, including A Brief History of Everything, Grace and Grit, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, and The Religion of Tomorrow, Wilber has put together what is essentially a synthesis of every psychological model of development. In fact, he locked himself away for years, writing every model down on pieces of yellow legal paper, and then knit them all together. I’ve written about Wilber’s work at length in my newsletter, which is also called Pulling the Thread—I’ll put links in the show notes—and I talk about his work on this show as well. Most recently, I talked about Ken Wilber with Nicole Churchill in our conversation about Spiral Dynamics. Wilber is a Spiral Dynamics wizard, though he uses it in aggregate with the work of other developmental thinkers, integrating the work of luminaries like Carol Gilligan, Robert Kegan, and others.  In today’s conversation, we talk about Wilber’s brand new book, Finding Radical Wholeness, which explores the five big processes we all undertake in our lives. In today’s conversation, we mostly talked about two: Waking Up and Growing Up, which are often conflated. Wilber makes the case for why they are unrelated processes—and the essential nature of the latter. While Waking Up, or having a Satori experience is wonderful—and something that 60% of people report—we all need to grow up. Wilber and I spend most of today’s conversation talking about our political environment from the standpoint of developmental psychology: Why we’re so fractured, and what it will look like when the Integral Stage becomes the leading edge of culture and we learn how to include and transcend. I think this is fascinating, and reassuring, and excellent context for a moment that feels so out-of-control. MORE FROM KEN WILBER: Finding Radical Wholeness A Brief History of Everything Sex, Ecology Spirituality Trump and a Post-Truth World The Religion of Tomorrow Grace and Grit More books from Ken Wilber More from Pulling the Thread Podcast: “The Basics of Spiral Dynamics” with Nicole Churchill “Our Collective Psychological Development” with John Churchill More from Pulling the Thread Newsletter: Transcend and Include Embracing Nondual Thinking Right Doing Ascending and Descending States vs. Stages To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I really think that the past, we can go back to it and we definitely learn lessons because I'm always a hindsight person. So in hindsight, I'm always thinking that, okay, what could I have done better? But the past experiences for me, I've learned as I've gotten older, is to grab the lesson. And hopefully there's a blessing in there too. And then move on. I used to stay stuck in the past and try to understand why, why, why, why, why I would spend so much time, Elise, that I'm never getting back or why did this person do that? Why did this happen? Why did they treat me this way? And really try to unpack all of their baggage. And what I've learned is the “why” doesn't even really matter. It's, you know, what is the lesson for me? What is the lesson for my soul that I need right now?” So says Nicole Avant, a philanthropist, filmmaker, and former diplomat. In her recent memoir, Think You’ll Be Happy, Nicole describes attending to the grief and shock of her mother’s unthinkable murder—she was shot in the back by a home intruder in 2021—by creating a living legacy in her honor. Her mom, Jacqueline Avant, had turned her Los Angeles home into a refuge for artists, politicians, and world-changers as the partner to Nicole’s father, entertainment mogul Clarence Avant, who is the subject of Nicole’s beautiful documentary,The Black Godfather. Nicole grew up sitting at the feet of extraordinary artists like Bill Withers, Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones, Sidney Poitier watching as her parents navigated the world to make it better for future generations. In today’s conversation, we talk about that legacy—as well as Nicole’s relationship to the divine. Like her parents, she is a master connector—putting people together to see what unfolds. MORE FROM NICOLE AVANT: Think You’ll Be Happy: Moving Through Grief with Grit, Grace, and Gratitude The Black Godfather, on Netflix Follow Nicole on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I think we need each other. I say this all the time, there are some things that are too big to feel in one body. You need a collective body to move them through. And I think that's what we need. We need to come together in spaces to heal, not just to consume together or to watch a movie together, but to feel together and to have human emotion in real life, in public and act from the place of a feeling body, to choose action from a feeling body and not just a reactive or a numb body, but a body that feels, a body that can connect. What kind of actions do you take in the world from that kind of body? I think it's different.” So says Prentis Hemphill, therapist, embodiment facilitator, and author of the just-released, What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. In today’s conversation—the final in a four-part series—we explore a path to putting ourselves, and the collective, back together, and how this begins with a visioning…but a visioning born from getting back in touch with how we actually feel. I loved their book—just by reading along with Prentis’s own path to re-embodiment, I found myself finding similar sensations in my chest, back and heart. In today’s conversation, we talk about somatics, yes, but also about conflict—and what it looks like to become more adept with our emotions in hard times. This is one of my favorite conversations I’ve had to date on Pulling the Thread—I hope you enjoy it too. MORE FROM PRENTIS HEMPHILL: What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World Prentis’s Website The Embodiment Institute Follow Prentis on Instagram RELATED EPISODES: PART 1: James Gordon, M.D., “A Toolkit for Working with Trauma” PART 2: Peter Levine, Ph.D, “Where Trauma Lives in the Body” PART 3: Resmaa Menakem, “Finding Fear in the Body (TRAUMA)” Thomas Hubl: “Feeling into the Collective Presence” Gabor Maté, M.D.: “When Stress Becomes Illness” Galit Atlas, PhD: “Understanding Emotional Inheritance” Thomas Hubl: “Processing Our Collective Past” Richard Schwartz, PhD: “Recovering Every Part of Ourselves” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“This is the richness of the traditional wife explosion, right? There's this simple idea that you get to choose. Now you're choosing to emulate a situation that's a fiction in that those women didn't choose anything. They had to dress like that. They had to live like that. They had to be nice to the men like that, because they had no bank accounts. They had no cars. They had no licenses. They had no income. They had no security. So, don't equate these two things because you're just kind of living a dignified version of something that was pretty egregiously harmful, you know. And it's the difference, I think, in knowing that you have an option.” So says Soraya Chemaly, an award-winning writer, journalist and activist whose work has been at the center of mine. Her now-classic, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger lit me on fire—not only for the deftness of her arguments but also because she is a meticulous researcher. What she gave air to in the pages of that book blew me away. She figures prominently in the endnotes of On Our Best Behavior. Her new book, The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth After Trauma, follows a similar path. Soraya takes something we’ve been served as an ideal—develop resilience—and flips it on its head, both widening and undermining this definition. She challenges our cultural myths about this concept and urges us all to shift and expand our perspective on the trait, moving from prioritizing the role of the individual to overcome and conquer to focusing on what’s really at work, which is collective care and connections with our communities. As she proves in these pages, resilience is always relational.  MORE FROM SORAYA CHEMALY: The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth After Trauma Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger Follow Soraya on Instagram Soraya’s Website To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Here's what I would say: peace will happen when people invest in cultivating peace as opposed to war. Peace will happen. And one thing I know, for me, I know peace, I know I will never see it, but maybe I can put something in place to where I leave something here and my children's, children's, children's grandchildren can nibble off of and feed on what I've left here the same way I feed off of Frederick Douglass's stuff.” So says therapist and social worker Resmaa Menakem, author of the New York Times bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies and originator of the Somatic Abolitionist movement. I met Resmaa many years ago, when he was one of the few voices in this space—Resmaa calls himself a communal provocateur and this is true, as his work challenges all of us to recognize and acknowledge that we’re scared. And that much of this fear is ancient. We were supposed to talk today about trauma in relationships, but our time together took a different turn—Resmaa jumped at the opportunity to put me in my familial and familiar fear. It’s hard, or at least it was for me, but hopefully you’ll stick with us to see how this works. This is the third part of a series on trauma, and it won’t surprise you to hear that Resmaa also trained with Peter Levine. MORE FROM RESMAA MENAKEM: My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies Monsters in Love: Why Your Partner Sometimes Drives You Crazy—And What You Can Do About It The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation’s Upheaval and Racial Reckoning Resmaa’s Website Follow Resmaa on Instagram RELATED EPISODES: PART 1: James Gordon, M.D., “A Toolkit for Working with Trauma” PART 2: Peter Levine, Ph.D, “Where Trauma Lives in the Body” Thomas Hubl: “Feeling into the Collective Presence” Gabor Maté, M.D.: “When Stress Becomes Illness” Galit Atlas, PhD: “Understanding Emotional Inheritance” Thomas Hubl: “Processing Our Collective Past” Richard Schwartz, PhD: “Recovering Every Part of Ourselves” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There are studies showing that, once your basic needs are met, and you're not worried about losing your house, losing your health care, increases in money don't significantly increase happiness, right? So I think, you know, money helps alleviate the very real biological primitive fear of you're gonna die if you don't have shelter and food and in our society, healthcare, but when it comes to things beyond that, I think that we have been sold the lie that money creates security and it's a natural conflation because at a certain point for securing the necessities,and it makes other problems easier to solve also clearly, but emotionally, money is not the solution to an emotional problem any more than food or having a certain kind of body or being married or not married.”  So says Kara Loewentheil, author of Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head—and How to Get it Out. While Kara and I went to college together, I first met her when she was gracious enough to have me on her hugely successful podcast, UnF*ck Your Brain, where I obviously fell in love with…her brain. Kara is theoretically an unlikely life coach—she graduated from Harvard Law School, litigated reproductive rights, and ran a think tank at Columbia University before deciding that she wanted to go upstream and rewire our culture’s brain instead.  Kara is fixated on what she calls the “Brain Gap” in women—the thought patterns so natural to women that keep us feeling anxious and disempowered. It’s in that “Brain Gap” that we continue to both unconsciously support and re-enact a culture that doesn’t do great things for women. My work and Kara’s work are very aligned. In fact, Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head—and How to Get it Out is a cousin to On Our Best Behavior—one that’s written with actionable insights, by a life coach, for getting to the root of the problem. MORE FROM KARA LOEWENTHEIL: Take Back Your Brain: How a Sexist Society Gets in Your Head—and How to Get it Out Kara’s Website: The New School of Feminist Thought Kara’s Book Website Kara’s Podcast: UnF*ck Your Brain Follow Kara on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There are therapies where the person is made to relive their traumas over and over and over again. It's called flooding. And that's the one type of therapy that I do not agree with. I think it, not all the time, but it can be harmful, again, in somatic experiencing, we titrate the experience, we touch into a sensation in our bodies that have to do with the trauma, but just touch into it, and then notice the shift to a higher level of order, a higher level of coherence, a higher, greater level of flow. To go from trauma to awakening and flow is really, I think, what healing is all about." So says Peter Levine, PhD. If you’ve read or heard anything about trauma, you likely know Peter’s name, as he’s the father of Somatic Experiencing, a body-awareness approach to healing trauma that’s informed the practice of almost every trauma-worker today. Levine is a prolific writer—his international best seller, Waking the Tiger, has been translated into twenty-two languages—though much of his work has been for fellow academics and teachers. He’s just published a new book, An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey, which is highly accessible for all of us. It’s a beautiful book that recounts how he came to understand the somatic experience of trauma through an event in his own childhood—and the scientists and cultures he encountered along the way that informed what ultimately became a world-changing protocol. Today’s conversation explores all of this—including some very surprising appearances by Einstein. MORE FROM PETER LEVINE, PHD: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey Waking the Tiger: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences Trauma & Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness Somatic Experiencing International RELATED EPISODES: PART 1: James Gordon, “TRAUMA/Tools for Transforming Trauma” Thomas Hubl: “Feeling into the Collective Presence” Gabor Maté, M.D.: “When Stress Becomes Illness” Galit Atlas, PhD: “Understanding Emotional Inheritance” Thomas Hubl: “Processing Our Collective Past” Richard Schwartz, PhD: “Recovering Every Part of Ourselves” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“In writing my book, I wanted to bring it back to the self because being online allows us to have this inappropriate level of audacity. And I think audacity is a very beautiful thing, but it gets so inappropriate online where you can go into Elise's messages and say, “by the way, I saw you liked this, you should be liking this, prove yourself to me”-- when the same person is probably not even able to have a conversation with their own partner in their home, but they can go online and demand people to say certain things, but in your home, are you that courageous to have a difficult conversation? Are you that courageous to have that same level of audacity in your day to day life. And I just worry that we're performing this very shadowy version of ourselves, especially online, without making any kind of effort in our everyday life to cultivate a strong sense of self, where you're able to handle conflict, where you're able to express disappointment to someone face to face and have a dialogue.” So says Africa Brooke, coach and author of The Third Perspective: Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance. I’ve been smitten with Africa for years, after I was one of the 12 million-odd people who read her Instagram manifesto, “Why I’m Leaving the Cult of Wokeness” in 2020. There, Africa gave voice to being part of a culture that was supposed to be tented around diversity and inclusion, and yet, she found herself sounding and behaving in an increasingly intolerant way, a way that resisted diversity of thought. Originally from Zimbabwe, Africa lives in the U.K. and had already amassed a following for documenting her path to sobriety online—a path that anticipated the sober curious movement that’s become more mainstream today. She’s well-versed in spotting patterns and recognizing the way culture was working both on her and in her, in ways that were separating her from herself.  I loved this conversation, a conversation I was very excited to have—it’s a vulnerable one. I’m grateful to Africa for saying what needs to be said and conscious that more of us need to join her. As she explains, people quickly finger her as far-right—and the far-right would love nothing more than to co-opt her—but she’s more of a social justice advocate than ever. She needs people in the center, and people on the left to join her in pointing out how our cancel culture is, to use her term, actually “collective sabotage.” And how we abandon our highest principles when we turn on each other so quickly and make each other “wrong.” I think this conversation speaks for itself. MORE FROM AFRICA BROOKE: The Third Perspective: Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance “Why I’m leaving the cult of wokeness” Africa’s Website Follow Africa on Instagram Africa’s Podcast: “Beyond the Self” Loretta Ross’s Episode: “Calling in the Call-Out Culture” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Now the tragedy, in one sense is a tragedy, that often people only become open when they've suffered horribly when that is both the tragedy of trauma, but also the promise. It's one thing to be trauma informed. It's another thing to inform our experience of trauma with some kind of courage and some kind of hopefulness for profound change. That's what's got to happen. If that can happen, then maybe out of all this contentiousness that is present in our 21st century United States, maybe something really good can happen, but we've got to pay attention, we've got to act on it, and take responsibility.” So says Dr. James Gordon, a Harvard-educated psychiatrist, former researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health and Chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, and a clinical professor of psychiatry and family medicine at Georgetown Medical School. He’s also the founder and executive director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine and a prolific writer on trauma. This is because he’s spent the last several decades traveling the globe and healing population-wide psychological trauma. He and 130 international faculty have brought this program to populations as diverse as refugees from wars in the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa; firefighters and U.S. military personnel and their families; student/parent/teacher school shooting survivors; and more. I met Jim many years ago, and he’s become a constant resource for me in my own life and work, particularly because he packages so many of the exercises that work in global groups into his book Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing. We talk about some of those exercises today—soft belly breathing, shaking and dancing, drawing—along with why it’s so important to address and complete the trauma cycle in areas of crisis. This is the first part of a four-part series, and James does an excellent job of setting the stage. MORE FROM JAMES GORDON, M.D.: Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing The Center for Mind-Body Medicine Follow Jim on Instagram RELATED EPISODES: Thomas Hubl: “Feeling into the Collective Presence” Gabor Maté, M.D.: “When Stress Becomes Illness” Galit Atlas, PhD: “Understanding Emotional Inheritance” Thomas Hubl: “Processing Our Collective Past” Richard Schwartz, PhD: “Recovering Every Part of Ourselves” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I realized I think there's a few things that are in our heads that are so deep in the culture. One of them is the idea that being overweight is a sin. It goes right back to if you look at Pope Gregory I in the 6th century when he first formulates the seven deadly sins, gluttony is there, it's always depicted with some fat person who looks monstrous, overeating. And how do we think about sin? If being overweight is a sin, we think sin requires punishment before you get to redemption. The only forms of weight loss that we admire are where you suffer horribly, right? You think about The Biggest Loser, that horrid, disgusting game show. If you go through agony, if you starve yourself, if you do extreme forms of exercise that devastate your body, then we'll go, he suffered. We forgive you. Well done. We'll let you be thin now, right?” So says Johann Hari, author of many bestselling books—Stolen Focus, Lost Connections, and Chasing the Scream. Johann is a fellow cultural psychic and his latest book—the subject of today’s conversation—bears this out. He takes on drugs like Ozempic and Mounjaro in Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs. He also writes about his own relationship to these drugs, as Johann is taking them. His book is a subtle and sensitive navigation of what is a tightly bound convergence of health and culture—and every page of his book anticipates and precedes the conversation. (As a disclaimer, I’m in it.) We talk about all  of it in today’s conversation, along with what would have happened if a woman had written this book first. MORE FROM JOHANN HARI: Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again Lost Connections: Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs Johann’s Website Follow Johann on Instagram To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices