Podcast appearances and mentions of Allan Schore

Join Jay Gunkelman, QEEGD (the man who has analyzed over 500,000 brain scans) and host Pete Jansons for another engaging NeuroNoodle Neurofeedback Podcast episode discussing neuroscience, psychology, mental health, and brain training.✅ Mouth Breathing & Apnea Myths: Jay dives into common misconceptions about neurofeedback's role in treating sleep apnea and nasal vs. mouth breathing patterns.✅ Understanding Mu & the Mirror Neuron System: We break down mu rhythms, their connection to frontal lobe function, and what they reveal about disengagement and attention.✅ Gamma Brainwaves: Helpful or Harmful? Jay clears the confusion around gamma activity, discussing the difference between healthy “chirps” and pathological patterns.✅ Bonus Brainwaves & Topics Covered:--Overtraining symptoms and vascular clients-Smell loss and the olfactory system-EEG signs of inattention and drowsiness-Compressed neurofeedback protocols and RAD findings-Environmental disruptors: EMFs, microplastics, LED light-The neuroscience of shame, guilt, and early development-Jay's October EEG Summit at the Yacht Club✅ Key Moments0:00 – Intro0:32 – Questions left over from our Q&A Show

Wie entscheidend ist emotionale Interaktion für die gesunde Entwicklung in unserer Kindheit? Fehlt diese Interaktion über längere Zeiträume oder ist sie inkonsistent, kann das zu psychischen und neurobiologischen Veränderungen führen – bis hin zu chronischem Stress, Hypervigilanz, Schreckhaftigkeit, Bindungsstörungen und dissoziativen Schutzmechanismen. (sieh dir dazu die Forschungen von Allan Schore an) Willst du erforschen, welches Bindungsmuster du hast? Dann klicke hier Willkommen zu L(i)eben mit Trauma, der Podcast mit Spezialisierung auf Bindung, Beziehungen und Bindungstrauma. In meiner Arbeit unterstütze ich Menschen dabei, ihre Bindungsmuster & frühen Bindungserfahrungen zu erkennen und zu verändern – insbesondere dann, wenn alte Verletzungen aus der Kindheit sich in heutigen Beziehungen widerspiegeln. Themen wie emotionale Abhängigkeit, Verlustangst, Bindungsangst oder das Gefühl, nie „genug“ zu sein, stehen im Mittelpunkt. Alle Links: 1:1 Begleitung | Website Instagram | YouTube

Let us hear from you!This is Episode 1 of our Raising Emotionally Resilient Children series. In this episode we give an overview of how the emotional brain develops, based on the work of Dr. Allan Schore. Next week, we'll get into the details of how the brain develops and what brain scans of mothers and their infants interacting can teach us about attachment. This week we introduce our new series, Raising Emotionally Resilient Kids. This series is designed to help you better understand your child's emotional development so you can support them in becoming resilient, emotionally intelligent, and secure.Dr. Allan Schore (Dr. Allan N. Schore)  Known as a pioneer in affective neuroscience and attachment theory, Dr. Schore's research on how early interactions shape the developing brain is foundational to this series. His book The Development of the Unconscious Mind is a major resource.Watch Dr. Allan Schore's podcast with Andrew Huberman Watch Dr. Schore give an academic lecture on this topic 

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Allan Schore, Ph.D., a faculty member in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles, a longtime clinical psychotherapist, and a multi-book author. We discuss how early child-parent interactions shape brain circuitry, impacting our ability to form attachments, manage emotions, and navigate conflict and stress. We cover how the development of right-brain circuitry related to emotional processing and the unconscious mind regulates physiological responses, influencing adult friendships and romantic relationships. We also explore how improving your ability to listen to the emotional tone—rather than just the meaning—of words is a vital skill for fostering better relationships with yourself and others, and how it plays a role in reshaping brain circuitry. Additionally, we explain how circuits in the right brain hemisphere drive creativity and intuition and discuss activities to access the unconscious mind. This episode delves into how the unconscious mind regulates emotions—both your own and others'—and shapes our sense of self. By the end, you'll have new knowledge and tools to build more secure, meaningful, and impactful connections of all kinds: professional, romantic, familial, friendships, and beyond. Access the full show notes for this episode, including referenced articles, resources, and people mentioned at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David Protein: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Eight Sleep: https://eightsleep.com/huberman Function: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps 00:00:00 Dr. Allan Schore 00:02:37 Sponsors: David & Eight Sleep 00:05:49 Thoughts & Unconscious Mind 00.07:36 Right vs Left Brain, Child Development, Attachment 00:13:19 Attachment Styles & Development, Emotions & Physiology 00:18:12 Intuition, Arousal, Emotional Regulation & Attachment 00:23:13 Psychobiological Attunement, Repair; Insecure & Anxious Attachment 00:28:33 Attachment Styles, Regulation Theory; Therapy 00:34:20 Sponsor: AG1 00:35:51 “Surrender,” Therapy, Patient Synchronization 00:39:46 Synchrony, Empathy, Therapy & Developing Autoregulation 00:45:07 Mother vs Father, Child Development; Single Caretakers 00:50:51 MDMA, Right Brain; Fetal Development 00:55:58 Sponsor: Function 00:57:46 Integrating Positive & Negative Emotions, Quiet vs Excited Love 01:03:33 Splitting, Boarderline; Therapy & Emotions 01:09:24 Tool: Right Brain, Vulnerability & Repair 01:15:32 Right vs. Left Brain, Attention 01:19:26 Right Brain Synchronization, Eye Connection, Empathy 01:25:39 Music & Dogs, Resonance 01:30:58 Right Brain & Body; Empathic Connection, Body Language 01:36:47 Tool: Text Message, Communication, Relationships 01:42:18 Right Brain Dominance & Activities; Tool: Fostering the Right Brain 01:50:10 Defenses, Blind Spots 01:53:14 Creativity, Accessing the Right Brain, Insight 01:59:31 Paternal Leave, Parent-Child Relationships, Attachment 02:05:16 Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow & Reviews, Sponsors, YouTube Feedback, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures

In this episode of the One Thing podcast, Dr. Peter discusses the profound impact of her father's experiences as a Holocaust survivor on her life and career as a trauma psychologist. The conversation delves into the effects of generational trauma, the physiological and psychological responses to significant traumatic events, and the steps taken to aid survivors of the recent October 7th attacks in Israel. Dr. Peter highlights her work with the Israel Healing Initiative, emphasizing the importance of neurostimulation in trauma treatment and her ongoing efforts to provide support across affected communities, including Jewish, Palestinian, Bedouin, and Druze populations. The discussion includes poignant survivor stories and touches upon the broader implications of trauma within a global context. The conversation highlights, stories of heroism during October 7, the importance of social support, the difference between real trauma and perceived trauma, and the need for practical solutions to promote post-traumatic growth. The episode provides invaluable knowledge on trauma response, the use of vagal nerve stimulation, neurostimulation, and ways to support continued efforts in mitigating trauma's impact on both Israeli and Palestinian communities. Here are some of the topics we cover: Father's Journey and Influence 9/11 and Global Reactions Understanding Trauma and PTSD October 7th Events and Initial Reactions Personal Stories of Survival Neurostimulation and Trauma Treatment Scaling Up Nonprofit Efforts Treating Trauma with Vagus Nerve Stimulators Personal Stories of Trauma and Healing Understanding the Physical Impact of Trauma The Role of Neurostimulation in Post-Traumatic Growth Supporting the Israel Healing Initiative About Dr. Peter: As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Peter has devoted her three-decade career to providing specialized treatment to survivors worldwide. Her experience spans diverse communities, including Iranian refugees, residents of the Qalandia refugee camp, and individuals from Arab, Druze, and Jewish Israeli backgrounds in the aftermath of the war. She has also provided support to witnesses of the 9/11 attacks. Previously holding the role of associate professor of psychology at Mount St. Mary's University in Los Angeles, Dr. Peter oversaw the Psychology Graduate Programs and served as acting Chair of the Psychology Department. Dr. Peter's academic journey culminated in a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, followed by three postdoctoral fellowships in clinical psychology, social psychology, and neuropsychology. Her dedication led to diplomate status in Clinical Psychology from the American Board of Psychological Specialties. Her expertise is deepened by her studies with pioneers in the field of Interpersonal Neurobiology, such as UCLA professors Allan Schore and Dan Siegel. This expertise allows her to effectively apply these principles in helping traumatized individuals regulate their emotions. Her certification in Homeland Security by the American Board of Psychological Specialties speaks to her expertise in trauma-related research and treatment. Her consultancy with the RAND Corporation on terrorism research demonstrates her commitment to understanding and addressing the psychological impact of traumatic events. Dr. Peter is the Vice President of Free Hearts Free Minds, an organization that provides trauma counseling and support to free-thinking ex-Muslims who have faced or are at risk of persecution from their families or communities. Socials Israel Healing Initiative Facebook Page Instagram --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/onethingpod/support

Kellee and Abby are back from their holiday break! Join them for the Season 5 in another conversation, all about looooooove

CW: Physical assault, trauma, and suicideDr. T and the Truth Fairy welcome Dr. Sharon Stanley - renowned psychotherapist, author, and developer of the psychotherapeutic model of somatic transformation - to the show. They have a searching and revealing conversation with Dr. Stanley about her career and the decades of work she has done with humans and trauma. Sharon Stanley describes her work as “relational to the core” and explains how her somatic work uses relationship to at times discern a particular technique. She shares the personal story of how she first became interested in trauma and how her study moved into the idea of somatic transformation from there. Dr. Stanley also names many foundational figures whom she has drawn insight from along the way.The discussion Dr. T and the Truth Fairy have with Sharon Stanley involve how Sharon keeps boundaries in the relationship formed through trauma bonding, what the intersubjective field is, and the six steps of somatic transformation. Sharon describes what ‘meaning making' encompasses and she invites Dr. T and Truth Fairy into a brief thematic reflection. This episode sheds light on how much Truth Fairy has learned from Dr. Stanley and why she has been mentioned so frequently on PUNK Therapy. It gives insight into her intentions and careful trauma healing methods.“When we do have an experience of going through something together, we can have an experience called trauma bonding. And the trauma bonding is a kind of an enmeshment where I feel what you feel, you feel what I feel. And we don't have clear boundaries. And that kind of leads me a little bit further into your question that working professionally with trauma, it's relational, but the boundaries are very clear. And how to make sure [in] those boundaries that there's a time, there's a place, there's a way we will, it's almost like a ritual that we will follow.” -  Dr. Sharon StanleyAbout Sharon Stanley, PhD:Over the past 17 years Sharon Stanley has developed and taught an emerging curriculum for healing trauma to thousands of  mental health practitioners. The educational experience of ST actively engages psychotherapists in exploring emerging research and practices in their own professional and personal lives. Sharon then applies their findings to the ongoing development of Somatic Transformation.As an instructor for Somatic Transformation, Sharon has had the privilege of teaching psychotherapists from Canada, United States, Middle East and Europe. Her doctoral studies at the University of Victoria involved research into the development of empathy in caregivers working with traumatized children and identifies the transformative effects of ST as an amplification of empathic connection. Sharon has been engaged in a small study group with Dr. Allan Schore, a well-known neuroscientist, for 18 years. She lives and practices psychotherapy on Bainbridge Island, just outside of Seattle.  Her book, Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma: Lifting the Burdens of the Past was published by Routledge in 2016 and is used by psychotherapists interested in a humanistic, developmental, body-centered, relational approach to healing trauma.Resources discussed in this episode:“Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma” by Sharon Stanley, PhDJudith HermanEdith SteinJohn O'DonohueMatryoshka dollsMax van ManenSuicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World---Punk Therapy: website |emailDr. Sharon Stanley: somatic transformation website | email

In this episode Leah really nerds out on the neuroscience associated with this type of parenting - did you know we have more than 5 senses?!   She discusses several different theories and research, including the science of interoception, Allan Schore's paper on regulation and attachment, and Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory. While this information may be difficult to take in and fully understand, it also supports many of the ideas and interventions associated with parenting our kids from this perspective.We want our kids to feel safe and connected, recognizing that the concept of neuroception means we're constantly scanning for danger. As parents, we don't want to be a sign of danger or feeling unsafe, requiring us to look at our response to our kids differently.Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple,  or wherever you listen to podcasts!We're planning a Q&A episode!! Send us your questions to info@parentaldevelopment.com!!Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!!

Welcome to season 5 episode 4 where this season we are bringing you personal stories and deep teaching into Curt's book, The Soul of Shame.  This week we are looking at chapter 3, “Joy, Shame and the Brain”.   We were made for joy. ⁠ ⁠ The bible and our greatest literature attest to this. But not only this: research in attachment reflects that joyful human relationships are the key to our well-being. ⁠ ⁠ No wonder, then, that shame targets our experience of joy as its first priority in disintegrating us, disconnecting us from ourselves and each other. ⁠ ⁠ This week we examine why joy is so important to practice—yep, you read that right: practice—and how shame will do anything it can to rob us of as much of it as it can.⁠   . . . . . Episode Links and References Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self by Allan Schore   . . . . . Thank you to our sponsor! Hon's Honey: Hon's Honey is a social enterprise dedicated to giving dignity and purpose to women survivors of trauma.  They believe in healing, second chances and new chapters, and so do we.  Use code BEINGKNOWN to receive 20% off your order.  . . . . . Stay connected: Instagram Facebook Twitter YouTube (Unedited videos of each episode AND the Post Show Conversations.) Please subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and we always welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.  Sign up to access the Being Known Podcast applications, the weekly exercises that connect what you are learning to your life in a practical way.    

In this episode we cover:Why meeting our needs is the gateway to personal agency and being in our own power in our lives.A discussion of how we first come into contact with our needs.Explanations of why what happened in our childhood is so important and how this relates to how we tend to ourselves now.Some suggestions and tips about what to start focusing on if you have no idea about how to tend to your needs.An anecdote from Cath's life.There is no need to have shame if you don't know how to meet your needs. Many of us grew up tending to the needs of our parents and as a result are disconnected from what we may need. This can be changed in adult life. There is SO much hope. Referenced the work of Allan Schore and Dan Siegel.Sign up for the journal questions at www.psychotherapymum.com or on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/psychotherapy_mum/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Stuart Shanker about the neuroscience and philosophical underpinnings of self-regulation. They discuss his clinical and research background in working with children and why he emphasizes a just society with self-reg. They discuss the 5-step method of self-reg and why stress management is important. They talk about infant development and the "4th trimester." They expound upon the evolutionary development of the triune brain and the current critiques of this concept. They talk about the complexities of the cortical and subcortical systems of the limbic system and prefrontal cortex in brain development. They discuss the interbrain and the importance of Allan Schore's work on attachment and the developing brain. They engage about Wittgenstein's concepts around aspects shifts and first person psychological utterances and how we understand temperament and personality in development. They mention the vagus nerve and his ideas about virtue. Stuart Shanker is the Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Psychology at York University. He is also the CEO of MEHRIT Centre, Ltd. He is the author of many books including, Reframed: Self-Reg for a Just Society. You can purchase his books here. You can find his work, research, and resources at his website. Twitter: @stuartshanker

In this episode Leah really nerds out on the neuroscience associated with this type of parenting - did you know we have more than 5 senses?!   She discusses several different theories and research, including the science of interoception, Allan Schore's paper on regulation and attachment, and Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory. While this information may be difficult to take in and fully understand, it also supports many of the ideas and interventions associated with parenting our kids from this perspective. We want our kids to feel safe and connected, recognizing that the concept of neuroception means we're constantly scanning for danger. As parents, we don't want to be a sign of danger or feeling unsafe, requiring us to look at our response to our kids differently.Subscribe, rate, and review us on Podchaser, Apple,  or wherever you listen to podcasts!We're planning a Q&A episode!! Send us your questions to info@parentaldevelopment.com!!Follow us on social media to join the conversation!!!FacebookInstagram

Welcome to Episode 18. I was once attending a conference in downtown Toronto and the theme of the conference was the entry problem: how do we enter into psychological material? There's a whole philosophical tradition, most notably at present taken up by a German psychologist and philosopher named Wolfgang Geegref who relies on a way of looking at psychology that postulates that it is basically psychology studying itself.    So when we're in therapy or we're thinking about ourselves, it's a very difficult thing to do. It's not like looking at an organ, for instance, and assessing what's wrong and deciding whether to do surgery or take another approach. Psyche studies psyche.   And about halfway through the day at this conference, I had to go move my car and I put the car in the underground parking lot at this hotel. I went to go back upstairs to rejoin the conference and there was a doorway not too far from where I parked. And up the stairs, there was another door that I opened and the door closed behind me. And then I realized that there were no handles on any of the doors in the room that I was in. Actually, there was a window just facing the street. I found myself with all these locked doors with no handles.    Sounds like I'd entered into a psychiatric ward. But no, I somehow had entered a door that I wasn't supposed to. And the irony wasn't lost on me that here I was at a conference discussing the entry problem and there was no way for me to enter. I eventually bang so hard on a door a man in a chef's hat came out. It must have been the rear of the kitchen and I imagine that security fixed the issue after that.    The reason I tell you this story is apropos of my interview today. Dr. Dustin Atlas is the director of Jewish Studies and Assistant Professor in the School of Religion at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His current book project, Buber Talks Jewish Dialogue and the Nonhuman World, uses the work of Martin Buber to interrogate contemporary post-human concerns in Jewish thought, politics, and life, exploring the ways in which Jewish thought allows us to engage the nonhuman. I reached out to him because I have only a peripheral knowledge of the philosopher Martin Buber's work. Martin Buber, who lived from 1878 to 1965, was a prolific author, scholar, literary translator, and political activist whose writings ranged from Jewish mysticism to social philosophy, Biblical Studies, religious finance, rhinology, philosophical anthropology, education, politics, and art.    But most famous among his writings was a short but powerful book entitled I and Thou which he wrote in 1923 where he considered our relations to others as twofold. There was the I-it relation which prevails between subject and objects of thought and action. And there was the I-thou relationship on the other hand which exceeds the subject-object relationship. All to say that Buber, and as you'll hear Dustin go into great detail in our interview today, was very much concerned with the limitations, challenges, and obstacles informing authentic connection. And this goes back to the entry problem because this is not something that can be forced or manufactured. This is a notion that pervades much of our lives but also a lot of psychological theory.    In thinking about my preface to my conversation with Dustin today, I wanted to share a kind of moment that I don't know whether I talk about it very often. I don't know if I've heard many other therapists talk about it. But it's the moment when somebody first walks in the door for therapy and there's a kind of unknown that enters the room. Usually, there's a lot of hunger when somebody finally decides to go to therapy. Usually, there's a lot that comes with that in terms of expectation. As I publish and produce more, people come in maybe having a sense of who I am, having listened to this podcast, having read my writing. And all of that is in the room.    And, of course, this is who I am. But in that moment, meeting an individual, it isn't who I am. I've never been in that moment before. And, as I've maybe talked about previously in this podcast, I also think it's important to resist certain temptations when it comes to finding answers. And I think that that pervades to a degree the conversation with Dustin today where, at some point, I felt that the two of us were talking about a kind of space to hold the nonspace, the nonbeing.   Later in our chat, he references relationships and references Martin Buber, talking about all of the different revolutions that human beings go through in a long-term intimate relationship. This is something that I face every day in my clinical practice with couples and in my own marriage where it's really important. I think that that's what I really appreciated about Dustin sharing with us his expert knowledge in the work of Martin Buber and others. It's crucial at least to try to frame the dissolution of moments in time, of ways that we understand ourselves and others, which we need on the one hand to not become psychotic so that we have some kind of predictable, continuous psychic skin and experience.    But also one of the huge challenges existentially is having to mourn the loss of so much of what we experienced as familiar and real. And, understandably, there can be an incredible clinging on to what we have come to know about ourselves and others. And to be honest, I think this is half of what I do as a therapist: sitting with people in mourning the loss of what they imagine themselves, their future, and others to be and tolerating a kind of nonspace, nonbeing that often we have no indication of how long being in that state will last.   I also want to avoid in my preface any kind of reification of these notions. There's certainly an attempt on my part to share a very private experience as a therapist where there's a very real part of me in the room trying to connect with someone, especially when we are first meeting, but also a part of me that needs to just observe and wait and listen. And frankly, the older I get, the more I've noticed that I'm not only listening to a voice which is not mine and is mind at the same time but also a somatic felt sense of what my body is telling me in the moment. And in other podcasts, maybe I'll go into some of the great work of people like Allan Schore and Peter Levine who confirm and really shore up the brilliance of those parts of our membrane that allow us to know a certain wisdom. But really I think what pervades my conversation with Dustin is a kind of lament between an attempt at reaching some kind of connection with others, with animals, with inanimate objects, and the necessity to have to wait, withhold, and not cling on to experiences that, ultimately, we experience as true or authentic. Dustin doesn't mince words with the ideas that he finds very troubling. I often bristle at the notion of authenticity because I don't really know what it means. We're never fully authentic. That's what the discovery of the unconscious, I think, really solidified for us, that we don't really know often if we're being true or not being true.   Dustin and I sat together a couple of years ago now in Kingston. I was just getting to know him and he, first of all, let me know that he was a scholar of Martin Buber's work. And then he added that it wasn't even so much the conventional notion that a lot of us think of when it comes to Buber and his focus on relationship and really that delineation of relationship, but he brought up the fact that he's even more interested with his work on relationship with animals and even with things, with objects. And so I wanted to bring Dustin onto the podcast in part because it's just an interesting area of thought to consider how two people connect and as a therapist I'm constantly oscillating between the fact that I think I'm just making everything up and maybe occasionally I actually connect with somebody. Please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Dustin Atlas.   Show Highlights: What sparked Dustin's interest in the work of Martin Buber. The nothingness that comes with dialogue. What animals teach us about how dialogue is ephemeral. Martin Buber's hostility to Carl Jung. The different kinds of relationships we can have with objects. Why Buber said religion isn't experiential. Why children interact with objects much more easily than adults. The differences between young and older Buber. How to bear disappointment about the things you thought you knew and had but don't know or have anymore. Why you live in a narrow world if you only relate to other human beings. How playing with our kids is a form of dialogue. The fractured space of relations. Subscribe and Review We'd appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and leaving an Apple Podcasts review. Reviews help others discover and learn what The Dignity of Suffering is all about. It only takes a second and helps us out a lot! If you enjoyed this episode, we've also created a PDF that has all of the key information for you from it. Just go to the episode page at https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ to download it. Supporting Resources: https://mitchellsmolkin.com/ Mitchell Smolkin is a sought-after clinician, speaker, and author. For media and interview requests please contact his publicist Randy Phipps at randy@rpcommunications.net. For all other inquiries, please send mail to info@mitchellsmolkin.com. *** Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their business and impact the world. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com

Sarah Peyton is a well-known author of her book “Your Resonant Self” and brings a whole different way of healing into the world.  She is also a Certified NVC Trainer. We get the honor to have a discussion with her on our show and give you Living Connected listeners a taste of her amazing knowledge and experiences.  Resources:Sarah's Website: https://sarahpeyton.com/ Sarah mentioned: 1. Allan Schore: http://www.allanschore.com/2. Iain McGilchrist: https://iainmcgilchrist.com/3. Mel Sears: https://nvctraining.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=latest&layout=latest&Itemid=2004. Lawrence J. Cohen PhD:  https://www.playfulparenting.com/CONTACT INFORMATION:Email: Livingconnected.nvc@gmail.comInstagram: livingconnectednvcFacebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/LivingConnectedNVC/Website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1153175 Music is brought to you by: https://www.purple-planet.com/

Welcome to The Endow Podcast! This podcast is a forum for women to foster conversations about the intellectual life and intentional community for the cultivation of the feminine genius. On this episode, Simone Rizkallah, Director of Program Growth, interviews Adam Young on the drama of your story, the call to judge, and how to avoid "editing" your anger, irritation and disappointments in prayer. Adam Young's approach to therapy has been shaped primarily by Dan Allender, John Eldredge, Daniel Siegel, Allan Schore, Pat Ogden, and Bessel van der Kolk. He is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with Master degrees in Social Work (Virginia Commonwealth University) and Divinity (Emory University). He completed extensive training with The Allender Center, including the Certificate Program and Externship Program. He is certified in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).https://adamyoungcounseling.comWhat's on your mind and heart? Let our host, Simone Rizkallah, know by connecting with her and The Endow Team on social media!Facebook at www.facebook.com/endowgroupsInstagram at www.instagram.com/endowgroupsWant to start your own Endow Group? Learn more by visiting our website at www.endowgroups.org or reach out to us at info@endowgroups.org. We look forward to serving you!

Clinical social worker (and host Ian Ebright's therapist) Theresa Rogers joins Today Plus Everything to talk about how we can better navigate the anxious times we're living in.  The two discuss how our formative years, dysfunctional conditions, and trauma get tangled up to form survival patterns that are no longer serving us in adult life—impeding and triggering our nervous system. The conversation explores examples of healthy and toxic leadership in politics, anxiety and depression, and includes insight from Theresa's 30 years of experience—inspired by the work of John Bowlby, Allan Schore, and the Polyvagal theory—as well as tips and a "live" meditation exercise. 

In this final episode of the series, the three of us talk about early childhood experiences and their impact on our development, finding the right therapist, and how to approach the financial investment of with working with a therapist. Frank and Peter also mention a few resources specifically in this episode which you can check out below:Nadine Burke Harris: How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime via TEDMED 2014Dr. Allan Schore on therapeutic alliance via YouTubePlease know that it's always okay to ask for help. If you're looking for help, there are resources available to you wherever you are. If you live in Canada or the United States, you may want to start with the list of resources below:Canada - List of Resources for Mental Health and WellnessCanada - Centre for Addiction and Mental HealthUnited States - National Institute of Mental HealthUnited States - MentalHealth.gov Learn more about Peter's and Frank's work below:Peter Stathakos & AssociatesAmazing Space Therapy and Wellness CentreTheme music by Hue.Logo design by Andrew Speer.Visit www.ikigai.blog for more information about The Ikigai Project. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we delve into the underlying PACT element of neuroscience in interviews with Lou Cozolino and Stan Tatkin.  Dr. Cozolino is a professor at Pepperdine University and the author of numerous books and articles about the overlap of developmental neuroscience and psychotherapy.  Dr. Tatkin is the founder of the PACT Institute and has written extensively about the overlap of developmental neuroscience and couple therapy.  They both had formative experiences at the Bradshaw Center and in Alan Schore's study groups in developmental affective neuroscience, both maintain private practices and both live in Southern California.  They also share in the ability to translate neuroscience in a way that makes sense to the psychotherapist. All of this overlap provides a solid foundation to build a better of understanding of neuroscience, it is also interesting to listen for the ways their paths diverge and how their work with different patient populations impacts  their perspective on psychobiology.  As usual, Stan generously leads us off and helps to get us situated in how the interview with Lou can be understood from the perspective of couples and secure functioning.Time-----00:00:00 - 00:03:10 -Jason Introduction00:02:00-00:41:25 - Jason and Stan Tatkin00:41:25-01:27:44 - Jason and Lou CozolinoResources-----Lou Cozolino’s books on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Louis-J.-Cozolino/e/B001H6IW0G%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share Short video of Lou on Inspire Ideas:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYokFn1nw4QInformation about Allan Schore:http://www.allanschore.com/  

We take a fairly deep dive into the world of trauma and what it does to the brain and our personalities. Do we all have some trauma? How can we get over it? Episodes 76 of the Be Yoruself and Love It! Podcast with Antony Sammeroff.

Hey there, Katie here.After listening through and editing this episode, I decided that I need to say just a little bit more. What I wanted to convey wasn't exactly clear, and by writing just a few words, I hope to clarify some things that I thought were lacking.One; I realize that when you're facing social anxiety, choosing to engage in community is THE hard part. Honestly, in my experience, the same could be said about depression. The thing about these issues is that they feel like never-ending cycles. The depression causes isolation, and the isolation causes the depression to spiral deeper, which causes the isolation to deepen. Of course, there are other contributing factors to why depression deepens; it's not only the isolation. But the reason I drive home that isolation is such a huge problem, is that both anxiety and depression are problems that cannot be faced alone. All of the things that contribute to these disorders cannot be fixed by the person who is being overcome and overwhelmed by them. You may need a doctor, you likely need a therapist, and you definitely need a church family, and of course, a confidant like a best friend and/or spouse. And two; many of us will at some point encounter seasons of isolation, whether we have a ton of friends around us, or only one. I don't want anyone to walk away from this episode feeling like I, or Sam, think it's just a matter of "make a few friends and this won't be a problem". The pain and fear of both anxiety and depression are real, they are debilitating, and we know that it isn't easy to get the help you need to get through it.But we also want you to know that it's okay to acknowledge weakness and that in fact, true relationship requires that you do. Recovery and healing also require it. None of this is easy, but it is crucial. It's crucial to fight against the apathy of depression, and the over-the-top urgency of anxiety, and the truth is we cannot fight this fight alone. If you need assistance seeking community and resources for dealing with depression and anxiety, please join our Facebook group for fellowship with likeminded parents, and direction toward resources like counseling that can be instrumental in helping you live and parent well, even with depression and anxiety. For further reading & listening Depression and Anxiety; an Honest Discussion Part 1 - Tending Lambs podcast, Sam and KatieChristian, You Depression is Real. So is God's Deliverance - JD GreearPractical Encouragement Through Depression and Anxiety - Sam MatherlyThe Place We Find Ourselves Podcast - Adam Young"The Place We Find Ourselves podcast features private practice therapist Adam Young (LCSW, MDiv) and interview guests as they discuss all things related to story, trauma, attachment, and interpersonal neurobiology. Listen in as Adam unpacks how trauma and abuse impact the heart and mind, as well as how to navigate the path toward healing, wholeness, and restoration. Interview episodes give you a sacred glimpse into the real-life stories of guests who have engaged their own experiences of trauma and abuse. Drawing from the work of neuroscientists such as Allan Schore, Dan Siegel, and Bessel van der Kolk, as well as Christian thought leaders Dan Allender and John Eldredge, this podcast will equip and inspire you to engage your own stories of harm in deep, transformative ways."

Sharon Stanley talks about what sustains her: the delight of just being alive, and how she gets in touch with that. Dr. Sharon Stanley is a psychotherapist, educator and writer living on Bainbridge Island, Washington.  As a long time student of Dr. Allan Schore, Sharon has integrated a number of somatic practices for healing trauma […]

Sharon Stanley talks about what sustains her: the delight of just being alive, and how she gets in touch with that. Audio only: Dr. Sharon Stanley is a psychotherapist, educator and writer living on Bainbridge Island, Washington.  As a long time student of Dr. Allan Schore, Sharon has integrated a number of somatic practices for […]

With so many different potential approaches to helping your relationship, how do you choose the one that’s right for you? And how do you make sense of them all together? John and Julie Gottman, Sue Johnson, Esther Perel, David Schnarch, Stan Tatkin, Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson, Terry Real - they’re all describing different ways of getting the same thing - a loving, thriving, passionate relationship. Today we’re going to tackle how it all fits together, so you’re better prepared to steer your own relation-ship. To help us integrate in a way that makes it practical and clear, we’ve invited Dr. Keith Witt back to the show. Keith Witt is an integral psychologist, which gives him a unique perspective in making sense of all these roads that lead to Rome. His most recent book, Loving Completely, details his approach to bringing all of the essential parts of you to your relationship. Along with having written 7 other books, Keith has conducted more than 55,000 therapy sessions with his clients! If you’ve been wondering how to make sense of it all, this episode is for you! Also, please check out our first three episodes with Keith Witt - Episode 158: Loving Completely,  Episode 80: Bring Your Shadow into the Light and Episode 13: Resolve Conflict and Create Intimacy through Attunement. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode has two great sponsors, each with a special offer for you. For a unique gift to discover meaningful stories from the life of someone important to you, visit Storyworth.com/ALIVE for $20 off a subscription. Share the memories with your family, and preserve them in a beautiful hardbound book. It’s a perfect Mother’s Day gift! Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Resources: Check out Keith Witt’s website Read Keith Witt’s new book: Loving Completely: A Five Star Practice for Creating Great Relationships Check out Keith Witt’s other books as well! FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict… Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) www.neilsattin.com/integrate Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Keith Witt. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. And if you can hear it in my voice, I'm particularly excited for today's conversation. Of course, we've had so many different viewpoints represented here on Relationship Alive because there are so many roads that lead to Rome, the Rome of romance and romantic partnership, and how we sustain loving, thriving, monogamous relationships, and it's not always that one road works for any one person. And this has come up several times in the show, this question of, well, “so and so says their way is the way and they sound so convincing when you're talking to them, Neil, so what do I do when it doesn't work?" And this happens sometimes. Neil Sattin: So, if you've tuned in for a while then you know that the reason that I have all these different voices on the show is because I really believe strongly that it's whatever works that's important. And I suppose for myself I might put some boundaries around that; what I'd be comfortable with or where I'd feel a little edgy or stretching, but for the most part, I think that it's up to you to really get informed about what's possible and then make choices that really align with you or maybe stretch you in a direction that feels like a light way to be stretched. At the same time, they all form part of this big puzzle that makes sense. And so, I wanted to have a conversation today about how we integrate as much as possible the way that we think about all of these different methodologies so you can see how they all fit together, they don't exclude each other, for the most part. They actually all find a place in the big picture of how we make relationships, what we want them to be. And as much as some of the people on my show might want you to think otherwise, this is my personal belief. Neil Sattin: And so to have this conversation, I've invited one of my favorite guests to have here on the show who also happens to be someone who's very good at integrating all these different approaches. His name is Keith Witt. He has been here before to talk about his books, "Loving Completely", "Shadow Light", "The Attuned Family"; and he is an integral psychologist among other things. And so the integral perspective, I think will help us understand how all of these different pieces fit together in a way that actually does make a coherent whole, it makes sense. So, Keith, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive. Keith Witt: I am always happy to be on your show and it's one of the pleasures of my life, our conversations. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Awesome, well, the feeling is mutual. I do want to say before we dive in deep that we'll have a transcript of this episode. If you're interested in downloading it, you may want to read it a few times, you can visit neilsattin.com/integrate 'cause we're going to be integrating everything today. Or, as always, you can text the word "PASSION" to the number 33444, follow the instructions and you'll be able to download the transcript to today's episode. So, Keith, let's start with maybe where you orient in terms of this conversation. And before we got started, you were talking about this sense of, as we talk about all these different schools of thought, we're really talking about the founders of modern relationship theory. So, where do you put yourself and how do you make sense of where you are in this conversation about how we're tying all of these things together? Keith Witt: Well, first of all, being a founder is a peculiar thing. I've developed various systems, all of them interrelated generally, under the integral umbrella. And integral has worked for me greatly. [chuckle] The reason why integral has worked for me greatly is the integral is a meta theory, not a theory. And so, I had actually generated systems and written some books about systems before I encountered integral. But then the integral, looking at the world through the objective and the subjective, the individual and the collective; looking at the world through types of people, states of consciousness, through people being at different developmental levels, including therapists, I realized that when you put any system into that, including the systems I developed, it expanded. And it made me just fascinated with the commonalities that affective systems, particularly of relationships and of love because I think everything's relationships is. Keith Witt: And so, one of the things that's different for me and other founders is that, even though I've... If you look at my eight books, there's essentially seven different systems interrelated of doing psychotherapy and of doing couples work. I'm not particularly invested in any of them. Those systems are useful, they're coherent, they have a lot of technical and theoretical interconnections with everybody else and with the research. But I agree with exactly what you said. Ultimately, when a couple or an individual wants to love better, they come in, it's the goodness of fit with the therapist and it's how effectively they move forward, and there's an alchemical experience that happens with that, that can only be described in the intersubjectivity of the session. And meta research on psychotherapy has shown this again and again, and one of my favorite meta-analyses, which they took lots of studies and put them together, they found out a couple of very fascinating things. One, therapy helps people, okay? That's good news for everybody. Neil Sattin: Good to know. Keith Witt: The second thing that the variance of change was explained by 40% in this meta-analysis, 40% of the variance of change was client variables; how resilient they were, what kind of social networks they had, what kind of resources they had; 30% of the variance of positive change was the relationship, what was the solidity of the intersubjectivity of the alliance between the clients and the therapist; 15% was placebo effect. If you go to somebody, give them a bunch of money and they expect to change, you're going to change. [chuckle] Keith Witt: In fact, that's something that has completely confused the field when it comes to the whole psychotropic thing. Probably 30% or 40% of the effect of most antidepressants is placebo effect, 8%-12% is probably the drug. Okay, so 15% placebo effect, 15% method of treatment. Okay, well, method of treatment 15% is significant. In poker, 7% is skill and the good poker player always wins but that 15% isn't as big as the client variables and it isn't as big as that 30% of the alliance. And so, I'm aware of that and so I hold my systems lightly, even though I love them. And so, I look at the other systems and I look at my relationships with the other systems, and I get a lot out of all of them. But also, I noticed that as we moved through the fields, our own little blind spots tend to affect how we absorb systems, how we enact systems, and how we integrate them. And I find that interesting because every time I find a blind spot, that's an opportunity to wake up. And this is where our conversation went when we were talking about this. So, how do they fit together? Well, as it turns out, even though they look very different from the outside, most of them fit together quite well in terms of the constructs that the various therapists bring to bear with couples and individuals for that matter and what they have to do in a session to help people move forward. Keith Witt: So, that's pretty much it. My Loving Completely approach is approach that I love a lot, and you can check it out in my book, "Loving Completely". And my book, "Waking Up" that was the first book that I wrote after I had my integral awakening, is one of the first texts on integrally-informed psychotherapy, and it has sections in it around integrally informed sex therapy and marriage counselling. And I'm quite proud of that, and I think that works a lot, but are those more effective than Gottman's approach. Schnarch's approach, or Perel's approach, or Tatkin's approach? I don't think so. I think pretty much you have a good therapist, who's enacting their system and is attuned to their clients, they're going to do pretty well. And this goes for me, all the way back to my doctoral research. I was always interested in this, and so my doctoral research was I took three different kinds of systems and researched them in terms of how much they enhanced the health of clients. Talking plus touching, talking without touching, and touching without talking. And I found that the people got better equally, which led me to conclude that in psychotherapy, people have a natural healing style. Keith Witt: And what you want to do is you want to identify it and enhance it and let it and help it grow as you grow throughout a lifetime. And I think that's probably the best way to go, as a psychotherapist and as a marriage counselor, and certainly when I train people and supervise people, that's my perspective. What's your natural healing style? How can we help you expand that and grow within that natural healing style? And that natural healing style has to involve, not just your style expanding, but you expanding. If we don't grow as individuals, we're limited as clinicians. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's... I really appreciate your saying that and it's making me think about that problem of when someone comes to me and says, "I tried. I found an EFT therapist and that didn't work, or I found a Gottman therapist and that didn't work." I wonder sometimes if that might be, because the particular therapist isn't necessarily 100% aligned in terms of their healing style, which you just mentioned, with the system that they've learned. It may be that they believe 150% in the effectiveness of that system, but if it doesn't tap into their own natural alignment and integrity and how they create resonance with their clients, then I could see it falling flat at times. Keith Witt: Oh yeah. Before, let me see, probably 2000, I've been doing this since I first started studying therapy in 1965. I mean, I've been studying bazillion systems. And so for me, until I was around 50, every time they discovered a new system, I go, "Oh, damn." Because I knew that I was going to get disintegrated. I was going to learn this system and it was going to disrupt my understanding of the psychotherapeutic universe. I would have to climb into this system and enact it until I could actually enact the system naturally, I could answer questions from the system. And I knew that it would re-organize my understanding of the universe, and it was a lot of work. So, every time I found a good system, I go, "Oh Jesus, not another one." And then I would study it and I would... Sometimes for years, and it was always difficult in the beginning because it would destabilize, and that's very much how development goes on any developmental line. You expand into the current world view, and something comes and causes that world view to not quite be enough, and so the old one disintegrates and you go through that period of disintegration before you re-integrate into a more complex system. And I kept hoping that it would be the end of it. I'd finally get a system that was so great that I wouldn't have to have go through that experience. Keith Witt: And then after I was 50 and studied integral and wrote about integral, I realized that I was enjoying the process now, that when someone came up with a new idea, like EMDR that it actually was... EMDR is wonderful in certain situations dealing with trauma. And so that was great when as soon as I identified it as a great system, I saw a research that persuaded me, I dived in and I had a lot of fun learning and acting EMDR until I could bring it into my repertoire of theoretical and practical understanding. Now, what did that reflect? That reflected my consciousness changing. Keith Witt: I shifted from being more egocentric in my understanding to being more open, so my unconscious was actually aware. Keith, there will be great systems that will happen and when they arrive, they'll help you grow and be a better therapist, they're wonderful. And so, my subjective reaction to them shifted from, "Oh, no," to "Oh, boy." And this is how you notice that you grow. You don't notice that you grow particularly because you have a new idea, you notice that you grow because you have a different natural reaction to something that you had a different reaction to before. And it's very difficult to notice a shift of world views from the inside. It's easier for other people to give you feedback about it until you get to a certain level of development in the integral, we call that the "second tier" and then it's just easier to see that kind of stuff. And so that's been my experience with this over the decades. That's my current experience with it. Neil Sattin: Great, yeah. And just to give you listening, a full sense of what I'm bringing to this conversation, I mentioned in the introduction that a lot of this is about you finding tools that work for you. I also have another bias that comes from my position of being able to talk to so many of the founders of relationship theories, which is... And it comes from my upbringing I think, which is this kind of like, "can't we all just get along" mentality. In an ideal world I'd be having this conversation, Keith, you would probably still be there and we would have everyone on a stage as a panel, but the express purpose of that conversation would be like, "Let's figure out how we can all work together." And my understanding is that, that's been challenging in the field to bring everyone together like that, but that's another thing that... My own agenda that I bring to this conversation is, I want everyone to get along and to commit to the overall betterment of how effective we can be in our lives or as therapists or coaches, or people who help others. It's really important to me. Keith Witt: Well, Amen. [laughter] Neil Sattin: And some other things that you were mentioning made me think immediately of John Gottman. And I can't remember if he mentioned this actually in our first interview, if it was part of what I recorded or if it was just part of my conversation with him. But he talks about how important it is for him to know when he's wrong. He keeps a very detailed record of all the ideas that he's ever had and I think he might have said that he's wrong more than half the time. Keith Witt: Yes, he says that. More than half of his hypothesis have been proved false. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Right, right. And so for him, this is one of the things that he stakes his claim around is that, he's distilled a body of work that statistically has been shown to work more than 50% of the time I think, in fact it's like 86 or something percent of the time. And that being said, he's also... What I love about that statement is one, his embrace of the willingness to be wrong, which is so important at any level of relationship, relationship to an idea, relationship to your spouse, so I really appreciate that. And also it seems to be his major critique of people who would use other systems that maybe haven't been empirically proven to be effective because what if you put it under a scientific scrutiny and found that it only worked 10% of the time, like your best placebo on its, without; or sorry, your best drug without the placebo effect. So, that's where it gets confusing for people I think, because they're like, "Well, if my local shaman hasn't undergone scientific study, what do I do with the fact that it's actually been really helpful for me? Versus going to my Gottman-certified therapist? Keith Witt: John Gottman is the only founder that I know of whose psychotherapeutic approach and theoretical approach literally arose out of his research. That's not true for any of the rest of us. Everybody else was doing stuff that worked really well for them in certain situations and they saw how things fit together, and then they fitted it together with other stuff that they found out and created a structure. That's not a bad thing. That's how theories historically have arisen, in my opinion, except for say, physics. And John Gottman started out as a mathematician. Keith Witt: I went to a three-day workshop with him and Julie, and at the very end, I went up to him, I said, "You know, John, I've done a lot of this stuff, okay? And your system has the most amount of good stuff and the least amount of bullshit than any other system that I've seen." And he laughed because he got it. Another thing that endeared me to him, and I gotta say I am biased towards John Gottman, I love that guy, I think he and Julie are great. Keith Witt: In a conference where everybody's talking about how their system is the best, he went up on stage and says, "You know, I think about my treatment's failures." And I thought, "God, John, thank you." I think about my treatment failures too, what the fuck. What can I do different. What's the new stuff? He is a researcher. Now, I use a lot of his research to validate my approach, I've changed things that I've done in response to some of his research. I've changed some of my understandings in response to some of his research. Why? He's just the best and most comprehensive couples researcher around. In terms of my approach, almost every psychotherapist and all couples counselors to a certain extent through psychoeducation, you're basically teaching people about themselves and about how relationships work. Keith Witt: The nice thing about Gottman's approach is that he didn't really, in most of his work, he didn't really have confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is what most founders bring to their research, if they do research. Okay, well, if you're doing research to show that your system is great, that's confirmation bias. Now, human beings, when they develop, when they develop from fundamentalist, which is I'm going to enact the EFT system or the crucible system exactly how it's supposed to be, and I'm not going to really think about whether it's working or not, that's a fundamentalist system. I'm going with the structure, but because it's the structure. Keith Witt: When you go to a more rational system, a rational system is, "Well, I want to cross-validate things and see how they work, and if they work better, I'll shift into a new system." In between that conformist and that rational system, there's an in-between stage. Susanne Cook-Greuter and Beena Sharma who studied developmental stages, they call it the 3-4 stage 'cause 3 is conformist and 4 is rational; they called it the 3-4 stage. In that stage, people experience themselves as open to input, but actually they have confirmation bias, they're looking for data that support their preconceived notions and they very much resist change. Keith Witt: You know, back in the '90s, I went to a David Schnarch workshop. And so, David Schnarch was all about differentiation, a concept he obviously lifted from Murray Bowen and never gives him any credit for, which pissed off Dan Siegel enough in the conference so Dan Siegel called him out on it. It was one of those little conference snafus that happen, it fascinated everybody. So I went up to Schnarch, I said, "You know, I think there is a more fundamental construct than differentiation." He said, "What?" I said, "I think it's health." He said, "That's too broad." Now, maybe he's right. Maybe my orientation towards what's healthy and not healthy is a too broad concept. But his immediate reaction was dismissal. He didn't want to consider that there might be a more fundamental organizing principle than his, okay? There was confirmation bias. Now, he's a good counterpoint, to me, to John Gottman. John Gottman doesn't like people making assertions without doing research, but I don't care, I still love John Gottman. Keith Witt: David Schnarch spent minutes on stage during that workshop warning people to not use his stuff 'cause it's all trademarked and I found him arrogant and narcissistic, and to this day, irritating. Now, what is that? Both of them have their own critiques. Why do I find myself really liking John Gottman and irritated with Schnarch? Even more importantly, whenever you get irritated with someone, there's a tendency to dismiss what's great about their system. And this is what is beautiful about integral, integral says, "Everybody gets to be right, nobody gets to be right all the time." And Schnarch's concept of differentiation and holding on to yourself and the whole crucible approach to couples is a really good approach. Okay, that is very effective, particularly with some couples where they keep trying to move out of the container and you keep them in the container until something pops, and out of that pop come something new. And sometimes that newness is a new discovery of love for each other. Now, Esther Perel does a similar thing, but she's more of a practical romantic. I see Schnarch and Susan Johnson as more practical moralistic, in that they seem to literally have moral disgust for other people who disagree with them. [chuckle] Keith Witt: I go, "Okay." [chuckle] Maybe that's what irritates me about them. Like Susan Johnson says, "If you do your work, you have to be slow and soft." Okay, well, that works for her with couples. But you know, as people might have noticed so far in our conversation, I'm not a particularly slow and soft guy, okay? So, my natural healing style, sure, I can get really gentle with people, and I actually was critiqued by Gestalt therapists in the '70s by being too nice to my clients. "You're too nice to your clients, Keith." "Oh, I'm sorry. Just because Fritz [Perls] is an asshole doesn't mean I have to be an asshole when I do therapy." [chuckle] Keith Witt: And so, sorry, Susan, slow and soft is not my natural style, okay? It's alright. Now, does that make me less effective than her with a couple? Probably with some couples, I don't know. Neil Sattin: Right, and it would probably make you less effective if you were implementing her system. Keith Witt: Yes, that's exactly right. And when you learn a system, it's good to implement it. Now, even though I love John and Julie, John and Julie, when they talk about implementing their systems, they use a lot of their research tools. They give people like questionnaires, they give them cards and stuff, and they have their structured things that they recommend people doing. I'm sorry, I don't like doing that stuff. [chuckle] Keith Witt: My clients don't like doing stuff like that, but even if my clients liked it, I don't like doing it. If you go to a risk management workshop, they give you a five-page thing your clients are supposed to sign about all the horrible things that they can report you for and that the therapy does and doesn't do. I'm sorry, I don't do a five-page thing. We all have our different styles. Now, that being said, I just love that guy, love him, and every time he gets a new thing out... I studied his last book from the beginning to end several times, and except for the math, just found it utterly fascinating. And I see him as a practical scientific guy. He is a true scientist. John Gottman will change an opinion on a dime if you give him persuasive data. And that's just not true for many people. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so, since you've brought up David Schnarch, and unfortunately, he hasn't been on my show yet, so we haven't had the benefit of being able to hear from him directly. I still... I reach out to him every so often and I'm hoping that one of these days he will. That being said, it's funny. I have my own bias when someone doesn't want to be on my show. [chuckle] I'm like, "Well, what's your problem?" What you just mentioned about your experience with him, that seems in some respects, to make sense given that he's staked his claim on differentiation, that that's where he's coming from, differentiation being that sense of holding on to you and your sense of who you are no matter what someone else is throwing at you. And so in preparation for this conversation, I really dove into his passionate marriage work, which is sort of the lay person's approach to crucible therapy, which is what he calls his work in the therapeutic realm. And I found myself really appreciating it, in fact, and it got me irritated because even... I was listening to this one recording of him and he said something that was dismissive of attachment theory and... Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And I love what attachment theory brings to the conversation about relationships, both how you come to understand your own dysfunction in a relationship or how you come to understand the function of the dyad, what that does for you. And concepts of safety and how that enables you to differentiate. I love that, and it kind of bridges into Ellyn Bader and Peter Pearson's developmental model too, which we can talk about in a little bit. But that all being said, when I heard him talking about the importance of knowing who you are, and at the same time being able to remove your distortions of who you are. And he talks about part of crucible being that your partner being there, that's a great way for you to learn where you actually aren't who you think you are, just as one example. Or you get to, through self-reflection, see some of the dysfunction in who you are, and actually work towards growth and improvement. But when he talks about differentiation, he talks about some things that I think are key. You talk about, not only holding on to who you are, but also your ability to self-soothe, so to take responsibility for yourself when you're triggered. How many times have we talked about that on the show? He talks about getting over your reactivity, so taking responsibility for not freaking out at your partner when they trigger you. Neil Sattin: Again, so important, and fits right in. And then, he talks about, and I love this concept, the idea... And this is a place where I feel like he's kind of unique, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Keith, 'cause you have a broader perspective, perhaps, than I do. But he talks about... He names his approach as a non-pathological approach. In other words, if things are going wrong, then nothing is wrong. It's like, that's what you would come to expect. And that part of what he holds as an ideal in a relationship is the ability to hold onto yourself, to self-soothe, to not get reactive with your partner, and to hold the container of a relationship when things get uncomfortable. And that does seem so important, being able to grow with your partner. If you're so focused on fixing things and one of you capitulating to the other, it's not that there's never a place for compromise, but it's like, I think, and so many couples rush to that, they overlook the actual growth potential that happens in truly experiencing themselves as separate individuals with different ideas about how to live and how to be in the world, or how to be with each other. Keith Witt: It's a wonderful approach. It's a wonderful understanding. I like it. And I use those concepts and those understandings, and have, ever since I learned the system. That the system has great efficacy, practically speaking. Now, that being said... So let's just expand. Okay, so it's great to say it's a non-pathological system. Okay, fine. And basically, effective therapists operate from that perspective. Here's two people, they want to change, they want to grow. That power of a human consciousness wanting to change and wanting to grow is so robust that there's a lot of details of self-regulation and moderation and holding on to yourself and understanding. But there's that basic core of power, of human consciousness wanting to grow. That's true, and psychopathology has existence. If somebody has a personality disorder, there's no couples approach that is going... In my experience, maybe I'm wrong, because I've been doing my own work. My lab is my practice. I've done 65,000 therapy sessions. And so, I take stuff into my lab, so to speak. So psychopathology has existence. Sometimes you need to go into that to help people grow. You have tell somebody, like, "You have a distorted view of the world," and need to have some individual work to deal with that, or, "You are so overwhelmed by your trauma history that you have to go resolve that trauma before you can experience sexuality and intimacy with your partner comfortably." Keith Witt: That needs to be normalized and there's a subtle bias. In integral, we would call that a pluralistic bias or a green bias, to treat everybody like they're the same. This is what causes David Deida to dismiss psychotherapy in general. Now, that's an interesting thing. I'm a psychotherapist, I teach psychotherapy, I write about psychotherapy, I've generated systems, I'm a founder of systems, I go to David Deida workshops. He generally puts down psychotherapy as being kind of a pluralistic, limp-wristed, egalitarian, second stage, you know, wimps, so to speak. And I still love the guy, okay? [chuckle] Keith Witt: Okay, so why is that? Probably part of it is because I see him as a kindred spirit, as a fellow warrior. But when you and I were talking about this earlier, but part of it is I probably have more projections with people like David Schnarch or Susan Johnson, like that moralistic... Maybe there's a part of me that has moral disgust that I don't like and I project onto them. I do that a little with Dan Siegel. I love Dan Siegel's work, I've studied his books, I've listened to his lectures endlessly, I've enjoyed his lectures. And every once in a while though on stage, he starts complaining about how somebody treated him badly or how somebody doesn't understand him or he had to push back, and I just find that icky. I go, "Dan, don't say stuff like that. That makes the rest of the cool stuff that you talk about. You know, you're a brilliant man, and you've changed everybody. Your book, The Developing Mind, was my foundation of neurobiology, interpersonal neurobiology." Keith Witt: Alan Schwartz is similar. He says everybody bow to evidence-based treatment. He's irritated with this American Psychological Association privileging the research of, particularly, cognitive behavioral therapy, I suspect because cognitive behavioral therapists and the labs around the country get a lot of money and other people don't. So there's a lot of personality that comes through and yet all these systems have wonderful things about them. So, Schnarch is more practical moralistic in that sense. Esther Perel is more practical romantic, she's practical. All the good therapists are practical. You're with a couple, we're going to help 'em move forward and understand them individually and as a couple, and we have a vision of good relating that's for effective therapists is similar. But she has basically a romantic approach. You have your own way of understanding yourself, and of love, and I support that as a therapist. And you have your understanding of what you want with this relationship and I support what you want. And your partner is similarly. And we deal with that and from an accepting standpoint and a practical standpoint, how can we move forward? Keith Witt: You feel enlivened by your secret affair that devastated your partner, I understand how you feel enlivened by that. I understand the draw of that. I understand your resentment at your partner for not being more cooperative and creating better love, the partner is outraged that you did this. Well, I understand your outrage. I understand your desire to love better. It's a very romantic approach, but it fits very well with all the scientific approaches, the moralistic approaches, with even David Deida's mythological approach. David Deida is basically a practical mythological approach. He draws from the wisdom, traditions of masculine and feminine. He used to teach the Shiva and Shakti scale, just brought it out of the Eastern traditions. And yeah, it's practical. This is how we can help you understand yourself, understand your partner, and understand how you enhance the polarity to have the intimacy and safety and love and the passion that you want. And if you get down to it in the psychotherapy session, if you watch any of us doing a session with people, you'd see very similar constructs that we're applying and you'd see very similar interventions. Neil Sattin: Yeah, it's so funny I was listening to the first season of Esther Perel's podcast that she put out with Audible. I think it's called Where Do We Begin? Or something like that. And one of the sessions I was like, this might as well be Harville Hendrix that I'm listening to, just in terms of how she was showing up for that couple and talking about safety and the way they were constructing their communication and it was like right out of his getting the love you want workshop practically. So that was fascinating for me and I think worth noting because if you're just a bystander and you're like, say, listening to the Relationship Alive podcast, you can be so persuaded by one person's viewpoint or the other. And in fact, I find myself, like you were mentioning earlier, Keith, persuaded over and over and over again. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: Because everyone's system has so much merit to it, that you might lose sight of where they both offer you something important. Sue Johnson and David Schnarch, it's interesting that you've paired them together because, obviously, they're in some ways they would see themselves as being in opposition to each other. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And yet, how many times have I seen with clients how important creating safety is to them, taking a stand for who they are? And vice versa, if they're all about the safety and they never take a risk by being who they are, I've seen that be problematic too. So, it's like everyone is reacting to the... What's the word? The distorted, the extended version, like if you go way too far into differentiation, that's not going to be a relationship. If you go way too far into creating safety or your couple bubble, like Stan calls it, Stan Tatkin, then you might lose the edge or the eroticism, which is what Esther would hone in on. You've lost your sense of the other person as other, you're too safe. Neil Sattin: So, it's so interesting because even in just this past three sentences or so, you've heard me jump from one to the other to the other trying to show you, like, "Yeah, they all actually feed into each other." If you're really, really stuck, like a lot of people are, I think that's why Esther's TED Talk took off because so many people are stuck. I think she writes in "The State of Affairs" that sexless marriage is one of the top Google searches or something like that. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: So, if you're in a sexless marriage, then when someone starts talking about how you feel too safe and you've come to not think of your partner as someone else. And so here are some ways to get you back to a more erotic, playful space with your partner, then you're going to listen and that's going to make sense to you. But it wouldn't make sense to you if you had no safety in your container and your partner was constantly texting other people and flirting with the waiters and waitresses at the restaurants, and if you were in a totally unsafe world, then that's not going to be a place where Esther's work might, or at least what you might initially think she's getting at. But again, this is just her TED Talk, you hear her in a session and she's talking about creating safety within a couple. Keith Witt: Exactly. That practically speaking, everybody comes from constructs that involve relational patterns, a developmental orientation, that people are influenced by unconscious influences and trauma programming. Everybody has a vision of happy relating for every couple they work with. No effective couples counselor doesn't do that. We all, if we have a couple, we immediately start having a vision of how they could be getting along better with each other. And all couples counselors are informed by the psychological and psychotherapeutic traditions, therapeutic relationship attunement, and that kind of stuff. Keith Witt: Now, when you look at it, for me, the breakdown between Schnarch dissing attachment theory and Susan Johnson saying, "I have the only couples therapy. We never had a theory before me." Okay? Well, look, if you say to a bunch of founders who have their own theories, "You never had a good theory of couples until me," everybody's going to get pissed off. So, Susan Johnson says that, I go, "Susan, you've got a good system, you got a good theory. You don't have to piss us all off by saying that. You can say, 'I got a couples thing that I prefer to yours.'" And so, John Gottman will go up in a workshop and say, "Well, we have our theory." You know he's speaking directly to that. Keith Witt: Now, that being said, Esther Perel and Schnarch make a point that a lot of other couples people miss, they go, "Look, sexuality is a big deal and it's been neglected by the field," and they're right about that. That was true. In the '70s, therapists wouldn't even ask their couples about sex, it just drove me crazy. I did a lot of sex therapy training in the '70s because I realized that to be effective with couples, I need to be really good at helping them have better sex, and integrated that into my work and have ever since. And David Deida's stuff has been priceless around that stuff. Keith Witt: And so, the field has grown to that. And to their credit, once again, John Gottman and Julie, they have their system of expanding the conversation about sexuality and the behaviors about sexuality because they've demonstrated from their research that it's not enough to just down-regulate conflict with a couple, you have to up-regulate good times. And as I make... The point that I make in my Loving Completely approach, a marriage is a friendship, a love affair and a capacity to heal injuries and ruptures. That love affair is a big deal. That first star, this erotic polarity between me and my partner, gets more space in my book than any of the other stars. Why? If that love affair isn't happening then there's a lot of problems that arise out of that, and that's that sexless marriage statistics that Esther mentions in her book. I wrote a book called "A Hundred Reasons to Not Have a Secret Affair", I couldn't find a publisher for it. And I read "State of Affairs" and I said, "Well, I like this a lot better than my book." [laughter] Keith Witt: And really I think that's a really good book about affairs and you can just feel that practical romantic orientation on her part. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and when you say romantic, let's just... Can you get more clear on what that means, just so we get you there? Keith Witt: Esther has... Now, this is just my reading of her, okay? And I've never talked to her. I hope I do some day. There's this sense for her about love. There's a mystery, a cross-cultural mystery about love, that there's love is, I want to be loved, I want to love and I want to do it in a way that works for me. And if it's not happening, I'm suffering and I want to make it happen. And if it's not happening and I'm suffering, I need to take that suffering into the world and into my own development, into my relationship and make love happen. And there's a certain mysterious quality about it. And yes, there's things that interfere with it like lies and abuse and all that other stuff. And to a certain extent, because she works an awful lot with infidelity and that kind of stuff, you can see our practices shape our theoretical understanding. There's that sense of, if we open that up, then love will happen. Now hopefully, it happens with us as a couple, but if it doesn't, okay. It didn't happen. Love, the relationship just because it ends wasn't unsuccessful, we lose each other, we move on and we find love some place else. Keith Witt: Okay, to me, this is very romantic. This is a subjective love-based, romance-based orientation towards eroticism and sexuality. And it's very effective because that's how in terms of the neurobiology of bonding, yes, we go from our various arousal systems, into attraction, into distracting attraction, into romantic infatuation, into intimate bonding, into life stages. Now, what I think Esther misses, because she doesn't seem to be as interested in the science, is that it's an apples and oranges comparison that early attraction, distracting attraction, romantic infatuation, sexual drives, with the sexual drives that exist in intimate bonding, okay. Keith Witt: In intimate bonding, I have discovered or it's been my experience, to go into those romantic infatuation circuits, it's very, very intricate and detailed and it's not nearly as easy as finding a new person that you don't know. And so you can't compare, "Well, it's very hard to develop romance and passion with my husband, but really easy with my lover." Well, of course it is. We're wired to have that be the case. That's not the point. The point is that... And now we're getting into an integral understanding of evolution of consciousness. As we expand our consciousness, as we get more world-centric and more compassionate and less bullshit, our relationships are more demanding. And so it's very, very difficult. I haven't found relationships where people have the depth of connection that they want, knowing each other and accepting each other and loving each other deeply, that they have that and that that container, which is powerful but fragile, can tolerate one of them going out and falling in love with another person. And also, that container suffers if they don't do what they need to do to take care of their love affair. They have a love affair that they believe in that they're sustaining with each other. Keith Witt: So, why is that fragile? Well, because it requires an awful lot of attention and knowledge and understanding and self-regulation. Why is it great? Because there's deeper intimacy available in that container than in previous containers over the last 10,000 years and it's more demanding. If you have a very, very primitive... Say you have a relationship that's pure conformist. We're getting married, we're going to have kids, we're going to do what the Bible says or the Koran says. In those cultures, women stop having sex with their partner when they stop being of childbirth age, in general. Fascinating study. They just go at that point, they go, "Well, I'm not going to do it anymore." A lot, not always, but a fair amount. Why is that? Because there isn't a developmental layer of intimacy that they and their husband are working for, because they're in a system where he's in charge. She has to do what he says. I say "yes" to sex, until I can't have kids anymore and then I can say "no" if I want. Keith Witt: And if we don't have a certain level of intimacy and a commitment to depth, why would we be interested? He would be going after youth and beauty and maybe I'll have an affair or maybe I won't. It just depends. If you're going in, but if you both have the sense of equal depth, if you both are post formal operational, if you both want to sustain your friendship and your love affair and expand it and expand each other, well, then that requires a different kind of inner subjectivity. So these are very complicated forces that are operating on all of us. Now, they're explicit in integral psychotherapy because we always look at lines and levels, and probably, you're going to tell me about Ellyn Bader, probably in their developmental model, because developmental models notice that people's worldviews change, and that relationships, demands of relationship, change as we go into different developmental levels. Keith Witt: The other ones, the effective ones, unconsciously adjust for different people's worldviews, but sometimes don't consciously do it, because it's not visible to them, consciously, but unconsciously, in the session, they get a feel for it and they attune to it. Just like if you're an effective therapist... Stan Tatkin has practically nothing about sexuality in his system, but I'll bet if people come in to his system suffering from not being sexual, he climbs in, understands their experience from the inside, finds out where they're turning each other and on and off, and helps them find the kind of safety that they need to move into eroticism. Keith Witt: And eroticism's very central, because it's like the canary in the coal mine. Everything else has to be going pretty well for you to be good lovers with your partner. It's very rare, as a couples counselor, for people to come in saying, "Yeah, we're both fulfilled, sexually. We enjoy sex, we have sex regularly, and we want a divorce." That actually happens once in a great while, but that's like one in 100. Usually, when people come in and say, "Sex is great," there's a solidity to their relationship, and they're coming in to talk about other kinds of issues; money issues, sometimes... Often child issues and parental issues, sometimes physical issues, that kind of stuff. Neil Sattin: Okay, so... Yeah, there are several different directions that I feel myself being pulled, and... Keith Witt: Great. Neil Sattin: I think where I'm going to go right now is on this practical level, because I want this to all be practical, and we're talking about all these systems as practical systems. I think I heard Schnarch say that... And I don't think this is an actual statistic, I think he was just making a point, which was, in a good relationship, sex makes up about 10% of what you think about and care about, but if the sex is bad... No, if the sex is good, then it's about 10% what you think about and care about. If the sex is bad, it's 90%, or non-existent. And so, I'm thinking about that in light of what you just said and wondering, okay, for people listening who are in this place where they're like, "Okay, well, I'm not connecting with my partner erotically. Should I be going to a sex therapist? Should I be going to an EFT therapist to work on my safety? Should I be... " I could feel... I can feel confusion there, around, what do you do, practically? 'Cause so many people might see like, "Oh, you're not having sex? Well, then, let's talk about sex." Others might say, "You're not having sex? Well, that's a symptom of so many other things going on in your relationship, so let's talk about the other things, and we'll talk about sex later." Keith Witt: Well, first of all, go to a good couples therapist who understands eroticism. It doesn't matter what system they're operating in, if they're a good therapist, a good couples therapist, experienced and know how to attune, and have the things that I mentioned, those qualities, and understand eroticism. One of the reasons that Schnarch says that is that, in general, human consciousness goes where the pain is. We have a half-dozen sex drives, we don't just have one, we have lots of them. And so, if one of those sex drives is activated in a negative way, say jealousy, that's a lot of pain. Say frustration... Frustrated... This happens a lot with guys after the first baby is born. A baby is born. Okay, their wife kinda gets over the birth, and he finds her utterly adorable and desirable. Yeah, this is adorable and she's in love with his kid, she's full of love, "We're sharing this thing," and he wants to have sex. She's in love with the kid, she's got follicle-stimulating hormone up the wazoo, her desire is down, biochemically. If she doesn't have a commitment to re-establishing their love affair, then he's in pain. Keith Witt: And so, what does he do? He makes jokes about it, and there's all these bazillion jokes about men wanting more sex, mothers with small children, and guys... Women don't want to have sex. And these are hostile jokes and these separate people. And, in general, three years after the birth of the first baby, according to the Gottmans' research, 70% of couples are doing worse. But what if you teach them about affection and eroticism and sensuality and say, "You need to sustain this after the birth of the first child. You need to both be onboard with it." Well, if you teach them that, then three years later, 70% of them are saying, "Yeah, we're actually better as lovers." Now, you need... In my experience, that's useful information for me to have, as a couples therapist. Keith Witt: And it's useful for me to know the parameters of that. Just like it's useful for me to know about psychopathology. You know, if somebody has some kind of trauma thing or a personality disorder or some kind of debilitating or God knows, you know, bipolar. That kind of stuff. That has to be addressed. That really has existence. You go to a therapist that has a general understanding, and is good with sexuality in general. I don't know if I'd want to go to any couples therapist who didn't understand the principles of sexuality, and the sex drives, and the stages of sexual bonding, whether I was working on sex or not. It's such a central part of the life stages of a relationship, you know. You don't just have one marriage, you have many marriages. And there's different demands at each developmental level of marriage. And you want to be true to those demands and help each other with them, and good couples therapists all do that. Whether they do it consciously or unconsciously doesn't really matter, you know. They do it. Because, they're inside the universe of these couples helping them grow. And they discover these blocks, and they have their own orientation to help people through them, and help people into deep inter-subjective, into love with each other. Keith Witt: And so, that's... All good couples therapists can attune. They all interrupt people all the time. 'Cause you gotta interrupt toxic patterns, and they all have some sense of what a positive pattern is. You know, all couples therapists suspend their ego in service of their clients. If you have too much ego in the session, you lose your capacity to help people. All good couples therapists are willing to share their clients' pain. All good couples therapists tell vivid enough stories, have vivid enough metaphors that they register, they land with people. They're bringing their best selves into the work, so that's... If you took anybody from any system and saw them work, and they were effective, you'd see that in my opinion and so, that's their natural healing style. And, you know, you keep expanding that and after a while... And what breaks my heart about this is since people resist change, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of natural healing styles in existence being embodied by great practitioners, that we'll never find out about. Because, you know, there's a resistance in the field to new systems. And these people don't have as much... I don't advocate much for any of my systems. Keith Witt: As a founder, I haven't like pushed to make one of my systems famous. Okay, well, that means a lot of people haven't encountered a bunch of my systems. Okay. Well, that's kind of a weakness in my approach as the founder, really. Because if I want to make an impact, I should go out and beat drums about my systems and I don't. I go, "Well, yeah, I like my systems but the other ones are great too. Use the one that... Study the ones that turn you on. Turn that and have that enhanced and expand your natural healing style." What lights me up is people doing that. And if they want to use my system, if they like it, of course, I get a little ego rush from that, sure. That's great. [chuckle] Everybody likes to be told they're great, you know. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: You're great, Keith. [laughter] Keith Witt: Yeah, there you go. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and... Keith Witt: Well, I'm actually a little embarrassed, but you know, I often do if my clients compliment me extravagantly, I'll get embarrassed. Partly because of the transference stuff, you know. Okay, so people go through stages, and partly because, I'm uncomfortable with my ego. I don't want it to show up in my session. Anyway. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm thinking of something you said earlier about systems that maybe do or don't actually handle mental health all that well. That there's, you know, a lot of these systems work well in the context of someone isn't suffering with major depression, or borderline personality disorder and that made me think of certain modalities that are helpful with that. Like in particular, what came to mind was Internal Family Systems, Dick Schwartz's system, and... Keith Witt: I love that. Neil Sattin: And there's been an evolution of that intimacy from the inside out which is basically applying Internal Family Systems to couples therapy. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And that Toni Herbine-Blank, she's been here on the show to talk about that. This is something that I feel particularly connected to, is this question of how we, in a relationship, actually show up for each other to help heal. 'Cause I don't think that there are many people in our world that have escaped some form of trauma or another. I think we all have like places where we're wounded or where we don't want to go. We're talking about all of these systems in many ways from the perspective of going and seeking help, which I definitely encourage you to do. It's a good idea to go and, as Keith was talking about a little while ago, to have that outside perspective until you're really good at getting outside perspective on your own. Neil Sattin: But that being said, I like those modalities because the more conscious I think you get of how you heal from trauma, so I'm thinking of, yes, Internal Family Systems, somatic experiencing, the things that really enable you to identify what's happening within you, both your body awareness and how you attune to your body, but also what Dick talks about in Internal Family Systems, literally identifying the different personalities in you who are competing and at war, he calls them parts. Keith Witt: Yes. Neil Sattin: And then you can bring those dialogues into your conversations with your partner. Then I think there is a lot of potential through that, through co-regulation to actually heal with each other. But I don't know about any studies that show that that's going to be curative if your partner has depression, for instance, but I do have a pretty strong belief that that's going to help you show up in that relationship in a way where you're still feeling connected and you're in integrity. Keith Witt: There are studies that show that it is curative to expand into your intimate relationship, your family relationships, and your social relationships to be curative with depression, just like there are many studies, overwhelmingly, that show that exercise is a better anti-depressant than any drug. So, that's all true. And your central point, I think, is huge, and that central point is when a couple has mobilized to, one, have compassionate self-observation of both their healthy and unhealthy sides. In my Shadow Light book, I talk about growing your shadow, and that our unconsciousness is constantly giving us constructive and destructive messages, and that we have resistances, defenses against being aware of them, and to the extent that we do that, we have problems with ourselves and in relationships with other people. Because, let's face it, the more intimate you are with yourself, which is having compassionate awareness and acceptance of yourself and self-regulation, the more able you are to be intimate with other people. So, that's just how it works, ask any therapist, any couples therapist. Keith Witt: And Dick Schwartz's approach is wonderful in that, one, he develops... You'll notice there's always a compassionate witness observing these inner parts, okay? Just like meditation increases the capacity of the compassionate self-observation, the witness, as we say in the wisdom traditions, so do these systems that look at these inner parts. Because if I'm looking at inner parts, who's looking? The compassionate witness is looking, and awareness regulates. So, as I'm looking at these parts and I'm identifying the constructive and destructive ones, already I am unconsciously up-regulating the constructive ones, down-regulating the destructive ones. Okay, that's a great language, and it's nonjudgmental, but it's very, very powerful. Now, say you do that with your partner. Instead of taking offense when your partner says something nasty, you go, "Wow, that was that nasty sub-personality." And you go, "Whoa, that was kind of nasty." And they go, "Ooh, that was my nasty self, I'm sorry." Now, at that point, the nasty self isn't in charge. The compassionate witness is in charge regulating the nasty self and now bonding with that partner, and they are collaborating to help shape each other to be their best selves. Keith Witt: When you get to that point with a couple that are doing that with their friendship, their love affair, and their capacity to repair injuries, that's a self-sustaining system that creates the great relationships. And you see the great relationships, you see that, it's called the Michelangelo Effect, it's been studied, and people, they end up talking more like each other, and looking more like each other. But even more, they get up... Long-term couples will tend to get happier with each other because they're receiving influence to be better. And it takes a lot of courage and a lot of openness to receive influence, and a lot of self-regulatory capacity, and that always runs from some kind of compassionate witness, and all the systems encourage that. They all have their different names for it, but if you don't have that, then you're kind of left with raw behaviorism. And if you do have that, which most of us do, or formal operational or post-formal operational. Keith Witt: Having that compassionate witness be more robust gives us more options, response flexibility and interpersonal neurobiology, they would say. And response flexibility isn't random. I want to choose the healthy responses, which support love and support health and I want to say no to the unhealthy ones. But I have to be aware of them, I have to be able to regulate them. That's where Allan Schore comes with regulation theory, that's where Harville Hendrix. His systems basically force people to self-regulate because they can't go into their fight patterns 'cause he's given them different patterns to do. Keith Witt: And so, probably the power of this system is as much by not allowing people to do their hostile patterns as it is giving them new patterns, and I think that's true for Dick Schwartz too in Internal Family Systems, and it's especially useful in trauma because we get overwhelmed with trauma. So, anything that causes us to observe trauma without being overwhelmed, whether it's somatic re-experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, all those things are drawing from the same well in terms of helping us be aware and regulate and then attach and then connect, love other people and be loved by other people. These are the things that the affective systems have in common. Like, practical mythological, somebody might do better if they see themselves at a particular stage of the Hero's Journey. Great, I love the Hero's Journey, I'm all over that, I've been studying it all my life and practising it. Keith Witt: Somebody might do great in seeing, "Well, I have this destructive... An Internal Family Systems thing. One of my firemen is just driving me crazy by giving me all these impulses to regulate myself in unhealthy ways." You go, "Oh, yeah." But he wants that fireman and he wants to feel better and what's a healthy way to feel better? Oh, now, I'm going to these other selves. Okay, these deeper ones. Oh, and here's this injured self that just really never felt good and still doesn't. Oh, well, we need to love that self until it begins to feel like a legitimate person who's in pain. When that begins to happen, say a childhood injury, most people hate that little kid who was abused, if you had early abuse. Once you start loving that kid who was abused, feeling the pain but loving him, saying, "Hey, look, it wasn't your fault they molested you or beat you up," things change, there's more freedom of motion and you can love better. Neil Sattin: Right. And this goes straight to the strengths of a system like EFT, and that's based around attachment and why it's so important to recognize the bonding, the safety, the ways that you are trying to regulate your safety in relationship. And if you're not conscious of that, how the ways you do it are probably going to be jeopardizing, ultimately, the safety of your relationship, even though, ironically, you're trying to keep yourself safe in those moments. Keith Witt: Yes, and now here's the paradox of the whole attachment stuff. The attachment theory just kind of blew the lid off of the developmental orientation. People have been resisting psychoanalytics... The cognitive behaviorists, the cognitive therapists have been resisting for decades the psychoanalysts' assertion that infancy and early childhood really matter. Well, attachment theory showed that it really does, that we do get set up for secure and insecure attachment, and that there's elements of that that go all the way to the adult attachment industry that the researchers in Berkeley, I forget their name... Mary Main came up with. Yes. Keith Witt: Now, there's a little switch here because that attachment has to do with mother/infant attachment. Okay, now, we go on to couples and then we gotta add that sexual component. Adding that sexual component to secure attachment is tricky. I really don't want to be having to be secure with my wife exactly the way I was secure with my mom. I want to have elements of that, but there's not a lot of eroticism there, or hopefully there isn't, and if there is, there's more problems, that would be more complicated. And so now we have to add that erotic component. Now that erotic component has a lot of other elements in it. It has adventure, it has transgression, it has change, it has whoever we discovered we are from a gender standpoint or whoever we discover we are in terms of our own kinks, whatever our culture told us about our sexuality, whether it's good or it's bad. Keith Witt: People discover their sexuality, and if they're lucky, the culture says, "Oh, that's fine sexuality." Say you discover you're a heterosexual g

39ème épisode. Solutions pour l’Angoisse, 4: Apprendre à gérer ses émotions. Traduction d’un des livres de Pia Mellody sur la codépendance: https://www.amazon.fr/Vaincre-dépendance-Pia-Mellody/dp/2290342416 Allan Schore sur l’attachement (comment les bébés apprennent à gérer leurs émotions). “Les années les plus importantes de notre vie – Nos débuts”: Ma vidéo sur la psychothérapie en France, avec comme exemple […]

Can you be addicted to love, or sex, and - if so - what does that mean? How does the way that your parents raised you - especially when you were really young - affect your sex life? How do you define your own version of healthy sex - so that you’re not just following along with what culture has handed you? And finally - how do you step away from the dopamine and novelty-seeking of dating - and, when you find someone, make the switch to a monogamous relationship? In today’s episode, we are speaking to one of the world’s experts on sex and neurobiology - and especially the treatment of Sex and Love Addiction - Dr. Alexandra Katehakis. Alex’s book, Sex Addiction as Affect Dysregulation, is a must-read for therapists looking to understand the latest on how to approach sex addiction treatment in therapy, and her work at the Center for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles fosters a sex-positive approach to re-discovering sex in a way that’s right for you. Alex is also the author of Erotic Intelligence: Igniting Hot, Healthy Sex While In Recovery from Sex Addiction. Noticing addictive behaviors: An addiction can be defined as something to which we have a strong predilection for and have little control over our actions in relation to the desire. We may find ourselves preoccupied in our thinking, and find that much of our time is spent either engaging in the addiction or in preparation for the experience of it. Furthermore, unlike other things which we strongly enjoy, an addiction has a certain secrecy and shame surrounding it. This is especially true when the behavior we are engaging in violates our own personal value system. Love as an addiction: Love is an addictive process. This makes sense in evolutionary and biological terms as it ensures that we bind together with a mate in an intense enough way as to invest in procreating and raising a family. The profound longing and desire that can be involved in falling in love is not necessarily problematic, however thinking about love through the addiction model can help shed light on the pain of breakups, divorces, and endings. Love withdrawal: How many times have you said, or heard a friend say, that it feels like a limb has been cut off when we lose someone. During endings many people experience the emotional and psychological distress as physical pain- as if their heart is actually breaking. This is true because the same neural pain centers in the brain involved in physical injury are involved in our attachments to others. While it can be very helpful to create boundaries with exes through such actions as blocking and/or deleting numbers, the pain can be visceral. Changing our automatic patterning: People realize they are in the cycle of addiction when they find themselves doing things they do not want to do anymore and yet, can’t stop engaging in the behavior despite wanting to. It is important at this stage to understand that 1) you do have the capacity to change and 2) it will be a slow process. Changing our automatic patterning is not like turning a speed boat around, rather it is more like turning around a large barge. Neuroscience research validates that this shifting is possible through repeated behavior. The saying is that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’, meaning that you must do something over and over again to build new neural pathways, and thus, new patterns. The more you engage in the new behavior the more tenacious the neural networks will become and the more integrated this way of being will feel- to the point that it will become the new automatic. As you focus increasingly on the new behavior, the old neural pathways associated with the negative addictions will begin to prune. This is the beauty of neuroplasticity- have some patience with it! Attunement is essential in building secure attachment. The predilections for addictions of all kinds are often established in early childhood. This is true because, human beings, more than most animals, are nearly entirely dependent on their caregivers for survival. As we now understand from the research on attachment, the first few months of a child’s life are critical in setting up a healthy nervous system. It is the job of the caregiver to be an interactive regulator- giving opportunity for attunement and safe interactions so that the right brain can develop over the first 18 months. There are many ways that parents fail to attune to their child- the severity of the impact depends on frequency, intensity, and ability to make repairs. Depending on the type of engagement from parents children will develop a tendency towards high sympathetic arousal (fight or flight responses) or parasympathetic responses such as freezing, collapse, and dissociation. This dysregulation can then lead to a higher dependence on external supports- thus helping to explain how addictions often stem from an attempt by an individual to regulate affect. Adaptive strategies for soothing. Early childhood experiences of attachment lay the groundwork and the wiring for lifelong relational patterns. Children who were not met with regulated and present caregivers inevitably find strategies in order to survive and often carry these patterns into adulthood when it comes to handling arousal state throughout their lifetime. Insecurely attached individuals either experience 1) a constantly seeking mentality and dependency on external soothing and/or 2) a high distrust that others will ever meet their needs. Trapped by the ‘rescue fantasy’: If you had a parent who was dismissive, or avoidant, you likely learned at a young age that you had to manage yourself, by yourself. You may have resorted to creating a rescue fantasy in which someone came to rescue you from the chronic emptiness and loneliness you were experiencing. This may have been a coach, a teacher, a rockstar, a neighbor, or a fairy princess- someone outside of yourself and your family who had the power to alleviate your pain. This is a brilliant soothing strategy in childhood, however it becomes increasingly maladaptive in adulthood in that it creates unhealthy desires and harmful expectations in our relationships. In cultivating the ability to imagine the ideal caregiver, a child feeds their need for attunement, however adults who idealize their lovers as saviors tend to miss critical cues that allow them to assess whether the person they are attracted to is available, safe, and stable. Need for reinforcing attachment: Only 54% of people in our culture today are securely attached- and this number is likely to shrink further as more families experience increasing stressors and there are fewer two person systems raising children. The fullness, high speed pace, and distraction of daily modern life is making it increasingly difficult for parents to insure they are able to provide their children with adequate attunement. Note that the majority of insecure attachments are not caused by outright abuse or neglect, but rather from an accumulation of misaligned and misattuned moments- microassaults that go without repair or acknowledgment. Human beings need other human beings for regulation: One thing we know from the accumulating data is that people can develop a secure attachment in a love relationship. It is in our relationships where we a second chance to practice getting our needs met in healthy ways. With a present, grounded, and  growth oriented partner it is possible to become more securely attached, love more fully, and have deeper intimacy. That said, long term relationships are not flower fields! As many like to say, if you want to not have any issues then it is best to live alone! Relationships turn up the heat on our underlying issues and bring our habits, patterns, and old beliefs to the surface. While much of our healing, especially of childhood wounds, are our responsibility to mend and tend, this does not have to occur prior to entering a relationship. In fact, some aspects of deep healing depends on the relationship given that we need coregulation to repair. Be on the lookout for a partner who does not have a martyr complex, nor a need for you to be helpless so they can be the ‘fixer’. Look instead for someone who shares your values and is willing to stay present through the pain and discomfort of growing. How do you switch from courtship into monogamy? We live in a culture that provides ample opportunity for novelty, and relies on a promise of more and better. This creates excitement, yet havoc in the dating world as there is a tendency to doubt what is in front of us in hopes for the newest and shiniest thing that may be waiting around the corner- or one more tinder swipe away. If you are interested in moving from dating into a longer term committed relationship, it is critical that you get clear with yourself about your values. Can you make a list of your top 3 non-negotiables? Example: education, spirituality, wants kids, doesn’t want kids, sense of humor… Get super clear with yourself. This clarity will help you to recognize when a person who fits these values shows up, and will help to ground you in the reality of the person in front of you, thus helping to alleviate the gnawing and often overwhelming urge to keep searching for some fantasy version of a partner. What to do when you are jonesing… Dating apps, along with porn, offers a dopamine rush that is hard to compete with. When you begin to shift towards wanting to dive deeper into a relationship you may struggle with feeling a lack of this exciting surge. Learn to be fully present with your somatic experience- noticing what is happening for you, what you are craving, and in what ways this helps show you that you are dysregulated.  Own your internal experience, and then commit to being more present to your partner. Let the distractions and urges be reminders to yourself to come back to your present experience- there is a plethora of feel good hormones (including dopamine) that can be released when you connect in with your partner and spend time finding out who they are without making assumptions, and getting that juicy surge of oxytocin that comes with intimate connections. Putting bodies, hearts, and souls together: We need each other to regulate. People know, at least technically, how to have sex- there has been enough emphasis on this throughout our culture- however they may not know how to have quality and truly connecting intimacy. We can put our bodies together, but are we capable of putting our hearts and souls together in a way that has meaning, promotes a sense of safety, while also being arousing and erotic? In order to move into a fuller experience of intimacy, we must learn to track ourselves and our partners. By paying close attention to our internal experiences we can learn to notice moments of dysregulation and from this becoming curious about the underlying need that is being somatically communicated. Once we notice this, we can name it to our partner and from this learn that we can in fact, get our needs met. The experience of getting a need met not only leads to healing, but also to an incredibly erotic, arousing, and passionate sense of deep connection! Multidimensionality of healthy sex: Healthy sex requires a thorough investigation of who you are sexually at this moment in your life, what you like, and from this putting together a new roadmap for yourself. What is healthy for you right now is likely to be different not only from other people, but even from yourself at an earlier point in your life. Get raw and honest with yourself. What feels good? What kind of touch turns you on? In what ways is the sex you are engaging in a celebration of your sexual values, and in what ways is it not? Look at the multidimensionality of sex- the physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual aspects. Tune into your arousal cycle, your current genital functioning, and any other physical cues that need to be paid attention to. Your sex life will not be fulfilling unless the sex practices you are engaging in aligns with your personal and sexual values. Get support and go on a sexual diet. If you suspect yourself to be in an addictive cycle when it comes to love, sex, and/or dating apps be sure to reach out for support. Find a therapist, a sex therapist, and/or a support group in your area or online. Love and sex addictions are the result of attachment wounding and thus, are best healed in relationship. Seek out safe others. There may be a time in your healing process in which you may benefit from taking a break from your compulsive patterns (even consider celibacy) in order to gain perspective on your own urgings. This pulling away time is a raw state as you will feel the void of not having ‘that thing’ you are so accustomed to running towards for relief. In these times fellowship can be incredibly helpful- search out people to surround yourself with that know what you are going through. And remember- the brain is capable of rewiring towards healthier habits if you are able and committed to putting in the time and effort needed to refocus your attention and train your brain! Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources: Check out the Center for Healthy Sex Read Alex Katehakis’ newest book Sex Addiction as Affect Dysregulation: A Neurobiologically Informed Holistic Treatment Find more about Allan Schore’s work here www.neilsattin.com/healthysex Visit to download the show guide, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the show guide to this episode with Alex Katehakis Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Continuing with Drew Pinsky on “Attachment and Reflective Function: Their Role in Self-organization” by Peter Fonagy and two articles by Allan Schore. Fonagy claims we gain the ability to emotionally self-regulate as a result of achieving secure attachment with a caregiver as infants. Schore claims that if this fails, we can end up fundamentally disengaged. So what are the philosophical implications? Listen to part 1 first, or get the ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! End song: "Anything but Love" by Steve Hackett, as featured on Nakedly Examined Music #45.

Radio legend Dr. Drew Pinsky talks with us about “Attachment and Reflective Function: Their Role in Self-Organization” by Peter Fonagy and two articles by Allan Schore. The focus is "theory of mind"; how do we develop the ability to impute thoughts and intentions to others? What in our upbringing can interfere with this development? We relate this back to previous episodes (Hegel, Buber, etc.) on recognition by others of the self. Listen to more Dr. Drew at DrDrew.com, especially his interview of Wes!  

Dr. Drew's favorite guest on his Dr. Drew Podcast. Dr. Allan Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. His Regulation Theory, grounded in developmental neuroscience and developmental psychoanalysis, focuses on the origin, psychopathogenesis, and psychotherapeutic treatment of the early forming subjective implicit self. This episode is sponsored by Alliant University. Go to alliant.edu for more.

At an early point in his secondary education, Dr. Drew Pinsky found himself debating whether he should become a doctor or an opera singer. Ultimately his true passion for helping others prevailed, making him one of the most recognizable names in medicine. Learn from the New York Times best-selling author, physician, opera singer, and civil servant as he goes deep into the philosophy behind the brain-body connection and addiction in this episode of Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. ***UPDATE: There was a file error where there was about 20mins of dead air after the interview. The file has been repaired. If you are experiencing issues please delete and re-download the podcast. We apologize for any inconvenience.*** SHOW NOTES Dr. Drew recalls being a workaholic and talks about why medicine is not fun today. [2:53] Tom and Dr. Drew dig into the philosophy behind helping other people. [5:54] Dr. Drew goes deep on the brain/body connection and the concept of embeddedness. [10:14] Tom and Dr. Drew discuss the inception of self. [14:18] Dr. Drew talks about constructing a sense of self as an adult. [18:17] Dr. Drew explains why disgust is a powerful motivator. [23:02] Dr. Drew unravels the necessity and power of myth. [28:35] Tom and Dr. Drew discuss cultivating a mythological landscape through community. [31:20] Dr. Drew describes how to leverage other people to make a conscious personal change. [34:34] Dr. Drew performs an impromptu operatic solo. [36:00] Dr. Drew talks about finding his path and how he stopped fighting a career in medicine. [36:40] Tom and Dr. Drew talk over subjective happiness and what it means to lead a good life. [41:54] Dr. Drew expounds on how to increase skill (techne) and wisdom (phronesis). [45:26] Dr. Drew defines the impact that he wants to have on the world. [48:01] MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Loveline - [0:55] Heal - http://bit.ly/2lJT7Dq [4:33] TERMINOLOGY Vagus nerve - http://bit.ly/2qg6iyq [12:04] Eudaimonic happiness - http://bit.ly/2qgaHRQ [7:10] Techne, Phronesis - http://bit.ly/2l0acan [8:33], [8:39] PEOPLE Martin Heidegger - http://bit.ly/2qdtDT2 [8:02] Steven Porges - http://bit.ly/2pI5Jwg [11:56] Wes Chapman - http://bit.ly/2pIr9ID [27:52] Dr. Allan Schore - http://bit.ly/2r3K8SE [39:10] BOOKS The Mirror Effect - http://amzn.to/2rk2485 [2:02] Cracked: Life on the Edge in a Rehab Clinic - http://amzn.to/2pOH6hu [2:03] Change or die - http://amzn.to/2qL82Cz [19:17] The Power of Myth - http://amzn.to/2qKX1RK [29:11] Candide by Voltaire - http://amzn.to/2raxsJJ [44:45] Epic of Gilgamesh - http://amzn.to/2ranyHY [44:56] FOLLOW DR. DREW WEBSITE: http://bit.ly/2qgazBH TWITTER: http://bit.ly/2pISjz8 INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/2pIHDRR FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/2qg6PQQ PODCAST: http://apple.co/2adyhqQ Tom Bilyeu is the co-founder of 2014 Inc. 500 company Quest Nutrition — a unicorn startup valued at over $1 billion — and the co-founder and host of Impact Theory. Impact Theory is a first-of-its-kind company designed to facilitate global change through the incubation of mission-based businesses and the cultivation of empowering content. Every piece of content Impact Theory creates is meant to underscore the company mission to free people from The Matrix and help them unlock their true potential. Impact Theory exists to inspire the next generation of game-changing companies and creators that will make a true and lasting impact on the world. FOLLOW TOM BILYEU TWITTER: http://bit.ly/2iyjY5P INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/2j7vqX8 FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/2hPStWo FOLLOW IMPACT THEORY TWITTER: http://bit.ly/2iC5lN3 INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/2hPSGJa FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/2iystOf Subscribe to the PODCAST to get episodes early: http://apple.co/2icO5wz

Dr. Allan Schore joins Dr. Drew for an examination of the long term results of trauma. Dr. Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development.

Guest: Allan Schore, MD, PhD Host: Laura Humphrey, PhD Dr. Allan Schore, a member of the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain and Development discusses the stages of brain development from infancy through adolescence.

Guest: Allan Schore, MD, PhD Host: Laura Humphrey, PhD Dr. Allan Schore, a member of the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain and Development discusses the separation and differences between biology and psychology in relation to medicine.

Guest: Allan Schore, MD, PhD Host: Laura Humphrey, PhD Dr. Allan Schore, a member of the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain and Development discusses the relationship between physician and patient from a psychological perspective.

Guest: Allan Schore, MD, PhD Host: Laura Humphrey, PhD Dr. Allan Schore, a member of the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain and Development discusses early relationships and experiences from a neurobiological perspective.

Today's guest is Alex Katehakis. Alex is a Clinical Sexologist with a doctorate in human sexuality. She's also the Clinical Director of the Center For Healthy Sex in Los Angeles, California. Alex has written several books - Sex Addiction As Affect Dysregulation, Erotic Intelligence, and Mirror Of Intimacy. Episode link>>>> www.theaddictedmind.com/87 ( http://www.theaddictedmind.com/87 ) In today's episode, she shares her wisdom and insight about recovery and we have a great conversation about the root causes of the addictive process. We focus on the early developmental trauma and the way that it affects the ability to regulate our affect, and how addictive substances or processes are used to escape from those feelings. Alex has always been fascinated by human sexuality. After practicing as a licensed marriage/family therapist for twenty-five years, she decided to dive deeper into human sexuality, rather than psychology. In addition to human sexuality, Alex has also been studying with Dr. Allan Schore for the past twelve years, looking specifically at developmental neuroscience and how the early formation of the infant impacts on the developing brain, nervous system, and mind. Talking about affect is referring to emotions. These emotions live deep within the body, and they only come forward when they are registered by the brain as feelings. When a person is dysregulated and stressed out, their affect becomes dysregulated. When a child feels threatened, perhaps from an alcoholic, raging, shut down, or mean parent, their affect becomes dysregulated and they will always find themselves looking for something to make them feel better. In their waking life, a dysregulated person will feel anxious, depressed, dead internally, or dull. There's a general lack of feeling vitality in the body. Dysregulated people say they don't feel joy states, or they are super anxious, so they have to drink to make the anxiety go away. They may use sex to make themselves feel powerful or good about themselves. Anything that we're doing outside of ourselves to make ourselves feel 'right internally' speaks to affect dysregulation. Someone who is securely attached, and has a good heart-rate variability in general, doesn't have to reach for anything to change their internal state or mood. Love addicts, and some sex addicts, learned very early on that they had to get their needs met by themselves, so they used fantasy, which is a form of mild to moderate dissociation. This makes it difficult for them to connect to another person, as an adult, and to have intimacy or closeness. People often don't know this about themselves until their lives become unmanageable. As humans, we are highly adaptable creatures, so we can adapt to just about anything, even something dysfunctional that feels better than the problem we're living in. This can create patterns that are difficult to change. Change is possible, however, it takes time. Willpower is difficult for people experiencing a lot of stress. It's not the best way to change long-standing patterns that people have developed over time. Long-term psychotherapy can help people feel into their bodies, and it allows them to feel the things they could not feel, as a child. The therapist's nervous system can soothe and regulate the nervous system of the patient in the same way as it would with a healthy mother and a child. This is known as a co-regulatory process. With a healthy person, their brain circuits are all online and firing. With someone who has been abused, however, their circuits are not coupled. They are down. This creates a deadness at their core. It requires the care of other people to get their circuits to come back up. Twelve-step programs help people change because they are inclusive and non-judgmental. As humans, we all need other people to survive. In her book, Sex Addiction As Affect Dysregulation, Alex looks at the underlying mechanism that drives problematic behavior. It helps people to see sex addiction in a new way, and it offers hope for the people who are struggling with it. Sex addiction is being recognized more and more by the scientific community as a bone fide problem. It was first recognized in about 1978, although people were talking about it as an affliction as early as in the 1800s. In 2011, the American Society of Addiction Medicine made a public policy statement, in which they included sex as an addiction. In 2018, a proposed diagnosis of compulsive sexual behavior disorder was established for the international coding book, the ICD. Willpower can be used to show up to people who care, and in that way, it can help to heal from sex addiction. Remember, it's never too late to take a step in the direction of health! *Links and resources:* To find out more, go to www.thecenterforhealthysex.com ( http://www.thecenterforhealthysex.com/ ) Alex also has a Youtube channel with hundreds of videos from sex-experts around the world. Alex's books: Sex Addiction As Affect Dysregulation ( https://amzn.to/39BV7VY ) Erotic Intelligence ( https://amzn.to/2SMERec ) Mirror Of Intimacy ( https://amzn.to/2OWgidu )

Dr. Sharon Stanley has educated thousands of healthcare professionals internationally in the principles and practices of somatic psychotherapy. Building on her research on empathy with traumatized youth, Sharon founded Somatic Transformation ( http://somatictransformation.com/ ) (ST), a trauma model and professional curriculum. ST is based on emerging research in Interpersonal Neurobiology and a phenomenological, intersubjective approach to transform relational and shock trauma. Sharon participates in Dr. Allan Schore’s Seattle Study Group, and her work with First Nations , the study of Afro-Brazilian healing with on-going research into clinical practice has led to a fluid convergence of neurological research and professional skills. Sharon has a clinical practice on Bainbridge Island, Washington. *Episode Links* * *Somatic Transformation* ( http://somatictransformation.com/ ) * *Sharon’s Trainings* ( http://somatictransformation.com/training/ ) * *Sharon’s Publications* ( http://somatictransformation.com/publications/ ) * *Sharon’s book:* Relational and Body-Centered Practices for Healing Trauma: Lifting the Burdens of the Past ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1138905968/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1138905968&ie=UTF8&linkCode=as2&linkId=0daf61d646269974da3c4ef1f1f5905f&tag=wescoatrapro-20 ) Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-trauma-therapist-podcast-with-guy-macpherson-phd-inspiring-interviews-with-thought-leaders-in-the-field-of-trauma/donations Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Dr. Sharon Stanley has educated thousands of healthcare professionals internationally in the principles and practices of somatic psychotherapy. Building on her research on empathy with traumatized youth, Sharon founded Somatic Transformation (ST), a trauma model and professional curriculum. ST is based on emerging research in Interpersonal Neurobiology and a phenomenological, intersubjective approach to transform relational and shock trauma. Sharon participates in Dr. Allan Schore’s Seattle Study Group, and her work with First Nations, the study of Afro-Brazilian healing with on-going research into clinical practice has led to a fluid convergence of neurological research and professional skills. Sharon has a clinical practice on Bainbridge Island, Washington.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-trauma-therapist-podcast-with-guy-macpherson-phd-inspiring-interviews-with-thought-leaders-in-the-field-of-trauma/donationsWant to advertise on this podcast? Go to https://redcircle.com/brands and sign up.