Conversation 1: Healing Gifted Shame

Hey everyone, this is Jennifer Harvey-Sanna and with my dear friend and collaborator, Katyn Eglinton. And we're here today talking about wearing giftedness and trauma healing. This is a topic that we don't find much out in the world. You don't find much picture on it. You don't find many talks on it. You find a lot about giftedness, a lot about trauma, but not covers both topics. And specifically, you never find anything about gifted specific trauma. So the idea of growing up feeling like an alien, that's quite traumatic for a lot of gifted people. And while in a community like Intergifted, you might hear lots of people talk about that. You don't find that in a lot of the literature or things that are available for kids, or adults. So Katyn and I have been exploring this topic together, thinking about what's relevant for our community. And today we're going to start with the topic of shame and how much shame many gifted people are carrying around and having trauma to begin. Having gone through trauma and not having from it yet. So that's going to be our little exploration for the next half hour or so. And I hope you enjoy it. So Katyn, maybe you could introduce yourself and then I'll tell everybody a little bit of yeah. Hi everyone. I'm Katyn and I am my coach with Intergifted and Jan here is my mentor and dear friend and we actually see trauma or we see we talk about and we think about trauma quite a lot when we work with the gifted population even though we don't work in a therapeutic way and even though that's not part of our domain as coaches, we definitely find ourselves needing to at least bring it up with clients once in a while and to bring up that awareness. So we notice it in our community as well how people are perhaps feeling really constrained and so on by trauma, trauma responses, trauma loops complex PTSD and one of the things when people are starting to do a little better is the question like well how come these trauma reactions or these PTSD flashbacks or what have you keep coming up? Why am I not done with it yet? Yeah, so that's where part of where our thoughts go when we start to explore trauma. Yep. And it's Karen's at Karen's. I usually call it Karen so that's my nickname. It's totally fine. She can refer to me and Katyn or Karen is totally fine. So I'll probably say interchangeably throughout our discussions together so as Katyn said, I am the founder of Intergifted and I'm also a coach, a psychologist but I practice as a coach and a mentor and working with gifted people all these years, it's been absolutely necessary for me to be over in trauma and trauma heal. And that's largely because a lot of the gifted specific trauma that people have, it doesn't come out in a regular context. So if a person's working with a trauma specific therapist, it's not unless they're gifted specific, gifted specific therapist, it's not likely that gifted specific trauma is really going to come out and be grateful. And then the basic question is what is gifted specific trauma? And it's like I said, feeling like an alien your whole life for a lot of people can feel very traumatic. And we're dependent on the system that we're born into and that is the sort of human system and the culture that we're born into. And when we feel so drastically different from the system that we're born into, that can lead to feelings of extreme confusion and trauma generally happens for people in situations of extreme confusion and sense of lack of fear and security. So if you're born as a gifted person looking to, let's say, an ongifted majority to raise you and to guide you and to be your authorities and to make decisions for you and help you to put your own internal moral code and your own internal value systems and so on, it can feel really traumatizing as really, really unsafe. And so the clients that are coming to us a lot of times, even their therapy, can have been at times traumatizing because they weren't, they were being told, you know, heard this from a lot of clients, they were being told, well, you know, you just, you just have to, you know, adapt. You just have to adapt to the way that it is. Yeah. So there's lots of versions that, that, you know, Jenna and I have heard over time of what that looks like. In some cases, that can look like misdiagnosing gifted, normal behaviors and ways of feeling and experiencing the world as pathological and other cases, it can look like sort of like diametrically opposed where the person, the gifted person is really struggling and the therapist will pronounce them perfectly healthy because the high ability is helping them cope with their difficulties. So that's what happened to me when I was in my early 20s. I was studying to become a therapist and I realized in studying to become a therapist that I had issues that I needed to deal with in order to be fully present and competent for my clients. So I went to a therapist and I saw her for about three months and after three months, she said, you know, you're, you're really healthy, you're mentally healthy. I think our therapy is done. I don't see any reason that I still need to see you and I remember inside feeling completely devastated. I felt, I mean, there were times I felt suicidal at that point in my life. I kind of, you know, I wasn't, I didn't, you know, have a plan, so to speak, but I had a lot of existential stuff that just really calm and forgive the people. You know, a lot of meaninglessness. It was the time I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my adult life, what I was going to do with my career and people were pushing me in certain directions, you know, to try to fit in the normal mold and I was like, you know, not, not interested in not, not feeling satisfied with those options, but trying to fit in nonetheless. And so I was struggling with all of that and she was saying that I was healthy. And one of the things I remember hearing her say was, well, you seem to have a really good understanding of, you know, all of your issues and what you should do about them. And I was thinking, well, yeah, I mean, sure, that's great. I mean, I'm a smart person, but that doesn't mean that I don't need the support and that doesn't mean I've got it all figured out. And I struggled after that, like I said, that wasn't my early 20s. And then there was a long period where I still really, really needed the help, but I was so terrified to try again. I was so terrified of not being seen again that I refused to go to a therapist for another I think four or five years in the meantime, doing therapy for other people. So I mentioned that. I mean, I wasn't doing trauma therapy fortunately for people, but yeah, other than the therapy part, I was so related to that experience. I mean, you know, because I've shared that with you, but I worked not in a psychology field, but in an area of like holistic healing for a while. And people looked up to me for my groundedness or well-being. And meanwhile, on the inside, I was having these high functioning panic attacks, constant anxiety and not feeling like whenever I did reach out for help, I didn't feel like I was, I felt like I was being looked at like, yeah, but you have, you, you, you should know this. You should have understood this based on how intelligent you are and based on how resourceful you are. This should not be a problem for you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Anne, I don't know if this was the case for you, but it was for me that like I, I did appear to be doing really well. I mean, I was working three jobs and doing my master's degree really fast. I had a relationship that was apparently successful, even though I wasn't happy with it. But from the outside, everybody said, oh, you have the perfect situation. I did all of the things that people expected and I did them, you know, extremely well. I didn't feel internally like I wanted to do them, but I did them. And yeah, I mean, so it was a very confusing situation for, for me and for a lot of people. I can see why they, they would, I could, I mean, looking back, you can see why they were like confused. But if, you know, if the therapist had met me then they would have totally understood that I was not okay. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking as sort of like comparing contrast to my own experience. experience and even though in my, like let's say, 20s, I was in so much of a higher achiever and I kept sort of like, I had like, I was employed, I was working hard, I was very involved in a spiritual community and I was, you know, like wherever I went, I got sort of these looks of, you know, like just compliments and and and looks of like, yeah, it'll like me know like she's a trooper, she's trying really hard and she's getting her life in order and so on and so forth. I know that people also commented once in a while, like why are you such a low achiever? Like you could be doing anything you could set your mind to and I didn't see it that way, like huge impostors and bromide and think that I could, you know, like even survive a job like that demanded more than 30 hours a week of ease. But but so even though I didn't have like so much of the like masking and sort of like passing for normal in that sense of of let's say worldly success. Yeah. I had that in terms of like seeming emotionally healthy and some very psychologically well adjusted and even wise, like that was a one typical thing that people said of me. Yeah. It's one of the things that I've heard from clients as well, like people have a strong sense of humor, you know, very sort of self deprecating sense of humor. People who have just an ability to talk about a domain that like, you know, in very in a very sort of gifted way, you know, so to talk about emotionality or talk about psychology or something in a very convincing way doesn't necessarily mean that they know how to live it out, but they know how to talk about it in a way that makes it sound like they can live it out or maybe they can live it out on the neuronorm level, but that in a way that would be fulfilling to them, they can't. They don't have the support for that or the possibilities for that or whatever. And then the other thing is the idea of being an old soul. You know, that's something that I've I was told that a lot growing up and I've heard that from a lot of my clients that people think they're an old soul and so somehow that excuses a lot of other things, you know, it's like, oh, you're an old soul, so you can handle things, you know, it's like, and it's what drives the like the conflict internally, right? Because the, you know, as as a quote unquote old soul, who can often like, you know, hold space for others, give good advice, support others with their problems, how come I can't figure my own stuff out? Yeah. And how come I'm still like how come I'm like not even figure out problems cognitive? I'm like, how how come I'm suffering? How come I'm hurting? How come I'm waking up in the morning and thinking I don't want to live? Yeah. That kind of those kinds of questions. And then the story for me was that I would, you know, feel that sort of cyclically and cycle through these times of intense pain and tends to spare and then take my old soul and shove everything under the rug, you know? Yeah. And then use that as almost like an armor against the theme. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I've seen a lot of people do. I've been there in my own way as well. Yeah. So with clients, I mean, the thing is that people come in with this enormous amount of shame about not having gotten the help that they needed, about not, I've heard people say it like I was a bad client, you know, like I didn't heal the way that my therapist wanted me to or that I was expected to, you know, these kinds of things that are like this sort of, yeah, code of shame about the fact that they're still struggling with this stuff. And it comes back to this idea like if you're not recognized, if people see you as healthy or whatever, you're not getting that validation. So what I've had to work on in more recent years in my own therapy is validating the other side of the story, you know, validating that, yes, okay, that's true that I could, that I could function well. But it was also true that I was really struggling and that it was really hard for me to convince people that that was actually happening. And as a little preview for something that, you know, we're working on. So this will be interesting for the audience is we're working on project around chronic illness and giftedness. And one of the lines of conversation that's come up in our discussion on that so far is about how much the gift of the illness was used as a mask as a, you know, socially acceptable excuse, let's say, for the gifted side of things. So the gifted suffering was not taken seriously yet the sickness, the physical illness was. And that was so true in my case, I spent a lot of my life, you know, being very, very sick. And many times that was the only way I could get people to believe that I was weak in some way or another and legitimize the fact that, yeah, I couldn't handle the normal, the normal stuff or that I was struggling. Yeah, absolutely, that there's moments where it's easier, more understandable, easier to translate to say, I have extreme chronic pain and therefore I can't go out rather than say, my emotional or excitabilities are too triggered when I go out into a crowd of non gifted people for instance. Yeah, or just the, you know, existential stuff, you know, for me, it was a lot of, it's easier to just be sick than it is and avoid people that way than it is to go out and have to answer the question, how are you and lie or say something totally inappropriate. Like I'm existential in panic because the way the world is or because nobody seems to, you know, be interested in deeper conversations around me or everybody just seems to, you know, do the same rhythm every day and I don't know how you can all do it or you are doing it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's like the giftedness and I think this will come back to this but the giftedness and the gifted trauma, it has so multi-branched, you know, like it branches off into all these arenas you can find it in the existential realm or I guess about our way to say it is the existential issues present themselves in all arenas. Yeah. And that can be in relationships, it can be at work, it can be socializing, it can be when dealing with like cleaning the kitchen, I don't know. And then all of a sudden cleaning the kitchen becomes an existential issue. Yeah. And then people wonder, well, how come you're so untidy or something like that? Yeah. I sort of wanted to circle back around to this thing that you said, Jenna, about feeling like an alien and I wanted to connect that to one of the, I would say most comprehensive foundational ideas in trauma, the current understanding of trauma in terms of like interpersonal and neurobiology. Some of you will be probably familiar with Stephen Borgia's Polyvegal theory and some of you might not and if you're not, I highly recommend that you read his book that you go into YouTube and search a video by him because he's a very good teacher, like a very good community as well. Yeah. And so what I'm thinking about and why I'm introducing this concept is because this neurobiological theory gives us an understanding of how healing happens in relationship and how it is literally our nervous system to nervous system connection that keeps us, keeps our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our psychies running optimally in there for it makes perfect sense that a sense of alienation would generate trauma in all the rings of life, even the like from the simplest to the most complex. So to, to, that's an interesting piece for me to think about because one of the things that I do work with a lot is idea of relationship and how we connect to other people as gifted people in authentic ways. So therefore for me, the question of gifted trauma as alienation from relationship comes up a lot. And I wanted to bring that up also to say all these examples that we're giving about our therapist not getting it other people looking at us and reflecting a completely different reality to us. All those things are basically creating a relational rupture saying you know to the gifted person you are self sufficient and you must continue to be self sufficient in all things. And that puts our relationship. all nervous system offline. And so the only thing left for us is to go into the trauma responses almost. It's like it's shutting down the pathway to the healthy connection. Yeah, and I think I mean that would be maybe the most neutral version of it. Because the more cities versions I think are not only yourself sufficient, but kind of your you should take the help that I'm giving you. So it's like don't be self-sufficient. Take the help that the help might be so very wrong, so very misatuned to the gifted person. And so there's you know there's that next level of it as well where it's not only like make it on your own. It's like you know take this, you've got to take my help and it's going to be in this form and this is what it's going to look like. And that's the person you know then in the second trauma loop, which is like not only do I not get the help, but I have to either reject this person you know who I might love or and reject their help. Or so you know beyond the act of just not getting the help, I have to actually reject this help or I'm forced to take it and hurt myself even more you know. So there's yeah there's other levels of that as well I think. Yeah there's many levels where even and this has come up like an awful lot recently with clients. I don't know if this is it's probably like also the case for you John. The idea of negative attribution when we don't understand where somebody else is coming from our cognitive bias will make it so that we will tend to interpret something a negative intention. And so when the gifted person is acting in ways where the neuron person doesn't understand the neuron person will tend to attribute a negative intention and label or act in ways that imply the gifted person is at fault or or or like you can continue to iterate. Oh yeah yeah absolutely. And with all of that comes in I mean an enormous amount of shame. I'm actually just the shame of not fitting in the shame of being forced to be self-sufficient. This was one of the big areas of shame that I grew up with which was like I guess I must have done something to deserve the fact that you know people are there for me and in the way that would make any sense to me. And that would go into terrible existential stuff like well why was I born if this was what was going to happen and so on and so forth. And and then the other thing is the shame that comes with this misattribution. Yeah you know the the the way that you can feel ashamed of the fact that you had to reject other people that we might love you know or like you have to reject be somehow or another because they're projecting onto you that you're doing this with negative intention and you know it's like conspire all off in all of these different directions in which just basically the whole system is not like attuned to what is actually going on for you. So I sometimes see like spinning plates you know like the idea of you just see persons constantly having to spin plates so that things don't fall and crash. And it's like relational spinning plates and realizing you know that you're having to like spin plates and order to like you know say a live video. Okay and your relationships can be really again it's same-inducing like why do I have to work so hard. I mean relationships are work so it's not to say like oh well none of us should have to work for our relationships but you know there's a bit of a level of organic and organic quality that you could have if you didn't have to be spinning plates not that you wouldn't have to work at it. Exactly and the idea of working to spin plates to to you know let's say keep in a tuned relationship attuned that's one thing. But you know to avoid a misattuned relationship from totally destroying you that's another thing. So yeah there's like the joyful work and then just panic you know panic and being maybe a 30 or 40 year old or even 20 year olds whatever adult and you're still struggling through all of that. I mean it just can undo so much shame and that's the thing that we often see you know people saying why if I'm so smart why is my life like this why are my relationships like this and it comes back to just what you said that if your life is still like this probably not your fault you probably haven't had the attuned relationships that would provide that nervous system to nervous system you know mirroring and regulation that would allow you to you know to regulate those things and to deal with the misattunement in healthier ways. I mean because that's a lot of the trauma healing as we'll talk about I'm sure later on is learning how to deal with that attunement in creative constructive non-reactive ways which when you become an adult I mean trauma healing as an adult can feel that simpler in a way because you're no longer dependent and what's no longer dependent you have different options for how you deal with you know trauma triggers and people that are triggering you know people on relationships that are triggering your trauma so you know not having the dependency that you can get creative with things you can you can you can handle your energy in different ways and you can start to respond to that misattunement by kind of transmuting it and figuring out ways to find the attuned energy when in other relationships you know with other gifted people typically and then respond to the misattunement differently because once you you know basically it's like I say to all my clients once you're not starving anymore you know you don't treat the same way so um so and it changes and a lot of people say like I don't I'll never I'll never feel like a knob I'll never feel okay it'll never be you know and I'm like yeah yeah I mean I know because I've been there and I've said those same things and I also know that once you're not starving anymore even if you don't have a feast yet um or even if you'll never have a feast I mean for some of us that are really really really far outliers we may never have a feast maybe not a feast as big as we would ideally want it so to say an intimate candle a dinner maybe or may but but intimate not a feast and but once you have that then you know you do treat food differently and you can maybe appreciate sweets without stuffing your face with them or whatever you know and it's so they may not be the most nutritious things and you can you can calibrate you know how how you behave with all of the different social nutrients that are around um and that sense of choice really does come with becoming an adult and I mean there is of course some stuff that kids can do you know kids who are dependent but once you're an independent adult then you do have these choices and that's a lot of what we're doing with clients who are helping them work through those choices since we're in the coaching role we're not you know necessarily going through what are the specific traumas and how they happen and you know with whom and all of that but we're kind of picking up on the feelings that are a result of the traumas so the sense of alienation the sense of starvation the sense of you know malnour this this chronic malnourishment these themes around you know masking not legitimizing the disability any disabilities that might be present whether that's related to giftedness or not you know and just the side that like we were talking about earlier just the side that can't be capable all the time you know side that just needs stuff like like a like a kid needs stuff and you just need it and there's no way you could be self-sufficient with that or it's like almost like redefining our humanity and Jennie talked about this a lot about like yeah I get to be a person too because so many people that I see both peers and clients we've it's like we can colonelize this I must be always capable I must always be spinning those plates and then the moment that a need arises or a place where we could not complete it without another then it becomes a shameful thing and it need not be it's recognizing that the paradigm of forced self-sufficiency is actually a trauma-based paradigm and well the real thing of being human is that we need each other yeah exactly and I think something essential with that is like the whole concept of goal setting and values determination like I kind of said at the beginning is social yeah um there's a certain amount of validation that we need from others even if we're super introverted there's a certain amount of validation we need from others um to celebrate our unique individuality so including our goals and our internalized values and stuff. And if what's happening, what I've seen with a lot of people, and I was there 20 years ago as well, maybe not even that long ago, was that I wasn't getting validation for what my goals or my unique value system was. And so it was like, I wasn't alone in a way, but I wasn't with other people who got what I cared about and understood and validated my values and stuff. And so I had the sense of like, I have to kind of like, you know, the achievement model. I have to achieve and then I will sort of earn this connection piece or whatever. - Yeah, I totally super-resonate with that. That was like that for me as well. - Yeah. - Yeah. And that's a really, really common one that I think both of us hear from clients a lot. - Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't feel like a deserved, well, even a deserved is not a good word, but just like what I said before, like an organic, yeah, we're there for each other, we cheer for each other, we appreciate each other for who we are. It's more like, if I only can scale that one mountain, then I will dot, dot, dot fill in the blanks. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And even that aspect I think is an area of trauma for many people, like that they're living their life according to values that are not theirs. And that's their social connection. And so it's very confusing. - Yeah. And it's like, it's depleting because it's like you scale that mountain. And then there's just another mountain. It's endless mountains forever and never the sense of reward. Or like, if there is reward, it's like a short lived sense of, okay, I did this. - Well, and I mean, you know, I think any life is scaling mountains forever. I mean, that's kind of the nature of the beast, but the thing is, are you scaling the mountains? They're interesting for you. - Yeah. - Because if I'm scaling the mountains, my mom wanted to see her whole life. Well, I may find some interesting things along the way, but it may not be, you know, the space I wanted, I always long to explore. And so it's going to feel empty somehow. - Yeah. - Yeah. And therefore there's not that sense of intrinsic motivation and then intrinsic joy, but then you could share with somebody else. - Yeah. - Yeah. I kind of want to weave this. Let me just think for a second. What we were saying before with this and what I'm trying to think about is, you know, just how to say it. This is a succinct way, which is, yeah, there's this aspect of having like a person, a gifted person in front of me, for example, whether they're a client or a friend or whoever was just discovering that they're gifted. They know that they're traumatized and sort of like illustrating all that we've been saying when they first talk to you or me or any of the other coaches or somebody who's been a bit further along in their gifted discovery. And then there's an ease and conversation where they could say whatever and just open their mouth and don't have to translate or they start like apologizing and then the other person's like, "No, no, I totally understand what you meant." That only starts to happen in that spontaneous sort of nervous system, to nervous system gifted connection that allows for those intrinsic values and intrinsic qualities that the person has to emerge that were sort of submerged under the shame and under the label like, this is one of your flaws. Yeah. You talk too much or you like care too much or you make everything so complicated or you're so perfectionistic and then to give to people, start to talk to each other and then all of the things, all of a sudden stop being flaws and can be recontextualized. As just another wonderful part of the other person. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, they almost. Go ahead. Oh, I said that too. What were you saying? I was just going to say then they become sort of part of the backdrop, you know, like creative tools, backdrop kind of thing as opposed to this thing that, you know, it's like if I don't know if you're the only one with a nose and then every single, oh my god, you need to get this thing on your face and it's a. then if you. then if you're like talking to other people's nose, then you're just like, okay, so that's a given. So now what? Like, what do we create? What do we do together? Exactly. And that's really not. So yeah, everybody has a nose. What's the big deal? All right, like why are we even talking about this? But it's very interesting because before clients have that experience, right, there's a cognitive piece that keeps circling around. It says like, I will never achieve that level of attunement. I will never achieve. And then after having the experience, this is what you were saying, John, but like actually getting to have some food, not starve, the experience like post-satisfaction of that hunger is like almost like changes the whole perspective of life and what life is about. Yeah. That makes sense, I'm just saying. Oh yeah. Like we're trying to moment, even that one first moment, all of a sudden can propel a huge unraveling of how we thought life was supposed to be. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And this is exactly what we're talking about in terms of the values and goals. Yeah. It's even the way we imagine our values and goals. From the point of view of, let's say, being unconventional in the neuro-neuronorm world, if we're with the non-neuronorm, if we're with people that reflect back to us, you know, their nose and our nose, then it's like, there's this sort of basic reality, this basic reality weave that then you just think, okay, so that's my basic. And now I can build off of there. But if your goals are like, just gotta get that, just gotta get that, just gotta get that. It's almost like you have this obsessive quality. And there's, I mean, it's like when you're starving and you just, all you can think about is getting food. That's it. So I mean, I say like the cartoon characters, when they're starving and they start between like a roasted chicken and everything they see. And then if you've lived like that all your life, then of course you're going to think you're surrounded by roasted chickens. That you're not. That's right. And when food comes into your belly and you're not seeing roasted chickens, I mean. Right. Exactly. And so the whole idea of like what your values are and what your goals could be, it changes the whole basic formula and what you have to work with, what you have to work from. Changes and also having the possibility of nourishing creative partners and stuff that also changes things. Then you're not just the solo creator and the solo person that just has power through and figure it out. Yeah. And I mean a lot of the stuff that we're talking about applies to some degree, to some gifted people, some of the time. I mean, it's not everybody's like this all the time and we've all only suffered in life. I mean, we're talking about a very specific experience that a lot of gifted people report. I'm not going to go say every person is going to have this exact thing in their life. A lot of people grew up with really good support. Maybe they grew up in a gifted family. Maybe they went to a gifted school. Whatever. Maybe they've been surrounded. And so they haven't had as much misattonement as some others of us. But it's important to kind of think about where one is at on the spectrum. And not just qualify that there might have been times in periods in one's life where this was going on. And that can still have an effect even if the whole of one's life wasn't in this kind of vein. Yeah. Yeah. It's not all or nothing. It can be a season one event, a series of events, all our lives. And that's going to make for a very different presentation in some ways. But it still deserves to be acknowledged even if it was just one time. Right. Which leads me to one of the areas of shame, which is other people suffered so much. I just watched the news and see how much people suffer. I'm not going to complain about, you know, quote, gifted trauma that's absurd. Yeah. And you're allowed a lot. Yeah. There's a lot of shame around that. And it's interesting because a lot of the shame comes out of our kind of, you know, in this constellation with a lot of the shame that came from, for example, I was, I had fun winning games, but I was, you know, always after a certain point, I was it started to get ashamed that I would always be the winner, you know. And so I would lose on purpose quite a lot to just balance things out socially. And success at work and just the different things. And I would kind of try to temper that so that it didn't stand out so much. There was a lot of shame around just, I don't know, outrunning people, so to speak. And so even with that aspect, like that's like one star, then this other star, then the constellation comes together and it can all get kind of mixed in, you know? I feel like, oh, I mean, I'm so much quicker than people. I have this brain and it's so much quicker than I can't complain about it. If I had maybe, if I was on the other end of the IQ spectrum, for example, and it was really struggling with deficits, then it would be like, it would be legitimate for me to complain. But because I have the other problem, so to speak, it's not a problem. And I should just be thankful that I have this brain. And it's like, yeah, and there's this whole other lived, real lived experience. And what I tell people all the time is like trauma is registered in your body. So whether you're like a lion is attacking you or you are feeling like your gifted needs are ignored, your body's responding, your body does not care whether it's a world problem, a world problem, or whatever your body is like, I'm not going to survive. And it responds like the body, you know, like our animal body is a program to do. So it's not, I mean, what I'm usually helping people do is, like, kind of basically divorce the narrative in their head from the physical experience of it. And so it kind of just, the narrative, like, doesn't matter. Like you don't have to get attached to like, it's morally right or wrong to have that narrative, as you had said before, and you put it so well with that, like putting a moral judgment on whether I'm, you know, allowed to have this narrative, the trauma narrative or not or whatever, you just, you kind of just put that aside and go like, I don't need to have any sort of moral feeling on any of that. The reality is this got program is that this got programmed in my body. And it's still having effect. So yeah, it's still programmed in my body. And if I want to take care of myself, I got to do something about it. Yeah, it's like trying to, it's trying to deny the injury because it shouldn't be there. But it's still there. Yeah, but it shouldn't be because the rest of these really well. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to ask about, um, about things that you do with your clients and working through this shame around the trauma. So I mean, obviously we talked to them about these themes of, you know, connecting with other gifted people, making sure that they're connecting and getting that nourishment. Are there other things that you would add in? Well, let me think about it. Um, a lot of what I do with clients is legitimizing the person under the shame. Yeah. So as to separate what was internalized. And that comes out actually quite organically, like we might be working on something else completely. And then these shame bursts come to light. Yeah. And then we talk about them. And then we're able to often separate. And then we're able to, like, who decided that you're not allowed to have a nose. And white and, and do we, is this still relevant? Um, so that, that's one of the things. And, you know what, one of the biggest things that I do in my work with clients is, is legitimizing pain. Yeah. And then, you know, I think, just, I, I, just in the same pain that we were saying just now, acknowledging that the pain is there, even as there is maybe joy, ecstasy, high levels of energy, creativity. Um, lofty goals, all these things. There is a deep pain and one does not cancel the other out. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, it's beautiful because I think, uh, it's what I'm working with a lot of my clients is a sort of let's say if I dare use the word a non dual approach. Um, in the sense of, you know, validating what happened then, validating what's going on now. And there's room for both. I mean, a lot of, I think, growing into psychological adulthood is learning to live with the cognitive dissonance of existence, which is that, you know, pain does exist. And it all exists together. And there's a certain amount that we have influence that we have on that balance. And I think, you know, both you and I have done a lot of work in whatever you want to call it spiritual, advanced spiritual development or advanced personal development, whatever take one wants to take on that. And, you know, it's kind of getting to the point where, um, you're choosing to focus on the positive, but in no way to ignore the negative so to speak. Yeah. So bringing it all in and realizing that, you know, um, a focus on the positive without denying the negative allows the two to blend together and lovely ways. If that, I mean, that could sound absurd to somebody listening like what is she talking about? Yeah, in holistic ways that creates a wholeness, right? Yeah. And what happens when, when that occurs is that you stop denying a part of just what's happening for you. You know, so all that resistance, all that denial of what's happening takes a lot of energy. Like denial is, is a is a psychological process that which takes a lot of energy. And maybe it was really a survival strategy for back then, you know, but then the question to my clients and the question I've asked myself over the years is like, okay, it was a survival strategy back then, but isn't it is, is it still adaptive for me? Am I dependent on something so much so that I need to deny it, you know, in order to keep surviving it. And the answer is always no. I mean, I'm no longer dependent on the parents or, you know, some degree of course independent on our culture, but for the most part, I'm a fairly independent person. And so I can say, okay, well, I'm going to generally focus on the positive, but allow that negative sometimes to be present when it shows up and sort of allow it to dissipate and the, you know, in the positive without fighting against it. Yeah, I would say for me, even the experience is that there's like a, like a second order, second level deep pain, even just from the action of trying to be in denial. Like, yeah, the, the moments where I've been able to really like accept a piece of my painful experience, even though I felt dream about it, there was a relief in just allowing that to be part of the wholeness that I, that it's like, I didn't even have to resolve the problem. I had to accept it existed and it all of a sudden was like, what are really yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's true. I mean, there's this, this incredible relief when you let go of the, the, the need to resist the thing. I mean, even with the shame, I mean, I'm not telling people you've got to get rid of that shame. Uh-uh. No, I'm like, okay, so it's there. Let's look at it. What do you want to do with it? Like it is an energy. You know, we can take it and turn it around to something else or channel it in a creative way or whatever. But it is an energy and it is there. So yeah, it all is. Like it's not. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I was reading something recently. I don't remember where I was talking about shifting from the problem based thinking because, you know, that that's the other, the way of thinking that we've been in all this time. I have a problem. I need to cut off from it. I have to solve it. I have to deny it. I have to numb it or medicated or whatever. And then all of us on the shame is no longer a problem. The gifted aspects of self are no longer a problem. Yeah, of something that is in my own like my own way of expressing giftedness can be very ecstatic in some ways. Yeah, it's like like, like, um, be holding that mystery. Yeah, embracing the mystery that I don't know the whole of who I am or what. Yeah. And I get to find out and that is very joyful for me. Yeah. Yeah. And I think another aspect of of it is that a lot of people are scared to let go of the resistance and stuff because in, in if they were like surrounded previously by, you know, in our world, you know, social environment. Social ecosystem, then if they would have let go of the denial, then it might have really overwhelmed people. Yeah, if they really lived in a non dualistic way, it might have really overwhelmed people. And so it's like also there's this kind of thing where it's like, let's just celebrate that we can even be looking at this stuff right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this has been a super, super fun conversation. Guys, we're gonna have to wrap it up now, but there's gonna be more coming, right? - Yes, there will be more coming, will be dealing with all sorts of interesting topics along our way here. So we'll be interested in your feedback on what's meaningful for you where you're at in your own journey with this. Because as we said, there's so little out there on it. And so we're shifting through many, many, many, many things, many aspects, many areas and aspects and areas to discover and connect to the gifted world. So whatever you all find, most interesting, most intriguing, most necessary for you, let us know. And we will bring that into our future conversations. - Yeah, so thank you all for listening. - Yes, thank you. - And it will be back. - And thank you to you, cutting. - Thank you, John. It's gonna be a pleasure as always. - Same. All right, bye everyone. - Bye.