Speaker 1: 1:27

what's going on everybody? Welcome to the show. This is the next level human podcast. I know some of you are seeing this on other platforms, um, for the first time. I think this is the first time I've been live on actually maybe I was with live with danny on substack but welcome. My name is dr jane tita. This is the next level human show and this is my good friend and colleague, justin Janoska, and we're going to take about I don't know, maybe 30 minutes or so to talk a little bit about subconscious wounds and the way I'll set this up and then I'll let you kind of get into it, justin.

Speaker 1: 2:05

Is that the way that Justin and I, the work that we do, we kind of are in this. You know, don't let me put words in your mouth either, but it feels like we're both. We're both in this in-between space where it seems to us that, you know, the trauma space is a space that both of us are really, really interested in, and but one of the things that we talk about a lot is the fact that most people really don't relate to having trauma and that's because they tend to see it as capital T traumas, so rape, war, physical abuse, you know, sexual abuse, that kind of stuff. But the people that you and I work with, we know that they're dealing with this all of the time and they're unconscious, and so one of the things that Justin and I like to say is that very few people have trauma, but everyone has mud my version of it and everyone has a cut, which is Justin's version of it and we'll get into this idea of mud and cuts, but maybe I'll set it up and essentially say it this way Most of us don't have trauma.

Speaker 1: 3:14

We've got drama, meaning that it's the story we tell about our suffering that determines the quality of our lives and determines whether or not we can heal from even physical stuff. If we start getting into more of the quantum metabolism, if we're going to use that kind of weird term but getting over heartbreak, you know, in our personal relationships, or mother wounds and father wounds, and, um, healing ourselves and our health, you know, uh. And and then dealing with you know things like financial and money mindsets and stuff like that. And so when we talk about the mud and the cut, I'll let you first define what you mean by the cut, because it's not trauma in the typical way. In fact, we all have it. It's just hidden, and so how do you see it?

Speaker 2: 4:03

Yeah, it's a great question and actually thinking about myself, right, because I could say that I had a cut and it probably was my parents' divorce, without even me realizing it, but I never would have called it trauma. So I can actually relate to probably most of my clients and yours, right. So it affected me for sure. You know, I think it drove me to have an anxious, preoccupied attachment style and these kinds of things and not feeling seen or not feeling secure within myself, right, but that's kind of what I mean and what we both mean, because there's like this sort of subconscious imprinting that happens and that's going to affect your identity and the way you view the world.

Speaker 2: 4:44

Right, I know you talk a lot about your experience on the baseball field, right, and that's kind of what that is. It's a very subtle kind of thing that you may not call traumatic, right, so call it whatever you want. I think mud and cuts are great words or acronyms, and that being continuous unconscious trauma, and the key word being unconscious, right, and trauma is not really what it is. It's just another way of saying an injury, but it doesn't look like, you know, the natural disaster or the sexual abuse that we mostly think of it as.

Speaker 2: 5:22

Yeah, so yours is continuous unconscious traumas, yeah, and the continuous thing is important because most of the time it's in line with um, you know, complex trauma, which really is, when we're looking at psychology research, that's more defining, uh, defined by um, uh, persistent, you know, chronic episodes of de-stressing and de-stabilizing events. So that means things like around not having your needs met over a period of time, many years, not feeling acknowledged or being belittled or criticized by a parent, growing up with an alcoholic father, things like that right, and that's kind of why it's subtle and invisible in a sense, because we're not. Even if we're really young, we're not going to know. Remember it right.

Speaker 1: 6:17

Yeah, and the fact that it's subtle means the fact that it's subtle and unconscious means we don't relate to it as having any real issues for us. And I love this idea of the cut. You know so, continuous unconscious trauma, subtle, continuous insults to the psychology. Mine is mud, misguided, unconscious decisions. And so from that perspective, it's the idea that we have things happen to us at times childhood development, teenage development, young adult development. Of course they can happen anytime in our lives where we don't have the knowledge and the wisdom and the experience to know how, the skill sets, the maturity to deal with those things. And that's why they're misguided, because things happen and we make this decision without the tools, without the maturity, without the wisdom, without the knowledge, without the know-how. And essentially it is also unconscious, subtle in a sense. In other words, it doesn't necessarily follow us around.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Now it is true that capital T traumas can major, shocking, severe, sudden emotional event that we're aware of. They talk about that in the research as SEES events, s-e-e events, sudden or severe emotional events. We're talking about subtle emotional events, subtle and continuous emotional events, this mud and this cut, okay. So, this being the case, I think to myself I don't think I've ever met a client and as I work as a clinician and a coach and a counselor those are all the domains I've worked in I don't think I've ever seen a client or a patient not have mud and cuts. How do you see it?

Speaker 2: 8:05

I mean, after doing this for quite a number of years, I think it's now easy to reflect back and be like, yeah, that client had something, had a cut, had mud, so did this one. Now I can't unsee it, it's all I see. It's like I'm very much focused in on that. The question is, do they see it? And that's, I think, half the battles. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But you know, I think it's important for other people to kind of help them look in a different direction, because sometimes we need that right. For someone to point it out to us like a therapist would perhaps right.

Speaker 1: 8:38

Well, yeah, and the way I oftentimes say that and you and I were just talking about this before we went live I oftentimes go. They won't see it, but life will, their life will, and what I mean by that is that. And this is this is where maybe we get into a little bit of the woo. Right, it's this idea that you know, call it what you want, call it God, call it universe. I call it source consciousness.

Speaker 1: 9:01

If you're a physicist, maybe you call it a zero point field, but it's this idea that life, there's this information that is surrounding us, from our consciousness that is dialoguing with us. Let me make it more simple. If you have recurrent patterns in your life, repeated obstacles that come up again and again, stuck emotions that show up year after year after year, to me this is your consciousness field sending you feedback. So maybe you don't relate to the mud or the cut or the trauma, but ultimately you are stuck in your patterns and as those repeated patterns, recurrent obstacles, stuck emotions, struggles on repeat, that basically tell you whether you have this or not. And so I don't think most people are going to relate to this work from the standpoint. If I say to you do you have subtle, continuous, unconscious traumas that have impacted your life. They're going to be like well, no, I don't have any traumas. I don't remember anything. I had a great upbringing.

Speaker 2: 10:02

So did I, by the way.

Speaker 1: 10:03

I had an amazing upbringing, but I did have events in my life that caused these repeated patterns, recurrent struggles, and let me just just to make it tangible, then I want to hear what you have to say on this, just just so everyone knows. So I had an incredibly loving mother and father. My mom was incredibly emotionally volatile, though, because she had a very difficult relationship with her mom, and so growing up I could run around the house with mud on my feet One minute. She was fine with it. The next minute I'd leave a sock on the floor and be getting spanked and she'd be freaking out. I'd frequently find her, you know, sobbing in her room and stuff like that. That stuff made me distrust. I didn't know, but I formed mud, misguided, unconscious decisions around female energy and female emotions. So then, when I started dating and then it impacted every relationship I was in how did I know? Repeated patterns, recurrent obstacles, stuck emotions I did not trust female emotions.

Speaker 2: 10:59

That's how this shows up. Yeah, and that makes me think about my patterns, because I didn't, for a long time, think about how it could stem from. I didn't know where it came from. Right, I think my uh experience with my parents splitting was maybe the foundation for why I had my patterns, which was, um, you know, attracting people who were anxious like me and codependent, basically is what it was Right. But that was life showing me, I think, and I hit my rock bottom with that at some point and realized, and you know, that's kind of when, I think, I met you and then, um, I was like I'm going to be alone for three years and that's what I did and I worked on myself and that's now I'm like completely in the other direction. But that's how you know. Yeah, and any of you listening to this, who've had a dark night of the soul.

Speaker 1: 11:46

Yours happened fairly early, right? You're like you were 10 years, yours was like early thirties, mine was early forties. I went through my sort of dark night of the soul. I actually see life as having really two phases. There's the conditioning phase, where you get a lot of the mud and cuts, and then there's the awakening phase, where you have to learn that fault is irrelevant and you wake up to taking responsibility for the mud and the cuts and you wake up to taking responsibility for the mud and the cuts Right. And once you wake up and to me one of my favorite philosophers, alain de Botton I don't know, I'm not French, I don't know if I'm saying that Alain de Botton he has a quote that I love, that is. It basically goes it's not the midlife crisis, it's the midlife awakening and it is our final chance to escape adolescence. And I love that quote because I do think you know no judgment here, but I do think, ultimately, what the hallmark, quintessential nature of a teenager adolescence is is they see everyone else's shit but are blind to their own Right. And until you take responsibility for your own stuff and wake up to that and take responsibility for the mud and the cuts. I think you're stuck. And I'll say one more thing about this, because I know this is going to be triggering and I want to see how you deal with this too, and I think it'll be triggering to some of you listening to this as well.

Speaker 1: 13:05

To me, this is all about the victim state and the victim mindset and learning to leave the victim mindset and the victim state behind. Now, I know that's triggering, so let me just spell this out. Then I want to get your take on this. It is my conviction that everyone must be a victim for a time.

Speaker 1: 13:26

It is a requirement for healing to be the victim, and all of us humans, if we want to be good humans, we have to have a degree of compassion and empathy for people who have been harmed and gone through difficult stuff as humans, we all have. That being said, and it's not up to us to say when it should happen, by the way but, that being said, every person, I also think, must eventually leave the victim mindset behind in order to heal, and many don't. And again, no judgment there. I know it's the hardest thing we do as humans, but to me, what we're really talking about is the idea that I refuse now to be a victim. When you went through your thing, right where you're, like this dark night of the soul three years alone, at some point in there you had to recognize this is me and my issue and I have to do something about it.

Speaker 2: 14:13

Yeah, I was a victim for a few months. I think. With that I can tell you that. No, uh, I'll be completely honest about that, and I don't know, I can't remember why or what catalyzed me to not be that way. Um, I think probably having you around helped a bit, but you know, you need, you need, you need somebody or something to shake you out of it If you, um, can't see it on your own and I don't know, I think, I think perception is obviously the hardest thing there, cause you maybe don't know any other way, and that's like, well, what was me?

Speaker 2: 14:47

Kind of thing. And, um, you could say the same with a chronic illness, like, if you don't know any other options, well, of course, you're just going to stay that way as a victim, Right, and I think that's what helped me is because I knew that at that time that I learned, rather, that there is a way to transform this, alchemize it, and you know, as you call it, pain is a purpose or tragedy and the triumph, right, kind of thing. And that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Yeah, it's almost like you. I think the way the shortcut to beating the victim state and I think the shortcut to and I'm curious what you think about this but I think the shortcut to healing the mud and the cuts is essentially number one the authentic telling of our story of struggle. That, I think is important. Like this is why I think 12 steps works really well. It's really about and if you parse that research it's really about telling your story, and you know I love Brene Brown's quote here shame cannot survive the light of day. So, first, I think your authentic telling of your story of struggle is critical. The next piece of that, though, is full ownership and integration of what's happened, meaning that we don't forget about it. We don't distract, deny blame, complain, whimper, whine, avoid an attack right, that's the victim state going into the villain state, but instead we go okay, this happened to me.

Speaker 1: 16:04

I have gone through this process. I have learned some things. Now, not only do I tell the story authentically, some things Now, not only do I tell the story authentically, but I look for people going through the same story who are a little bit behind me, that I have some lessons to teach them, because they're going through this struggle and I help them. So I think those are the two stages. One tell your authentic story of struggle. Number two find people suffering from the same hurt you yourself have suffered and look to help them learn the lessons you yourself have already learned. And I think that's how you begin this process, and the beautiful thing about that is that can be chosen at any moment.

Speaker 2: 16:40

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, and actually that's what I think I did without even knowing at the time, subconsciously I probably probably did, but I didn't really think about it because I was already doing this line of work with helping people with sickness and illness. But obviously I didn't deal with that myself. But I think with the emotional pain and you can see that in clients, you have a different awareness around this. You can kind of see like their own cuts in a sense. Again, didn't see it then, didn't call it that then, but I think that probably helped me in a lot of ways. Right, as you say, when you kind of help other people heal, you heal yourself. And that's essentially what I did, I think, and I really, really shifted me out of it the most.

Speaker 1: 17:24

Yeah, I actually think that there is no healing until you begin to help others heal. It's like the final healing happens in that process. So we don't have a whole lot of time for this. Like another 15 minutes, let's uh, instead of making this a dialogue about um. Another 15 minutes, let's uh, instead of making this a a dialogue about um. You know what's gone wrong? Tell me your, tell me the ways that you deal with helping people get over their cut, and then I'll go through, like what are the steps? Like what are the steps that you know, you and I basically walk people through to help them get over this subtle, continuous, unconscious drama that is stuck in their nervous system. By the way, I think we would both say not just stuck in their nervous system, but stuck in their biofield, in a sense, which that's where we could have a whole nother conversation about how this gets turned into physical illness.

Speaker 2: 18:11

Right, and that's mostly the connection I'm making these days is with physical illness. But yeah, how to work through this. I mean, the interesting thing is there's so many different ingredients, as I call it, and I that's kind of how I think about it, because people nowadays I'm sure you see it too really latch on to you know it's psychodynamic therapy or in DR, hypnosis or talk therapy or whatever it's out there and like I do this thing and that's going to be the thing that solves the issue for me, when a lot of times it doesn't, and then they move on to the next thing and then to the next thing, like a checklist, and they're often disillusioned and disappointed. Right, and there's a whole, I think, a reason behind why I think there are shortcomings with these therapies.

Speaker 2: 18:55

But the way I was trained before I went to do my doctorate degree and what I'm working on now, it was all about mind body medicine. It was a lot of telling your story and using, you know, philosophy from Buddhism a lot. That's what I learned right away from these therapists and teachers of mine, so I was already immersed into that and it was really eye-opening, because that really was the healing of medicine was compassion and kindness and, um, you know, acts of service and doing these kinds of things. But I think to your question, it is not so much a logical thing that we can, um, really talk. I always tell people like you can't, I can't talk you out of an emotion you don't want to have into an emotion you do want, or I can't talk you out of a behavior you don't want to have into yeah, because it's subconscious, so logical rational-based stuff ain't going to work, Right?

Speaker 2: 19:45

So, especially if you're in a codependent relationship or a trauma bond, you're not going to talk them out of that. So it really comes down to the somatic, physical level and and cause it's. You know, it's really entrenched in your nervous system, right? So how do you teach the body a new language of safety and peace and love and and it's gotta be at a deep emotional experience and embodied experience, and there are a lot of ways to do that, I think. Just conceptually, that's kind of how I think we need to look at it. And that's where you know other modalities are more effective than talk therapy. That's usually prevalent right now.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, I would agree with that and I come at it from a similar angle and then I'll just make an addition to that. To me, I look at it like because this stuff is subconscious the first types of tools and there's many that can do this, but the first type of tool is a tool that can be unconscious. So you want things that can get into the alpha and theta brainwave states so that you can loosen up the default mode network and begin to see some of those belief structures that are there, that form your identity. There's many tools that can do that. There's memory reconsolidation, there's EMDR, there's others. Obviously, psychedelics can be really wonderful for this, but those things alone obviously to your point.

Speaker 1: 21:10

That's why people have to keep going back, because it's not just about rewriting the story and finding the unconscious story and drama. It's also about rewiring the emotional holding patterns and nervous system and then it's about retraining the habits and behaviors. So what I think is going on in this space is that most people will focus on one area of that. So rewrite, rewire, retrain, they all have to be done. But what happens is certain tools only focus in certain areas. So, let's say, alpha and theta brainwave state work like hypnosis and you know breath work, you know and stuff like that Dimensionalized consciousness work. That's the rewrite phase. But then you got stuff like you know that rewires the nervous system. This would be stuff like maybe like Joe Dispenza's type work or stuff like that. It's more about the rewiring, the emotional stuff.

Speaker 1: 21:55

But then you also have the old coaching stuff, tiny habits and logic-based insights in therapy and coaching.

Speaker 1: 22:02

So I think therapy and coaching doesn't always seep as deep as we want because these other tools aren't there.

Speaker 1: 22:09

Now a lot of therapists are actually starting to use some of these tools, but I think if you understand that all three need, you need to have the all three tools. You need to have a rewriting tool that gets in that alpha theta brainwave state and you know that default mode network and starts looking at the belief structures. You need to have the rewiring phase that rewires the emotional holding pattern and nervous system. Then you have to have the retrain phase, like what's actually happening in the real world, and I think that's why it's so difficult, because all three of those things need to be there. They're these, these tools like EMDR and stuff like that that they don't do at all and so you need, you know, a therapist or a practitioner who knows how to put these things together, and right now I think we're in the wild, wild West in that that area, so we're making a lot of progress, but not everyone has put these tools together in that way, so I don't know if that's that's how you see it.

Speaker 2: 22:58

I do see it that way. It's too compartmentalized, right, because people will tell me I see a psychotherapist for this stuff and then I go see a somatic person for this and an energy worker for this.

Speaker 1: 23:08

It's like you need an integrator, right, you need someone who can integrate all that.

Speaker 2: 23:12

Yeah, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense because you are getting different pieces of support from each of these people. I'm sure it's helpful, but is it really creating the change that you want? And you find a lot of times it's not, and you wonder why. And I think actually one thing that's lacking, and maybe you see it this way, is they don't have a lot of homework, we'll say, or things to do between sessions or meetings. What are they doing? Meditating and journaling. Is that really enough, right? Because that's what they're often told.

Speaker 1: 23:44

Yeah Well, the meditating and journaling is the rewrite and rewire. So there I look at like the, the exposure therapies, and that's where CBT and stuff like that can be really useful. You need to have those exposure there. So none of my clients go away without homework. That is challenging for them. Like, hey, you're going to have this conversation or you're going to do this particular thing in real life because your brain needs to see it.

Speaker 2: 24:05

That's what's missing, right, that's probably half of it that people are missing, and that's why I think it's hard to you know, get long lasting change. They feel good for a while, but then they're kind of back to old, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:19

And I would add one more thing to this, and then I want to see your thoughts, and then we can wrap, because I know you're in a hurry. So here's the way I see this too. I also think part of this rewrite phase. Let's just talk about this rewrite phase for a minute, because to me, what typically happens here is it's what do we mean by rewrite? It's not erase, it's, it's a form of editing, and so, and the way that I think that work needs to be done is it needs to be done in a way where you take someone's historical narrative and they have got to find a way in this process and we can make another quote, you know, sort of woo woo assumption.

Speaker 1: 25:01

But what if and this is the assumption I make I don't know if this is true, but what if? Every single thing that is happening to us as humans is exactly what is required for us to be exposed to, so that we can learn the lesson we didn't know we needed, so that we can get to the place we didn't know we wanted to go? And the only reason I phrase it that way is because how many of us in life have seen it be that way, where something happens and we're in this turmoil. It's the worst thing ever, but then we realize we gain an insight and understanding, and then we end up getting to a place we didn't know that we wanted to be. And isn't this also the hero's journey?

Speaker 1: 25:40

We hear about this in every great story that's ever been written for humans, and so, in a sense, in this rewriting phase, I think what we really need to be doing is that practitioners also need not to add another thing that we all need, but we need to understand a very deep understanding of story architecture and how to, when we're in that rewrite phase, to help people understand we can't jettison everything that happened to them.

Speaker 1: 26:04

We need to include that in their story architecture. We just need to help them rewrite it in a way that makes them the hero of that process. That's why the authentic telling of our story of struggle, number one and then going out and being like I've made the journey, I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm Harry Potter, now I'm here to help you, right, right, like to me, that's it. But if we try to just go, I'm going to not look at this stuff and try to erase it or edit it in the wrong way. In other words, we have a word for this, it's very prevalent, we all use it integration. I just think that we're not integrating correctly. We need to integrate the rewrite, rewire, retrain, but we also in that, within that rewrite phase, we need to integrate the historical narrative of the person into their future. Next level, human self. Those things, if those things happen, I think people I don't think they will. Not only will they thrive, but they will be the best possible versions of themselves.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Yes, and that's a key thing, because it's like getting out of survival mode is maybe the first goal, right, and being the being you know, quote, unquote normal. And then it's like, okay, now you're out of the ground, you're, you're standing. Now how do you rise into this next best version of you? Right, that's got to be the second phase, so people can do the therapies and all this stuff, but they're probably not doing this.

Speaker 1: 27:29

The second part yeah, right, yeah, and I would say, uh, the way I might say that in, it's like there's a breakdown to breakthrough phase, right where you're broken down and you break through. Now you're back to normal. And then I think the next piece is there's this idea of escape and evolution, and what I mean by escape is escape the culture level mantras, the culture level understandings, and basically own the fact that, a we're all unique. B there's never been another version of us ever on the planet, nor will there be again. And C as a result of that, we have unique work to do, and my theory is that, you know, what humans really want is not happiness, they want fulfillment, they want to matter and make a difference.

Speaker 1: 28:12

And so that last part that you talk about, whereas it's now escape and evolve, that's the part that I think everyone craves. But you're right, a lot of people do need to get through breakdown to breakthrough. Yeah, and no question about that. Yeah, cool, all right. Well, thanks for hanging out everybody. I know that's a quick little sort of mix up, but we got a roll and hopefully you enjoyed this brief discussion with Justin and myself. We will talk to you next time.