Dr. Thema Bryant - Renowned Psychologist & Trauma Healer | Break Free from Trauma Cycles & Reclaim Your Power

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professor and ordain minister she spent her life helping people break free from trauma reclaim their authentic selves and build meaningful connections my area of research is actually trauma recovery many times when people have experience extreme stress or trauma they disconnect and a part of what you disconnect from can be your heart so a part of the healing process is reconnecting with yourself including reconnecting with your heart many times we set it up as an either or because they do you want to be a successful person or do you want to be a well person it's not that's a false choice you can be both but you have to invest in both with a doctorate from Duke post-doctoral training at Harvard in leadership at Princeton in pepper dine she's shaped global conversations on mental health spirituality and social justice sometimes we are stuck in guilt and shame about mistakes we made in the past personal or business wise learn from it and move forward as former APA president she's been a leading voice in mental health equity through her best selling books podcast and sacred artistry she's guiding millions back to themselves today she's here to share her wisdom let's get into it welcome the success story on your host scott clary the success story podcast is part of the hub spot podcast network hub spot not only supports the show but they support entrepreneurs that's why it's such a huge fan of hub spot and I'm very grateful for hub spot for supporting the show because they help entrepreneurs and as a fellow entrepreneur I know it takes a lot to grow your business a lot of audience attracting a lot of sales a lot of marketing a lot of leads for a lot of channel management a lot of content a lot of long days late nights a lot of weekends a lot of wishing there wasn't easier way but there is with breeze this is hub spots new collection of AI tools it's easier than ever for marketers for entrepreneurs to attract audiences to increase leads to score customers the closed deals fast which means pretty soon your company will have a lot to celebrate visit hub spot calm slash marketers to learn more I want to start with sort of a main focus that you centered your work on so what made you focus on the heart as key to a mental health crisis yes so many times we ignore our feelings and people will even vilify how they feel and say you know I'm just focused on the logic or I make decisions based on what makes sense and can neglect what are the things that bring you joy what are the things that create despair or distress for you what are the things that you're grieving and so for us to be holistically well it requires us tending to our hearts and not thinking of our hearts as an afterthought or as a problem is a core part of who we are it's so interesting because I've always found that we make these decisions with emotions but then we justify them with logic but for some reason you try and trick ourselves into thinking that it was just logic the entire time so first of all just speak to why we do this and also maybe give some context as to how did your research go in this direction what was the inflection point to push you down this path yes absolutely so my area of research is actually trauma recovery so many times people have gone through very difficult experiences whether they were the direct target of the trauma or they love and care about someone who went through a traumatic experience individually or we see like collective trauma as well whether school shootings or a veteran after war and so many times when people have experience extreme stress or trauma they disconnect and a part of what you disconnect from can be your heart so when you ask people like you know how do you feel about that oh yeah I don't know or like nothing so they're just kind of numb so a part of the healing process is reconnecting with yourself including reconnecting with your heart and I feel like that's not an easy it's not an easy thing to prove if everybody just thought hey if I just spend like a little bit more time focusing on myself and focusing on how I feel but I think there I think there's something scary there about going and looking inside like what what actually happens with trauma like what's the scientific reason for that disconnect and you're talking about these really horrible examples of trauma but I think that most people have some sort of trauma childhood trauma things that they haven't dealt with things that are not as incredibly horrific as school shootings and war but just things to still impact them so what happens with this so it becomes really a priority for people to feel safe and so one way we can feel safe is you know when we hear the teenagers say like I don't care you know you tell them there could be a bad consequence I don't care and then some of us become adults who still convince ourselves not to care because we don't want to be hurt again we don't want to be disappointed again so then people think the solution is the illusion of control and if I try to control everything in my environment and try to control myself including my emotions then that feels safe to people then that can be falsely thought of as strong you know that this person is so strong nothing moves them or nothing phases them and so the heart has become hardened as a way to feel safe even though we're disconnected from ourselves and you feel like this goes counter like what is the what is the I guess the legacy or the traditional way to deal with this yeah so you know what happens is basically we can't heal a wound that we don't acknowledge so if I keep saying I'm fine but I'm actually not fine I'm just kind of diving into being a workaholic being a perfectionist being very driven but I think I'm fine then the negative consequences can show up in the way that I treat myself so that can be self neglect and self abandonment it may be the way that I treat people who are close to me because that doesn't feel safe or comfortable and so the way that I parent can be affected by my unhealed wounds the way I treat my partner can be an effect of my my unaddressed hurts and so it is important that we start to tell ourselves the truth that we have been through some things that were disturbing or that were upsetting that had an impact and that we then open ourselves up to being transformed to making a different decision so that my wounds are not running my life and I think that so you're saying most people don't even realize that they have these these yeah especially if as you mentioned if it was a childhood wound then people will say oh no that's just my personality right because they develop this armor so early they don't remember a version of themselves before they were so defended or cold or hard and so what I say is that's actually not you that's your wound you never got to develop a freely flowing you but you can you can develop that now even in adulthood we can develop it and then when this when they don't heal these wounds for the average person listening to this who is a high performer in their work or in their business or just in life they just want to kill it at everything doing credible how do these wounds manifest because I think that part of you teach so much in terms of healing with yourself with others but nobody can heal if they don't even recognize to your point that they have a problem so how do these things show up in your day to day yeah you may be financially successful resume incredible but my question would be how are you in the middle of the night by yourself right because many of us can outwardly perform that that's our way of coping is to stay busy but as you were alluding to for some people it's scary to be still and let truth show up so that's why some of us are workaholics you know you want to be so busy because you're either running in pursuit of self-worth or running from the stigma and shame of your past and so for you to actually be well not just look good on paper this is what we're talking about tending to your heart and it also can affect the way you show up in the workplace we've all had that supervisor or boss who was very controlling very dismissive very dishonoring they were not well they're on top of this business mountain but they're not a well person and so many times we set it up as an either or we say do you want to be a successful person or do you want to be a well person and it's not that's a false choice you can be both but you have to invest in both right so we've invested in the business part have you invested in the inner part yeah because I think that I'm just thinking about some of my friends that have been like ridiculously successful from a financial standpoint and you know they they have their exit or they build their business and then the relationship with the kids isn't great or they divorce their wife or they they and then they you see these crazy stories absolutely crazy stories of people that have had like $100 million dollar exit then they're depressed yes and they can't figure out why and it and they can't say that because everyone's going to be like whoa right I got a strong again now that he's so happy yeah to see the same thing happen with lottery winners right where people thought like if you made this amount that that's guaranteed happiness and people you know can live in a mansion and be miserable miserable you blend you blend a heart and you blend sort of how do I say this like you blend the heart and you blend science and then you blend soul all into this healing formula why is it important to bridge these gaps like traditionally I mean you were you were a president of the APA which was just phenomenal does traditional textbook APA say that you blend science and soul and heart into healing somebody or is this a sort of a new novel idea so one of the beautiful things trend that's happening in psychology is an increased attention to our spirituality or faith or religion which returns psychology to its roots that it's not just about your cognitions but to really think about ourselves holistically so your thoughts your emotions your behavior your sense of what is sacred to you your relationships and community so it's an important part and we have you know well established research of these things as what we will call protective factors that when you go through the difficulties of life the stress of life having a sense of what's sacred to you and or having community those things can protect us and help us to deal with life challenges okay so that makes sense so you do have to account for all the factors that impact your day like you can't heal yourself fully by saying I'm gonna I'm gonna logic myself into doing some inner work and some and some internals and some internal searching but I'm going to remove the emotions out of that I'm gonna remove the spirituality out of it which I think that's what people tend to do people that are high performing logical people like how do I fix everything with a solution or a template or a playbook and you're saying that's the wrong attitude to go into any of this yeah you want to say I'm not gonna ignore or censor parts of myself I want to be fully grounded in truth as always say you know to ourselves what parts of you do you miss what parts of you were you taught to suppress or to ignore um that in order to be successful I can't be connected to feelings or in order to be successful I can't have relationships so there are these false notions that we've been given and that we then go and teach the people after us you know some people who were mentored to believe that these things were true and yet maybe the person who was mentoring them still has some brokenness or has some aspects of their life that are unfulfilled I just want to take a second and thank cornbread ham for supporting today's episode now cornbread ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really just shut off from work and what makes them special is how cornbread ham crafts them they only use a flower of USDA organic hamplants that's the best part for the purest most potent experience no fillers no artificial fluff just clean full spectrum goodness in delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor I keep them in my night stand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing and I love how transparent they are too every batch is third party lab tests it's you know exactly what you're getting and they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners all listeners can save 30% off their first order just head to cornbread ham dot com slash success and use code success a check out that's cornbread ham dot com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing dummies so how can you tell if a personality trait is serving you or maybe hurting you because some people again some some people have adopted these personality traits they've built their entire career off it what are the signals that things are broken in your life yes so you know you look at what you gained by being a certain way but you also want to count the cost right so if I say well you know the key to being successful is I only sleep five hours and that's way I'm working when other people are sleeping and that's the key to success I get more done because everybody else is asleep right okay so you got a couple of extra hours of sleep I mean a couple extra hours of work but what did you give up by that right what did that cost you not only during that time and we could even say what was the quality of the work you were doing right so I could be sitting in front of a computer but if I'm drained and empty then like what am I producing out of that fatigue and then I also require that from my team who are the people who could have been good contributors to my team but left because of these unrealistic and humane expectations so you know what does it cost and then I would encourage people to look for other models so you may have thought that is the key because that's what you saw someone you admire do are there any examples of people who do it another way right it's so refreshing if you're ever in a work setting where the supervisor or boss is actually a kind person so it pushes back against this myth that to be a successful leader you have to be like harsh right it's like yeah another way it had like do we have evidence of that we do have evidence of that of course and I think that you know um you're speaking about leadership and like the work context but I think that a lot of people because I bring this up quite often on the podcast like look at your family relationships to obviously that's a huge signal of success because again in work it's one thing but some people put so much of themselves into work that everything else sort of falls by the wayside and this is why you see people after building anything significant and they have a divorce or their kids hate them because they're not they're not around and I also would say it maybe just tell me your thoughts on this because I think it's a very interesting idea so people will push back and say hey I'm doing okay with my work and my relationship at home is okay like I mean we're not fighting but I think we get so used to status close and base lines and the norm and for a second like I would just gonna go ahead but I was gonna say I just want people to not think about okay it's not like it's not like we're cheating on each other and divorced and screaming but like could it be better right that's so important because sometimes our bar is so off our standard is so off and we're taking people for granted there isn't joy there but you said like no one's leaving we've committed to staying but like I always say like it's not how many years do you have together how many years where each person was actually joyful well each person really felt the other one had their back right where each person was fulfilled in it right and so for us to be intentional and that's not just about what I'm giving to the other person that nourishing my relationships always comes back to me as well that it it because it's nourishing for me to be in a well-ordered garden and I don't even think that I don't think people understand that I think that sometimes the relationship becomes this thing that they have to take care of but it's not in their mind it's like it's so far from a point where it can actually come back and benefit me that it's just I can't it's hard for them to see themselves getting to that point there's like this this huge divide but based on your work the goal is not to just jump in and triage the relationship I think the goal is to start to do the work on yourself first right yeah so where do you start yeah so a big part is when we talk about self-compassion because when I'm compassionate towards myself I take better care of myself so that can include the rest that includes what I eat like eating to live that includes movement exercise that may include individual therapy or couples therapy it also includes immersing yourself in things that bring you joy that's a way of taking care of yourself how it thermon is theologian said do the thing which makes you come alive because far too few people are actually alive and so then it's like the care of my physical body but also like emotionally and spiritually you know what feeds me what nourishes me that will also include setting boundaries so what are the things and the people I need to say no to to better honor myself and to protect my peace and my wellness that I can't keep saying yes to everything being pulled in a million directions it's not good for our health and also we don't do those things well because we're too spread then and so the I call the blessing of boundaries so bless yourself with the holiness of no what am I going to say no to and that often for some of us those who are more on like the people pleaser part of the scale we probably need to pause before we answer right if someone asks you to do something instead of an automatic yes to pause sometimes get some more information because you don't know how much is being required by what they're asking reflect on it and know that you don't have to say yes to everything I just want to take a quick break and thank the Havspot podcast network for supporting success story for the past two years now the Havspot podcast network has other incredible podcasts like my first million now if you are an entrepreneur or you are ready to turn your entrepreneurial dreams into millions you have to listen to my first million it's a show that is revolutionizing business podcasting it's hosted by Sam parr Sean purrey this is a Havspot podcast network original it brings you unfiltered conversations with self-made millionaires who actually tell you how they did it if you want to learn how Alex Ramose built his fitness empire or how Sophia Amaruso turned nasty girl into a fashion phenomenon these aren't just success stories they're the blueprints for your own journey to the top each episode breaks down the exact strategies and hidden opportunities that you can use right now don't just dream about your first million learn how to make it listen to my first million wherever you get your podcasts I just want to take a second and thank cornbread ham for supporting today's episode now cornbread ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really just shut off from work now what makes them special is how cornbread ham perhaps them they only use a flower of USDA organic hamplants that's the best part for the purest most potent experience no fillers no artificial fluff just clean full spectrum goodness and delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor I keep them in my night stand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing and I love how transparent they are to every batch is third party lab tests it's you know exactly what you're getting and they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners all listeners can save 30% off their first order just head to cornbread ham dot com slash success and use code success at checkout that's cornbread ham dot com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing dummies fresh books is supporting today's episode and if you've ever wondered how successful entrepreneur stay on top of their finances while growing their business the answer is fresh books the numbers don't lie over 30 million people 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freshbooks.com slash pricing dash offer for 60% off I feel like everybody I don't know it just feels like everybody's trying to keep up all the time and you know what you mentioned about creating space to pursue what you actually find joy and what you actually love I don't think I can count many people that I know that are creating space in their lives I think that it's all very reactive I think that you have your work and you have your family and you have your kids schedule and maybe if you have some time you get to the gym but I think that what people live a lot of life reactively in the first step is to create that space because if you live life reactively you have no idea what joy is right can't yes and for some of us some people were raised to feel guilty for enjoying themselves to feel guilty for relaxing you know depending on your kind of family culture it may have been like a bad thing to quote unquote just sit around right if you had to always be doing something and so some of us have been made to believe that our busyness equals our worth so we're like I'm booked and busy I'm booked and busy and I have to have multiple streams of income and if I enjoy something and I'm not making money off of it then it's a problem and it's like no that's your joy that's your joy I think that that's most people yes I think that's most people sadly it is and in chasing something you know it's a societal setup to never have fulfillment to never have contentment for it to never be enough you know I practice in Los Angeles and so a number of my clients are very successful but even if they're having some form of success they're always looking at like who is a step ahead of them right it's like I'm in the magazine but how come I wasn't on the cover right it's always you know it's always insufficient how do I I love how you know the deeper get into this it's very obvious there's like a lot of friction in in in being happy in doing the inner work and finding that there's so much friction you just mentioned the good point society and I keep thinking about I want to talk about how to build relationship with others but I don't even think it's fair to go there yet because people are still trying to figure out okay you're telling me all the things that I'm maybe now aware of society setup social media setup comparison like everyone's saying they have to do more do more do more have to be productive have to make more money is there any like I don't know strategy I don't want to think make it sound so robotic but just something somebody can do right now who is part of this part of this all these signals all these inputs they're like I don't know how to shut off because my my wife my friends they're all playing this game of needing more and more and more how do I tune out how do I remove myself from the matrix so it's be yeah I think one of the things is actually celebrating our wins and celebrating the wins of our friends and family when we're so perpetually driven for more we don't even pause to enjoy like the good thing that happened right right and even you know you see people in the media and they're like so what's next for you and it's like they're currently touring on a film like a blockbuster but no it's what's next so it's like I want to sit in the beauty of this present moment right and we shall see what's next but in this moment I'm very excited about what I'm doing or what I what I've done and we can create that climate with our family and friends as well because some of them as you said are like off to the next and it's like no less less pause and celebrate this is awesome what you have done I think the more I think the more you get into the routine of celebrating and and and creating space for wins it starts to become more normal it's just not normal because you don't do it right you do it enough it starts yeah yes yeah and then you can shift the culture of your circle then that becomes the thing of like oh what are we doing to celebrate such and such right and then that becomes as you say it becomes the norm so along with the self compassion another piece that we want to work on is self forgiveness sometimes we are stuck in guilt and shame about mistakes we made in the past personal or business wise and so because we then don't feel worthy we're perpetually trying to outrun our past and so to give myself peace to be an imperfect person and yeah there are some things I didn't know five years ago ten years ago even yesterday right and I give myself grace to like not have to live in punishment mode the rest of my life but to learn from it and and move forward when you do that work and then you start to uncover some space in your life and you start to sort of find out what gives you joy what's actually what what is happening what is what is what is what are you healing yourself at this point is it sort of like the first step yeah you're starting to heal and you're giving you're rewiring your nervous system right so your nervous system when you're just constantly on the go is never settled and it our bodies weren't designed to always be stressed right the stress is supposed to emerge when we're in a place of danger and it helps us to then mobilize so we can get out of there or take action but some of us live in that perpetual state of stress so when I engage in things that bring me joy or things that are relaxing it gives my nervous system the message I'm safe I'm okay I can breathe and we make better decisions and our health is better when we have some of that more settled or peaceful part to our eating instead of always being on the go or in combat mode where we're fighting everything and everyone and then when you start to now you operate from a much healthier state of mind a much better place this is this is what you're talking about you're now healing you're healing your mind you're healing your heart and this is the internal work is there other ideas around internal work that people should know before they start to try and fix relationships with others right so a part of it can be healing the wounds from your past relationships so when you've had unhealthy past relationships you often you may have over generalized or you've come up with some cognition some thoughts some rules about how relationships work that were based on the dysfunctional ones you were in and so then you can bring that thing pattern to new people because you haven't healed it so I always say instead of jumping from one relationship to the next let me pause heal learn the lesson so I don't have to repeat the class if we've all these all these traumas that were like we're not aware of because we're healing our heart we're healing our soul we're just becoming a more centered we're setting our boundaries coming more centered person the traumas that we don't know that we had because like you mentioned before we kind of lived through it it changed our reality for lack of a better description and now that's our new reality how do we how do we understand what what happened and go back to that place and and figure out how it how we were before our reality shift right it is it depends on the age that you were at the time so you know if things were pretty much routine and pretty much safe until the person you dated at 17 or 22 then you can think about how was I before this and trying to recover or regain some of that for myself for other people who may have grown up in very stressful households where there was addiction or where there was any form of abuse or abandonment you may not know a prior version of yourself and so then it is kind of creating it from scratch and starting to recognize your why so become curious about you know why do I respond with such intensity when I'm dealing with someone who has some authority over me or some power over me how come other people seem to be calm in this setting and for me I feel like I'm in danger right so as I start to become curious and observant then I can start to connect the dots of you know maybe it's because the people I've encountered who had power over me used it in a harmful way and so now I'm always on guard for that to happen so of course that work is easier done if we're in therapy someone who can help you walk through that process but if you're doing it with self-help books and journaling it's that curiosity and observation and then there's I mean with your work you started to discover that the connect there was a significant connection between the self-work and the relationship so what so when you start to do the self-work what what happens with the relationships what's the connection well to start with when I work on myself who I choose is different right if I'm in a place of neglect and not feeling good about myself then a lot of unacceptable things will be acceptable because I figure like this is the best I can get or I should just be grateful they chose me I'm just glad they called me back after I texted them 10 times so those kinds of decision making what I like to say is problematic people approach everybody the question is like how long do you entertain them and when I feel better about myself I don't feel the need to convince people of my worth I don't feel the need to stay in toxic situations so long I'm more able to let things go or to recognize what aligns with me and also some of that desperation goes down because I enjoy my own company and then you know if I meet friends or a partner who align with that that will be beautiful but I'm not needing to like fill that spot today right yeah I can't tolerate myself then it's like kind of anyone who comes along I'm going to put in that spot because I don't want to be by myself what are some of the ways so you now now you focus on the right connections but say those right connections are in your life the people you work with the person you're dating or married to or say you already have those connections like you have your kids your kids are not new to your life they were always there you done some self work right how do you start to strengthen those relationships or how do you even to your point like understand if those relationships need strengthening which I think even if they're not bad like we sort of spoke about before they could always be better yeah so one of them is through deepening our communication so we may not have like problematic communication where people aren't like yelling and cursing at each other but our people actually sharing on the heart level and we can create that shift or that deepening by us introducing that dialogue so for example during the pandemic both of my kids were you know home doing school online and so at dinner we would have a conversation about you know what was the best and worst part of the day and I would share as well and my transparency about like the difficulty of us you know being at home or not getting to see friends that was like a permission slip to them for them to begin to share versus parenting that just as like you should be grateful or you know you should never be disappointed or sad or angry and so by me being more open it creates more openness in my relationships so you create more openness you have deeper you have start to have deeper relationships deeper conversations how do you strengthen these conversation these relationships if the person your work or you're trying to build the relationship with has not done the work that you've done because it does take two people to build the relationship and then you what you don't want say just using me as an example I do all this self work I'm trying to build a deeper relationship with my wife and you have an amazing relationship I don't want it to be construed by say say I don't want to people think oh my god it's got has to do a whole bunch of work and Gina's not happy by but say I want to do some work and and she hasn't done the work and then she's like what what's going on why are you acting so weird why what is this what is this new you that's and I think that it could be off putting for some for someone who's in your circle or even forget your partner a work a workperson a business partner it could be incredibly off putting because they don't have that romantic intimate connection with you they're just a almost like a business transaction relationship and you want and you understand that having a deeper more meaningful relationship with that person is going to be positive on the other side of it but they don't want to go down that same path as you or they don't understand what you've done yes I appreciate the question because for me it's so important not to like sugar coat things or just be like this motivation here like it'll be great uh it has its costs when you heal and change you'll discover some people like to the old you some people were comfortable with your brokenness some people were benefited from your insecurity you know by your silenced muted voice by you being a doormat by you never having any of your own opinions but doing whatever they say some people love that and so as you heal and start to look deeper and speak from a more deeper place then it will shift things it's a ripple effect so some people will shift with you and some people will fade away that's tough it is and I want to say too as it relates to uh marriage that they are different ways of working with ourselves so I find it really important for us never to get to the place where like our path is the only path so if they're not doing it our way then we're like they're not doing the work and you know an example that just comes up for me is working with a couple and the wife is really into like self-help books and the guy is just not a reader he's never been into books the whole time they were dating and now they're married and she was trying to frame it as if he doesn't read these books he doesn't care about the marriage it's like that's not true like when you when you got with him he went into books so but what are the other ways that he demonstrates his care and desire for you all to have a healthy marriage so yeah it's just important that we brought in our idea of what the pathways of what work self-improvement look like there has to be something about seeing seeing development through the lens of the other person like walking their shoes it sounds cliche but it's so true and I think that we've been so funny we forget like the most cliche common sense sayings when we when we try and build relationships but they are very true because if we're doing all this work and the other person shows support love camaraderie friendship in a different way what I found to be the not toxic toxic so wrong word but the negative part of doing the self-help and the self-work is you imposing that exact same thing on someone else and then you're trying to increase their standard without them even understanding that you're you're playing a whole different game right that's right yeah we make ourselves not only the center but the standard so then like if you're not doing what I'm doing then you're not ready or you're not serious or and yeah perspective taking and compassion and just more of an openness because the whole goal of this is not so that you think that you've done the work and now you're better than everyone else that's right then we got to start all over ah exactly exactly and I'm sure you see this I'm sure you see this for some people becomes the ego trip yeah then it's like now you still can't see yourself right because you have this like inflated a sense of self which we know that inflated sense of self is a cover for insecurity a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever gonna have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business it's important to hire well and find the right person but it takes so much time and it's so labor 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source of truth for your business you get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real-time data insights forecasting you're basically looking in the future of your business with actionable data whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning and net suite dot com slash Scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is net suite dot com slash Scott clary a shadow to Nord VPN for supporting today's episode I have to tell you a story so I was actually in Toronto visiting family last month and I went to binge some of my favorite Netflix shows I forgot and I realized that half of my US shows weren't available in Canada super annoying flipped on Nord VPN 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commitment because they offer a 30 day money back guarantee the link is in the episode description trust me it's worth checking out especially if you travel or stream content regularly that's nord VPN dot com slash success so when there's somebody who is knock on a strenny who's an important person in your life what's what's your advice to start building that you've done the work yourself you want to strengthen that relationship business personal otherwise they're not on the same page they're the boyfriend who hasn't read a book of the entire relationship what do you do so I would look at creating co-creating moments of joy together that are out of our norm so it may be like they don't want to read the book but the author is given some talk in town and so to see like they want to they you know they may be more open to hearing someone speak if they're an interesting speaker than like reading the whole book or you know going horseback riding or whatever it is like a different experience that can stretch us instead of remaining stagnant where you know all we do is like go our separate ways and we're like roommates but we're disconnected yeah I guess it's like you're kind of doing what you did for yourself you're creating space for joy because you're you're understanding that the majority of people do not have joy in their life they have they're on a hamster wheel they have all this commitment and they're always rushing to keep up and that's why you know a lot of times people will begin to think about their marriage or relationship just as obligation or duty or bills because what has been neglected in that is the friendship and it is the joy what would be the biggest when it comes to building relationships meaningful relationships like heart-centered soul-centered relationships what do you think is the biggest misconception about how to do it a big mistake that people make is trying to be who they think the person wants and not being honest so you know we we may think we're protecting their feelings sometimes we're like avoiding conflict but our emotions have a change so that we can have growing resentment and the other person have no idea that something's wrong so I would say that lack of communication and pretending to be okay with things we're not okay with when you harbor that resentment towards somebody for so long yeah I'm sure you see what show but I'm sure there's like physical health issues natural health issues all of it yeah including there's research on suppressed anger and women showing up with autoimmune disease it can show up in our you know respiratory system women and men our reproductive system digestive system so you know a lot around gut health is like connected to our stress levels so it is important that we express ourselves so that we can actually build something real if I'm having to pretend in your pretending we don't have a real foundation yeah and just some of the more difficult parts of relationships so trust issues betrayal conflict personal and professional you know the lessons sort of crossover to both what's the advice for somebody to maintain these relationships through conflict and then I'll ask about betrayal as well because obviously that's a huge one in work or with the cheating spouse partner something or even not even that serious so first of all conflict so you've done to you done this work how do you you have conflict with somebody you don't want to throw it all at the window what do you do yeah so one of the things with conflict is recognizing some things are not that deep right I like to say some things are not drama worthy so like I really like going off because of the and if there is a big like commotion over something that seems small then really that's not the issue is like what do you are really arguing about because it doesn't match the intensity doesn't match the topic right so I think a part of it is also recognizing that your spouse doesn't have to agree with you on everything some people like sincerely take disagreement as disrespect right of like how dare they disrespect me by having a different opinion now that's not disrespect they have their individual who had a different life experience than you so they land in a different place on this particular topic so you know a part of it when we're trying to find resolution can be does it have to be either or like whatever we're debating is this one of those way it could be a both and or is it like you know opposite perspective so we really have to choose and then like either who has more investment in it because for some things some of us may feel like I have a preference but I don't really care right like if I was going to choose I would pick this but whatever right versus the other person may be like I want this and it means a lot to me okay so you put that in the equation and then you can also you know consider some level of expertise right if one of the two people have like a finance background and we're making a financial decision well you know if we have a different perspective less think about maybe who has the experience on the topic and let that you know put some weight on the scales yeah no I makes it I like I like that approach a lot and then the second part to that would be the betrayal piece so when somebody betrays you obviously you probably have opinions about which relationships are worth maintaining which relationships you should exit out of given the opportunity if you do have that opportunity exit out of them what are some thoughts of people should consider if there's betrayal in the relationship yes great question and I will say you know in my clinical work I always leave it to people to decide right like good therapy is self-empowerment for people to honor their choices and also for me I'm not going to have people years from now saying you told me that wasn't me like you chose for yourself um but you know factors for people to consider um um is the person demonstrating consistent remorse because sometimes people apologize but if you bring it up a week or two weeks later they have a bad attitude like I thought you forgave me why do you keep throwing it in my face it's like this just happened and there's still hurt by it right yeah so consistent remorse and is it are they just upset they got caught or are they upset that they have jeopardized the relationship because they actually like don't want to lose this person um and then you know you can think about uh the pattern of it um you know for some people once is sufficient because I feel like if you did it once you'll do it again for other people they're like oh if it was kind of only once I'll give that a yes so you have to decide for yourself where that line is uh for some people it's the level of connection with that person uh like a one night stand versus like you can have a whole nother day down the street right yeah well uh you know all of those can be factors but what one of the factors that people often don't consider which I think is really important is what has been the state of the relationship overall right because if you felt good in the relationship then you may feel like that goodness was enough to fight for and that you want to like restore that versus if like the other areas of the relationship were already problematic and maybe the one thing you were holding on to was at least this person is faithful right so you're like uh they don't do this they don't do that but at least I can trust them well in that circumstance when the person breaks your trust thing you're like well now we have nothing yeah is there is there a way that you've seen nothing is a hundred percent certain but is there some way to understand if that person is sorry that they got caught versus sorry that they hurt you because I think that is a huge yes a huge factor in that decision right is their tone in response to you afterwards like I was saying if they're acting like it's a problem that you're asking questions right if they're acting like it's a problem that intimacy is now hard for you because of what they did see someone who who regrets it and feels for you will understand that you're not just a light switch so there are going to be consequences of their behavior so they will deal with themselves sit with themselves to be able to have the patience for your process and to keep showing up instead of then doing the mind game where you're the problem because you're hurt thank you net sweet for supporting today's episode now what does the future hold for business if you ask nine experts you're going to get ten answers bull market bear market inflation up inflation down honestly I just need a crystal ball but until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing they future proved their operations with net sweet by oracle which is the number one cloud ERP imagine having your accounting your financial management your inventory your HR all flowing together in one fluid platform here's what makes net sweet different it gives you one source of truth for your business you get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real-time data insights forecasting you're basically looking into the future of your business with actionable data whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions net sweet helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning and net sweet dot com slash Scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free go to net sweet dot com slash Scott clary that is net sweet dot com slash Scott clary you a lot of your work centers around relationship patterns being hard to break do you think that there is some times where a mistake a betrayal cheating is that not a pattern or is it the sign of something in the future that people should be more worried about it is true that the best predictor of future behaviors past behavior right it's like once someone does something you just know like they have the capacity for it right it's an option whereas you may feel like before that it was not an option to be considered so it can be sometimes you discover and I've worked with clients who have actually never been faithful it's just now they got caught right and they you know people who are transparent with me will say I'm not sure I can be like some people before marriage and during marriage just always had people on the side who knew or didn't know they were married um and so you know now that it comes to light they're having to grapple with uh like do I want to even try and do I believe I can you know you would think you know you'd want people to contemplate that before marriage but something for sure right and so now they're really thinking about you know can I really say with confidence that the rest of my life I'm going to be with this one person okay so it is important for for people to interrogate like do you actually want to be married if this is what this person's idea of marriage is of course some people are in a marriage where it's open and they just have the rules of as long as they're not at my house or whatever it is then like you know you can be with one of those people but for this person you know for them the commitment the covenant was this and you knew that right yeah oh um yeah having to really have some some both engagement truth telling with yourself but also learning new skills so you know with some people have them look back of like what are the pathways that often lead to the cheating so you can cut some of that stuff on off that happens earlier right so like if you're in the coffee shop innocently flirting with people right but often that is to have the results of like exchanging numbers or social media or you know so all those things you may say like I didn't do anything but it's leading somewhere right yeah and I think that you know on both sides of a broken relationship for both people who's always two people involved in a broken relationship um all the work you're talking about it's going to do two things for somebody who is a who is a cheater or somebody who betrays trust they're probably going to understand a little bit better why they're doing it and maybe that's the work that you're talking about in your book can actually help them stop doing it and on the flip side the person that is getting betrayed or cheated on or hurt now they're going to have the self worth and they're going to have the confidence I would assume to make the right decision about that person and potentially be with somebody who does honor what they want so on both sides right the work is for everybody and sometimes you know I say sometimes even if a relationship ends it could be a win for both people that is a painful experience but you can both grow in the aftermath and land on the other side as better people and better partners yeah I think that most people too who are cheating betraying assholes I think deep down they actually want to understand why they act the way they after why they're triggered or why they do the things they want to do and I think that they just have a hard time understanding where to even start the self work because I don't think most people outside of like some edge cases I don't think most people wake up every day and want to hurt someone right I want to know obviously you're not even thinking about the other person right it's not like I'm going here to hurt you they're usually not wanting that person to find out often it is a way of feeding the ego of feeling like here's this person who admires me or who seems to be into me and like there's no emotional labor involved right we can just show up meet up somewhere have this encounter and it's like all joy and no labor right then they associate home with like the labor of family and marriage and all of those things and you know some particular some boys and men grew up being told that like the number that you have is the reflection of your value at worth right more is that the enjoyment is actually not even so much the physical and sexual intimacy but the conquest right of like I got this one I so that's why they may put you in another category like once you're you said I do they're like okay I got them like put them over there right now who am I gonna get yeah and I think that I've heard this before I mean I know that a lot of your work focuses on relationships and that's that's a really important piece of everyone's life obviously but I've also heard that you know I wouldn't do business with somebody to cheat on their wife because if they can cheat on their wife then how do I know they're going to be loyal to me as a business partner if you're already hurting the person who's the most important person in the world to you right so yeah that's a good point we say like character integrity and also I should say the word discipline you know it takes off discipline to say I'm gonna say no to this temporary pleasure because my priority is this like long term yeah value what would be what would be one idea or one you can answer this one of two ways I would say one important idea from the book that I didn't ask you about that I should have that you want to leave with the audience or also it could just be the most important takeaway from the book that you think the audience should know that if they read the whole book and they only take one thing away what it would be yeah so I think an important aspect of the book that we didn't touch on is a chapter on how to release someone who doesn't love you and many people spend months if not years waiting for someone to choose them and you know holding on to this like fantasy or dream that one day it will happen and so you know it's important you're kind of the first step in that process I talk about is to recognize the truth which is you don't have to release them because they're already gone and they're already not yours so this idea like how am I gonna let them go it's like they're not with you yeah so uh and to know we're putting our lives on hold you know there could be people who would either love to be your friend if it's a friend love to be your partner um but because you're so tied up in this idea of who you thought it was gonna be and when you thought it was gonna be that you're like missing your life and so we also want to look at in those circumstances if that's a pattern or a cycle uh like why do I keep picking people who don't pick me or why do I keep picking people that aren't available um it may be that we're emotionally unavailable and so then I can pick people who are otherwise distracted and I never have to deal with actual intimacy and connection that's tough for people to come to terms with yes yeah it's easier to like keep trying that maybe like rest this way you're sending this message or do this thing so again that reminder of you're already enough you're enough and the people who align with you who value you will see that and desire mutual connection with you instead of you always being the pursuer when you do this self work the first step all of this becomes I'm assuming a lot easier to see yes when you begin to take care of yourself and not abandon yourself then everything flows from that then I'm like grounded in truth um grounded in compassion for myself so I want to not only choose people but I want to act in a way that honors my values and my truth amazing where can people go to connect with you um when this drops I think the book will be available wherever you can get books so Amazon and probably every other bookstore in the world but I'll put the I'll put the link in the show notes um working people connect with you what else do you want to know about your work what you're working on outside of this yes absolutely so uh please connect with me if you're on social media uh on Instagram it's dr dr dr period tamah t-h-e-m-a uh my website is dr tamah.com and the books are not only everywhere that books are sold but I was glad to also do the audio version of the book so if you prefer to listen instead of like sitting there reading it you can have that and uh the book that came before this one is called homecoming uh and so that's for people who have experienced any form of trauma childhood or otherwise uh you can look at that work as well to help you to heal amazing thank you I want to ask one last question this has been phenomenal and the last question I'd like to ask because you've you've given over a lot today but also in your life you've had a lot of sort of insight wisdom experience and of all the things that you've learned in your life let's pretend that you can only pass one of those lessons onto your kids because it's the most important lesson it could be about business life it could be about trauma healing anything it doesn't matter the thing that's most important to you you want to pass on to your kids what would that lesson be and why yeah I would want my kids to live from a place of sacredness so when you treat yourself as though you are sacred that will be that you honor yourself and value yourself and then you build relationships and you treat other people in a sacred way and then larger than that because I am you know one of those dreamers want to change the world you know if I have ideas about seeing humanity in a sacred way then whatever work I choose to do for me it becomes like an act of ministry or service or collective care and so I would say be sacred and live sacredly