Sense of Soul - Overcoming Trauma

Episode Date: January 27, 2023

Today on Sense of Soul Podcast we have Danny Greeves, he is a childhood and relationship trauma expert best known for using groundbreaking psychological techniques to help his clients move on from painful past trauma, boost confidence, conquer self-expression, and achieve their dreams. Danny was awarded the Prestige 2021 Life Coach of the Year Award and in 2022 USA TODAY recognized Danny as one of the “Top 9 Coaches” to help level up your life! He has worked with thousands of people and corporate clients, including Google, where he provided their employees with mindset training. Danny has authored multiple books, including 'Accelerated Trauma Resolution', the step-by-step guide to overcoming trauma. For many years, Danny struggled with anxiety, low self-esteem, and stress and couldn't form healthy relationships due to various traumas. He often resorted to food or alcohol to get away from his problems until his late 20s, when he reached a point where he desperately wanted to change. With millions of people failed by traditional talk therapy, Danny wanted to find the most powerful treatment techniques to help someone struggling with traumatic memories, and he turned to a neurosurgeon specializing in psychology, a master hypnotist, and a world-renowned cognitive therapist for help. Visit his website and get his book! https://thetraumaexpert.co.uk Follow his journey… https://instagram.com/dannygreeves?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= https://www.facebook.com/DannyGreevesTheTraumaExpert?mibextid=LQQJ4d Visit Sense of Soul at www.mysenseofsoul.com Do you want Ad Free episodes? Join our Sense of Soul Patreon, our community of seekers and lightworkers. Also recieve 50% off of Shanna’s Soul Immersion experience as a Patreon member, monthly Sacred circles, Shanna mini series, Sense of Soul merch and more. https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Thank you to our Sponsor  KACHAVA, Use this link for 10% off! www.kachava.com/senseofsoul

Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy. Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Hey friends, if you're looking for ad-free Sense of Soul episodes, you can find them at Sense of Soul Patreon. Become a monthly member at any level. You will also have access to our monthly SOS Sacred Circles, our mini-series, merch, and much more. And it's a great way to help support our podcast so that we can continue to bring you inspiring episodes twice a week with our enlightened guests from all around the world.

Check out our Patreon. Today we have with us Dani Greaves. Dani is a multi-award winning coach and therapist who helps people enjoy more fulfilling lives by creating strong self-confidence, better relationships, and positivity. He was awarded Prestige 2021 Life Coach of the Year Award and has helped individuals across the globe. He was also named one of USA Today's top nine coaches to help level up your life in 2022. Danny is a childhood and relationship trauma expert, best known for using his groundbreaking psychological techniques to help his clients move on from painful past trauma, boost confidence, conquer self-expression, and achieve their dreams. Danny has authored

multiple books, including a book I was reading this morning called Accelerated Trauma Resolution, The Step-by-Step Guide to Overcoming Trauma. And I am so excited to talk to Danny all about his book and about his many amazing methods that he offers to his clients and that he's here to share with us today. Thanks so much for joining me, Danny. Hello. Hi, Danny. How are you? I'm very well, thank you. Yourself? I am good. Good morning. Well, it's morning for me. Where are you at? So I'm in Norwich in the UK, so it's good afternoon here. Good afternoon. Thank you so much. I've been listening to your voice all morning and you have such a pleasant voice. I like it.

Oh, thank you. I've actually been doing the same with you. So I've been going back through the podcast episodes this morning. I was skimming through your book, but what I really want to do is I want to go and just really absorb it. It was amazing. I took so many awesome notes. You did a great job of simplifying, I think, a lot of things. It was amazing. I took so many awesome notes. You did a great job of

simplifying, I think, a lot of things. That was the primary goal. I've had to explain it in so many different ways. And then I'd work with a client and then they'd say to their friend, I can't really explain what he does. So I was like, okay, I need to find a way to try and simplify it. So if that's what came across that's mission accomplished yes you did I love how you threw in all of your best tools and you said this is all the things that I've seen work yeah and really it's a way of helping people to understand regardless of what your background is why the mind does what it does when we have a painful experience, and therefore what the simplest way out of that predicament is. So it

really just gives us a little bit of a roadmap to help people know if you have had a painful experience, if you had had a trauma, it's not a life sentence. But in order to change that, we just need to understand a little bit more about how our own minds work, because then we can start to make the change. I think we're all infinitely more powerful than we realize, but we need to be able to unlock our own powers. It's something that's usually just a mystery to people, isn't it? and the vast majority of people it's just trial and error whereas when we were little if we were to learn some degree of psychology like we learn english or maths or science i think it would make a huge difference but i don't know how close we are to that yeah i agree and recently i have two episodes that have to do with mushrooms ah Ah, fascinating. Yeah, it is an accelerated

way is what you know, they're claiming. And I have seen this, you know, I've worked with people who we brought their stuff up to the present, you know, and they're aware of it. And then they go and do mushrooms. And boy, they're able to get through that super fast. I like to think that because everyone is different. I appreciate that for some people, they really just want a problem solved. So then they can then get on and do what they want to do. And I totally understand that. And then I think there are other people who not only want to get that change and that transformation, but they really want to grow and learn and understand the process as well. So I think they both have their place.

I'd imagine a fair amount of people who listen to this podcast are probably in the latter category in terms they want an understanding, they want to learn how it works. But I think it's just up to the individual. Right, because if you're a seeker, you want to know. You've been trying to uncover the truth of how things work, whether it's society, religion, spiritually. And I think most importantly, we're human. So we really should understand what's going on with the human body and the mind. I think it's baked into us, isn't it? That inner curiosity to to learn more to ask questions so it's just about can we ask some quality questions to to give us some quality answers but you know oftentimes we

just want to put a band-aid on it or we want a healing miracle you know so we you know sometimes we don't even want to know which is what our minds sometimes do it's it's certainly one strategy isn't it it's a strategy to sometimes actually, I'm not just, I'm just not going to deal with that. And unfortunately, when we don't deal with it, all it does is actually get bigger. So then the fear of dealing with it gets scarier. And then actually, we're in we're in quite a tricky situation when we do that. And it's that sort of like moment of courage that really fascinates me when someone says, okay, I'm not going to tolerate this anymore. I'm going to go explore. And that's, that's the mindset that I think really, really helps people move forward.

So tell me, did you come into this work because you were working through your own issues or I shouldn't say issues issues but your own trauma or is this something that you've just you know decided hey I'm going to be this when I grow up I would love to say that when I was younger I always wanted to work with trauma and it was kind of my destiny from a young age but the reality is not at all so So when, when I was at school, I did a psychology class, and I thought that was interesting, but that's kind of where it finished. And what I was really interested in is learning about the nervous system. So I originally started working as a physical therapist, and I was specializing with helping people with chronic pain. And as it happened at the time,

I had some of my own chronic pain. So that's kind of the avenue that I took to try and heal myself through that avenue. And then as I was on that journey, kind of somewhat out of the blue, I was introduced to the idea that actually our emotions can cause physical changes in the body, which can then lead to the sensation of pain. And I thought that that's interesting. And as I explored that, that then revealed that I'd been suppressing quite a lot of my own stuff that I'd been pushing away. And then when I started to learn how my mind works, that was the first time where I was actually sort of really lit up about learning something. I just consumed it and it just felt really natural. And I hadn't had that experience before.

So in a very short space of time, I changed careers, quit my old job, started focusing on this. And then it's just been a really natural progression. Wow. Similar, I started out as a massage therapist, rubbing people's pain. I mean, they would see release for a bit because of that proprioception. I mean, their bodies would just like memory foams go right back to what it was. There was no real healing in it. I've been there. Yeah. And even now I have other therapists who will be like, all right, Shanna, I need your help. Because, you know, I started to really see a lot of success with the energy work, with like the cranial sacral therapy. Just when I was able to give people space to connect with their pain, just be quiet with it and listen to it. I think that being still, that being quiet in a safe space is often where actually change can

just start to happen. And while we might look for someone to do something to us, to help us ease those symptoms, actually, when someone creates a space for us to then go inwards, that's where that's actually where the actual healing occurs, I think. Yeah, like that's the miracle that you're looking for. It's already it's right there inside of you. Isn't that awesome? It's wonderful. Yes, I know. I think it is. What I've learned lately, or not lately, but over the years, is that pain has been just a message. And it is, right? Pain is just a message from your brain, right? Telling you something is wrong. But I decided to listen to the message. And in turn, what ended up happening was I ended up controlling the pain rather than the pain controlling me yeah and can you speak about that because when you said that you had this you know the similar experience with pain um you know what is going on you know what's happening when we're experiencing pain like this that's out of nowhere that becomes chronic with you you know, no injury.

Yeah. Well, I think what you touched on, one of the key components in terms of being able to translate symptoms into feedback. So often we have pain or we have an illness and we judge that as something that we want to get rid of rather than actually translating it to try and see what the message is and often first of all we'll have we'll have an influence or we'll have a change in our psychology so we'll be aware of something even if we don't give it too much energy we'll be aware of something psychologically and then if we choose not to do anything, so if we ignore that, then it starts to move into our physiology, then it starts to move into the body, into the sensations, into the feelings. And then if we still refuse to listen to that, then it moves more into our sociology. So it affects our relationships, the people around us, the environment that we're in. So I think we do get plenty of opportunities but we're all quite well trained at pushing those away rather than dealing with them

and if we think about what we now know about the nervous system the hpa axis so one of the primary systems in the body that deals with stress that's finally giving us the answers in terms of how do emotional issues translate to physical symptoms. So for years, the idea of it's all in your head would be considered quite an insult. And particularly for people who have a chronic pain or have sort of chronic symptoms, that would be one of the probably the one of the most upsetting things that you can say. Whereas, yes, yeah, exactly. But now we know actually, when you have unbalanced, and you have painful perceptions, that causes repeated and re triggering of the stress response, which means your nervous system is getting regular excess doses of cortisol and adrenaline, which then function and affect your inflammation levels, your muscle tightness,

your muscle tension. And when this happens for a short time, the body's really adept at compensating and the body can hide it for a while but when that continues for months or years soon that then moves into a place where the body just can't compensate anymore and then our physical sensations start to become expressed so now we can see the clear mechanism of how emotions impact physiology i think that will in the coming years lead to even more ways of actually helping people address those emotional issues that are causing the chronic pain so in terms of my story the biggest difference without a doubt that impacted my shoulder pain and helped it resolve was actually clearing the trauma around my parents divorce and to tell me in those early days that that was the connection,

you couldn't have paid me enough to believe that. But actually having worked through that and experienced that shift, it's really powerful in learning just what the mind can do. There's that marriage happening between spirituality and science and lots of different teachings. but yet we didn't know that there was actually science that backed this up yeah so i think the key is also really good quality science like really good quality science not some where it was quite sparse and it was maybe a little bit inconsistent now we're getting like the gold

standard of scientific trials, backing it up, which I think is really important for lots of reasons. Yeah. It's interesting. Just as an example, I remember one time I had this client, chronic pain, kind of accepted it forever to have that kind of pain. Oh yeah. I've always had this. I'm always going to have this. It was like, you know, what happened originally? Oh, you know, I got in a car accident. I was young, blah, blah, blah. What was going on around that time? Or, you know, oh, I was getting divorced and I, you know, all this stuff. Oh, you know, and sometimes I just do that just throughout breadcrumbs, like, you know, for them to kind of see that maybe you were going through a hard time when you got that injury and maybe it's living inside of you and that's that's

quite a revelation isn't it when even if you're given a few breadcrumbs that can be that can be something that's that's powerful in itself to just start to connect the dots. And then we start to get a little bit curious and think, oh, could that be? And then, then we explore it. And then we start to get motion. Right. I, you know, a lot of times I used to be so into like true crime. I love true crime. I like the mysteries. I mean, I want to research them and figure them out.

I always loved investigating. And, you know, that kind of turned inward. I started to investigate like my ancestry, my DNA, you know, the negative patterns in my family. I started to investigate what made me. We're always putting so much energy outside of ourselves. Yeah. And I think we end up putting more and more layers on. Whereas to get to really what we really enjoy, we actually have to go inward rather than putting more layers on. So it's even sometimes a little bit counterintuitive because we sometimes have to ask some difficult questions and really sit with them because we do have the answers, but we might not like the answers. I think that's kind of that sometimes where the challenge is. Yeah, it was a huge part of my journey.

Looking back at the things that molded me and that became that subconscious mind and some of it was just family patterns that were so strong. Very strong. And if we think our parents, when they were little, their parents would have been one degree stronger in their convictions or one degree firmer in the way that they behaved. And I think when we're young, and when we're very little, in particular, it's our natural tendency to be comfortable being vulnerable and being open. And so there aren't too many people who had an experience when they were very little, where they could open up and be vulnerable, and not be told that that was either wrong or be criticized or be scolded for that. And so I think for a vast number of people, those early experiences

when we did dare open up, that was met with maybe a critical voice or a punishment. and when we learn those rules we learn those family rules they as you say they're deep and unless we can find ways to update them and expand them and or break free of them then often those rules will govern the rest of our lives so it's it's really important to be able to face those moments because once those moments have been processed that ability to be open and vulnerable is natural so it just comes back but it's not necessarily easy to get there wow so true and then you also have the standard that you have to live up to, that you want to fit into. And that starts kind of like after you're seven, right? So now you've moved into being formed by all of these expectations of your family.

You go out to school and you have all of this. My 10-year-old asked me, not even a week ago, why is it that I have to have 13 years of math? I said, God, that's such a good point. I don't know how to say this. And you can see in her right now, 10, right? Fifth grade, starting to really care about the things that she wears, not for herself, not just for her own comfort. No one has that or someone else has that sweatshirt. I'm not wearing it ever again. The ego, it starts to form and get loud at a very young age. And then we get a little bit older and then it becomes more romantic. And then we try and conform and fit into the ideas that we think our ideal partner will have.

So often we bend and put on a slight facade in the early days, at least to try and give them the impression that we are who they want them to be. Then we move into employment and then we have a new set of rules. We have another authority figure. We have new sets of expectations and ways to behave. So often we'll have five or six different layers of conditioning. And then we wonder why we lose ourselves. And wanting to be the best parent and have my kids be the best kids. Right. I mean, I went through all that with my older kids.

I mean, my son was going to be a baseball player before he was born. Right. You know, I already had planned their religion, their belief systems. What bullshit is that? Now that I look back, I mean, how unfair, unfair you know to not come into this world like who are you I'm telling them who they're going to be yeah we're often then asked about that in terms of have we planned it have we thought it through and then if you say no then you'll probably get a bit of a funny look and really so it does take then courage to actually allow them

to do that so my son is six months at the moment so we're doing our best to help him just grow as naturally as he can do but it's hard yes such a difference between my older kids and my younger I really had a hard time when all of this came to my awareness and I could see it. It really was through my own experience with my son because come his senior year, he hurt his arm. He had a lot of, my dad died. It was very hard for him. He was, we worked for my dad and, you know, broken heart. Everything fell through for him when it came to baseball, his, his, his high school team won state championship the year he couldn't play. You know, his senior year.

Literally, my dad died during his graduation. It was a bad time. So much trauma. Well, he looked at me confused, but I could hear him saying, where do I go? Coach me. Which base do I go to next? Where's my team? Where's my fans to tear me on? Like, where do I go? What do I go to next where's my team where's my fans to cheer me on like where do I go

what do I do yeah and I was like oh my god what did I do and it wasn't just me it was it was all it was everyone it was the community yeah it was it was everything And it's taken him a good five to seven years. Right. And I gave him that space when I realized it. Right. I did, but it took him a long time to start just figuring out for the first time who he really was not, you know, based on what everybody else wanted him to be. And it was hard, but you know, you, I can understand why there's so many suicides. And I think when we, when we don't understand how our mind works and we believe strongly that actually there isn't a way to change the way that we're feeling yeah then some people

start to think well that is the way out because if I stay here there's no possibility of change right or something's wrong with me so yeah there's some there's something wrong and it can't be changed it's fixed so that's why I think it's so important that actually we help people learn how their mind works and when we've got some relatively simple to understand tools because you know they're they're human then they're natural to us then we can start to really make changes but if we don't have that option if we don't have that choice many people grow up and spend a lot of their lives thinking that their mind is working against them and I think that that's one thing that will be so powerful

to change to help people see that the mind is pliable the mind is adaptable it's flexible but we need to know how to do that well and I would say that in our family and maybe in many, many people's lives, you might hear, oh, you need to just go to church. Jesus is going to save you. And that is beautiful. It's not that I'm taking away from it. Jesus is a master healer. He was a great teacher.

I'm not taking away from that. And I'm not taking away from community and support and love, right? However, like you said, understanding like the root of it, that inside work for myself from experience, once you are aware of that, awakened to that, it's like it doesn't go away. It's that inner wisdom, isn't it? Yes. And I think if we were to take pretty much all of the religions

all the way back, then I think a lot of their core pieces were about understanding the self, about finding balance, about certain sort of principles that actually could apply today. But I think over the millennia, those have often been changed and warped to such a degree that I think the key messages are often lost. So I read in your book about three principles that stuck with you that you had learned. One was consulting help or asking for help. That was my dad's biggest message. When anyone would work for him, he'd be like, please ask for for help if you don't know what you're doing ask for help so that was always a big one but it's hard to ask for help I've been there been drowning before and did not want to lift my hand for help you know because I was like I do it myself because I had been let down before you know and I was that stubborn in that then the second

one was asking questions that was another thing my dad, you know, if you don't know, ask a question. And then the last one, I think, am I saying these right? And the last one was receiving feedback. So it's really if we want to achieve a transformation in something. So if we really want to change something, then we need those three key components. So we need to be able to actually seek someone who is an expert in that particular field. So we need to go to someone who has more awareness or more information than us, opening yourself up to actually there is more information out there. Yeah. So once we start to consult with someone who is an expert in that area, then we want to ask those quality questions.

And then we want to be able to get feedback on our answers to then help us to learn and grow and move forwards. But we need all three of those to get a transformation. So when maybe we're struggling with a trauma or maybe we're struggling with painful experiences and we will often say okay well i'll try a self-help book now if self-help books achieved a transformation then the whole world would be in a spectacularly wonderful place but the reality is mental health problems are bigger than ever. So therefore, it's not necessarily the content. Actually, it's being able to implement it with guidance and get feedback. And that's the key, I think, to actually learning and growing in whatever area it is.

If I have a burst pipe in my bathroom, then what's the first thing I'm going to do? I'm going to consult an expert, someone who knows what the issue is. Then I'm going to ask them questions in terms of right, how do we sort this? What's the issue? What's the plan? And then we're going to get feedback on, okay, has that worked? Is that all we need to do? Yes, that's it. So those three apply to all transformations. But if we just do it by ourselves, then we'll be forever boxed in by our own beliefs. So that's why I think we need that external guidance. I wonder if like, because I remember a time when, you know, I was in the Al-Anon and I was reading all the boundary books the codependency books and I could tell you all about everything about how to do it and all the things but I wasn't applying it in my life you can be so knowledgeable but it's the action the action yeah absolutely that's that that's that

is the the key part of it and sometimes it's actually being held accountable to put those actions in place as well, because we'll often come up and I'm exactly the same. We'll find excuses and find ways around things. But whereas if we're sticking to a plan and we're getting feedback, then the desire to perform increases and then we're more likely to to actually go ahead and do it so I feel like that's where the commitment comes in like how committed are you to making your mental health a priority right or your pain go away you know how committed are you to get a resolution? Yeah. And I think there are commitment can actually be broken down into a few different components. So first of all, we need mental commitment in terms of, okay, I'm going to decide that I'm going to make a change.

So we have the mental component first, then we have the physical element of commitment. Am I going to turn up? And am I going to attend as and when I say I am so I might have the physical element of commitment am i going to turn up and am i going to attend as and when i say i am so i might have the knowledge but if i'm not physically there then i'm not committed then we have the spiritual commitment so why is this important what's the deeper reason for it what's the driver and then often we'll have the financial commitment because even if we have the previous free actually a lot of the time things change when we put our money where our mouth is and because of the way value systems work we will find money for that which we value and we'll run out of money for

that which we don't it's a mere miracle sometimes how I have been able to provide a Christmas for my four children at one point when I was single parent, right? I mean, it was, wow, I just pulled that off, right? If you want to pull it off, you will. Yeah. If it's important to you, you'll find that money. And that's why, that's why we need all four, because if we don't have all four one of them starts to slide and then we're not truly committed okay so here's my thing a person can have an issue with each thing i mean sometimes people are so busy right they're just barely hanging on and they never even give themselves five minutes to even consider maybe something is wrong here and everybody else is going whoa right um until you run into a brick wall. I've been there before, like just, and on the fast track.

And actually that was just a way to, to ignore, right? Anything that really, truly that was happening within me. Exactly. So then you have that. So then the next one you were talking about, this is the one that I really get home with me is the commitment to actually showing up right which is another thing you know you people make excuses all the time right so why am I making those excuses so you literally there's so much because it's like why do I do this why do I do that and then we go on to the the spiritual so yeah that needs to be a big enough why and so often we'll I'll be speaking to someone and then I'll say okay so why have you

decided now is the time to to work on this and it'll be something along the lines of right I want to I want to change my relationship. Okay, that's great. So it's a very common one. But that single idea by itself is too vague and general and broad to actually provide the energy needed to take motion. Whereas when someone can break that down and say, actually actually I want to be more intimate with my party partner in the morning I want to be more free to go and do the things that I want to do on a Saturday evening I want to be able to arrange time where I can be one-on-one with my partner when the kids aren't there so when we get the real specifics then the energy starts to increase. But if it's just broad, then that'll work for a

week or two. And then when you need to show up on week four, then then it starts to drop a little bit. So we need we need the specifics, the brain does not like generalities, it doesn't give us tangible, it doesn't change our chemistry enough to make a difference. Yeah, so specifics are key. That's amazing. I like that point. And I think also, just generally, a lot of the things that when we look at ourselves that we want to change, it's because of the outside world. I want a better relationship with my partner, we're looking for our partner, you know, basically to be better, you know, or a lot of times, you know, everything that we're seeking love, trust, validation, all the things that we're not feeling inside of us, we're looking for outside and it doesn't, doesn't work it's like i've even noticed that i

mean my relationship i mean for so long it was so dysfunctional it was because i was dysfunctional in it right i can't i can't change him i can only change me when i change me i mean the whole dynamic of our relationship change yeah cannot apply an external solution to an internal problem yeah and then expect it to be to be solved it might help and I think the danger is sometimes it allows you to cope which is I think probably one of the most dangerous things because when you allow yourself to tolerate and when you allow yourself to just cope, you can actually, as humans, we can do that for a long time. And it's just on the edge of tolerable. I actually looked up to people who did that before.

Ah, interesting. You know, like in my family, just watching my mama tolerate and be so patient. I thought it was honorable I wanted to be like that isn't that insane well it makes logical sense but in terms of living a fulfilled life that's probably not going to get you the way the idea the outcome that you want well it looked good from the outside I mean she definitely looked like Mother Teresa. But when I started experiencing it for myself, it felt like shit. So it didn't work out for me.

It didn't work. It didn't work out. But it's true, though. It's scary how long we can tolerate something. Yeah. And there's a principle here that's called hedonic adaptation and the principle of hedonic adaptation says that regardless of our circumstances whether they're incredibly positive or incredibly negative in a very short space of time it feels normal so if for example you win the lottery say you've got a hundred million pounds

and you've got everything that you ever want that very quickly starts to feel normal so you might have a high of three months say for example maybe even six months but then it just starts to feel normal and then the the fizz starts to fade away what's more troubling is that when we're in a toxic relationship or when we're in a job that's unfulfilling or when we're taking actions that are minimizing ourselves if we do that for a short period of time then that starts to feel like normal and then all of a sudden we can go for a long period of time in a blink of an eye and it's just it's just normal and the only way that we then contrast that is then either something more intense happens for you to then go okay now i need to change or you get a glimpse of

what happens on the other side of it and then that contrast is enough for you to go, right, now I'm mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially ready to change. So hedonic adaptation is a really powerful idea, I think. God, so many people living like that, right? Oh my gosh. And it's just, you're not living authentically. I mean, you're masking who you truly are inside

and what you truly want to do with your life. It's so sad. So I think that is what turns into pain. All of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, you know, my back is just hurting so bad. Are you stressed? No, everything's great. You know, the best life in the world. Didn't you see my Facebook? we look so great you don't sleep right you know anxiety yeah I know I'm excited for no reason I'm so happy generalized anxiety been there yeah yeah it's so crazy it's just those masks we wear you know like I'm fine I'm fine yeah so just before we sort of started our call today I had a conversation with a new client and her primary symptom was overwhelming stress in there and the challenge that she was talking through is that she would have a mountain of

emails each day and she couldn't feel like she could get through them and that was just getting more and more and more stressed but when we actually drilled down to it she kind of got to the moment where she admitted and she went to be honest my life's just not working I'm not fulfilled in my job I don't like what I'm doing so therefore the thought of doing that again tomorrow is just unbearable and then the expectations she put on herself were to do everything all day in that job and have everything finished so then we've got an unfulfilled career and we've got unrealistic expectations and then we've got a perfect storm for overwhelming stress so yeah

often our stories don't hold up that well when we question them but we need to we need to question them sometimes with some difficult questions and that goes for me as well that goes for you we could all ask some questions and we all avoid them um to some degree well and we could even start asking too many questions because we don't trust ourselves or yes you know the doubt that we have like keep questioning myself you know because maybe I'm not doing it right or I'm not good enough for this and that but there's so many things oh my god it's such a mind fuck yeah oh my god it's it's just a lot but you know what we're talking about everybody's mind you know and, and it just comes to just yours. Nobody knows it better than you. You just don't realize that you do. So how do you start? If they come to you and they say, I have all these problems, what is your way to get to the root for them? I think in order for us to make progress, we need to be able to clearly articulate where

we're going. Because if we don't know where we're going, we have no way of knowing what the obstacles are, what the challenges are, what's in the way. And that doesn't mean we need a 24 point detailed plan of exactly where we're going. but we need to know where we're directing the ship. When we know where we're going, where we're heading, then we need to identify, okay, so what are the obstacles that are holding us back? Because when we know where we want to go and what's holding us back, then we can formulate a plan to solve both of them.

So it's really chunking it down into small pieces, getting clear on where we're going, and then committing to getting there. You know, and sometimes people think of trauma as like, oh my God, it's been this huge use by, you know, somebody close to us. It doesn't always have to be that. You mentioned divorce, which is kind of a common thing. You know, sometimes it's just, I mean, I have a ridiculous memory. I mean, it's so, so minute. I mean, it was like my dad, he was so disappointed. I didn't want to play softball. I mean, he even talked about it on his deathbed. You know,

I actually at that point I was already kind of awakened and I was like, good Lord, this poor man. He's going to take this with him to his death. No, I mean, I felt like I let him down. Like, you know, and he talked about it often, you know, as a joke, maybe in some way. And that's kind of how I looked at it after a while. Because I know he never did it intentionally to hurt me. And if he knew that I had carried something so silly with me for most

of my life you know but sometimes it's something small so is it very very often it's something small very yeah so there are 10 different types of adverse childhood experiences so these are not specifically defined as trauma but they're potentially traumatic and highly stressful. And it ranges from sort of physical abuse. So if you were stressed, so it covers the big ones. But sometimes it also covers things like not feeling special in your family home, one member going to prison, not having emotional support, not feeling loved, parental divorce, bullying at school. And often it's those events that either accumulate over time or have such an impact that they start a behavior change, which then ripples forward through time. So most of the work that I actually do with clients is on those adverse

incidents rather than the big, huge traumas. Because most people have had challenges growing up. And sometimes it's actually working through the challenges that leads to a big change rather than, as you said, you know, that one, one case that made the news rather than, as you said, you know, that one case that made the news rather than those. And that's something that I find really quite frequently. Wow. And then you also find it in your everyday relationships as well. I mean, you know, all of these things. I mean, you may not see it. You be like oh nothing like my mother which means one thing yeah

means exactly like your mother yeah you're just it's so funny because sometimes you're just not even conscious to it yes yeah very very often yeah yeah or things that you swore that you would never do and I think that sometimes you don't, you go on the extreme opposite, but it's still because of that. So there's always still the root of it. You're like, oh, I would never be that way with my children. Well, yeah, you're the opposite. So it's still controlling you the way that your mother was. Yes, exactly. It's just gone in the polar direction. Yeah. Yep. Been there, done that too. And I also think that what happens when you bring your awareness to these things, you actually do find some empathy for your parents. Oh, 100%.

Yeah. 100%. Yeah. When we're inside of it, it's hard to see, though. So that's why I think. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You need that other perspective to kind of help you find that awareness. At the very end of your book, which I

didn't get to, which I can't wait to was some sort of assessment. Yeah. Tell me about that. Which does it do? So when you work through the book, and you kind of get us like a really good grip of what's going on, then you can go through the free assessment which is takes about four or five minutes and it just asks you some specific questions about your history and about any symptoms that you're having to find out if actually first of all if you believe that after going through the book that approach would work for. Now you've got a bit of a grounding. And also I share some tips and some sort of specialized content that kind of helps you put the details in the book in a broader context. So it's an effective way to just find out where you are at the moment and then compare that to where it is that you want to be. So that's a free tool that

you get after sort of going through the book and it's only a short one. You created a system, a system of all your great tools that you've put together. Yes, yeah. It combines the conscious elements in terms of balancing perceptions, asking questions, the subconscious element in terms of how we store trauma and then the unconscious element in terms of how we store trauma, and then the unconscious element in terms of those rules that we learn from family members that we're blind to. So it just covers the whole spectrum. And that's the way that I have found is the most efficient way to accelerate the resolution of trauma. There's different methods. So I'm just looking at some of these.

I thought some of them were very interesting. You talk about with the subconscious mind, the eye movement, desensitization and pre-processing. I thought that was very interesting. I was curious. Can you tell me about that? Yeah. So that comes to one of the guiding principles of the book in terms of when you have a painful or traumatic experience in that moment your mind takes a snapshot of where you are who you're with what's happening what it smells like and it stores all of that as well as all the feelings that you're having in what's known as an emotional memory image that emotional memory image. That emotional memory image then gets stored subconsciously, a little bit like on a danger list. And then your mind becomes hypervigilant for anything that resembles

that. Now, when you go into a certain environment, and if your mind can link anything about what you're going through now to that danger event, triggers an echo of that original response. And then you are flooded with stress hormones and cortisol. So EMDR is one of the techniques that we can use to actually neutralize that emotional memory image, and then actually allow the trauma to resolve. So it's one of the tools that can be used. The way you described it and explained it, the science behind it, it was so receivable. I mean, it just. And I was one of them. It just makes sense.

Like it just makes sense. And I'm not in any way pretending that I was the creator of this. I'm simply learning from the mentors that have helped me. But when I heard it, that just makes sense. And then for all of the clients that I work with, just when I explain it, they says, Yeah, okay. So not only do you have a book, which you have on your website, the audible, you can get the paperback, or you can actually get the PDF for free. Yes. So the real purpose of the book is to help people get an understanding of how trauma works. So the audio version and the PDF version is completely

free to download. And the purpose, as we discussed, is really just to simplify how the mind works in relation to trauma, to give people an idea that they're not crazy. There's not something wrong with them. They're not at fault, but they just haven't understood how it works yet. Wow. So you're gifting the world this, which needs it so desperately. Yes, that's the gift. And it's a compilation of the gifts that I've been given so it just felt right to to give it away and then so if they do like your book which I'm sure they will and they take this free assessment at the end of the book what kind of services do you offer and do you offer them via zoom yeah so I've been working online since 2015 so um I've been working online for like sort of eight, nine years now. And the book is

the theory of how it works, but also an outline of how we resolve it. So the program that I offer is essentially the book in life form with one-to-one guidance with me. So we can get those three elements to then create a transformation. Nice. You said something earlier, like we're far more powerful than we perceive ourselves to be. You know, we've been told because I think the world wants us to be small, like the hierarchy wants us to be small. As we're put into educational systems and things like that, we're definitely taken down a path that guides us more into a box that encourages us to actually go out and really express ourselves.

And until we learn, even at a fundamental level, how our mind works, then we're going to follow the mental structures that we get told to follow. So that's why when someone gets a glimpse of oh actually i i control my perceptions i can balance them i can increase this i can decrease that all by asking questions and eliciting the right information then that individual just feels empowered because they're doing the work yeah that that's I think the one of the most liberating things when you realize that actually it's you that makes the change you may have a guide you may have a coach you may have a therapist but you're the one who does the

work yeah we are so powerful and it makes me sad because we've given our power away for so long to every every which direction outside of us you know I think that most of the people that listen to this podcast you know are seekers within you know seeking that knowledge within the wisdom within like Jesus said their kingdom within and I think that it's not unique it's within all of us so don't give up I always just say you know don't give up and there's so many different you know like you said um you know the EMDR there's so many different things that you can do did I read that you also do hypnosis so yes I'm a hypnotherapist um a technique that I use is also called split second unlearning which is where we actually help someone access the emotional

memory image that's causing the problem and then guide them through a process to clear it. So that's something that has, it's recently just been published in the UK. So it's only now getting its first sort of literature and scientific background. So that's kind of one of the breakthrough tools that I talk about in the book. And it's also one of the breakthrough tools that I use. When I'm speaking to a potential client, I'll hear the phrase, I've tried everything. And it may feel that way. And I've been in that position where it feels like I've just done everything. But actually, there's some really powerful tools out there. And split second and learning is definitely one of them.

I hate I hate that people feel that way. Like never give up. There's always something out there, right? Yeah, I mean, go take some mushrooms, if anything. I mean, life is hard. It makes me so sad that you know, we are all faced with such challenges collectively. Even the best thing you can do is not worry about the collective and worry about you and you helping yourself helps the collective. Helps. Yeah. Yeah. It all starts with the self, doesn't it? It sure does. All right. Well, thank you, Danny. Can you tell everybody where they can find you and your book? So I'd recommend that you go to www.thetraumaexpert.co.uk and that's definitely a.co.uk one and there you'll find me where you can download the audiobook and the pdf for free and that will give you hopefully more insights even than we've shared

today and a bit more of an outline in terms of actually how we can accelerate trauma resolution. Awesome. And now it's time for break that shit down. On a daily basis, think about the single biggest challenge you've had that day. then ask yourself how is that challenge helping you to grow because when we can be grateful and thankful for what's going well in life and we can see the challenges that we're going through are going to help us in life then regardless of what happens we're always moving in the right direction so it's a little practice that you can do in the shower in front of your office you can do it in your diary your journal but just getting skilled in the art of finding the learnings within the challenges

and that will set you up for ongoing growth. That's good advice. Just recently, I began to at night, just kind of like, oh, what happened today? Let's just like unfold it all. So that way I make space for some good dreams. Yes, yeah. And, you know, I think that I'm going to add that. I'm going to start adding that.

What was the lesson, you know, that I learned? When we practice that on the little things, it's easier. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's easier to apply to the bigger ones. Does that actually become like a new neural pathway? Exactly. Yeah. Danny, nice to meet you. Lovely to meet you.

Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening.