Discovering Wholeness And Healing From Trauma With James Gordon, MD

Trauma will come to all of us, sooner or later. It's a fact of life. Each of us has the capacity to understand and heal ourselves. Listen to this interivew with James Gordon, MD author of The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma and be inspired to take some steps towards your own healing. Undertand how trauma can affect your brain, body, relationships and life. Discover practical tools such as Soft Belly Breathing, Shaking and Dancing to improve your well-being.

Transcript

I am Anna Siwald and this is Authentic Parenting,

A podcast about personal development in the context of parenting,

Where I explore how you can find more calm,

Connection and joy in parenting through the process of self-discovery and inner growth with a trauma-informed lens.

What if we lived in a world where trauma was seen as an accepted,

Inevitable human experience and not a pathological anomaly?

What if healing and reversing trauma was the key to attaining the joy and fulfillment that every human deserves?

Trauma disrupts our biology and psychology and our relationships with others.

We all experience trauma.

It's not a part from life,

But an integral part of it,

Says Dr.

Gordon.

It's a crisis,

But it can also be an opportunity.

Today I have the honor of interviewing world-renowned expert on trauma,

Dr.

James Gordon.

He is the founder and executive director of the Center for Mind Body Medicine in Washington,

D.

C.

,

Where he has created and implemented what may well be the world's largest and most effective program for healing population-wide trauma.

He and his 130 international faculty have brought this program to populations as diverse as refugees from wars in the Balkans,

The Middle East,

And Africa,

New York City firefighters and U.

S.

Military personnel and veterans and their families,

Student-parent teacher school shooting survivors and Native American children and their families,

As well as stressed-out professionals,

Stay-at-home mothers,

Inner-city children,

White House officials,

Health professionals,

And medical students and people struggling with emotional and physical illnesses.

Dr.

James Gordon wrote a phenomenal book called The Transformation,

Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma.

It represents the culmination of his 50 years as a practitioner,

Teacher,

And advocate of integrative approaches to overcoming psychological trauma and stress,

Offering eye-opening research,

Innovative perspective support,

And inspirational stories.

The Transformation,

For the first time,

Gives the reading public clear guidance in the methods that Dr.

Gordon has developed and that he and his team have used to relieve the suffering of hundreds of thousands of children and adults around the world.

Dr.

Gordon's work is grounded in a basic understanding that trauma will come to all of us,

Sooner or later,

And each of us has the capacity to understand and heal ourselves.

Please enjoy this fantastic interview with Dr.

James Gordon and to learn more,

Get his book and involved in the worldwide projects and possibly get trained,

Visit his website,

Cmbm.

Org.

Well,

Dr.

Gordon,

Welcome to Authentic Parenting.

Thank you very much,

Anna.

I truly enjoyed your book with an amazing title,

The Transformation,

Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma.

It's a very positive,

Uplifting,

Hopeful,

And empowering book and message,

Which I really enjoyed reading it.

It's about trauma,

Yet it's very accessible to ordinary people.

So thank you.

It's a big accomplishment.

You're welcome.

No,

That's why I wrote it so that people could easily read it and easily use the approach that I'm sharing in there.

Yes.

Before we get into the trauma part,

I would love to ask you,

What made you become a doctor?

Who influenced you or who inspired you to become a doctor?

Well,

I think I was inspired by my father.

My father was a surgeon and he was not the easiest man in the world,

To say the least.

But when he was,

When I had the opportunity to see him with his patients,

Whether it was well-to-do people I'd see in his office or people who had no money at all,

Whom I would see when I went on hospital rounds with him,

The best part of him came out,

The most kind,

The most loving,

The most concerned.

And that was inspiring to me that he brought both a very high level of skill and also a high level of affection and even sweetness to the people he was working with,

His patients.

And I could see that the relationship that he had with them was really a good one.

So I like the idea from the beginning of being a doctor,

Being somebody who was helpful to other people and who had these relationships where the help that he was giving was useful to them in very difficult times in their lives.

I think that was the beginning.

And then when I was about eight or nine years old,

My father said to me,

He said,

Jimmy,

That's the way you talk,

It was kind of rough voice.

He said,

What are you going to be when you grow up?

And at that point,

I hadn't yet a chance to watch my father much with patients,

Although I certainly knew he was a doctor.

I said,

Well,

You know,

I think I want to be either a farmer or a rabbi.

So he said,

What the hell you want to do that for?

I said,

Well,

A farmer grows things and spends time with animals,

And I like that.

And a rabbi helps people.

And he said,

Oh,

That's the way he talked.

He said,

Look,

He said,

If you're a doctor,

You'll help a hell of a lot more people than any rabbi.

And if you're a doctor,

You can make enough money so you can have a farm.

He said,

If you're a doctor,

You can do anything.

And I think that's the part that really stuck in my mind.

So it was a combination of watching him when I grew older and of seeing what it was like and what a wonderful thing it was to be helpful to other people when they really needed it.

And then on the other hand,

The sense that there was a tremendous amount of freedom that could come with being a doctor.

And those two kind of laid the foundation for my becoming a doctor.

My mother's father was also a doctor who was a pediatrician.

And I didn't feel particularly close to him,

But I like the stories that my mother told of my grandfather going in a horse and buggy and visiting patients and visiting people who had no money,

Who would trade his medical services for bread that they would bake or meat that they would give him,

Vegetables.

I thought,

Well,

That sounds really nice.

I mean,

He's really there helping people who really need it.

So that's what brought me originally to wanting to become a doctor.

And then I had a sense that I wanted to help people by understanding their stories.

And I was always interested in stories.

I loved to read as a kid.

I loved stories of people who were in big trouble who somehow managed to get out of the trouble.

And then when I was about 13 or 14,

I started reading for a course in ancient history.

I decided I would read some of the Platonic dialogues about Socrates.

And I was reading about Socrates and I thought,

That's really cool what he's doing.

He's talking with people and people are getting to know themselves.

He's helping them to learn more about themselves.

And he seems to be having a good time while he does it.

And I thought,

Well,

I'd love to do something like that.

And then by the time I was 16,

I began to think,

Well,

Maybe being a psychiatrist is sort of like what Socrates did,

Helping people get to know themselves better by looking at the stories in their lives and by answering questions.

So that's the early background of how I began to talk to him.

Well,

I have a burning question now.

Did you acquire a farm?

Did I?

I'm sorry,

Did I what?

Did you get the farm?

Did you acquire a farm?

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

No,

I never owned the farm.

I never was interested in making money.

But when I was a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health for 11 or 12 years,

I lived on a farm.

This was in my late 20s to just 40 years old.

And I loved it.

And I had animals.

I had a horse and a pony and a goat and lots of chickens and other animals would be there and a horse and dogs and cats.

And I had a huge garden.

My girlfriend and I lived together.

It was great.

I loved living on a farm.

So I did get to do it.

But I never owned the farm.

That was fine too.

Yeah.

It's so interesting hearing your story about your dad,

Right?

Being very compassionate and caring towards his patients and at home having this masculine expected from the culture,

From the society type of playing that role perhaps.

It's very interesting to hear your take on it.

And even when you imitate his voice,

Did he see you become a doctor and was he proud of you?

I would love to know.

Well,

He was.

He wouldn't admit it because I became a psychiatrist.

He wanted me to become an internist.

You'd say to me,

All psychiatrists are crazy.

He was a surgeon.

But on the other hand,

He went to psychiatrists for therapy,

But he still maintained that they were all crazy.

I think he was disappointed that I didn't become an internist.

He didn't want me to be a surgeon.

He wanted me to be an internist because he thought they were the kind of intellectuals from medicine.

By the time he had mixed feelings,

I think he was at times,

He didn't give out praise very easily under any circumstance.

He was never terribly satisfied.

But every once in a while,

I would catch him looking at me with something that looked like he was proud of me.

But he still,

I think,

Till and every once in a while,

He'd asked for my advice.

So especially in his later years.

So I think he came around to understanding that as a psychiatrist,

I was learning things that could be useful.

But maybe even more important,

He was interested in my advice about nutrition and advice about how to deal with chronic physical problems that he had.

So both interested in what I had to say about his psychological issues and his physical issues.

So I suppose now that you're asking me,

You know,

Maybe he was,

You know,

Certainly he had some trust in me and felt that what I was learning and what I was doing had real value and might have value for him too.

Yeah,

Very interesting.

So trauma,

What is trauma?

Why don't we begin from there,

Right from the beginning,

What it means?

Well,

You know,

I stick with a very basic definition.

Trauma is a Greek word.

It means injury.

Injury to the mind,

The body,

The spirit,

To our social relations.

I think trauma are those things are traumatic,

Which throw our lives into chaos or which shut us down significantly as we respond to them.

And that's kind of a working definition of trauma.

And I think the important thing is that trauma comes to all of us.

I don't regard it,

Many people think that trauma is something that only comes to people who have been devastated by wars,

Raped,

Horribly assaulted or grown up in the most abusive and neglectful homes imaginable.

But for me,

Just in being a human on this planet for some time,

I've observed that the trauma is there in all of our lives.

If it doesn't come early on,

As because we're growing up in poverty,

Some abuse and neglect discriminated against,

It's likely to come early adulthood or midlife where we deal with difficulties,

Major difficulties in relationships,

Losses,

Loss of our parents,

Children's illnesses,

Children's difficulties,

Those are all traumatic.

And if it doesn't come then,

It surely will if we're lucky enough to live to be old as we become frail and deal with the loss of people we love and face our own inevitable death.

So I think the message that's really important,

I don't think the message is,

But I know that for me the message that's really important is that trauma is a part of life.

It's not apart from life.

And that that is true.

And also that we can resolve the imbalances that trauma causes.

We can sort of bring a new order out of the chaos.

We can start again,

Shut down,

Stall.

And that as we move through trauma,

We also have the possibility and the capacity to discover greater meaning and purpose,

More compassion and love.

The trauma can be the soil in which these virtues grow.

And this is really,

This is my understanding,

This is an ancient understanding that's there in all the world's major religious and spiritual traditions and in the beliefs and practices of indigenous people.

And now we're beginning to look at this in a more systematic,

Scientific way and psychologists who are studying in that way are calling it post-traumatic growth.

So that's the message.

Trauma is there.

It may throw us into chaos and we shut our lives down.

We can move through and beyond it.

And it can become the soil in which so much greater wisdom and love and passion can grow in which we can discover who we're meant to be.

Yes.

What I loved about your book,

The main point was that you give the person who is traumatized a sense of control and choice that you do have a choice to recover and heal and take charge of your own healing.

Is it fair to say that we intuitively,

Innately know how to heal ourselves?

I think it is,

But we have to be reminded of it.

And especially when we have been seriously traumatized,

We feel helpless and hopeless and in a very real sense,

The parts of our brain that can grasp that it's possible to move through and beyond trauma or at least partially disabled by that trauma.

So we have to reestablish physiological,

Biological,

Psychological balance,

And then we can appreciate the possibilities that are there and use all the tools for healing that I write about in Transformation that are available to all of us.

But we have to really come into balance and we have to also,

It's also important for most of us to understand from someone else that it's possible to remind ourselves of this deep knowing that's there inside us,

Which is at least temporarily obscured or shut down or overwhelmed by the trauma.

So what I do in the book is not only state that this is a possibility,

I tell stories that are,

I believe,

Inspiring and I share some of the research to give people a sense that this really is possible.

And then I begin to teach the techniques that make it possible.

Yes.

Before we get to the techniques,

Which I truly love and I have been practicing them,

It's really,

You know,

I'll say more later,

But can we,

Can I ask you perhaps to speak a little bit about how trauma impacts the brain and the body?

What are the,

When someone experiences trauma,

How does it impact their body and their brain?

Some changes that occur.

I think the way to look at it,

And this is oversimplifying,

But really focusing on the most important parts,

I think,

Is that when we're traumatized,

When we're going through a situation that is challenging for us and that we,

You know,

That it feels like a life or death situation,

That we go into what's called the fight or flight response.

And this is a biological response that's present in all vertebrates,

All animals with backbones and including the human animal.

And if you think about fight or flight,

The sort of easiest example to visualize is an antelope who is at a water hole on the Serengeti Plain in Africa.

And she's happily drinking and a lion comes along.

And the antelope startles and runs.

Now,

The genetic programming says to the antelope,

This is a lion.

You're not going to fight.

You got to get out of there.

So the antelope runs as fast as possible.

If the lion catches the antelope,

The story is over.

If the lion doesn't,

Then the antelope three minutes later is happily grazing.

What's happened is the fight or flight response has been turned on quickly and turned off quickly.

The antelope's heart has been beating fast,

Blood pressure's up,

The big muscles,

The muscles responsible for running are activated,

Digestion is slowed down,

Centers of the brain that have to do with fear and anger are exacerbated.

And in humans who are in fight or flight,

Centers of the frontal cortex that are responsible for responsible judgment making,

Self-awareness and compassion are shut down.

And so are centers of the brain that make it easier for us to connect with other people.

That's fight or flight.

It's supposed to be quickly turned on and quickly turned off.

If a situation is overwhelming and inescapable,

Then often another response will come into play.

This is called the freeze response.

Just about everybody's experienced fight or flight many times in their lives because we humans respond to emotional threats just as if they were threats to our physical existence.

The freeze response is in situations that are overwhelming and inescapable.

So one of them that's all sort of unfortunately painfully familiar in our society is children who are being abused by the very people who are supposed to take care of them.

So they can't get away because they're just little kids and they're dependent on these people.

So they're stuck in this overwhelming and inescapable situation.

You also see it in adults who are in a war,

For example,

And they can't get away and they can't do much about it.

If we're assaulted,

Brutally assaulted or raped,

Or you see it in people who are staying in relationships that are abusive,

That they feel they can't get out of.

And that freeze response is a very old sort of primitive biological response.

Fight or flight is mediated by the sympathetic nervous system,

Which is one half of the autonomic automatic nervous system that operates outside of conscious control.

The freeze response is mediated by the other half of the autonomic nervous system,

By a part of the parasympathetic nervous system that is deep in our midbrain.

And so we shut down or we may physically collapse.

We feel removed from the situation.

We may feel numb in our body sometimes.

When people are freezing,

They feel like they've left their body and they're watching what's happening to them from a distance.

And once again,

This freeze response is potentially life saving.

I don't know if you had cats ever.

I lived on that farm.

I had four cats and a couple of them were really good mousers.

They're very good at catching mice.

And what they would do is they would bring a mouse back to me or my girlfriend,

I guess they called her.

It was a gift to us,

I suppose.

And the mouse would be limp in their jaws and they'd be shaking the mouse around.

And sometimes,

Of course,

They would crush the mouse and the story was over for the mouse.

But sometimes they get bored because the mouse wasn't fighting back or playing with them.

I don't know what cats were thinking.

And they put the mouse down and mousie would shake herself off and run away.

The mouse had a freeze response.

It saved her life.

And then when she no longer needed it,

When the cat put her down,

She shook herself off,

Ran away,

Freeze response was over.

The problem for us humans is not fight or flight or freeze when they happen.

Those are biological,

Potentially life-saving responses.

The problem is when they continue long after the traumatic events have passed or when we continue to live in situations that are producing those responses.

When we continue to feel every day that we go to work that our boss is a lion.

We're going in there and we get anxious and tense and worried just as we think about even going to work or if we're in a relationship that is abusive and we feel that high level of attention.

So that's what happens to us biologically.

The areas of our brain responsible for decision making and self-awareness and passion for ourselves and others not operating well,

Center of our brain and the amygdala,

It's part of the emotional brain,

Is in overdrive and it's a center of fear and anger.

And centers of our brain that make it easier to connect with other people are not operating so well.

We get the picture of somebody who's really not particularly self-aware,

Not thinking straight,

Anxious,

Angry,

Fearful and has difficulty connecting with other people.

That's what we see all too often.

That's what we feel all too often in the aftermath of trauma.

And that's the situation people were in when I see them here in my private practice or when I see them in all the places in the US and around the world where we're working with all populations and traumatized.

Yes.

What makes certain people come out of a traumatic situation,

Bounce back and be more resilient than others?

You know,

I think there are a couple of things.

I'll say a couple of things,

But what I want to emphasize is that that possibility is there for just about everyone,

Regardless of their history.

That's really the most important point to get across.

If you've had a childhood that has been traumatic or an early life that's been traumatic,

It's going to be harder for you to deal with the trauma that comes to you later in life.

We know that.

We're very vulnerable to it on a variety of biological levels.

So if you've had the good fortune to have parents who are loving and supportive and grow up with few worries about money and without being discriminated against,

In a world where people make you feel good about yourself,

You're going to do better with trauma no matter what kind of trauma.

On the other hand,

If the trauma is big enough,

Significant enough,

Everybody is going to be devastated by it.

So I think that's important to realize as well.

Sometimes we have a belief,

If only I had done this or only I could do this or only I were stronger,

Smarter,

Wiser,

Whatever it is,

I would be able to deal with it.

I think it's really important to say that there are events that are overwhelming to all of us.

I was just talking the other day with a woman who'd had,

I think,

11 surgeries for a couple of different kinds of cancer and some other issues that she had.

She was feeling very bad because she was facing another surgery and she was totally devastated by that.

I said,

Hey,

11 surgeries,

You're still here.

You're still working.

You're still looking around.

You're still trying to find ways to help and heal yourself.

I'm impressed.

So I think it's always important to understand that even though there may be some of us who are fortunate enough to have a built-in resilience that makes it easier for us to deal with trauma,

Trauma is going to be hard for everyone.

And if it's not one thing,

It's going to be another.

So things that are particularly traumatizing for one person may not be such a big deal for another person based on their history,

Based on their life experience.

But I think the main thing is we have to be compassionate toward ourselves.

We have to recognize that whatever it is that's happened really has happened and that if we're feeling overwhelmed and devastated and anxious and fearful,

It's understandable.

And I think it's important for us to accept what's come to us and not,

As is too often the case,

Especially here in the United States,

But not only here to think,

No,

I've got to be tough.

I've got to get through it.

I should be able to deal with it better,

If only.

This is what's happening right now.

Yeah,

It just makes me think of children who quote unquote misbehave and they have anger,

Rage issues.

They don't listen to their parents and they throw tantrums.

And parents,

What is our first response is to punish the person,

A child in this case,

Who is hurting.

I think we also have to shift how we think about human behavior and emotional outbursts and understand and see that these are signs that this person might be traumatized and they might be scared and hopeless and helpless.

That's why they're behaving and acting like that.

But unfortunately,

I feel like we live in this punitive culture.

The victims get victimized and punished over and over again and re-traumatized.

That's certainly true.

I think that it's important that that perspective is a really important one.

I understand why it's difficult for parents as a parent myself.

But I think that even if you lose it,

And I have a son who's now 17 who's not always so easy to deal with,

Very sort of strong willed,

Temperamental,

At times prone to tantrums for sure.

And I think that even when a important thing is even if you lose patience,

Get over it.

You've lost patience.

Okay,

You got angry.

Don't get on yourself.

Relax and let the kid go through whatever the kid needs to go through and then just be there afterwards.

So if you do lose it,

Be a little compassionate to yourself as well as to the kid.

And then give your child an opportunity to,

If they can,

Talk about what's going on.

First of all,

The fact that you're there and present with them,

That you're not running out,

Running away,

And you're not totally condemning them.

That's a step in the right direction.

And then afterwards,

Just do your best to be there so that they have an opportunity to share with you what's going on and so that they don't feel that they're totally rejected.

Those tantrums are never,

I've never found them to be easier when there's tremendous oppositional behavior.

But I think we can move through that.

And I know I'm just thinking about my son,

You know,

There are times when he'd get angry and he wouldn't want to talk to me.

He'd say,

Fine,

Don't talk to me.

We're still going to the ball game or we're still going to play ball or we're still going to watch this on TV or do whatever we're going to do.

And after a while,

He relaxes and then he comes around and moves ahead.

I think it's important to see that these situations are not permanent.

And this is just something that you may never even find out,

No matter how compassionate you are,

You may never find out exactly what it was they were so excited about.

But the relationship continues and it's often just a matter of hanging in and doing your best to relax yourself.

That's the cru.

.

.

Even if you can't right away get your child to relax,

You do your best to relax.

Yes,

Great perspective.

I completely support that.

I always say,

Don't take on your children's mood.

My daughter is 11 when she gets up in the morning and yells at me,

You washed my sweater and it shrunk.

You have no laundry skills.

She begins the day like that.

I don't get involved or engaged in her misery.

I say to myself,

Okay,

This will pass.

I am in the perfect mood.

Why should I spoil my mood?

It's hard to do,

But I think it's wise and it's great perspective.

I love that.

Well,

Perspective is really crucial here too.

And one of the things about.

.

.

One of the first techniques that I teach in the transformation for dealing with our own trauma is also one that's enormously useful for dealing with whatever our kids are going through,

Which is just to take a few minutes to breathe slowly and deeply in through the nose,

Out through the mouth,

With our belly soft and relaxed.

So technically it's a concentrated meditation,

Focusing on the breath,

Focusing on the words soft as you breathe in,

Belly as you breathe out.

Doing that for a few minutes,

Then your perspective starts to shift.

You're not in fight or flight.

You're relaxed.

So even if the child stays in fight or flight and has no interest in you helping her or him to get out of fight or flight,

You're not there and you can do exactly what you're saying.

You can just sort of say,

Okay,

This is what's going on here.

Whenever you want to talk,

Whenever you want to hang out again,

I'm right here.

You know what?

And I respond to that when I,

You know,

This is the very skill I tried very hard to cultivate as a parent,

Self-awareness and posing before reacting and just crafting my message,

What I'm going to say and how I'm going to respond.

And I work very hard.

And so when she's in agitated mood,

I come and say,

You know,

I'm available,

Let's talk.

Or if you want to talk,

I understand.

She goes,

And you,

Stop with your calmness.

You can't do anything right.

She comments on that.

She's like,

And you are so calm and pretending to help me.

And you know,

She doesn't like that either.

So I leave the room in that case and let her be with her own big emotions.

And then she comes and says,

I'm so sorry,

Mommy.

I talked to you like that.

And we do repair that as you alluded to,

And you spoke about it,

Which is part of any relationship.

Right.

But it's great because she's a smart girl.

She turns into things and she knows how to get you.

Most definitely.

Yes.

So I say to my son,

I said,

Gabe,

You're pretty good at pushing my buttons.

Oh gosh,

They do.

So I'm curious,

And after this question,

We will go into your methods and talk about a couple of them,

Which I really want to speak about.

It's very empowering.

When you became a parent 17 years ago,

What showed up for you in terms of what did you bring from your past,

Being parented by your father,

As you gave a little bit of description in the beginning?

What showed up for you?

What patterns?

It's a great question.

I'll tell you what's interesting.

I helped to raise other kids before Gabe came along.

They were not my biological kids.

So first of all,

One was a little girl whose mom adopted her,

And I was very,

Very close to her for seven years.

And that was totally easy.

No,

Literally no problems.

We were like completely connected to each other.

Everything was easy between us.

And that was remarkable.

I also helped to raise three of my godchildren.

It was also generally,

They didn't live with me when they were small,

They lived with me later on.

That was also quite easy.

Having a biological child,

And I think a biological child of the same sex,

Was a different kind of challenge.

And I think what,

And also I didn't live with him and his mom.

We were never married.

We became,

We've become very,

Very good friends.

We really love each other.

We just don't live together.

And so the relationship was more complicated with him than with these other children.

I think what came up is that his difficulties sometimes,

His extreme,

His sensitivity to me,

To my not being there,

Made him at some level distressed with me.

And it was only,

It's only recently in the last year or two that he's been able to tell me that.

And I would always feel it when I would come into his life and,

You know,

I lived in DC,

Washington DC,

His mom and he lived in California,

Lived in California.

And it was always difficult at first when I would be with him.

And it was hard for,

I think really hard for both of us to just relax and totally be with each other.

I think particularly hard for him.

And also when I would get ready to leave after three or four or five days with him,

That would be hard too.

So what would come up in me is,

You know,

My wanting everything to be good and my disappointment that it wasn't easier,

That it wasn't as easy as it had been with these four other children and other children I've known pretty well.

In general,

I get along pretty well,

Quite well with kids.

And so that was,

That was distressing to me that it wasn't as easy and I could understand it,

But still it was,

It was painful.

And I think if what came up for me was a sense of early in my life,

Not so much from my father,

But from my mother,

Not really being completely warmly accepted when I was a little child.

And I think those feelings of being sensitive to rejection,

Those came up with my son.

And that's the primary one.

Interesting that you're asking me,

Because I'm just tuning into it particularly.

I've thought about it before,

But you're helping me tune into it.

But those feelings of rejection came up in me.

Why isn't,

You know,

Why I love him,

Why doesn't he love me?

Or at least not in the same way,

Why can't he show it?

So I had that hurt.

And what I had to deal with is a tendency to myself to withdraw.

So I really had to keep on coming back.

I had to relax.

I had to,

You know,

Do physical activity to get rid of my tension.

I had to develop the perspective so that I could see what was going on and then use my imagination and use my intuition to find ways that we could closely connect.

So one of the ways that,

And those ways mostly had to do with what he wanted to do,

Not with what I wanted to do with the other kids.

Whatever I wanted to do,

That was an adventure for them,

No matter what it was,

Going for whatever I needed to do,

It was just kind of so easy and so simple.

With Gabe,

It was more,

I really had to tune into what was important to him.

So one of the things from early on that was important to him was athletics.

And so we played half a dozen different kinds of balls together.

And now he's got,

You know,

Been playing one on one basketball until a couple years ago.

Now he's much too good for him,

Much too big and fast and skillful.

But that was a way that we could connect.

And other ways is to watch the TV programs that he was interested in.

Forget about what I wanted him to look at,

What he wanted me to look at,

Whatever those kids programs were.

And then we could discuss the programs.

Later on,

It became much more mutual,

Or it has become much more mutual.

He'll tell me what he's watching.

I'll tell him what I'm watching.

He gets interested in it.

We'll go to a bookstore together.

We'll discuss which books to buy,

Which books not to buy.

So it's a process of evolution.

But I think that that first,

You know,

The thing that you asked about,

That's what I had to deal with,

That sense of not being,

Of being rejected,

Of not being completely loved and accepted and embraced.

And I can understand that from his point of view.

But I wasn't there all the time.

Other kids had dads who were there all the time,

And I wasn't.

Well,

Thank you so much for sharing it.

I really appreciate that.

And what you say about giving him the choice and doing the things that he wanted to do,

I just want to emphasize that point is huge,

Right?

And now you said then it shifted into a mutual thing.

But in the beginning,

I think,

Especially when children experience trauma,

Right,

Giving them that sense of control and choice is huge in restoring their faith and hope and trust.

And I love hearing how your relationship started out like that,

And then it shifted into this more mutual form.

It's fascinating.

Yeah,

I think this is also important for all of us as parents.

Another thing that I think just coming to my mind now is that I have friends and sharing with them our experience of our children.

So when they're going through a crisis with their kids or kids,

They talk to me about it,

And I can reassure them and give them perspective.

When I'm going through a crisis,

It's vice versa.

I just want to emphasize,

I know we have so many parents who are listening,

But it's really important to talk with your friends about what's going on,

To share what's going on,

And that we can all help each other.

I think one of the problems for us is that we live in a world where we're not nearly as closely connected as our genetic programming demands that we be.

One of the ways I think about ways to deal with trauma and just ways to help ourselves is I think about how did we evolve as a species.

And in this context,

We evolved as a species for the overwhelming majority of our history in bands that's BANDS,

In communities of 30 or 50 people who are always with each other,

Always available to help each other.

I've spent time with some indigenous people who were pretty close to being hunter-gatherers,

And everybody's always together.

Everybody's always sharing what's going on,

The good times and the bad times with each other.

If the women are having trouble with the kids,

They're sharing it with the other women.

Same with the men.

And the kids themselves are always getting together.

They sort of eat meals together,

15,

20 kids in this community that I visited.

And they talk to each other about whatever's going on.

So I think we really need to bring that more into our lives.

And that's an important part of trauma healing.

Yes,

Yes,

Big time.

Relationships definitely,

Social engagement,

Connections,

It's truly powerful.

Without that,

You can't heal yourself in isolation.

I remember that.

I experienced a severe earthquake in 1988 when I was 13.

I feel like that's the biggest thing I've learned that,

Yes,

There was suffering.

We were all going through this experience together,

But we all came together to help one another.

I internalized that sense of help and support,

Even though there was no food,

No shelter.

We were just outside,

But that togetherness of sharing and being with each other,

I felt it then that there was power in that.

I'm sorry,

Where was the earthquake?

In Armenia in 1988.

Did you by any chance go there to help and work?

I know you travel quite a bit.

No,

We weren't there.

We began to do this international work about 1996.

So we were there,

For example,

In Haiti within weeks after the earthquake and have worked there ever since 2010.

And we've worked after many climate related disasters.

And I think it's true,

These kinds of disasters can bring out the best in people and bring people together to support each other and just to be there for each other.

Yes,

Definitely.

I remember us getting together with children.

After school,

We would go to each other's homes.

We all had lost our parents and we were just kids,

Cook together,

Eat together,

Share,

Laugh,

Dance,

Play music.

After I read your book,

It sort of brought that memory back for me.

I'm like,

Yeah,

I was truly healing.

We created our own little circle of healing without knowing what we were doing.

But we benefited from it tremendously.

Yeah,

I'm really glad you're saying that.

What we can bring to that,

In addition to that coming together,

Which is really important and which I encourage people who are reading my book,

Is to share their experiences with each other,

To come together with one or two people or a whole group.

But then in addition,

That one can use the very simple practical tools that I teach to balance out physiology and psychology,

Disordered and disrupted with trauma,

To mobilize our imagination so that we can solve problems that seem insoluble to us using mental imagery or drawings or words,

Writing in a journal.

And then that we can also take time to be in situations that are healing,

Situations with other people,

But also spending time in nature and spending time with animals.

I think we're learning that this program of trauma healing can be available to any of us and that there's very,

Very good scientific evidence.

Especially for all the 20 or 25 different techniques that I teach in the transformation.

And that if we can use those techniques in addition to coming together with other people,

We can really create a comprehensive program of trauma healing.

Yes,

Yes,

Most definitely.

When did you put together this method?

When did it all come together?

I'm curious in terms of your work.

When did you say that this is what we've been doing,

Let's put this together?

I'm just curious about that.

I started learning techniques of self-awareness and self-care,

Different forms of meditation,

For example,

Yoga,

Tai Chi,

Working with diet to rebalance my somewhat disordered biochemistry,

Using physical exercise and movement.

I began to do that,

I would say,

In the late 1960s.

I learned first on myself for a long time.

And then I began to use some of these individual techniques with other people.

And as I learned more and more of them from my teachers,

Particularly one teacher,

An Indian acupuncturist herbalist,

Naturopathic physician,

Homeopath,

Meditation master,

Fabulous cook,

Sham singer,

As I began to learn from sham starting in 1973,

I spent more time practicing these techniques on myself and then sharing them with other people,

Sharing them with patients,

Sharing with friends,

Sharing them with family members.

And by the late 1980s,

I had the sense that it was really time to put together a comprehensive program,

That I wanted to do something on a large scale and to create a program for addressing all of the chronic physical,

Psychological challenges that we humans face.

And so at that point,

It became clear to me,

I was going to need to start my own center,

The Center for Mind Body Medicine.

And what I did is I just sort of put out the call and about 20 or 25 people volunteered to help me with the center.

And they were doctors,

Nurses,

Mental health professionals,

Teachers.

We even had a professional gambler,

Which I regarded as a good fortune.

And what we did is we put together this curriculum and the curriculum includes many,

Many of the techniques that I teach in the transformation.

So this is back in 1991,

We began doing this,

Practicing these techniques ourselves in a group,

Doing research on them to see what the scientific evidence for them was or how they might work on a biological,

Psychological level.

And we put together this curriculum.

That was the first,

We had no money,

No paid staff,

But it was really interesting to us to see if we could put together a mind body medicine curriculum,

Curriculum of self-care and support.

So we did it.

And then we began over the period of maybe a year or two.

And then we began to offer the approach that we had developed to other people.

And we began working with inner city kids,

With adults,

With chronic and life-threatening illness,

With stressed out Washington DC professionals,

With my medical students at Georgetown,

And with people who are in my private practice who had been tortured by dictatorships in other countries.

So we began to use these techniques and this approach with those people.

And it seemed to work quite well.

Then we began to train other people to use this approach.

And initially we trained people locally here in the Washington DC area,

Then decided,

Well,

This is going well,

Let's train people on a national level.

So we did that.

We still do that.

And by about 1996,

The idea had come to me that this approach of self-awareness and self-care,

Which was working so well for parents and kids and people with chronic illness,

People who are dealing with the stresses of high stress jobs and difficult relationships and people dealing with significant chronic illnesses and loss,

If this is working so well with them,

Then maybe it can work in some of the more troubled places on the planet.

So I began,

First of my colleagues,

Susan Lord,

Who was a family physician,

To go visit some of these places.

Initially Mozambique,

South Africa,

Mozambique had a revolution and then a terrible civil war and there were lots of child soldiers who were forced to kill other people.

We started using these techniques with them.

And then in South Africa,

With people who had lost family members after apartheid.

And we could see that this approach,

And it's really,

I've refined it some and added to it,

And there's much more science now,

But this is the approach that's there in the transformation.

And it was working for these people.

And then I decided,

Well,

Let me go someplace where the war is just over,

Where there's been so much racial or ethnic hatred.

So we went to Bosnia and began to work there.

About a year after the date of the courts,

The peace treaty was signed.

And then after that,

Once,

What we saw,

This is an important point,

Is that if you wait till after the catastrophe is over,

And these patterns of trauma,

The ones I mentioned earlier,

The fight or flight and the freeze response and the resulting physical and psychological changes,

The social withdrawal,

The kind of behavior that's antisocial,

Become fixed and harder to change.

So the time to begin is as soon as possible.

So Susan and I went into Kosovo during the war and began to work with families that have been bombed and burned out of their homes,

And with the soldiers who were the monitors and the peacekeepers.

Ultimately,

We developed a program that became central to all of mental health in Kosovo,

And we've gone on from there,

Working in the Middle East and Israel and Gaza with Syrian refugees,

Working in Haiti,

Working on Indian reservations here,

After school shootings in the U.

S.

After climate-related disasters.

We're beginning work now in Central Asia with countries dealing with returning ISIS fighters and their families,

Hope to be doing work in Ukraine with veterans,

Working with U.

S.

Veterans.

Anyway,

So it just keeps growing because this approach that we developed all those years ago works.

It works because it's working with the way human beings function with who we are,

And we're teaching people the basic vocabulary and grammar of how we humans function,

And then giving them the language,

Giving them the tools of self-care so that they can enter into that conversation that's always going on among all parts of ourselves,

And to help and heal ourselves.

So this works with individuals,

It works with groups,

It works with communities,

And some places we're working with whole countries and getting very good results.

Pretty fascinating.

I'm so impressed and proud to see this work like that on a global level.

It just shows that we're all the same on a human level,

Right,

Regardless of the color of your skin,

Where you are,

What language you speak.

It's pretty powerful to hear your description.

Really very moving.

Yeah,

It is,

And that's very moving to me,

And sometimes I have to say,

When I see what's possible for other people,

And for myself at times too,

I'm quite astonished.

For example,

Yesterday was a very challenging day,

All kinds of disappointments coming up,

And I sort of sat through them.

I didn't try to fight against them.

I did my best to accept what had come,

To kind of breathe deeply through them,

And afterwards work out and get out some of the tension from my body.

And I woke up this morning kind of ready to go.

It's not that I'm denying the disappointments or the difficulties or the challenges,

It's just that over time,

And I think this is what can happen,

This is the promise of this approach and of the transformation,

Is that we can move through the challenges that are inevitably going to come more quickly,

And we can spend more and more time in that relaxed meditative state,

That state of moment-to-moment awareness that enables us to live our lives fully.

So that's the promise,

And that's really the possibility,

And I've just seen it happen in all these situations that I've described,

As well as in my own life.

What are some surprising things that you've discovered or learned throughout this work in the world globally,

Or perhaps you see some common things?

What have you observed?

It's a great question.

I'm often surprised.

First of all,

I'm surprised by what makes a difference for people.

This is an important point.

We're all very similar in so many ways,

And that's important to understand.

We all deal with very similar kinds of challenges.

If we can relax and sit with other people and not try to argue with them or change them,

We can become aware of those commonalities and have some interest in and even compassion for them.

On the other hand,

What works for one person doesn't necessarily work for another,

And I'm thinking now of a little kid in Haiti who I met him a couple of years ago,

And he'd been living for several years in a tent camp with Father Freddy,

Who was a Catholic priest who we trained in our method of self-awareness,

Self-care,

And group support.

He's living in a tent camp with Father Freddy,

And he'd been in a small mind-body group with Father Freddy.

So I asked him,

Just the way I always ask kids,

What was your favorite technique in the group?

And usually the kids say,

Oh,

I like that soft belly breathing.

That made me so relaxed.

Or like doing the drawings.

I can see my problems,

And I can solve my problems.

It was fun.

Or I like the shaking and dancing.

That made me feel so good.

It was such fun to do.

Or like whatever it was.

But this kid said,

I'd liked the,

And then he went.

And what he was doing is breathing very fast,

In through his nose and out through his nose,

Raising his arms up and down like a bellows or a crazed chicken,

Just breathing as fast and as deep as he possibly could.

This is a very,

Very strenuous technique that we teach.

And I said,

Really,

Why did you like that technique so much?

And he said to me,

Well,

During the earthquake,

I saw my mother die under a pile of rubble.

And I was sitting there and I couldn't do anything.

I was screaming and crying and trying to take the rocks off,

But I couldn't do anything.

And I saw her die.

And every night for years after the earthquake,

Whenever I tried to go to sleep,

I would see her there and I couldn't sleep because I also knew that when I went to sleep,

I would have a nightmare about it.

But after Father Freddy told us,

I decided that I would do that before I went to sleep and see if it could do anything.

He said,

And I did that.

And it started to make those terrible images go away.

And the nightmares,

After a few nights,

The nightmares began to go away.

So I do this now every night and I sleep well at night and I'm not scared to go to sleep.

And that's why I like to do.

Now,

I would never have predicted that.

And usually we tell people not to do that technique before you go to bed because it's very energizing.

We use it often early in the morning for people whose emotions are shut down and their bodies are shut down and they're low energy.

But this is what this kid,

You were talking earlier about the intrinsic wisdom that we have.

This kid who was no more than nine years old at the time,

He did this eight or nine years old.

Somehow he intuited that this would work for him and it did.

So I'm often surprised by how people come to discover what's most helpful and healing for them.

And I'm also often surprised by the fact that people are able,

Even people who've been so devastated,

That they are able to come through these catastrophic situations and move through and beyond them and in a sense come back to life again.

It's always a miracle that touches me and often enough brings me to tears.

And I see it everywhere.

I see it all,

You know,

People all over the United States who we work with,

People who've been in terrible situations,

Relationships,

People with false children,

People facing life threatening illnesses.

It's a continual source of wonder and joy to see it.

Wow.

Well,

How does this all make you feel,

You know,

When you see your work spread in the world like this and you being part of all of this global change and healing?

Like truly,

You know,

How do you feel?

I'll quote James Brown,

I feel good.

I do feel good.

No regrets of not becoming an internist.

No,

Not at all.

No,

Thank you for that Ramon.

And you know,

I think this is really important also for the people who are listening to us,

Who are going through hard times,

Is that as you move through your own hard times,

There is an unfolding that happens very naturally in so many people of wanting to share what you have learned and probably Anna you've experienced this yourself,

Of wanting to share what's been helpful to you,

Wanting to share what you've learned with other people.

This is a natural part of the healing from psychological trauma.

I just encourage people to become more aware of it and to act on it when they feel it.

It's so satisfying not only to be able to help yourself,

But then to be able to share what you're learning.

Yes.

And one last question before I say goodbye.

What inspires you in life besides all the wonderful work and all that as a person?

What inspires you?

The trees outside my window.

People smiling,

Watching my son go from being kind of lazy and not trying very hard to just trying,

You know,

Trying his heart out and playing basketball so skillfully,

Just watching him do that,

Watching him change,

Take that into his own hands.

It's so touching,

So inspiring.

So it's,

I'm also,

I'm inspired too when we realize something new,

We're open and when I see people who are open to change and that that changes.

And again,

I'm talking about my son,

I'm thinking about too.

I'm seeing,

I'm really,

He's a source of inspiration.

And so,

And you know,

And the more aware I am,

The more I use my own program of self-care and self-awareness,

The more I'm inspired by the smallest things.

I think that's really what it's about.

So it's not just the trees outside my window,

But it's the cup of coffee that my assistant brought me this morning.

It's the taste of the cereal that I'm eating.

It's a smile from the intern as she walks into the office.

All of these things are,

You know,

Give me joy.

Thank you so much.

I truly treasured this conversation with you and wish you good luck with,

You know,

With sharing your message and helping people in the world.

This,

You know,

This is an honorable work and I truly appreciate people like you.

And as I said to my friend,

If you know,

I feels like he's an older,

Wiser version of me.

I wish I can live a legacy like you in the world.

Beautiful.

You know,

The other thing I just want to mention,

In addition to reading the transformation,

If people want to learn more about the work that we're doing,

Whether they want to participate in it in one way or another,

Or look at some of the videos of me demonstrating some of the techniques,

Or just learn about what we're doing here in the United States and around the world,

Or get trained by us.

If you want to learn how to do this work for yourself and share it with other people,

Please look at our website.

It's cmbm.

Org,

Charlie Mary,

Betty Mary.

Org,

Cmbm.

Org.

It's the Center for Mind,

Body,

And Medicine.

We are a healing community and a community of healers.

And the transformation is a book about your own self-care and it's also an invitation to become a part of our community.

So Anna,

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

I really appreciate it.

Yes,

Fantastic.

I might become a.

.

.

I might get trained.

Fantastic,

Please come.

Myself.

Yeah,

It would be fun.

Thank you again.

I look forward to meeting you.

Likewise.

Yeah,

I'm not far from Washington,

DC.

Okay.

Where are you?

New Jersey.

All right.

That's close by.

That's close by.

Have a fantastic week,

Dr.

Gordon.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me on the program.

And that's it for this episode of the Authentic Parenting podcast.

I hope you enjoyed this interview as much as I did.

What is your number one key takeaway from this interview?

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And as always,

Connect to the present moment,

To yourself and your children.

Until next week,

I am Anna Siewald.

Thank you so much for listening.

Reviews

Very informative.
Thank you so much.