Breaking Generational Cycles of Family Trauma | with Jennifer Westcott

Michael: Jennifer Westcott. Welcome to the show, my friend. I've been tremendously excited to have you on to have this really in depth conversation to talk about not only the status of mental health for people who are practitioners and of service to those in the world, but also from a general perspective in the world that we live in and bring your incredible expertise to the table today. So first and foremost, thank you for being here.

Jennifer: Thank you so much, Michael. I'm excited. I'm really happy to be here and honored.

Michael: Yeah, same. It's something I've been looking forward to before you and I sat down a couple of months ago to think about the conversation we're going to have. The thing that I really loved about our initial interaction was just your raw authenticity, which I'm going to call up on you to deliver today. And I'm just so curious, out of the gate for those now having listened to this podcast. Podcast for six or seven years, 800 episodes. Why should they listen to today's episode.

Jennifer: I don't love the word should, so I'm going to say they shouldn't if they don't want to, they could, they could listen to it. I hope to offer perspective from the inside world of being a therapist that is human and relatable. I think sometimes people are curious about their therapists and what goes on in our heads. In that way, if you're interested in all things incest and fucked up family ness, this is the one for you. I'll say that, yeah.

Michael: I don't know that people are necessarily particularly interested in it, but it is a conversation that some people might need to have.

Jennifer: The people know who they are. When you, and you go, oh god, I can't wait to hear that, you've had a hard life.

Michael: Yeah.

Jennifer: A sad life.

Michael: It's so fun. I, there, there's a book called the truth by Neil Strauss. So Neil Strauss in the early two thousands wrote a pickup artist book called the game. And it was just like how you go and, Hook up with women and, all of the things about the social dichotomy of just human interaction and relationship. Of course that works until it doesn't work. And so roughly a decade later, he writes this book. Unbelievably raw book called the truth and the truth is about his journey to healing through just this insane amount of emotional abuse, neglect. And then he dropped a phrase and I must've read this in 2010. I'm going to guess he had written about emotional and covert incest. And I had such a holy shit moment as I realized, and I'm going to share the rawness here, cause it's important. ‘Cause I want to help people today. I realized that I went through that with my mother, who was a covert, emotional, incestuous mother. I like many boys who are raised in the chaos of a household like ours grew up. Under the circumstances of being mommy's good little boy and the man of the house and all of these things. And so I want to dive into this despite the discomfort that some may have. I'm going to actually challenge people to stay with this today, because if not for that book, I don't know that I would actually. Be on the path that has led me here, 14 years, probably later. So, I'm very curious, Jen, like first and foremost, I'd love for you to just define some things for us. We're going to get into the therapy side of the conversation in a little bit, but I would just love some definitions. If you can explain covert incest and actual, like the traditional, God, that's such a fucked up way to say the standard of incest. I think people need to understand this because if you're anything like me, even though my mom was walking around our house naked at all times, I never connected those dots and I want to help people today.

Jennifer: Okay. Wow. I can feel my whole body. That feeling you get when you're just in that place of about to speak about something that just is so deep in my heart. I don't want to fuck it up. I can't, I'm just going to, I'm just going to say it from my own perspective.

Michael: Please.

Jennifer: It only took me, I just want to say this first. I'm not an expert in this. I'm, I don't want to be an expert. I want to be able to just talk from my own experience and the experience of seeing like hundreds of people in therapy. Because it took me probably 10 years my therapy, hardcore therapy time where I did the real deep work to come to the word incest therapy without apologizing, saying, I'm not sure if that's what it really was saying, ideas. I think there might have been something sexual. Then it went to, oh my God, is this sexual abuse? Then it went to, Oh, this is incest. And I was like, went into shock with every level of this awareness. So I think what you've said there is so to me about a growing awareness that starts bubbling up as you learn vocabulary for the experience, like I knew what incest was. I'm a therapist, so I'd studied this. So, to me, the term incest means a sexual between people who are related and should not be having that experience. Now, define sexual, because to me it was not sexual for me. And I believe still, it was not sexual for my mother, but how do I know that? Is that just my denial? Is that? I take it a bit further, because I think it confuses a lot of people when they hear the word sex. It's involving your private body parts, okay, like anything that kind of is happening between two people that are in a familiar caregiving relationship that involves sexual body parts I could swallow because I never knew, and I think, I haven't I had a really amazing therapist for a long time who said to me, it's about intention because I wanted to get into, yeah, but I don't think she and, maybe I misinterpreted it, maybe, like maybe she meant this and it wasn't, and he said, it's the energy. It's the intention because maybe, because it was my mother putting that out there now just to get the chills over with. my mom's still alive and my mom does not accept that this was her. She, this is not her truth. Okay, so it's hard to talk about because of that reason, but I think I'm not alone in that. There's a lot of people whose person that they believe did this would say, I never, no way. I never did that. But anyway, I don't know why I lost my place, but covert incest to me, what ran through my mind when you said the words was how many times I say to a client in the beginning anything happen to you as a child, like sexually? No. That's, that is so often the first thing or they say there was some weird things that happened, but I don't think it was anything. It's probably nothing. I don't think anything happened. But I think the covert part of it is when the energy in the home, the energy in the environment is sexualized. Maybe you're exposed to your mom being naked. That happened for me too. My mom would always go to the bathroom in front of me, stuff like that or your dad walks by you at 13 and goes, whew, you got a hot little body there. That being the, just once and not without the energy of it happening over and uncomfortable. So that's how I contrast it. Incest is pretty, it involves some touching or some interaction and covert, but they both have the same really bad outcome for our psyche. And here's the thing I want to add, because it really has come circle for me. This part, it always involves mind manipulation first, always. There's always sort of brainwashing about the lack of boundaries being a good thing. You're my special kid, right? You're the boy of the house that keeps this family going there. There's this breakdown of the regular boundaries has to come first.

Michael: Yeah. And then that leads inevitably, I believe, down the path of enmeshment, where you are suddenly looking at your life and another point of topic that a lot of people may not know what it means, but it's just that it's being built and groomed into being whatever someone else wants you to be. The abandonment of your own boundaries, the loss of identity. Maybe your identity is only familial. like maybe everything in your life is built around the structure of everyone else telling you how to live. And that often is a very interesting by product or maybe even precursor. I'm not sure the chicken and the egg here in those two in that context, but what I find so interesting is it's such a taboo subject and yet it impacts so many people. And one of the things that I was thinking about, like in the lead up to our conversation was how often you can track that generationally and you look at it and you go shit look at her mom and her dad did and their parents and so on and so forth. And there's a weird, I don't even know that this is necessarily a question I should ask, but I'm going to ask it cause I'm just so curious. You're a professional, you're a therapist, you've been doing this for a very long time. Is there something, this is such a fucked up question, but it's just love. Nature of what I, just the nature of what I think is important is it human nature that the sexual proclivity has come up in family first because of generational trauma? What I'm asking is this a continuation or is this one off? Does that make sense?

Jennifer: Yes. Agreed. I think it's the next thing that happens in the discussion is why. Why did my mother do this? What happened to my mother? I think we ask that a lot more about women than men, I will say that. I think with men we, we just go to sadly, I think we often go to this place of you know what men can be like, they're violent or they're sexually off or whatever. We tend to want to know the story. We want to know what happened to them. We don't always know. But what I would say about it is this, here's my answer that might be out of left field. And I'm almost scared to say it. I don't think we know because we are so afraid to talk about the perpetrators. We want to put them in the box of, you're a perpetrator, you're obviously bad and wrong, and you should feel shame, and you should be in jail, but you're not, so we're just not going to focus on you. And I wish we had more tolerance for this, the subject of people who sexually abuse or manipulate or molest or however you want to put it. I wish we had more tolerance to say, yeah, come on in, we need to learn about what's going on for you. And we don't do that. So, we don't know I have no idea. I have clues with my mother. mother killed herself. Her brother killed himself. I have clues about things she said about her childhood and things that happened with some bad man. But I think we don't know enough and because we don't there and because society won't go there. people that have done it cannot face it. They're so shamed. They're so cast out. It's the worst kind of crime. You hear stories like people in jail take care of the child molesters, right? They're going to get taken out, there's no openness to really openly and fully explore how this all comes to be.

Michael: Yeah, it's such a difficult subject matter, and this is something I've shared publicly. This is well known. I've been on television shows and all kinds of things sharing this. I was molested by a woman who was in our church. And part of me, as fucked up as it may sound, I'm like, before I took her to the hangman's noose, I'm like, I would love to understand what the fuck was happening in her life, right? That a grown woman would do that to an eight year old child. And you can't have that conversation and people will say you got to side with the victim. I'm speaking from a victim perspective where I'm looking at this and I'm going, if we understood this, maybe we can solve the problem, but this is the same thing we continue to run into where it's we're ignoring it and sweeping it under the rug until it comes to us. To this giant explosion. And we saw that happen. I think about me too, movement being a big catalyst of something like that. And it's eventually it always comes out, but on the other side of it, you have these people who immediately in which obviously I understand want to demonize, hurt, kill in prison, lock away and throw away the key on these people. But I'm like, It probably happened to them.

Jennifer: This is the thing. It's like the whole bullying thing. We want, you know what, there's this word in psychology, and this is the way I define it, so I hope I'm not wrong, because I've been saying it for years, dissonance.

Michael: Yeah, totally.

Jennifer: What it means is your poor old brain can't handle holding two opposing thoughts at the same time. So we want to pick a camp. So if someone's a molester, we can't handle seeing them as being abused too, It's your family member and you love them and because when it's your mom, like I was sexually abused by a neighbor He was a pedophile across the back lane when I was growing up between like age seven and eight nine I had a lot easier time handling that I could easily put him in the box of that's what He was a used to say to my therapist. He was like a nice straightforward Pedophile like I knew how to conceptualize him when I finally started healing because he wasn't my family became oh my god, my mom did this to me somebody would maybe as a brother or Someone they I love her to this day I love so I'm always stuck trying to hold two opposing things at the same time How do you love someone that did this? And I just think it gets really messy that we just go, Oh, God, let's not talk about it. Or the worst of all, we want kids and victims to be able to prove it before we'll actually stand behind them and listen. you can't go around accusing people of this willy nilly. People don't. Nobody wants that. To go down this road and unless it's happened.

Michael: Yeah. Children especially.

Jennifer: Oh,

Michael: Children, especially we, I would say for adults a little bit different. I think a lot of people are guilty before proven innocent, but children don't generally speaking, just pull this out of a hat. There's something here. I think that a part of the difficulty, In having these conversations, even in the space of a therapeutic or coaching setting is that people feel a tremendous amount of shame and guilt. And I am one of those people. Let me rephrase that. I was one of those people when I first started this journey and I was like, okay, I'm going to tell the truth about this. It probably took me two years of therapy before I opened up, and it was one of those things where it was. So I was embarrassed because for whatever reason, the stigma or shame gets attached to it about your self worth about who you are, about what it is that you represent as a human being, that you're not lovable or if you go down the path that I went, you become hyper promiscuous. Like I'm, Fucking everybody who's a lot like it's a whole thing, right? It's a dark place to be. And then I realized like you can only see light by walking through the darkness. And I had to sit and have these unbelievably painful conversations. If somebody is like beginning this journey and they're having some aha moments and they're thinking to themselves, that did happen with my uncle, that happened with my dad, that happened with my mom or my sister, or that happened with. In any capacity, or maybe this was a thing. And I remember mom did that, but dad did this and they're not sure. And they sit across from you in this therapeutic setting where do you open up the space to talk about this? ‘Cause I think that this is one of those really. Dark realities that keeps people from their full potential that keeps them from love, from happiness, from relationships, from real true, genuine connection. How do we open up that space as practitioners and professionals here? Do we open up the space? Is it like, is it the client's responsibility? And then if I'm sitting here and I'm a client and I'm like, I want to deal with this, but I'm terrified, where do I start?

Jennifer: Yeah. Yes. You're asking such great questions and it does. Because what I've noticed, I've worked in lots of different settings, and what I've noticed is we rarely ask this question and when we do, we expect that clients come in with conscious awareness and know why they're in therapy, and know what they want to work on, and know that, tick the box, have you ever been sexually abused as a child, it's on the intake form, they said no, we don't need to go there. That is so not my experience. My experience is people need to feel safe and, the whole thing about and guilt lends itself well to denial which I thought meant I was pretending not to know when I really did know. until I came out of my own amnesia about what happened with my mom that I realized it's that old saying denial is don't even know I am lying. I didn't even know. So I think lost our way a little bit with not attending to the unconscious enough anymore in therapy. We want it all to be this, think a different thought and you'll be cured. People could do their healing work from their conscious awareness, they would do it. wants to be able to look after themselves. But is I find that people need to be asked more than one time at more than one place in the process. Where do you think this came from? Has anything ever happened to you? Why do you think you're reacting this way to this? Have you ever considered? And it's a dance, like I don't say to people, I know you were sexually abused, I can tell. Because who am I to say that? A lot of therapists, I think, nowadays are afraid to ask the question. So when you say, I say to you as a client, did anything ever happen to you sexually? Because I notice you telling me about Being really sexual and having lots of partners and what do you think that's about and you say I don't know I don't think anything ever happened. There was some weird stuff, but you don't let it drop You said tell me what the weird tell me about it. What makes it feel weird. How's it feel right now in your body? What because I think people need to be I guess journeyed with and I needed this kind of this detective lens on, I think of it like therapy is like the giant dot to dot, like the kind where you don't know actually what the picture is from looking at it. There's so many numbers and we're together trying to weave this picture. And yeah, the idea that like, I'll never, I got to tell you a story about this. I live in a fairly small town and trying to get help for myself was sometimes not easy. And I had to be really humble and just say to my colleagues. I need help. Oh my God. Somebody help me. So there was this program in town for females who had, were survivors of abuse. I went to the program and said, would you consider seeing me? I feel like something's wrong. This was before I remembered my mom had sexually abused me and I filled out the intake form and I just knew something, there was something not right, but I didn't know what it was, but I had these. Funny relationships in my family and I got turned away And I think of that so much because wanted me to know had happened to me before I could even get the help. That's our public service went by the symptoms that were coming up and how messed up I was and how I didn't understand I was confused and I was you know, if I went by that alone, they would have said come on in But I had to say, yes, I've been abused, or I don't know, or no, and I said no at that point.

Michael: I want to go into that a little bit more because I don't, I've been coaching for almost a decade, thousands and thousands of people, millions of people have listened to this show, obviously a huge really all I do is talk about childhood trauma and it's there is this feeling of when you are looking at those four, first off, I think these forums are fucking nonsensical in my professional opinion, I look at these forums and I think to myself, they're nonsensical because of one reason people who are beginning this journey, or if they're about to step into the vast unknown in a lot of capacities are going to see check boxes and feel embarrassed. They're going to feel shame about the idea that they're going to get this label. And so it's like from a practitioner standpoint, you look at that and you go we need this data because we need to understand what we're getting in and what we're working towards. But like you're turned away in that moment. That's gotta feel embarrassing. That's gotta feel shameful. Not that I'm labeling your feelings. I don't know. I wasn't there.

Jennifer: It felt, you know what it felt like? It was the feeling I had as a child. And when I first remembered and started dealing with it, the same feeling, I have to prove it better on me that I have to prove it better. I still hear sometimes people who work with children say things like I think they're being abused, they need to really clearly say it for us to be able to do it. And I'm like, they're saying it with every action they're making, like they are saying it but we don't say it verbally with the word, the labels. When we're at this stage of newness to it, we say it because we're cloaked in shame, like you said, with a lot of trepidation and confusion and maybe, but I don't know, and I don't want to be a victim. This is the other thing that gets in the way. wants to be seen as a victim. I'm not a victim, right? You hear that all the time. I'm not a victim. I'm not going to be a victim. But until you can hold your victimization and actually put it forward and say, this happened to me and I'm not okay and I need help. You're not going to get any help. Blocked by these ideas. I think sometimes in our culture, especially around incest, that before you even get help, you should be over it. And you should be strong and you should be moving forward and thinking better thoughts. You need time to fall apart this is you need a good old breakdown, you need to hit lists. And I was working as a therapist at this point. I thought it made me a better therapist, but I remember I would make a list and it would say things like, take bread out, make toast, butter toast, put knife back, like that's how I was functioning. Inside, but on the outside, incest makes you able to survive a lot. So I knew how to look like I was okay from the time I was probably five, right? So it's hard cause the places that help people need something concrete to go by, but I wish we could change it a little and be a little more flexible with what a sexual abuse survivor's experience is like when it's first coming up. It's not that clear.

Michael: Yeah, it's not. And you're on autopilot because you're autonomic systems just a total wreck. You're probably just in a sympathetic response for ever. And then you're just like, I have these moments where, Here's what's so fascinating. For whatever reason, I have a very ironclad memory, like it is locked in. That's been my response to trauma. Like I remember stuff that's completely unnecessary. I'm phenomenal at trivia, but like As far as the day to day, I, at a period of time, before really understanding human psychology, my own brain, myself, other people, myself in relation to other people, I thought I was a sociopath. And I say that because so much of my life was robotic.

Jennifer: Yep.

Michael: And the roboticness to it was a byproduct of learning how to shut down to survive the chaos of the environment that I was in, and I think that's a big part of it as well as we have these responses to these stressors that are simply survival mechanisms and the worst part. As is for a period of time, they serve you, they keep you safe, they keep you protected to whatever capacity safe and protected means in the chaos of whatever your fucking life looks like. And then one day you have to look at your life and you have to assess it and take a really hard look at why you are the way you are. And I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing. It just is. I'm looking at him going, why am I this way? And for me, what I had come to realize that I was this way, because from a very simple somatic approach, my body was trying to keep me alive. Emotions had no place in this conversation. It was like, you're either alive or you're dead. And so you look at that. It was even in these months, I'm going to go into this for a second. In these moments of, I am finding myself in these spaces of it's beyond hookup. You can call hookup culture. This is I'm on Craigslist. I'm on my space. I'm like going to bars. If you are a living human breathing. I'm like, let's go in very dangerous and precarious situations. And then what would happen is on the backside of it, here comes the shame. Here comes the guilt. Here comes the lack of confidence. Here comes all the things because it's we will do anything. Here's what I came to realize. The feelings that I had in childhood, I replicated in adulthood because that was my emotional home. And so for people who are like in this space where they're working with therapists, they're having hard conversations, but they're still in the shit. Like they're deep and they're like, man, cause I'd have these moments, Jen. I'd go to therapy. It'd be fucking two, three times a week. I'm doing CBT, EMDR, Gestalt, ABC. I'm doing everything right. Spending my life on this shit. And then I'd be like, all right, I'm gonna go hook up with all these strangers, see what happens. And then I came to realize Oh, this journey revolves around you really getting in a place where you love yourself first, where, what advice would you give to someone who might be in a similar situation as what I was in, where they're recreating that emotional home, but yet they're doing the work.

Jennifer: I know.

Michael: Is where I think we lose people.

Jennifer: Yeah. And I guess I would say you're going to go through a tunnel and you're going to get to the point and the tunnel, when you go to therapy and you really dive in because you want something different. You go through this tunnel is what I experienced and it started to get dark both ways. I, it was dark in front of me, I couldn't see a way out of this, and when I looked back I'd come in far enough with therapy and healing and sobriety I couldn't see backwards anymore to the, what it was like, and that's when people want out, and they know they can turn around and they know the way back out, and they can just pop out and start, go back to the beginning. I just say keep fucking going, because if it doesn't feel scary and you lose friends that you thought you would never lose and you might lose family members and your whole life feels messy, if it doesn't happen that way, you're probably not really doing it. You have to step off a cliff you're healing this kind of stuff, and you hope there's a net, and I think there, there is a net that, that comes out and appears but you can't wait for the tunnel to always be light at the other end, you can't wait for it to know the nets there. couldn't, I was terrified when I was in the middle of doing this work for probably four years. Hardcore. I still, right now talking to you about this, I'm in the full fight, flight, freeze feeling in my body. I can, I'm full of adrenaline. I'm, it's an old feeling that I now understand, but hard and not meant to like, I think the other thing I would say to people is, The goal isn't to get happy so many people want to just do it so they can be happy. Why are you coming to counseling? Because I want to feel happy. And I say that's not the goal. The goal is to get whole. The goal is to be able to feel in the moment. The goal is to know what spontaneous means, what intimacy means. And it's not a straight trajectory. It's gonna suck before it gets better. And it will get better. It gets better incrementally all along the way. My worst moments are also my best moments because I've layed in the lap of a woman and cried for the first time in my life and trusted it and she didn't hurt me. That happened at my worst moment of not trusting, like you get these sweet, bittersweet connections of the worst and the best. And it's amazing, like the healing process to me isn't in any book. it, it has a timing of its own. It has a process of its own. And just get into the hands of someone that can walk it with you. That's what I would say.

Michael: Yeah. The cliff is scary though.

Jennifer: Oh, God. And you know what I needed for me as a therapist and what I try to be now for other people. I needed my therapist not to be scared and he wasn't, I would phone him up hyperventilating in between sessions trying to be me. Independent and not a victim and then I would have a complete nervous breakdown and phone him and say Like I don't know what's happening. I'm scared as I'm and he I'm crazy. I felt crazy am crazy and he would laugh on the other end of the phone and say yeah, that's the stage You're at you're in the crazy stage. Keep going. You're good He just was never of what, because he'd done his own work, so he knew I need to go to people and I want to be someone. I need to go to someone who'd done this journey because otherwise if you need a hospitalization. I wonder if you need an increase in your medication. I wonder if you need that, that rush to fix. It's not fucking helpful when you're healing trauma. We need to feel unraveled and we need to be beside each other and say, I'm not scared of this. Let's go bring it on.

Michael: And in the unraveling what you actually will find as the core. Because the unraveling is all of the things that you think you know about yourself that are probably lies, indoctrination, survival mechanisms. tactics, techniques, all of the things, and then you get unraveled and you're nakedly standing in front of who you are. And it's that's where you figure out the truth. But what's so unbelievably hard about that is people use this word intimacy all the time. right? And they use it in relation to relationships. They don't often use it in relation to oneself as an individual. And it's if you want to find out who the fuck you are, you're going to have to be intimate with yourself. And that intimacy with yourself is such an almost impossible task in the beginning. Because one of the things that happens is Totally. And one of the things that I discovered was I'm a liar. This was like the most earth shattering fucking moment for me. When I was like 27, I was doing the work I'd hit rock bottom. I was on the way up and on the way up. What I had to do was start telling the truth and if you would have told me the Taxes that I would have to pay for the lies that were purchased I don't know that I would have done this work Because holy shit, the more I unraveled, the more that I had to tell the truth. And then the more that I told the truth, the more I had to come to the realizations. The abuse from my mother, her cutting my finger off. My stepfather being an insane person, my grandmother being a racist growing up homeless, like I had to sit in those and realize you're not some strong man who is capable of taking on the fucking world because you're still operating like a fucking wounded child. And that was like. Twofold. One was like, fuck you. Two was like, oh my God, you're right. And so you talk about this cliff, but like without intimacy, the cliff doesn't have a bottom. You're just free falling forever. So how do you get. Intimate with yourself because I even saw your physical reaction when I said that. How does one get intimate with themselves?

Jennifer: I'm thinking back to the word you used at the beginning and again there, truth, I'm thinking about the, when I first remembered that my, I had a, like a middle of the night jolt awake, Oh my God, my mom was sexually inappropriate with me. That was the sentence that into my awareness. And I thought, that can't be true, and I thought to myself, okay, I'm never telling another living soul that. I am not, I'm not, I am going to, okay, I'm going to go to counseling, I'm going to deal with it, but I'm not going to tell anyone that happened. I tried that. I told my husband. Eventually, I told the therapist right away that same day I waited for him like a lunatic outside his office at 10 to 8 in the morning because I thought something terrible has happened. I've had this weird idea come into my head and I don't know what it means. months and months of this idea that I would just work on this in secret not ever need to upset anybody with it, including me. And so what ended up happening was I wanted to kill myself because did not, you can't know, you can't unknow it once you know it, you can't go back to unknowing. So I'm walking around with this thing that I feel like is a major life change. My world is never going to be the same. And my mom's still phoning me every to talk about the weather and what we're cooking for supper and how the kids are and what she did when we were kids and I started going a little bit crazy. And so I think I got to, I know I did, I got to this point where I'm either going to tell the truth. Or I'm going to kill myself and I plan, I planned, it's sad to say I don't even think I've ever told my kids and they're almost adults now, but I planned my suicide. And I thought I only saw these two options live fully in my truth and not have to keep it or die and not have to do this because this is, there is no way this is going to end well. And that was the jump off the cliff moment for me was when I decided, have to talk about this. I have to write my family a letter and tell them, here's what happened to me. And that's what I did. It didn't go well. There's this sort of want that if you just do these steps, then things work out. It didn't work out. It didn't go well with them. But the more I faced my truth, like what I. What I just knew was true, even though I have doubts and confusions, the more healthy I got, the better my life got. And I started being able to say, Oh my God, the more I talk about this and the more I. Don't run from it. I feel better. I feel oh my god. I can quit drinking. Oh my god I can you know, like it started gradually to just show up as my life was getting home.

Michael: Yeah. It really sucks at the beginning.

Jennifer: The beginning and the middle and here's something that I really struggle with there's this sort of and I don't want to sound like I'm bad mouthing other types of therapy, because I love any therapy, I'll try anything, and I have. I'll do it all. But, there's a belief right now in trauma therapy that you don't need to talk about it. And every time I hear someone say, you don't need to talk about it to heal from it, because we don't want you to get re triggered. I cringe inside because if I hadn't talked about it, felt it, on the floor crying, thrown up, felt nauseous, all the things that took over my being when I went there. If I hadn't been with a therapist who was okay with that, I wouldn't have healed. this idea that it can be so sanitized. Some of the things my mother did, there is no way to sanitize it. It was awful. And so, when I would, when I hear that today, people say we don't want you to get upset or be re triggered. So we'll have these other ways you can do it without having to go there. It's going to be messy if you want to really heal. If you want to cope and soothe, it can be sanitary. Yeah, that's where I'm at. And I know that's sometimes unpopular to…

Michael: I agree with fuck popular. I agree with you. And here's why I always, I do my best and as a co I look at coaching and therapy as two entirely different spheres.

Jennifer: Sometimes.

Michael: Some ways they totally are. And then a lot of ways they overlap. And in one of the things that I tell my clients all the time, because one of the things that people who have survived trauma don't get. In today's space is honesty, and the thing that they get is this sanitized approach that you just laid out and I'm known for being canceled for saying if your life sucks, it's your fault. I stand by that. And I still agree with that to this moment.

Jennifer: When you're an adult. Yeah.

Michael: And what I tell my clients all the time. All the time, as I tell them this, if you're triggered, good, because that means you're about to have a breakthrough.

Jennifer: You and me are very similar because I'm the same before my memory came out, here's a picture of what I was like in my life. I was terrified of dogs. To the point that liked to go walking and running, because I had to do something to get rid of the feeling in my body, so I'd run. If I saw a dog like, as far away as I could possibly see, maybe it's a kilometer away, mile away. I'd jump in the next car that drove by, because I would get so terrified. I couldn't go to the gym because I couldn't stand the noises that people would make when they were lifting weights, because it sounded sexual to me, and I got triggered, and I couldn't stand it, and I had to get out of there right now, know why. couldn't go to movies because I went to the Green Mile, and there was a scene of these two girls being sexually abused, and I freaked out and looked around and thought, why is nobody else ready to throw up. And so I stopped going to movies, I stopped. Became smaller and smaller because I was avoiding being triggered to walk into every trigger full blast and I know who was with me and who I could talk to. And they would say, you are okay. You're here now. You're not them. You're here now. Keep walking. Let yourself feel it because this is the truth. This is how you get intimate with yourself. You don't turn away and go well that doesn't feel good So I need to have a bath and take my mind off it and think nice thoughts that fucking work.

Michael: No, it doesn't work, and I'm very pro the idea of putting yourself into situations that are so uncomfortable that you want to sprint out the door.

Jennifer: Support, right?

Michael: Yeah, especially with support.

Jennifer: Who can say, walked this, I know you're going to be okay. I'm not afraid of this. This is a feeling. This isn't a threat right now. Like I needed someone to narrate it for me.

Michael: One of the things that I had that, and I actually have an interesting question for you after I say this, I realized therapy in the beginning didn't work for me because the people that I was sitting across from. I didn't relate to, I grew up in the hood with drug addict parents. I was abandoned as a child, sexual abuse, mental, emotional, physical abuse. I have an ACE score of 10 like the guy who went to fucking Princeton all due respect to had both of his parents in the worst thing that ever happened to him. Somebody punched him in the face cause he was an asshole one time. Like I don't relate to that. And then I realized, and this is probably the type a in me, the entrepreneur in me, I was like, I've got to actually treat this like I'm hiring somebody for a job to work for me. And what I did is I made a spreadsheet and I wrote down the names of all of the quote unquote, and there, and I'll say this 15 years ago, there really weren't childhood trauma therapist, at least not that I could find. And so I was looking for people who worked like CBT gestalt, things of that nature. I was roughly familiar with that. I made a spreadsheet, literally 40 names. The first go around, I called and did a phone interview with every single therapist. Before I went into their office and then I would go sit in their office. And by the end of it, I was interviewing them the whole time, by the way. And when I would walk out, I'd be like, Oh, this isn't the right person. I'd shake their hand. I can tell within 10 minutes Oh no, you're not right. And I just kept doing that and doing that. And then I. I found the guy who changed my life forever because when I sat across from him, the thing that I understood to be the most true was he was as fucked up as I was. And yet what he was doing was he was not only walking the path and down the tunnel, but he was able to hold my hand as we did. And that's the same thing that I do for my clients. I'm like, if you weren't super fucked up, I probably can't help you.

Jennifer: Of the only people I've ever actually fired as clients, that have nothing wrong, and they're joyful. I'm like, gotta go. I don't, I can't if you truly are that joyful. And this is just some kind of sporting event. I don't, it's, I'm not your…

Michael: Yeah. And sometimes that is when I was 20, in my early twenties, 20 to 25, I worked for a fortune 10 company. I made a couple hundred grand a year. We would all collectively as a group of young people who were very successful working at this company, we would talk about the fact that we were going to therapy. Like it was like a badge of honor in some weird way. And I was lying to my therapist the whole time. So it was a huge waste of money. I'm curious about something though. The question that I was leading into, and this is a loaded question. I expect a lot of people to email me and be pissed off, but I don't care. Michael@thinkunbroken.com. You guys know the email. The question that I have for you is what makes a good therapist and what makes a bad therapist?

Jennifer: Okay.

Michael: Because I disagree with the idea that there's not a separation. That's my opinion.

Jennifer: Okay.

Michael: About it from someone who's been doing this for a long time.

Jennifer: Okay. I wouldn't have been so afraid of the question if you hadn't given it that big wind up about how you're gonna get, okay. This is my opinion.

Michael: Happens every time though. Happens every time.

Jennifer: This is only my opinion. And I'm not saying it's true for everybody. And I, in my practice, I've been a clinical supervisor of therapists for 20 years. I've supervised tons of therapists and lots of students and all of that. And I've noticed a few things. And one of the things I've noticed is there is a part of being a therapist you cannot teach a therapist. it's stuff like authenticity transparency, compassion, and care. If a therapist does not naturally have those things, I don't care what school you go to, you can't learn it. Have that or you don't. So that's number one for me. two, my experience, therapists that have done their own work. I don't care what their story is, but I want them to know it. Because there, I don't really believe there are people who are unscathed. And I think this idea is sometimes sold to therapists that, you need to be the expert, and you need to be the one that helps, and you need to have the answer. So hide all your own shit, and don't bring it into the room. I totally don't experience that as good therapy. I like the people that are willing to show their cards a little in an appropriate way. Is what happened to me with a dog when I was seven they go, there needs to be a human connection and the way that we have that as therapists is that we have touched our own wounds in the presence of someone else. We've been in someone else's hands and been this vulnerable. We know what it feels like. And then I think they do a good therapist does need to have some sort of training, so they've got a rough idea of What the options are, but then they have to know what they do and why. Because what I've found is, if people love the type of therapy they do, they're good at it. If people do the kind of therapy they think they should do, because it's the latest greatest, it's the next thing, and everybody's doing it, so I should do it. But if it doesn't fit the person, they'll suck at it. It's, we know, it's not the type of therapy you do, it's the human connection. The therapists I've come across that were not good for me, they sat too far away, they wrote shit down when I was talking, they didn't make eye contact, they were totally blank slate, unemotional, they were very heady and they stayed in their heads and theorized things and wanted me to be able to think my way out of trauma. And then when I couldn't they blame you and say you must have not done your homework and you're not journaling. And I know this I want the therapist that says, oh my God, there's something that's helping you be stuck that I need to figure out because it's not you. I need to figure out what is holding you here. I, I've not gotten through it, not, if you spent a little more time on self care, you maybe wouldn't be quite as upset. Yeah. kind of shit, because people are little girls and boys in therapy. I don't care your age or your profession, they come in and they're little girls and boys and they're vulnerable. And so a good therapist holds that and sees that and makes it safe.

Michael: I love that. I think, okay, we live in a space and time that is so politically correct it's actually detrimental to people. And I know that I get pushed back on this. And at the end of the day, you believe what you believe. You vote for what you vote. You see the world through how you see the world. I see the world through reality. I've been a fucking adult since I was eight years old. Like I know the world, I know the darkness of it. And I think that we've coddled society so much. that we're actually not doing anyone true justice. I think you being in the great North of Canada, you guys have it far worse than we do down here in the States when it comes to telling the truth. Everything is scapegoated and hidden under rugs and it's almost impossible to have an honest, decent conversation. And God forbid, if you trigger somebody publicly, you're going to get fucking sued or arrested or gets, disbanded or lose your license or Lord knows what happens. Do you think that has played a role and is perhaps a issue that has become problematic with the mental health field today?

Jennifer: Yes, I do. And I think I have this pillow. I just want to grab it. It's right here. I have this pillow in my office here. when people walk in, they're always nervous, like the hell is about to happen. And they look over and they see this pillow and they go, everything's going to be okay. I'm okay. And the pillow.

Michael: And what does that pillow say for those watching?

Jennifer: It just is like a big, and can't believe how many people relax when they see that. It was given to me by a client. I didn't even buy it. She said I helped her learn how to swear and I've heard from my clients over and over. It's your realness and I don't have to worry about how I say things and I say it the right way. And yeah, I think sometimes we're so wound up in. Not wanting to offend anyone. We replicate dysfunctional family patterns of enmeshment and codependency in therapy. We end up it right for our therapist. I have I'm in therapy twice a week right now and I'm actually doing psychoanalysis, if you can believe it. I can't even believe I'm doing it. I've been doing it for three years. I still want to please her. I want to know, are you mad at me? Are you happy? Am I doing it right? Am I? when you're, when you come in this place where you're playing out your own family of origin dynamics with the therapist if you're met with political correctness, it can feel like the parent who is shaming you or approving of you is in the room with you. that's not good for healing. So yeah, I think sometimes we're way too uptight. I'm, I keep thinking of a story to tell you, but I'm afraid to tell it cause it's really risqué. But it goes with this point of not being politically correct.

Michael: Maybe that's the next level of intimacy. So, I can go and have the most full, happy, loving relationship of my life, because that's in front of me. But I've done the plant medicines and ayahuasca and mushrooms and, men's groups and individual and one on one and every name it like literally hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours invested in myself. And so I don't balk at that at the slightest because I'm like. Okay, do it. Do the thing that fixes your fucking life, regardless of what people say. And I think personally, a great freedom for me has come in that I don't care if people judge me. I don't care if you don't like me. I don't care if you find that I'm crass or arrogant or whatever. You may want to label it because I look at my life. Statistically, I should be dead or in jail. There's almost no probability that I'm here other than that. It's I've been able to figure some things out and I'm not going to hold my voice back. This is what I encourage people to do across the board, whether you're my client or not. I always encourage this. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. You don't want to go to the dinner party. Just say, I don't want to go. It's fine. The world will not end. You don't want to continue to date the person. Tell them don't waste their time. Don't waste yours. Your therapist sucks and you need to fire them. Hey, Jen, not working out.

Jennifer: Do it.

Michael: Like we have got to get into the place. That, to me, is the deepest sense of agency, of sovereignty, of autonomy. My definition, and I'm going to ask your definition of this, my definition of healing trauma is doing what you want because you want to do it, and not doing what you don't want to do because you don't want to do it.

Jennifer: It's so nice. I like that. That's ooh, tangible, and you can hold that in your hand, yeah.

Michael: So, I'm curious, what is your definition?

Jennifer: Of healing trauma? What? I feel like I should have an answer for this.

Michael: You may not have one. It was just a left field question. I didn't even have that written down.

Jennifer: Give myself permission to say, in this moment right now accepting who I am, and believing in my own mind, what I know, being able to be free with choosing who I say that to, and it all, it, a lack of feeling or the bad people talk about good feelings and bad feelings, which kind of drives me crazy because they're all just feelings and information. But I don't expect to have a lack of fear or sadness or shame today. I have those feelings and I cherish them because I am like you. I grew up dead emotionally. survive. And so coming alive, that's my definition of coming to life and being a human being. And, even right now, like I'm full of shame for talking about naked therapy and, Oh my God, what's going to happen? I'm afraid. But that's me being alive. being a person in the world and I belong here and I can ask for help and I can receive help and I can give help today. Like that, that's healing to me. I can be spontaneous. I can eat what I want because I want to eat it because I know I'm hungry. That's healing to me. I can poop in public places now. I don't mean that's that came out wrong, but like public.

Michael: Get what you mean.

Jennifer: Like, I would drive 10 miles home to go to the bathroom cause I couldn't, my whole system was shut down when I was away from home. That's healing to me that I can sleep. Holy shit. I can go to bed and go to sleep. I take a little bit of melatonin. I sometimes take a medication, but that's healing to me because I went my life not being able to sleep most of the time. There's a lot of things that represent healing to me. And it's heart, like it, it touches me to talk about it because it's, yeah, it's touching.

Michael: Yeah, I love it. And it's human. This has been absolutely incredible conversation. I was looking forward to this and we're going to have to continue this. And there's so many more questions I've written down that we didn't get to have. the time to get into today. But before I ask you my last question, can you please tell everyone where they can find you.

Jennifer: Sure, they can find me at holistichealingcounselling.com. Counselling has two L's. And if you're a therapist just shoot me a line at Jen@TherapistSanctuary.com.

Michael: And guys go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. Look up Jen's episode for that and more in the show notes. My last question for you, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Jennifer: I don't know. I think sometimes I feel bad saying this ‘cause I feel like it's the wrong answer, but in a way I think I'm always going to be a bit broken. Like I, and I think that feels okay to me today. Like I don't think I'm ever going to fully get over some of the things that happened and I'm okay with that. So that's my answer.

Michael: I fucking respect that. I've had these moments in my life Where I look at it and I think to myself, God damn dude, you've done so much. You should be super proud. And I am. And I look at some of the things that I've done that are bad. And I think you should be very ashamed. That was a real fucked up thing that you do. And I am, and I'm both, and I can hold both of those in different spaces. And I think about some of the worst things that happened to me. Some I can forgive some I fucking cannot. And I think one of these misnomers is that you have to forgive to heal. And I'm like, maybe.

Jennifer: We can do a whole episode on that.

Michael: I think we're probably going to have to because we're out of time and this has been so powerful and I appreciate you tremendously guys. Make sure that you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com again, check out Jennifer's episode because this was amazing, reach out to her. If you're struggling, you need help, you need support and share this with someone in your life. If you had a holy shit moment and you're like, I need, to share this because I know that this person has not yet faced the demon that's inside of them. This might be the thing that changes their life and you might be able to help become the hero their story. That said, my friends, thank you for being here.

And Until Next Time,

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.