The Transformative Self-Improvement Journey and Healing of Trauma | with Thais Gibson

Michael: Hey, what's up Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well, wherever you are in the world. Today, I'm joined by a very special guest, Thais Gibson who is an — author, speaker, educator pretty much an everything kind of person. Welcome to the podcast, My friend!

Thais:  Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here with you.

Michael: Yeah, I'm so stoked to have you here and I know that this episode is going to bring so much value to people, and I've done my research on you. I know about you and who you are, and follow you on social and all the things. But for those who don't tell us about yourself.

Thais: So, I grew up in Toronto, Canada and I was an athlete growing up and really wanted to get a D1 soccer scholarship was my sort of plan and in my scouting year, I had really bad knee surgery, basically really complicated surgery, I was on crutches for eight weeks and I got addicted to my painkillers, just before my 15th birthday and went through this whole process of basically trying to figure out what addiction was. Like, didn't even know, I went to my first set of withdrawals didn't even know what withdrawals were what was happening to me was a very young and very kind of lonely experience and that took me on a journey to really trying to figure out like, what is going on? How do I get over this? And that really set me on this path at a very young age of like personal development, self-understanding, self-awareness, but more than anything else learning about the subconscious mind because as somebody who tried rehab, and all these different things that didn't work for me.  It wasn't until I learned about subconscious reprogramming and how for real change to happen it has to exist at the subconscious level wasn't until I got my hands on that but I understood like the battle of addiction people go through or the battle when people are failing their goals and New Year's resolutions is the battle between their conscious mind having one set of intentions and their subconscious mind, having a different set of intentions, and as sort of being at war and ultimately, the conscious mind can't out will or overpower the subconscious mind. And so, we get pulled back in these old directions and it can be really defeating, so that took me on a path. Went back to school, did a master's degree in transpersonal sake, 13 different certifications, and launched a personal development school after the running, a practice for about the better part of a decade.

Michael: Yeah, fascinating. I mean, when I read the background of your story and saw what you've done and the changes that you are stepping into making in the world.  I think to myself, this is what we need more of and I am a huge proponent about the understanding of mindset in the capability that you have of, once you have this thing, your brain in tune with what you want in the world, like everything is possible. Statistically, I should be dead or in jail. I grew up in a zip code where my friends were getting murdered. I was doing drugs at 12 years old. Like my life is nuts and yet here I am. I am not an anomaly, I am sure that you would agree that you and as well are not an anomaly. It is so much about this work that we do that creates change, but before I dive in because I have so many questions for you here today is when you're in this moment, you recognize, oh shit I have been impacted by prescription drugs, I'm very young and my teens, this is super scary. How are you even cognizant enough to step through that? Because I know adults, where that is so left field to them and terrifying like how do we create a pathway to step onto the path of healing when we're impacted by something that is so common, especially in North America as prescription drugs.

Thais: Yeah, I think for me it was unique in the sense that like I was really scared when I first understood what was happening, like when I just, you know, it was easy to justify because I was on painkillers for a while. And then when the prescription ran out there was somebody who gave them to me, who was a year older, and this whole thing and it was like this sort of slippery slope of incrementalism. But for me, I think that it was shocking at a point because I was like, I was this kid who was getting good grades and doing all these things and now like, what's going on, I'm struggling in life and all areas. And it sorts of was this from the very beginning, I wanted to stop like my conscious mind I wanted to stop, but my subconscious had a lot of trauma that was unresolved and I'm dealt with. And I had to really work on and figure out, but I think as an individual, like, listening to this, if that's something that a person is struggling with, I mean, I think anybody who's been through like real addiction, where, you know, there's like and I'm not sure if you've had this experience, but it's like you've just daily use and you even if for periods of time, like weeks months, you are like, oh, you know, I prefer this life and I like to feel numb and all these different things. There are low points with any addiction like they're really rocky like low blow points and I think sometimes that pain can be a motivator and that's what pain is. Just a feedback mechanism to let us know. Hey, something is out of alignment right now, whether it's like your thoughts, whether it's your unmet needs and like pain is there to call us and go, okay, we have to be able to create change. So I think for me, from the very beginning, I like wanted to stop, you know, at least like before the first year in. But isn't it took me about seven years total until I really saw myself out the other side.

Michael: Yeah. It's really incredibly profound how when you're in it and even though you recognize that you're in it, how controlling it can be. Because there is that part of you where there's justification, you look at it and you go, oh, my life feels, okay like this it's not that bad. I used to tell myself all the time at one point I weigh 350 pounds smoking, two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep every night and I go well at least I'm not killing anybody. And it would always be like this self-justification what happened to me? And this is what I'm very curious about is I have this moment in which I hit rock bottom. I had a total breakdown and was like, okay it's either, I have to create a change in my life where I'm going to die. And one of my biggest goals is, how do we mitigate the risk of rock bottom and create change before that moment of curves and what I'm very curious about is, was there a rock bottom moment here in your life where you were like oh wow if I don't fix this now, everything's over.

Thais: Yeah totally. I had a really big rock bottom, I had a rock bottom, it was a crazy thing. There's a whole long complicated story won't get into, but you know, it was I was getting married young like 19 years old to my, you know, a boyfriend who's also addicted to prescription drugs and I was in the US and I was getting married, so I could go back to school because I had left school and tried to go back and my papers and visa weren't working, and so we were trying to do this whole thing and then I caught him cheating on me the exact way that I caught a parent cheating on me and all our apparent cheating on the other parent in my life as a child. And in one sort of evening, it was like lost my papers, lost my ability to work, lost my ability to go back to school. We were living in a place that his parents own that we were renting had nowhere to live, like just in one night, like everything in my life was taken and I was already like, you know, living the life of having no money and all these different things. And so just everything kind of got ripped away from me overnight. And then I went down a really dark path for a little bit. And it was from that where it was, like. I think, sometimes we lose everything and it's like the grace of God can come in at that point because you're no attachments left, right? You have nothing to like look at through that lens. So that was the thing for me. But I think ultimately just from, like, a healing perspective of people are wondering about, like, why do I get stuck in these patterns? And why am I so helpless in the relationship to myself?

I think something that's so valuable to look at it's like the problem is not the problem, it's not the painkillers, it's not the wine or the two packs of cigarettes a day.  Like, the problem is that we are using those things. Those things aren't jumping down our throat when we're not looking, they're not smoking us, you know? And when we can't do anything about it, the problem is that we are using these things to run from unprocessed programmed patterns that are creating pain within us and until we go inside of ourselves and clean up that unresolved trauma and really take a look, we will continue to reach externally for things to try to numb that pain that actually exists is an imprint because of the past and that's how it's still there with us all this time after traumatic events happen.

Michael: Yeah I'm constantly fascinated by the idea of my understanding of there was nothing external in the world that was going to heal me intrinsically. It was always me chasing this idea of the more I do, the more access them, more drugs, girls, cars clothes, whatever somehow I would be satiated internally and feel like I'm capable of Love worthy of love self-belief, things of that nature. And as we progress and as we head ford, the thing that I'm always wondering is how do we mitigate that moment of rock bottom and I know with what you do in personal development and now me being in it for really 15 years of my life and thinking about what it means, I have this goal that says if I can give someone a tool that helps them keep from reaching Rock Bottom, I want to do that. The problem is though, I believe inherently and I hope that you'll be a person to correct me here. I believe that inherently as human beings, we love suffering, it is our favorite thing, we like to crave it, for whatever reason, part of it, being a defense mechanism to avoid reality, right? And the other part of it, I think is because we've become socially norm, it's become a social norm to understand that suffering has to be reality. However, I argue that that in fact is not true.  And so, what I'm trying to figure out here is how do you mitigate the risk of rock bottom and create change before a breakdown happens?

Thais:  Yeah, there's a bunch in here. So, a couple of things. So, first thing, I think I disagree with your point, so I'm not sure if you're saying, you believe that wheel of suffering or you, you're hoping that there's evidence to prove it to prove otherwise, but I don't think we love suffering. I think that we get imprinted by painful things inherently.  And then those become programmed patterns within our subconscious mind that then we may reach to maintain a comfort zone. And those things that we're doing, are not to create suffering for ourselves. Those things that we're doing, are coping mechanisms, that are being played out that are outdated strategies. So I really want to like, explain that for a second for people who are, like, what did you just say? So we go through childhood. We conditioned, we go through the system of classical conditioning. It's important you get the socialized need to get brought into the world, we get punished for doing things wrong we get rewarded for doing things, right? So we're mind that comes into the world kind of open now learns that parts of me are acceptable and parts of me are worthy of punishment and that creates pain for a child, because one of the only biological fears, a child, has a fear of abandonment. So a child comes into the world, they see this, they start being imprinted by the pain from their caregivers, and especially if that's coupled with different forms of attachment trauma. If there's any kind of painful events or extreme suffering in childhood, what happens when we have a painful event or piece of suffering is we give it meaning. So like let's say for example to parents just get divorced. Okay? And then the child goes well if they loved me enough they would stay together or the child makes some kind of meaning out of that event and maybe during that time one parent is criticizing the child, more. And the child goes, oh well I must not be good enough because I'm hearing from their expression to me that I'm not good enough and all these things that we go through, imprint us at our subconscious level.  And then we hold on to these stories because we want to remember them. So we can protect ourselves from these things recurring, later on, we want to remember, we're not good enough and then not expose that to people. And so you know, we hide or we become insecure and pull back or we remember we're on lovable so we don't get into relationships.

So we have all these things that imprint us and we remember them and we hold on to them and retain, we retell them actually is a subconscious strategy for self-protection but what happens is the mind is wired for survival and it goes we have to avoid pain all times are doing that but ultimately that creates more emotional pain. And I think if we look at every single painful thing we've ever done any kind of suffering, we've created, it was all a subconscious strategy to get a need met at the time. I took painkillers. Why numb emotional pain? Somebody's smoking cigarettes, and we can look at it from a perspective and go. No, that's not good.

You know, that's not healthy. You know, it's carcinogenic but like there's something in us it's running or something that our brain just using as a strategy to try to protect us or numbness in some form and so I think that's, you know, it's not that love of suffering. It's that a part of ourselves doesn't have better-equipped strategies to protect us from pain. And so, to answer that question, how do we stop ourselves from getting to that point? What we do is we have to learn to take inventory of ourselves. What are all the habits we have? What are the thought patterns? We have ordered the belief patterns. We have, what are those imprints at a subconscious level and how can we update our strategy? So we're always trying to get our needs met in the healthiest form and how can we learn to reprogram these stories or narratives we have about ourselves because of imprints from painful, past experiences.

Michael: Yeah, and when you're in this moment of what I call reframing and what most people do, call reframing and in your in this before you can take that place, that first step, I think so much of it is about compassion removing guilt and shame from the journey and understanding like part of it is you're not alone. Even though the sad truth of his at that many people suffer, you are not alone. So this isn't a one-way journey and the other part of it is understanding that there are amazing supports and communities who are willing to help guide you through this because it's only through that and at least in my experience in which I felt like I was able to finally step into what was next. And what I wonder is as we are in this place in first beginning this process, how do you step into that place of understanding that it's okay to be, okay, with bad things that have happened to you?

Thais: I think one of the first steps for that is everything we go through. Like we are always as human beings going to form some kind of coping mechanism or some kind of experience or believe about ourselves because of the things we go through. But anytime we give more painful meaning to ourselves because of those things, we just perpetuate the suffering. So one of the first things I tell people all the time like when we're going through a healing journey, one of the most important things you're going you have to learn to do is you set into that healing journey is to make sure that you change your internal dialogue so that it is always in a state of self-compassion and treating yourself no differently than you would treat a wounded child in pain because of anything else, any like beating ourselves up to any negative internal dialogue. Just distracts us from the problem.  Like if we have somebody and they make a mistake and that person is going into the situation, they're blaming themselves and beating themselves up, that doesn't even help you solve the problem or fix the mistake that just helps, you tell the story but yourself and distract yourself from taking accountability from introspecting as to why you made that mistake and beating ourselves up is always going to feed the problem instead of before the solution.

Michael:  Yeah. Now I have to say this, sure all sounds great on paper, right? In this process of stepping into the moment of recognizing that you do have to be compassionate and self-love will also be recognizing the narrative that everything ingrained in you is from that negative standpoint. I'm not good enough. I'm not strong enough, I'm not capable enough as being reinforced by either adult’s peers whomever, that may be and youth and knowing that up, until that moment, you've kind of been programmed. How do you step into acceptance when everything that you know, is I'm not good enough. I'm not strong enough, I'm not capable enough. This narrative of enough or vice versa, putting yourself in a position to leverage your own power to create that narrative. How do you do that?

Thais: So I think one of the first things is we always have to look at the situation and go and recognize the difference between our conscious mind and our subconscious mind. So the subconscious mind has all these imprints has these ideas in these concepts of like I'm not good enough, I'm weak, I'm disrespected, I don't belong, I'm excluded, you know, we have all these core wounds, there's like twenty-two major court wounds, people have the create this, like internal, I am narrative and nobody wants those.  Nobody in our identity wants those things. The problem is that our subconscious and unconscious were collectively run 95 to 97% of our thoughts, emotional behaviors on autopilot, but our conscious mind is our three to five percent and that's the part that they can observe.

And so what I get people to do when we're trying to get out of that is to sit down and observe like what are your narratives and to focus in on what those major, 22 core wounds are and start recognizing which ones show up for me the most and then I get people to run through this thing, it's called DTEA, it's like our beliefs produce patterns of thought, our thoughts, produce emotions, there are other ways we can produce emotions, but they do if I'm if I believe I am disliked and I go to a social event and I'm having thoughts about like, oh, that person is not going to like me. Oh, I'm not going to fit into that group. Oh, they're not going to accept me. How do I feel right? So I have I'm disliked as a core wound or a belief that creates patterns of thought, kind of, like, tree branches coming off the tree trunk.

How do I start feeling when I'm in that position? And then Neuroscience is proven, every single decision we make is based on emotion. So even people who are like, I'm a logical rational thinker. No, you make emotionally based decisions that you're tipping point. So we have to look and go, okay, when I feel bad these patterns of me feeling negative emotion, what I'm feeling that way, what are my coping mechanisms? And people have the same patterns of coping mechanisms, they have, they binge, watch Netflix, they binge eat, they, you know, play video games for 9 hours. Like, whatever it is, we have to first take inventory and audit ourselves from our conscious perspective, being able to look into our subconscious and then we can actually use reprogramming tools to get rid of these things at the root level reprogrammable beliefs our thought patterns and then our natural emotions that come off of that and our behaviors follow as a byproduct of plucking, those issues out at the root.  And if we can do that proactively and we don't have to get into a position wherein the behaviors or in the actions we are using painkillers or, you know, cocaine or anything like that. Because we can get to that point of doing the work from our conscious mind into our subconscious mind proactively, instead of reactively.

Michael: Yeah, I love that. I mean I could not agree a few more and that's so much of what I have my clients do is like, how do we create a baseline of understanding, how we got to this place? And then from there moving forward, and one of the things that I'm really curious about us, how do you navigate fear in this process? Because so many people step into this with shame guilt and then the big elephant in the room being fear of the second that I do this, people are going to see me who, for who I really am. When I think that often you've not yet, discovered who you really are. And thus, you are afraid of the outcome, we've been programmed obviously, in this conversation, especially the context of this conversation to believe that told true, when in fact, I actually know that it is not true. That we know who we are until the moment we make a choice. And so, that choice for me was stepping through fear.  And I see it all the time where people cross that boundary between who they are, and who they want to be because they want to step into it, how do you navigate fear in this process?

Thais: So one thing I always tell people in like love ours are things like this, is, we have to get really specific. Whenever we are trying to solve a problem, I think where people get lost in like, the problem is that they don't define the problem explicitly enough. So people be like, oh, I feel afraid or I feel sad. Okay, great. That doesn't give you a whole lot to deal with see if you like, okay, what specifically am I afraid of? There are only two things that ever cause fear. So, like the two things in this doesn't just apply to fear this. Applies to any emotional pain ever. Number one, Painful stories. Okay, so we're telling some kind of painful narrative, kind of like we've been talking about the belief and thought patterns, right?

I'm disliked, I'm afraid of being rejected, I'm afraid of being, you know, excluded, I'm afraid of being exiled, whatever it is. So that specific story or narrative that we've had or an unmet need. So we get afraid of a need not being that. Oh, I'm not going to get love and connection. I'm not going to get safety. Oh, I'm not going to get closeness with people. And so when we can really define, okay? What are those two things? Like, is this an unmet need or is it a painful story?

I'm telling myself and then we can go, okay? But if it's an unmet need the brain gets its needs met in the present but also in its fantasies of the future and then in its nostalgic memories of the past. So we can look at our unmet needs and we can go. Okay, well let me make a strategy to get the need bad. Let me advocate for the need or let me ask somebody to meet the need or let me meet that need in the relationship to myself. So if I'm afraid I'm not going to get safety, God. What's my strategy to go out and get safety? If I'm afraid that I'm going to be disliked. Maybe I should question that story instead of projecting that onto the future. And so we can manage and mitigate our fear of actually doing just that work from a procedural step-by-step solution. And that really helps us to minimize any negative, emotion that we're feeling. And the last thing we'll add to that, is that sometimes people will, you know, there's that quote and it's like, oh, you know, guilt is about the past and depressions about the past and fears about the future. Really fear is not about the future, fear is about the past.  Because the future is neutral right? The future is it. We don't know anything about the future.  Could be great, it could be terrible. So what's actually happening when we're fearing the future, is we have unresolved core wounds, these painful beliefs in like we keep talking about from the past that we project out onto the future. Oh, I've been bullied in the past. Oh, I'm afraid of being bullied again in the future. And so everything, that we feel that's negative, it's a beautiful opportunity, it's a feedback mechanism for us to go inside of ourselves and be like what specifically is this about?  What wound is still alive or what unmet need do I have? And to do the workaround, those things will give you a solution you're looking for.

Michael: Yeah. And a part of it is trusting yourself knowing that within you, you are capable of making the right decision for yourself and that's something that comes from learned behavior. Can you show up for yourself? Can you do the things? You say you're going to do find the therapist, find the coach, go to AA, in a, whatever that a, maybe I've been all of them and then put yourself in this position where every single day, you hold yourself accountable because I have found for most people. The only way that changes actually happens is in the doing, how much of this process is actually in showing up for yourself?

Thais: Well, this is a really interesting thing. We can think about these things all day in our mind, but unless we're doing the work, so do the work and can exist in a couple of different forms, right? I can do the work by questioning my narrative. So, if I've been telling myself every day that I'm stupid, for example, which is a core wound. Not a very nice one, but it is, you know if I go through life. And I'm telling myself that, you know, I have to change my internal dialogue. If I catch myself writing that narrative, I have to question it know, like, what is some evidence for why I'm smart or capable and I'm learning and growing like, we have to equal a break, that story. And, so that's technically doing the work. It's doing something by shifting the narrative within ourselves. If it's meeting an unmet need, we have to take action from a more behavioral perspective because we don't get our needs met by sitting still.

Now, what year I think talking about two that make such a profound difference, is that the subconscious is where change happens. So like we were talking about the earlier conscious mind cannot out well or overpower the subconscious mind and when we're doing something it's repetition plus emotion that reprograms. So we can have this long-standing pattern where we've always been telling the narrative or we've always been sabotaging our need for safety or love and connection or whatever it might be. But we have to do is take action like you're saying but on a daily basis, repetitively in a way that it elicits an emotional response and then what we're actually firing and wiring new neural pathways and when we stopped running the old patterns, the old neural pathways atrophy like muscles, and so, we're actually reprogramming our brain from that perspective.

Michael: Yeah, and I think about the rewards that one should give themselves along with the accolades that all too often people have been through traumatic experiences do not give themselves due to the fear of worth. And knowing that on the backside of doing that is this really beautiful capacity to step into ownership and a feel good about and I could not agree more if you can attach, and I'm not saying necessarily a reward mechanism to the thing that you're doing, but that emotional response of I did this, thus I feel good about myself in time that will far outweigh any of the entrance extrinsic forces that make you feel good because those are going to run out eventually if you leverage the world to make you feel good about who you are, that will run out, not that it's not important, not that things that like Community are not a huge factor in this healing Journey but you have to get good with who you are first. I often think the number one thing every single day that I strive for is, how can I put my feet on the ground and be totally okay with who I am? And so often we get lost in this idea in the narrative that we have to show up like this other person, in order for people to recognize us in this place of showing up for us, which I'm sure you've had the same experience that negative self-talk, the negative self-belief that shadow part of you that says you're not good enough, you're not strong enough like even though you're doing the work in your in it every day. How do you step up through it to solidify it and to build sovereignty within yourself, so you do show up every day even though it's not always noticeable immediately?

Thais: Yeah, it's a beautiful question because it's definitely something probably a lot of people are feeling on their Journey. So, here at you, you touch on a rope, something really important like the emotional component and the conscious mind speaks the language the conscious mind can speak English, for example, right? The subconscious does not speak in language, it speaks in emotion and imagery. So when we are trying to like create a new behavior, a new pattern we're trying to wire that in. What we actually have to be able to do, is we have to communicate to our subconscious mind which is where the problems are existing from because once they're observing and we're making you know, strategies to move through things that are our conscious mind. We don't really suffer too much at that level, so it's our subconscious mind in those patterns, it really needs the help and the support, and the healing. And so, when we look at the pattern have to reprogram there. If we don't have that emotional piece, then we can get really stuck. So for example, if you are going, okay, now I'm going to change the narrative for, you know, why I'm accepted by people, instead of I'm rejected by everybody. Then we can't just say like an affirmation and go. I am accepted, I am accepted. I'm accepted. It doesn't do anything. Really, and that's why people have so much pushback with affirmations. We have to go, I am accepted and then we need to find evidence and evidence if we look at a piece of evidence, we go, I'm accepted or I'm worthy of being accepted because I have this characteristic or I've had these friendships in the past and I felt accepted then every time we give ourselves a piece of evidence, what that actually is is an image, we think of an image in our mind and all images in our mind, our memories. And I'll memory is colored with emotion. So we think, oh, I have this nice quality, I'm friendly and we think of the times we've met friends or been friendly and that contains emotion.

And now, we're actually using our conscious mind to speak to our subconscious mind, and the more we're doing that on a repetitive basis, the more naturally we're going to feel good doing the work because we're actually uplifting ourselves in the process, but then if we do get stuck I always say to people you have to make a pact in the relationship to yourself that everything you're going through when your intention is to heal, is you have to treat yourself the way you would treat a child. If a child is going through something and they come home and they had a bad day and they're crying or not going to be like, what's wrong with you?

You should have been better, you're not good enough, you're ruining everything you would never do that. So why are we going to talk to ourselves in that abusive way? Why are we going to put ourselves down when we're having a bad day or if we're falling off or something like that?  We instead have to be able to be like, in full acceptance in, full compassion and kindness, we are human beings, we are going to go through different things and we have to, from a conscious perspective, choose every single time to be gentle and compassionate to ourselves instead.

Michael: I love that you said the word choose and I get so much pushback on this in content and podcast and my book even about the Power of choice because I believe that there is a part of this, which does declare, I am making a choice to do this. I'm making a choice to be kind to myself. I am making a choice to show up. I'm making a choice to listen to the podcast to go to therapy, to go to the gym to eat the good food, whatever that thing is, so many choices in there, but a lot of the counterargument is, we are natively pre-programmed to not be able to make that declaration. I disagree with that and I'm so curious about what your thoughts are.

Thais:  Yeah, I feel like that's a lot load of crap for people.

Michael: I'll say it for you. It's bullshit.

Thais: Thank you. We are pre-programmed, of course, we're free programs. We have a genetic predisposition, we get programmed in our whole upbringing where nature and nurture, but that doesn't mean that we just stayed there. It doesn't mean that like, oh, we're a program, so we're fine it, like no, we are actually being reprogrammed all the time and what we can do is use our conscious mind to make decisions. Why are in those decisions with positive emotions that we're using positive emotional associations? Our conscious mind can think and it can do things and if we can get into a habit of doing things that we reprogram ourselves. Like if you say, I want to go to the gym and great, then what you should be doing, if somebody's never been doing that and they want to start every time you go to the gym, make sure you enjoy it, make sure you feel good about it, make the choice lace, it with positive emotion. Now, your subconscious mind starts to make new emotional associations to this thing. And then we do that repetitively because the subconscious is a program through repetition plus emotion over time we start feeling good about going to the gym and that becomes a natural part of our programming. So yes, we were pre-programmed but our conscious mind can reprogram our subconscious mind and that's a really powerful hack that we have as human beings. We're not just stuck the way that we were. Whoever said, that's you.

Michael: Yeah, I mean the thing that I think about so often is if it is true that we are the sum total of all of our experiences leading up to this moment. Then that way, that means we've been informed by all those things to understand who we are right now. However, the future is not yet been determined and we can't change the past. So that means that there is still an innumerable amount of possibilities ahead of you and part of that involves being willing to step into it and say, I'm just going to see what happens. What kind of role does just curiosity play in this?

Thais: I think there's a beautiful. There's a quote you reminded me of when he said that it's by Wayne Dyer and he says like you can't drive your car looking in the rearview mirror and its sort of this idea like you can't just live your life by assuming that the past will be the future. I think that's what we do when we're on autopilot, but when we start observing our patterns and we start to become more conscious and we witness and we're aware, that's when we start having a point of control to be like, what is serving me in my patterns and what's not and how can I reprogram, what's no longer serving but what was your question after that? Sorry, the quote got me.

Michael: No, no problem. What I'm really wondering and trying to distill down here is how do you still step into that chain the idea that it's okay to change your narrative even though everything about your past and leading up till this moment has been an experience of you're not allowed to, you're not good enough, you're not capable enough, but now you're in this moment of a precipice of I can do this but I don't know how am I actually allowed to and then give yourself permission to through curiosity of if I'm curious about it? What will happen? Because I think so many people already have a wall up that says I'm not going to do this because I know the outcome and I don't know about you but I can't predict the future and because of that I'm willing to be curious about the possibility. So what I'm wondering about, what I'm curious about is what role does curiosity play in this journey?

Thais: I think curiosity is huge. There's like the big five-factor model, which is like it's related to personality and there's a quality called openness. And openness has essentially proven to be, majorly determinant on people being able to stay open to new experiences, be open and curious about their environment, and basically dealing with change better. The more open somebody is the better, they actually deal with change, and things that are sort of thrown their way the more adaptable they are. So obviously that plays a huge role but it's sort of boils down. Like if somebody's sitting down right now and they're listening and they're going you know what the past has always been, you know a certain way. And I'm afraid of really trying to think about moving on, you know, I always just get people first.  The first layer of anything is just a strip back your stories. Like what narratives do you have? Oh, something bad's gonna happen if I change.

There are people who don't just want to change for no reason they or don't want to avoid change for no reason. They have stories or ideas about change and that's what's creating the avoidance behavior. So if we can look first and investigate and go, well why am I close to change? Why am I afraid of change? Why am I afraid of being curious? Like what are my narratives? What do I believe will happen that will be bad or what am I afraid will happen? And that's what's creating that avoidance and when we can start questioning those things. Then we get to start setting ourselves free. So we sort of have to peel back the layers and then one other thing too is you can look at what needs do I get in that by trying to avoid change and if somebody's like, oh well I want to stay safe for, I want to stay comfortable. Okay. Well, what are the downsides? What does it actually cost you does staying where you truly keep you comfortable and safe? What are the downsides in 5 years in 10 years? And when we really take a look, sometimes will realize that this need to avoid curiosity, avoid being open, avoid change are actually things that will create more pain long-term and that can be a bit of a motivator to shift as well.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm sure you'll agree with me, though. I will not put words in your mouth, that real change happens to become uncomfortable because that's when you discover the truth of who you are right now, there's someone listening in there on that precipice, they want to step over this edge and they have this notion that personal development is a joke. It's whoo, it's whatever, right? And yet here they are, how do we push them into what's next in life. What is it about personal growth and personal development that has played such an important role in your life?

Thais: I would say that I got the control back over my life.  I think that we forget that we actually have control and I think it's really easy when we go through painful things and especially where people are victimized by things.  I think it's easy to be like, I'm the victim, but then to stay there and that creates an enormous amount of suffering. I think we can look at things and go. Yes, I was objectively the victim in a situation but I'm not going to keep living that narrative. And what I always tell people is if we are in a situation, if we went through pain, if through challenges, we owe it to ourselves especially if those challenges were because of other people, and we didn't ask for those things to happen to us.

We owe it and the relationship to ourselves to go in and pluck out every little imprint on her subconscious mind. That was made because of that situation or person. So, if somebody was abused, if somebody was screamed at whatever might have been that shatter that rattled them. What did you make that mean about you?  Did you make that I know, I'm weak? Did you make that mean, I'm a helpless person? I'm powerless? And then why forty years later or 50 years later? Are you still in that narrative about yourself? Because if something happened literally 40 or 50 years before, it's such an injustice.

So we have to look at that and be like, hey, personal development, personal growth self-observation or self-actualization, just looking at our patterns and actually using our conscious mind to reprogram, but we don't want there anymore and meeting our needs for ourselves that if somebody was emotional, neglected in childhood, you can bet that person 30 years, later, 40 years later, they're in a state of emotional neglect in the relationship in themselves.  So we have to look what are the narratives I've been telling myself for so long. What were the unmet needs that were not met by me? Both of those things are forms of trauma, the things that happened that shouldn't have happened like abuse and the things that didn't happen that should have happened, like, emotional neglect, and we have to look at all those things, and we have to stop re-traumatizing ourselves on autopilot, but then enacting those things in the relationship to ourselves. And so, you know, it's very important that we do that out of like, justice to ourselves. And so, personal development gives you that opportunity to observe, to look at those things, and to stop re-traumatizing ourselves in autopilot because we have these imprints playing themselves out in our lives over and over again.

Michael: Love it! I literally have goosebumps right now because I could not say it better myself. It is so important that one of the benefits that this gives you controls that thing that is often stripped from, as you can get it back. If you're willing to step into it and I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying it's going to happen overnight, but it can and you know what? Sometimes that's good enough, I could talk to you. Literally all day. I feel like we're just tipping the iceberg here. There are so much more. I have to ask, but before I ask you my last question, where can everybody find you?

Thais: www.personaldevelopmentschool.com I have over 40 courses in there. People can check out what I do for lab webinars a week and then I put daily content on personal development school  - Thais Gibson.

Michael: Awesome!

Thais: And the YouTube content.

Michael:  I believe you have a book too.

Thais: Yes, the Attachment Theory Guide.

Michael: There you go. Perfect.  My last question for you is, what does it mean to you to be Unbroken?

Thais: It means going back in and becoming our own parents or caregivers that we didn't get to have. Like, people are imperfect and I think we can go through things from parents, we can go through things from siblings, from teachers, and I think so much of healing ourselves and putting ourselves back together is literally, as being able to look at all the things that weren't given to us or all the things that were done to us that we didn't like or would have preferred not to have happened and we have to actually go in and repair and to show up for ourselves in those areas and meet the unmet needs change the narrative and then we become whole again through doing those things and through, being able to give those things to ourselves that we didn't get.

Michael:  Yeah, I loved it! Absolutely could not agree more, thank you so much for being here Unbroken Nation.

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