Yes.

Well, um, before I go into Sisyphus, I used the chapter The Achilles Heel because, um, a lot of complex trauma survivors will know that, you know, we all have these emotional maps of the world in terms of who we are and how we'll survive, and everybody has core negative beliefs.

And you don't come out of the womb with these beliefs.

You learn them through painful and invalidating life experiences.

It could be, "I'm not good enough." It could be, "I'm too much." And in this Psychological Achilles Heel chapter, I used, um, Matthew Perry's memoir as, um, as a case study, and anyone that has read that memoir, and he has a documentary coming out later this month, he repeatedly said in his memoir, "I'm broken." And it was something he started telling himself early on when he felt very unseen in a stressed out family system.

And it's emblematic of what happens in complex trauma, where you have an early formative memory where, you know, when a parent looks through you with despondent eyes, you don't stop loving them.

You stop loving yourself, and you start telling yourself a story about yourself, that core negative belief.

Mm.

Can you tell us just a little bit about the book and just maybe what, what is it about, first of all?

Um, well, thank you so much.

You're just filling up my cup with all of your, [laughs] your praise.

So, um, I am a complex trauma therapist, so, um, basically that's the pain that people endure in the context of their relationships.

And, um, I spent the last 15 years working with trauma survivors in one way or another.

And, um, I teach at NYU.

I teach, um, graduate therapists.

Like, how do we gradually become the, the most beautiful version of ourselves?

Now let's talk about how did they get there? Where do they come from?

Well, that, that's a really great question.

And, um, first off, you know, nobody likes to go into the painful past, um, but the unexamined history is doomed to repetition.

And, um, Carl Jung has a quote that I love, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it continues to rule your life, and you call it fate." So, um, I created an exercise that I call the Erotic Emotional Map, um, and it's modeled off of the exam, uh, the psychology test that's the gold standard, the Adult Attachment Interview, with a little bit of a twist.

And, um, I had to give it a more kind of jazzy title because these tests have such boring titles, and I wish people put more imagination into how they name them.

So I called it the Erotic Emotional Map.

But basically, there's a very simple question, which is, you know, per the Adult Attachment Interview, if you look at the relationship you had with each of your caregivers between the age of 5 to 12, and you describe three to five adjectives you had to de- to describe the relationship, um, you can start to see that people are a complicated blend of vices and virtues, darkness and light.

What would you say to somebody who has that pattern?

So the first one goes, in an upbringing with complex trauma and acute trauma, does the distinction matter? And maybe in answering that question, you can help us understand what is complex trauma? What is acute trauma?

Yeah, absolutely.

So complex trauma is the kind of trauma that occurs within the context of close relationships.

It's best described as the debt by a thousand cuts.

It can be what happened too much, what didn't happen enough, what didn't happen at all.

And the other thing about complex PTSD, which I'd like to say is that let's say you were in the park having a picnic and then a bear comes toward you and you're no longer digesting your sandwich.

You either have go into freeze or you go into flight, you're probably not going to fight the bear unless you're incredibly jacked.

as well.

So I would continue to go to relationships with unavailable people because they would validate this thing for me that I didn't even know existed.

First off, I really appreciate you sharing that because it brings the theory to life.

Sometimes we talk about these psychological theories and it's kind of like reading a driving manual without getting in the car.

And then you get a little bit of your own healing journey and it's like, aha, it all makes sense.

And speaking exactly to what you shared, it's a very universal experience.

And in the book, we explore this through the erotic emotional map.

And there's an exercise that you often use in therapy where you have someone give three to five adjectives to describe the relationship they had with each parent, not the parent, the relationship.

we don't have the tools and the knowledge to kind of investigate it a little deeper and ask like, okay, is this coming from the fact that I'm nervous about, am I going to get a call back from this person or am I like excited because this feels good? So can you talk a little bit about the importance of that? getting in touch with certain parts of your body and why that's a very key part in not repeating these patterns.

What can these two myths teach us about finding the balance between loving ourselves and loving another person?

Well, they represent two opposite ends of the spectrum.

Narcissist is over ego, or as Freud said, his libido is focused on the self.

And Echo has a poor sense of self.

She has not individuated herself.

she's besotted with him at first sight.

And then when he cruelly rejects her, she's so brokenhearted that she disappears into a cave and just evaporates as sorrow in the ether.

Because I think not enough people know about it, and I'd like people in my audience to to look for somebody certified in EMDR because it really is so important with trauma.

Is that kind of what it is? What do you help me understand that?

Well, first off, I like to call this your erotic emotional map.

And a very simple thing that I like to do with people is that, and you know this as a therapist, that when somebody comes to you, first you hear their life story, then you notice their I am beliefs.

All of those I am beliefs are learned through painful or maybe invalidating life moments.

Some of them are positive beliefs, some of them are negative beliefs.

But also the golden question that you often ask people when they come in is to describe the relationship they had with each parent.

Three to five adjectives, not the parent, the person themselves, but just the relationship.

yeah

Is that kind of what it is? What do you help me understand that?

Well, first off, I like to call this your erotic emotional map.

And a very simple thing that I like to do with people is that, and you know this as a therapist, that when somebody comes to you, first you hear their life story, then you notice their I am beliefs.

All of those I am beliefs are learned through painful or maybe invalidating life moments.

Some of them are positive beliefs, some of them are negative beliefs.

But also the golden question that you often ask people when they come in is to describe the relationship they had with each parent.

Three to five adjectives, not the parent, the person themselves, but just the relationship.

It was OK, what what is something that I need to learn a little bit more? here and i know i've got a therapist on this call here with me and you're about to like sink into all this stuff and i'm done being psychoanalyzed for the day and i want to get our listeners to i mean so what do we start to do with this like what because i know people are like okay got it you know identify who the archetype is and stuff so so what do we start to do how do what are the steps

I'm sure that's a fear, right? That, that some founders have is like, what if I lose the,

yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that is the most common fear.

So what you're talking about is the psychological principle of sublimation.

Sublimation is when you turn your psychological Achilles heel into your superpower.

So, for example, Michael Phelps was running laps around his parents' house.

Do a lot of people have a hard time connecting with that? Or do a lot of people you work with, like, have almost like a inexplicable connection with it? I'd just love to hear your riff on that.

Yes.

Which is basically this golden question you tend to ask people when they come into therapy, where you kind of say from the ages of 5 to 11, give me three to five adjectives to describe the relationship, uh, with each, both of your caregivers, your parents.

And you describe the relationship and not the person.

So an optimal relationship might be stable, predictable, reliable, trustworthy.

But in reality, a lot of relationships are a complicated blend of vices and virtues.

What might have happened too much or too little or not enough, or what didn't happen at all.

And you often get a selection of adjectives like funny, warm, scary, uh, stressful, strict.

[laughs]