Dr. Christine Gibson - Modern Trauma

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🎙️🎙️🎙️Today’s guest is a visionary at the intersection of healing, equity, and systems change. Dr. Christine Gibson is a family physician and trauma therapist based in Calgary, Canada, whose work transcends borders—both literal and figurative. With a career steeped in global health, medical education, and equity advocacy, Christine has spent her life weaving narratives that bridge trauma, resilience, and the profound power of story.

Her debut book, The Modern Trauma Toolkit, released in 2023, offers a revolutionary approach to understanding and overcoming trauma. But that’s just the beginning. Known to her massive following as TikTokTraumaDoc, she’s a social media powerhouse with over 130k followers, using her platform to educate, empower, and inspire global audiences.

Christine’s academic credentials are just as remarkable—holding a Doctorate in Professional Studies, a Master’s in Medical Education, and two TEDx talks under her belt. She’s also a WHO-approved social media educator, a global non-profit leader, and the force behind Safer Spaces Training, a corporation dedicated to building psychological safety. Oh, and let’s not forget the Belong Foundation, another testament to her tireless work creating spaces for healing and growth.

Get ready to explore how trauma becomes growth, how systems can evolve, and how the power of storytelling might just save us all. Please join me in welcoming the incredible Dr. Christine Gibson!

Questions:

Trauma and Healing

1. You describe trauma as a story that our body holds onto. What happens when the story evolves faster than the body can adapt? Can healing ever outpace the pain?

2. In your experience, does trauma ultimately reveal the truth about a person, or does it obscure it? Is there value in the identity we forge through trauma, or is it something to shed?

3. How do you see trauma influencing systems of power and oppression? Could collective trauma be weaponized to maintain inequality?

4. Post-traumatic growth is a powerful concept. Is there a limit to the “growth” that can come from trauma, or does every wound hold transformative potential?

Systems Change and Equity

5. You’ve worked in systems change and global health. Is the healthcare system more traumatized than the patients it serves? How can the system itself be healed?

6. How do you reconcile the tension between individual healing and systemic inequities that perpetuate harm? Can personal transformation ever disrupt entrenched systems?

7. Are the concepts of equity and justice inherently traumatizing to those who benefit from privilege? How do we move toward equity without creating new traumas?

Storytelling and Narrative

8. You weave story into your work. Are stories inherently healing, or can they also deepen wounds if told in the wrong way?

9. If trauma can be reframed as a story, what is the role of the “villain” in that narrative? Is forgiveness about rewriting the villain, or removing them altogether?

10. Do stories have a responsibility to the truth, or are they only accountable to the teller’s perception? How do you balance those when guiding others?

Philosophy of Healing

11. Do you believe healing requires the presence of pain, or could humanity evolve to heal without suffering?

12. If the body holds memory, is it possible for the body to “forgive”? What might forgiveness look like at a cellular level?

13. Is the concept of “safety” in psychological terms a universal human need, or is it a culturally specific construct?

Social Media and Influence

14. You’ve grown a significant following as “Tiktoktraumadoc.” Does the platforming of trauma education risk trivializing it, or does it democratize healing in ways traditional systems never could?

15. Social media often thrives on polarization. How do you navigate teaching about trauma in a medium that rewards extreme emotions over nuance?

Intergenerational Impact

16. Trauma can ripple across generations. In your view, does healing follow the same path, or is it unique to each individual?

17. How do we heal in a world that values individualism, when trauma itself is often a collective experience passed down?

Human Potential

18. Do you think there’s a “ceiling” to human resilience? Can humanity’s ability to endure and adapt also become its greatest limitation?

19. If humans were to collectively heal from trauma, what would the next stage of our evolution look like?

The Future of Trauma Work

20. How do you see the intersection of technology and trauma? Could artificial intelligence play a role in identifying, treating, or even experiencing trauma?

21. As someone who bridges psychology, medicine, and philosophy, do you think there is an ultimate “unifying theory” of healing, or will it always remain fragmented?

22. Is there a concept of trauma or healing that you believe humanity isn’t yet ready to understand or accept?

Poem:

The Spirals That Rage

Rage, oh spiral, against the silence of surrender!

In your turning lies the tempest of truth,

the trembling triumph of life unyielding.

Spin, sacred strands, through sorrow, through stars,

through the scars of history’s endless wars!

Male and female—

twin flames tethered, circling in eternal embrace.

Lilith and Adam, Isis and Osiris:

their love a forge of fire and forgiveness,

each kiss a dagger, each wound a bloom,

melting malice into meaning,

molding madness into memory.

East and West—

pillars of paradox, peaks of pride and power.

One whispers wisdom like jasmine on moonlit winds,

the other roars with the sun’s golden fury.

Raging together, they trade temples for towers,

trails for trains, only to find

their longing is the same:

a home within the other,

a harmony not yet sung.

Science and Spirit—

the alchemist’s paradox,

one asks how, the other why.

Galileo, shackled but staring at eternity;

Einstein, chasing whispers of God’s laughter.

The lab and the altar,

both sacred, both searching.

Each formula a hymn, each prayer an experiment,

their union the fire

that casts shadows into light.

Yin and Yang—

circling as lovers who cannot part,

light in shadow, shadow in light.

The moon murmurs lullabies to the sun,

the sun answers with flame.

They rage not to destroy, but to define,

to breathe life into stillness,

to bind chaos into the sacred pulse

of the universe’s heart.

The Double Helix twists and tears,

its strands screaming with every spin.

Not content to settle, it survives,

each turn a trial, each trial a triumph.

In its spiral, it dares us to rage—

to rise, to live, to love.

We rage—against silence, against stillness,

against the dying of the light.

We rage to remember the fire that forged us,

the love that lacerated us,

the truth that tore us open.

Spin, oh spiral, spin!

Your dance is the language of the divine.

For the helix does not die;

it rises, twisting into light,

always into light.

https://www.christinegibson.net/

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ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the true life podcast I hope everybody's having a beautiful day I hope the sun is shining I hope the birds are singing I hope the wind is at your back I have with me today ladies and gentlemen modern the modern trauma toolkit I got some tools for you I have an incredible individual so today's guest is a visionary at the intersection of healing equity and systems change dr christine gibson is a family physician and trauma therapist based in calgary canada whose work transcends borders, both literal and figurative. With a career steeped in global health, medical education, and equity advocacy, Christine has spent her life weaving narratives that bridge trauma, resilience, and the profound power of story. Her debut book, The Modern Trauma Toolkit, released in twenty twenty three, offers a revolutionary approach to understanding and overcoming trauma. But that's just the beginning. No one to her massive following as tick tock trauma. She's a social media powerhouse with over one hundred thirty thousand followers using her platform to educate, empower and inspire global audiences. Christine's academic credentials are just as remarkable. Holding a doctorate in professional studies, a master's in medical education, and two TEDx talks under her belt, she's also a WHO-approved social media educator, a global nonprofit leader, and the force behind Safer Spaces Training, a corporation dedicated to building psychological safety. And let's not forget the Belong Foundation, another testament to her tireless work creating spaces for healing and growth. Get ready to explore how trauma becomes growth, how systems can evolve, and how the power of storytelling might just save us all. Christine, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I'm great. I'm sorry. The bio is way too long. Trim that to like twenty percent. But yeah, on paper, I'm fancy. And yes, I'm very dedicated to systems change and post-traumatic growth. Well, I've got a few questions that are kind of stacking up here and we're going to we're going to bounce around a little bit. We'll get to the book. We'll get to the narratives. We'll get to the personal story. But let me just start off with this first question right here that's coming in to us from Desiree. She says. What happens when the story – okay, she says, you described trauma as a story that our body holds on to. What happens when the story evolves faster than the body can adapt? Can healing ever outpace the pain? Nice question, Desiree. Thank you for starting us off. It's a beautifully phrased question, too. I don't think of any of this as linear. I think of this as really, really circular, and that way you can – Like in circles, you can also accommodate for ancestral trauma that we hold and the pre-verbal trauma that we hold. and what we will pass on and the circles also accommodate for like it's not just our body it's our family system it's the community it's the ecosystem so there's many circles that hold the trauma so if it's getting beyond our body perhaps the family circle or the community circle or even the ecosystem needs to hold it so I I try not to think of these things in really finite systems but that there's all of these circles of healing and trauma that are happening and I mean, I can think of a very specific example where that, what you're describing can happen and that's in our First Nations. So in Indigenous communities, I think the trauma did get beyond what could be held by an individual. And so it had to be held by a system and sometimes it has to be held by the earth and sometimes it has to be held in ritual and ceremony. That's one community where I think it did get and still continues to be quite overwhelming with the ongoing structural violence they face. Yeah, it's interesting to think about. I love the idea. Well, I get the image of the stone being thrown in the still pond and the way it ripples out when I hear you begin to talk about the circular, the echoes of trauma on some level. It is like that though, right? A lot of the traumas people hold aren't – Might not even be their own traumas. They might be their mom's traumas or their dad's traumas or their grandfather's traumas. Like that's that's kind of an interesting concept. Is that something when people come to you or you begin talking or maybe your own personal experience that doesn't you don't learn that right off the bat, though, right? Isn't it sort of struggling with yourself before you start realizing, hey, this thing's not mine? It's one of the reasons when I work with trauma, I very rarely start with the story, because sometimes the story isn't the story. So for two reasons. it can be very triggering and it can actually strengthen the pathways toward traumatic memory and traumatic content to tell your story when you're not in a calm body. So the first goal is to learn how to be in a calm nervous system. And if I say, hey, tell me your trauma story the first time that I meet somebody, We haven't established trust and we haven't established a path forward. And oftentimes they will be telling that story and strengthening the pathway. So it's one of the reasons why I don't start with that story unless... I mean, some people will come to me and they... have to tell the story like they're compelled to. And I will always listen to it. But if I'm making a suggestion of where to start, I start with the body and the nervous system. And I start with noticing. Can we notice if you're over-activated or under-activated? And that's where the trauma is stuck in the nervous system. And once they learn how to get into the window of tolerance and into a calm body more of the time, that's when we start to approach what the story might look like. And sometimes the story isn't necessarily, this is a thing that happened to me. It's more, this is a feeling that's stuck. So if shame is stuck, if anger is stuck, one of the things that we just know is that might not belong to you. And it's one of the ways that I really enjoy working with both cognitive or brain-based therapies and somatic or body-based therapies, because those kinds of patterns that are inherited through our genes, they're often more amenable to somatic or non-verbal ways of moving them through. And yeah, I'll stop there. But I don't think enough people recognize this. Yeah, we should back up a little because there's a lot of information in there. Maybe we could jump back a little bit to the beginning and we could talk about what was it that obviously you have been helping a lot of people and you've done some really deep thinking to develop some tools like the window of tolerance and all of these ideas that are probably very helpful to people. But How did you get there? Did you start off maybe figuring out some stuff about yourself, or did you notice a pattern of people coming to you? This is probably the foundation of the book as well, but maybe we could talk about that a little bit before we jump back forward. Yeah, absolutely. So I have been a family physician for over twenty years and I started in a hospital system. So very, very ill patients, a lot of pain and suffering. And it was a really intense job for me. So when I look back on it, in retrospect, it was a fairly traumatic job. I would work a hundred hours a week. I would be sleep deprived for a couple of days in a row. and seeing and being a part of the story of a lot of suffering without really an invitation to process it. Because as physicians, you're just told like if something bad happens, and this human that you are connected to, you just go to the next room. And so one of the things that I learned, I mean, extra is to stuff my own feelings and to not really acknowledge them and process them. And a lot of us are like that, especially of a certain age. So I mean, I find that the younger folks are less liable to do that than folks of my generation. And we just push down our feelings and trundle on. So that was my kind of first career path. And then I went into family practice in about twenty seventeen. And it was right after I had survived the earthquakes in Nepal. So I'd gone through significant personal trauma in the lead up to me leaving the hospital. And part of that was just this acknowledgement that I'm feeling overwhelmed. And part of that overwhelm was personal. There was a marriage that ended quite badly. And then there was the earthquakes. And so in Nepal, for those who don't know that are listening, there was a series of earthquakes starting with a seven point eight that rippled through the Kathmandu Valley where I'd been working at the time. And it was it was terrifying. You know, I really thought I would die. A lot of the buildings around me came down because I was in the old city in Patan. And I didn't really understand what was happening in my mind-body system afterwards. I could kind of, with curiosity, think, well, is this PTSD? What's happening? But in terms of really understanding it, I just had to do some research. So I obviously met with a psychiatrist. I got evacuated to Singapore. And he said, what you're having is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Right. And I hadn't really heard that phrase before. So I started studying. And when you just said the window of tolerance is a new tool, it's not. That's psychiatrist Dan Siegel. He came up with that. So a lot of what I did in the Modern Trauma Toolkit is I brought together a lot of the thinking that's been happening by a number of different thought leaders in trauma. And I'm trying to explain to people in a really easily accessible way. So the book is written at a grade eight language. And the examples are very inclusive. And they might be softly triggering, but I'm not going to describe events in great detail, which a lot of other trauma authors have done. So what I tried to do is I wrote the book that I knew my patients needed to read. And as I started studying trauma for like eight years, I... I started focusing on it in my practice. So in my family practice, I put a lot of my patients through trauma therapies as I was learning them, and they didn't just recover in their mental health conditions, their physical health improved. And that was what really drove it home to me is, If your nervous system is always in fight or flight or sympathetic state, your immune system never has a chance to turn on. Or your rest and digest, your sleeping, your digestion, all of these systems are never really in balance. And the way that my patients recovered in my family practice was just so... clear to me they were back in an embodied state. Their parasympathetic state was starting to work. Things like diabetes and asthma and all these other things were improving. And I thought, wow, trauma is the root of so much of what I'm seeing. And my family practice was in an equity deserving community. They'd been through lots of childhood trauma and lots of systemic issues that happened to them. So now I work primarily at a refugee clinic and in adult addictions. And I still see a very small number of my, my old family practice patients. So it's really narrowed my focus in terms of seeing, well, who is the most harmed by trauma and not really accessing the the help that they need. And then I keep thinking, well, how can we help trauma at these larger systems? We're facing climate emergency and natural disasters, we're facing political polarization, we're facing an ongoing pandemic and people are struggling. And that's why I joined TikTok and it's why I wrote the Modern Trauma Toolkit. It's such a great answer. It's interesting to me that here you are in the stage of your life, if we take it to the beginning part of the story and there's all these earthquakes around you, it sounds like a metaphor for your life on some level. Like all the walls just come crashing down and you're like, okay, here we go. It shook up more than my physical body. Like it shook me up. Yeah. You think there's a connection to something bigger? Like we spoke just briefly about like the concentric circles and how like the world around us is holding all this energy. Is that like, is that a. Is it all necessary? You know what I mean by that? I know you didn't cause that earthquake, but on some level, was that earthquake a way for you to begin anew, to start a new life? Do you think that there's something bigger happening? And before I answer, I want to acknowledge that at minimum, ten thousand people died in that earthquake, many of them in the Kathmandu Valley. So it was it was a devastating earthquake for Nepal. And the repercussions are still rippling out, as you described. The ripples in the pond are still definitely happening in Nepal. So I was. fortunate to survive and many others didn't. I mean I had the privilege at the time of bringing a lot of awareness to what was happening in the earthquake because for whatever reason I maintained my wi-fi connection so I think part of my purpose in that moment was to bring attention to Canadians and even the world because I was one of few people who were able to tell the story through my lens obviously and just say what I was seeing on the ground So like at that micro level, I think at that moment, there was something that I had a purpose in that event. And it led to my first TED talk is just seeing community come together and solve their own problems. for me professionally those ripples definitely continued and I felt like something that really opened up for me was this connection to flow and I know when I'm supposed to be going in a direction and every once in a while I've got a confused like right now I was trying to decide about a program that I was studying and do I stay or go because the flow wasn't really telling me what direction to go. But I have found that since being in the earthquake in twenty fifteen, a friend of mine sent me the TED talk from Dr. Alyssa Rankin. She's become a good friend since then, but she was one of my first teachers in terms of like understanding whole health systems. And so that all happened in twenty fifteen within like a week of itself. And then I the kinds of therapies that I've been studying since. And I mean, I've certified in the alphabet soup of therapy. And that's why I called the Modern Trauma Toolkit, because there's just so many tools in there. But I just find that these the things that I meant to learn are just showing up in my path and things like tick tock in the book. It's just come in a real flow state. And so I'm both learning and sharing and bridging and bending and all of these really interesting things that were definitely not on my path before the earthquake. what led you to go to nepal like that seems like there's a lot it seems to me I've never been there but it seems to me the the eastern influence holds a lot of potential for western medicine was was there something that drew you over there I've been doing medical education work overseas since about two thousand seven. So I started working in Laos through a project between Calgary and Laos. And I was learning a lot through that program. But what it really stimulated me to understand is Family medicine is the backbone of health care. And if they don't have strong primary care, health systems really struggle. So that was a lesson I learned in Laos. So I started a nonprofit called the Global Family Med Foundation. And so I've been doing academic consulting in places like Myanmar, so like Yangon. uh ethiopia throughout east africa so tanzania uganda rwanda um and I had spent about a month to six weeks every year in lao as a part of that project for eight years and then I did the same in nepal so I would actually live on the ground for four to six weeks um the hospital job did allow me to do that that was one of the amazing perks of the crazy hours I worked is I could just get a huge chunk of time off and live somewhere else And I mean, when I say that I do academic consulting, so much of it was learning from the locals. And Patton Academy in Nepal has one of the most incredible community-based medical training that I've ever seen. They have all of their students from the year one doing twenty five percent of their training in community. And that includes the rural communities. And I've never seen a since a program just so community-oriented as what they're doing in Patten. What they're allowing for is all of their medical students are comfortable and craving these smaller community village environments where they're really immersed and connected to the people. In so many other countries, the doctors are like, well, where can I work with the fanciest machines and the highest tech and all the subspecialists? But in Nepal, they're like, where can I be in community? And it was amazing. So, yeah, I learned a lot in Nepal and I was definitely drawn to learning in resource poor environments and then taking that knowledge back to Canada where I was doing a lot of medical education and I was running a residency in health equity at the time. Nepal in particular, I was drawn to Patton, but I'd been to Nepal before. And, you know, I live in a mountain community in Canada. The Nepali... I mean, there's definitely prairies in Nepal as well, but the mountains really draw me. And the way that you... have to put so much effort into being in community in Nepal because these villages are so hard to reach. And just seeing how this medical education program was sending students out to these very far villages and thereby helping them during the earthquake. I mean, there was one village where the medical students were stationed And after their own housing collapsed during the earthquake, they spent the entire like rest of Saturday afternoon and night dragging the patients out of the hospital that was crumbling. And they saved all of them before the hospital fell. So, you know, the stories that I hear are so, I don't like to use the word resilient because it's, resilience is so often imposed on people, but it really is the story of resilience. And I've been totally honored to hear it in many different venues. Thank you for sharing that. It's, it hits me on a lot of levels. My wife and her family are a hundred percent Laotian. And so I got, I get up to all these cool stories of Lao and the families come over and talk about all these amazing time. One of my uncles on my, on my wife's side, we were talking a couple of weekends ago and he was telling me like how grateful and how thankful he is to be here. He goes, you know, George, There's one question that I asked myself in Lao and one question that I asked myself here that are exactly the same but have a different meaning. I go, what is it? And he goes, what are we going to eat today? In Lao, you ask yourself, what are we going to eat today? Because there's no food where we were at. In here, I'm like, what are we going to eat today? We want to get some steak. We want to get some chicken. You know what I mean? He just said it with this gregorious smile and you could feel the warmth radiating off of him. And I was like, Whoa, that is a real foundation of community right there. When you're dealing with different daily I expectations of how life is and what life means. And there is something real about community there. When you are, when you're in a tight knit community where everyone on some level has shared goals and shared sacrifices, you know, you're not worried about buying a Tesla or going to Costco. You know, there's, there's bigger problems and there's more important problems and more human problems on some level. We're foundation problems. And I do think the trauma in Laos, I didn't recognize it at the time because my radar wasn't really on it. But the most unexploded ordinances or landmines in the world exist in Laos. And I heard that story often because to this day, children will be walking through a minefield and have an explosion. And So one of the things that I saw in Laos that I've never seen anywhere else was just a lot of amputations and harm. And it's ongoing because even though the Americans dropped everything, they did not come and clean it up. So they called it the secret ore because they dropped more mines into Laos than they did Vietnam during that time. So That is a trauma that lives on in the mulberry trees. Like the silk industry was like the backbone of a lot of Lao agriculture and they had mulberry farms, but because so much chemical agents were dropped in the country, they lost two or three generations of mulberry trees because they couldn't grow. And then they lost the ability to weave silk because they lost the generations that knew how to do it. So one of the things that I saw that was connected actually to a maternity waiting home where women that were pregnant were waiting in a larger center so that they could deliver their child safely. And they were teaching these women how to weave. So like when you talk about those circles, like there were these circles of traumatic events that happened that wove through the generations. And you can also see the healing and what I would call post-traumatic growth weaving back in. And I didn't have the words for it then, but when I look back on my experiences in Lao, that was very much what I was seeing too. Are there some particular areas of the book that are, that are connected to that particular part of your life? I didn't get really personal about it in the Modern Trauma Toolkit, but I've traveled to, I mean, at this point, I think it's closer to eighty countries. It was about sixty. Now it's closer to eighty. So I'm very much interested in both what did our ancestors know? Like, what did my Ukrainian and Scottish ancestors know about healing that we have forgotten and we could accommodate into the healing paradigm? and what do other cultures do for healing because in western culture we're so quick to turn to medications and I'm of the personal belief that medications don't do a lot for trauma what they do is they mask symptoms so I could give you a medication called prazosin and it's a blood pressure medication and it's going to lower your blood pressure and it's going to change your dreams to be more calm because you no longer think that your body is activated but all I'm doing is lowering your blood pressure at nighttime. I'm not changing the neural pathways in your mind. Whereas other cultures, they have community ritual like dancing in a circle or chanting together. And now I understand the physiology about why chanting works and why doing it in a group works even better because you're lengthening your exhale, which is your parasympathetic system, The chanting is vibrating your vagus nerve, which runs between your lungs and your spine. And you co-regulate in a group, and you actually, your mirror neurons will activate and group processes. This is something that one of the journalists that I quoted calls the extended mind. The extended mind is deeply healing. And we have so many cultural... patterns that have been with humans for millennia. And in modern times, we've lost them. So one of the things that I do explore in the Modern Trauma Toolkit is what did we know through ancient ways and what do we know through other cultures? I've studied Ayurvedic counseling. So that's the Vedic texts in India and ten thousand year old knowledge. I've studied Qigong with a guy out of Minnesota, actually. Spring Forest Qigong is how to take the healing practices and make them really easy and simple. Master Lin calls it a healer in every home. So I'm really interested in how these ancient techniques can be relearned. And I think we need to do that because we don't have a pill for what's happening to us right now. We don't have a pill, but we have some mushrooms. Like I've been working a lot. And they're readily available. I'm not a doctor. I'm not saying people should do them. But I spend a lot of time in the community, like PTSD, trauma, addiction, speaking to people that are sort of on the front lines. And I can't help but hear the similar ideas about the body keeps the score, the four agreements, neuroplasticity, the default mode network, all of these ways in which modern medicine through SSRI seem to be a way to, you know, just dampen everything down so you can white knuckle it through another day and be happy about it on some strange level. But when I started hearing again about rites of passage, ceremony, all of these wonderful ways that we have sort of turned away from, like, man, it makes my, it gives me goosebumps to hear because I can't help but see this thing percolating to the top. Like, Hey, here we are. We all need some help. What if we did it in a community? You know what I mean? Like, I think your book is just like is just another concentric circle radiating outwards and helping people see that. Like, is that is this bubbling to the front right now? Are you are you seeing that as well? Yeah, and I mean, you've brought up so many things in that one paragraph. I'll grab a couple of the threads that you've just woven. So one is psychedelics. I mean, when I have this chapter on chemicals and the modern trauma toolkit, and I'm talking about drugs, I don't really differentiate between heroin and cocaine and the folks that I see at the addiction clinic are using because in the nineteen forties, doctors were freely prescribing and taking these substances because that was considered medicine at the time. So, you know, concentric circles like Opium was one of the reasons that colonization happened and colonization has caused most of our trauma if we look at systems. So I think all of these drugs and chemicals are just so connected. And if you look at the lineage of cultures that have had a relationship with plants, so you mentioned psilocybin or mushrooms, but I mean, there's San Pedro, there's ayahuasca, And a lot of what we use now as plant medicine has derivations in the natural world. And there's communities that have a long lineage to it. So I do worry that we're kind of commodifying and returning psychedelics into our capitalistic structures. We're kind of adding them to colonized ways. And I think it's really interesting to explore, well, what does that lineage look like? And what does a relationship look like? I think psychedelics have a lot of potential in our relationship to trauma and traumatic events but in such a cautious way and in a very humble way and to acknowledge people with that relationship and try to be in relationship in that way um very curious very humble um and in a very careful way because set and setting matters so much. And so even at the addiction clinic, I've, I've got some folks who are addicted to the psychedelic category of medications. And it's not supposed to be like, if you look at the drugs harm, alcohol and tobacco do far more harm than psychedelics. It just, it just, It's so wild to me that they keep restricting the use of something that the research is showing is so deeply healing, but it's healing in a very specific environment. So when I talk about it in the Modern Trauma Toolkit, I'm really specific about set and setting. So set is your frame of mind and setting is who is around you, who is guiding this journey. I don't think people should just go into a cabin with, you know, some explosive psilocybin trauma. That can go horribly wrong. Yeah, without a doubt. It's interesting to see. And I can't underscore enough the idea that whatever you take is sort of a bridge. You still have to confront the shame. You have to confront those threshold guardians of shame and guilt that are standing there. Like, you can't go in over here. That's part of the... And maybe that's the part for the ceremony. Maybe that's the part for the chanting. Maybe that's the part to see the elders passing down wisdom so that you as a younger person can say, hey, here's this tool. And now you're old enough to use it. You've seen these things. Now I'm going to show you how to you've experienced them. Now I'm going to show you how to integrate them. Like it kind of seems like we're talking about integration in a lot of ways. Absolutely. That's well said, George. And I think in the book, I outline these three stages. And they're, again, not linear. I think of them as circular and kind of spiraling up and spiraling down. But Judith Herman describes establishing safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnecting. And so to me, that's noticing what's happening in the system, what's happening in the nervous system, what's happening in the family and the community system. And so that's establishing safety is getting into a place where you can actually be in a calm body and move to phase two, which is trauma processing. So I call that shifting. And a lot of that is through neuroplasticity, which you mentioned. In the Modern Trauma Toolkit, I focus more on phase one. What are the different ways that you can learn to shift your own nervous system and to shift the community system towards a place where process work can happen? Process work is a new relationship with the past. And that can be your personal past, but it can also be the ancestral past. And the simplest way to describe it is just leaving the pain of the past in the past and post-traumatic growth is moving forward in a way where you've where you've let go that strong connection to the pain. And a lot of people identify with it. They believe that the story of trauma is their story. And that's one place where I feel like the trauma gets really stuck. But for a lot of other people, they're very curious about what else is possible outside of those trauma reflexes. And that's where we get into phase three, which is reconnecting to self, your adult consciousness, reconnecting to community. And that can be pets and nature and music and art and spirituality and all these other ways that humans can connect. And we've lost that priority. And these are ancient things that we've been doing for millennia. And we forget because we become cogs in the wheel. Yeah, I think it... I think it... it reminds us that the rituals are there for a reason. Like when you talk about getting stuck in the story, for me, that looks like a negative feedback loop in an internal dialogue. You are a dummy, George. Why did you do that? It's unforgivable. And it's like, it's real easy to put that record on and just let it play. You know what I mean? Like it's almost like, okay, stop. I'm done. I don't want to hear this anymore. This is a stupid record. You know, I don't want to hear it anymore, but it's hard to, Like it plays in the background. If you're not aware of it, if you don't physically take the needle off and set it down and be like, I'm scratching this record up. I don't want to play that anymore. you know what I mean it'll play in the background right that's what I call noticing it's like noticing what that record is and and noticing it without shame like without like looking at it with the lens of curiosity and compassion I always say I always wear glasses and one of the lenses is curiosity and one of the lenses is compassion and instead of saying well why do I have this story what's wrong with me and I hate this story say why does the story make sense Like, what is this story telling me? And when you ask, why does the story make sense? Then you're exploring it with a great deal of curiosity. And many times it will trace back to childhood. Sometimes it will trace to the ancestors. And when you understand why the story makes sense and why the story is protective. So why would it make sense that I think I'm not good enough and I'm not deserving? Well, when I was a child and I wasn't getting my needs met, it was safer for me to believe that. that there was something fundamentally wrong with me than believing that my caregivers weren't capable of getting my needs met. That is life threatening. Whereas the belief that I'm no good is ego threatening. And that was actually easier to handle. If you can look at that story with adult consciousness, that's when the healing takes place because you recognize that the story was always there to protect you. It was not trying to hurt you. And you can develop a better relationship with that story. And when you recognize that that story is there for a reason and that story makes sense, then instead of recognizing, oh, there's that story again and adding to the burden of shame, you say, oh, I wonder how I can help the part of me that's stuck in that story. And it becomes so much more a story of grace and healing and growth rather than continuing to get stuck in the shame. I feel like I'm doing some therapy right now. Thank you for that. Well, I mean, that's, that's my goal, George. And that this is what I do on TikTok is I try to one minute snippets of like, what have you thought about it this way? And how would that feel different? And I learned so much from my patients and in community and I'm constantly learning. So, you know, there are beautifully accessible ways for us to see things differently. Yeah. And they're right there waiting for us. It's almost sometimes I, you know, I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday and we were talking about insights and discovery. And he said something new to me. It's like, you know, discovering isn't having this flash of insight, like a light bulb. It's more of discovering, like you're taking things off so that you can notice them. And I was like, for me, that hit home. And I'm like, okay. Oh, that's how I was able to discover this thing or that's how I discovered this thing about myself. And it helped me to think about it in a way that was much more meaningful and helpful and allow for further discoveries. It's like, oh, I'm just taking these things off. That's all I'm doing. I'm just discovering this. And here I am. I'm kind of awesome in this way. And maybe that's a cool thing. It's interesting to think about the linguistics of it. Yeah, yeah. A lot of the therapies that I use actually are really embedded in wordplay. And what I've come to understand is the language of our subconscious mind is not English. The language of our subconscious is story. So it's imagery and it's metaphor. So using interactive guided imagery where you don't just tell the story of where to be. I won't say, let's go to the beach and I'm going to tell you what it's like. I'm going to say... would it be a safe place to imagine that we're going to a beach? Would you want to have shoes on? How close would you want to get to the water? And the person guides their own imagery, and then they guide themselves to a place of common connection. So I love using imagery, and I love using wordplay. So one of my favorite phase two trauma processing therapies is called accelerated resolution therapy, and it's a cousin of EMDR. It's like a more... gentle and faster version. And the creator Lainey Rosenzweig, she, she put so much wordplay into it. So she'll say things like you have some change in your pocket and you're going to give this change to, to try to get the brain ready for change. Or she, she uses like a movie metaphor where you're watching this movie and the movie is changing. And then you're the director of the movie and you're changing the, what's happening in the movie. And so much of what you're doing is shifting through metaphor and wordplay. Like if I'll just give you an example of somebody I saw this week and we did an ART session and, um, they were feeling very constrained and constricted. And so we imagined what it would take to break that sense of constriction. And sometimes people will break a rope or lift a weight or they use power tools or somebody like a spiritual guide will help them with that. But there are these metaphorical ways of breaking this heaviness or this tightness that we have in the tissues that aren't available through saying, well, I'm going to think my way out of it. So I just love the creativity that can happen in phase two trauma therapy. And I can't teach you how to do your own DIY accelerated resolution therapy in my book, but I can certainly teach you how to get there. And the use of metaphor and wordplay is one of the things that I love working with. So in the Modern Trauma Toolkit, I have forty different activities. Many of them are audio guided practices. Some of them are community level exercises because within those concentric circles, healing doesn't just happen in the individual. So I really wanted to share all of these things that I was learning. Yeah, I'm glad that you did. This sounds amazing to me and I can't help but think how In a book like the Modern Trauma Toolkit, combined with the spoken word that you're able to do on the different channels that you have, it's almost like healing can be contagious the same way that illness can be contagious, right? Like if you're radiating that outward, like why can't it be? Like why can't wellness be as contagious as illness? Isn't there like that great quote that says the difference between wellness and illness is I? Something like that? Yeah, all of that's really beautiful. Yeah, I do believe that healing happens in different levels. So sometimes one person can work through traumatic patterns of attachment, wounds, or things that they were exposed to in their family unit, and they can heal the unit for the generations. So if one person is doing the work for the family, then the next generation will have healed those pains. And that can happen at the molecular level through something we know is called epigenetics. So just as trauma can be passed down through multiple generations, so can healing. So there is that kind of linear progression through a family, but there is also community healing. So one of the things that I witnessed in Nepal after the earthquake was community looking after each other. There would be a giant tarp with many families that were newly unhoused, and then they would have this giant bowl of Dal Bhat, like the lentils and the rice, and they were cooking for fifty. And so community did look after each other, and they knew that they weren't going to be alone on the street the way that we often are in Western culture, that the community would take them in and look after them. And that's what I saw. So we live in the Western society Many of us live in very individually focused lifestyles. What I think we really need to discover or uncover is that humans are meant to live in community. We're meant to live in a much more collective way. And I think one of the many lessons I learned by working overseas is just what it looks like to live in more of a collective unit. And I think it's one of the ways that colonialism and capitalism paradigms have harmed us. And I'm not saying it hasn't given us great tools. I mean, modern medicine is awesome. I love to use modern medicine tools as well. But I don't want to forget the things that we've always known. See, that sounds spiritual to me. And I don't mean like religious. I think there's a difference between religion and spirituality. But there is something so powerful about realizing that you're bigger than yourself and you're part of this huge thing that's trying to communicate to you on some level. And you could see it when you go outside and you see this flower bloom and you start thinking, man, it's August twenty fourth at two twenty two p.m. How did it know? How did it know to climb that high on that tree and produce that flower? Right. How did it know? And you can't help, but think that the same divine intelligence that knew that also knows where I'm at in life. Maybe that's the reason I'm here right now. And you start, you start realizing, wait a minute, I'm, I'm, I'm part of this thing. You know, maybe I didn't come into this. Well, maybe I came out of it, you know, and then like that, then you start really having some, some discovering moments, right? Isn't it, is it spiritual? Is it, is there some spirituality going on here? Yeah, and I don't want to impose that perspective on everybody. But yeah, I totally see what you mean. And I think Eastern philosophy, like you asked, was I connected to Nepal? I mean, I've studied Ayurvedic counseling. I have been a practitioner of yoga for decades. I do believe that there is some Eastern philosophy that has a lot more understanding of interconnectivity than we do. And it's why we keep trying to appropriate things like mindfulness and reinvent it. I mean, this has been around forever. So one of the things that I've explored working in the East is meditation and mindfulness and the tenets of Buddhism. And I think it is very interesting how... healing can come through the sense of interconnectivity. One of the things that I do, so I teach my patients something called tapping. And tapping is self acupressure. So acupuncture is when you take the meridian lines of energy in the body and you insert these needles. You can tap those same lines. So you use your fingertips. And what EFT tapping did is they map the emotional meridians of the body. Could I explain that in a Western context? A little bit. We're actually starting to get some research to understand how self-acupressure works. And we've got great research proving that it works for things like trauma and anxiety and cravings. When I do tapping with my patients and I'll teach them self-acupressure, and there's a whole book, a chapter in the Modern Trauma Toolkit, as well as a twenty minute video teaching anybody who is interested how to do tapping. I will say to them, when you set up the phrase that you're going to use for your session, don't say I have anxiety or I am anxious because then you become that thing. Say there is anxiety because you have some and I have some and your neighbor has some and your child has some. There is anxiety. This is a part of the human experience. This is something that our brain does. And so there is anxiety allows you to connect to this very human experience that we all have. And you said the definition between like wellness and illness. And I was just reading for something that I'm writing on Substack about the WHO's definition of wellbeing. And I'm studying lifestyle medicine right now. So they had, they had it in the curriculum and, and it was kind of this like positive thoughts and an absence of negative emotions. And I was like, an absence of negative emotions. That's not the human journey. Like, isn't being happy all the time. It's flexibility. And that's what I'm constantly teaching my patients is like, of course, you're going to be sad or anxious or feel experience guilt like we all do. This is the human experience. We just don't want your day to day life to be tilted in that direction. Flexibility allows you to experience the whole gamut of emotions. And when we have this like sense of interconnectivity, we realize that That is the human journey and all of us are on it. And that's what it looks like when we're connected to everybody who's on that same journey. And that means the non-living world as well and all of the living beings and these greater ecosystems because we are a carbon-based ecosystem. life form with a whole lot of water in us. So for us to not have the humility to understand that the carbon and the water around us is also inside us, like the, the interconnectivity is just deep at every level. Yeah. It's, it's ineffable in so many ways. When you really begin thinking about thinking about it, but so profound in its ability to, to inspire, maybe even hurt on some level, like in that, it makes me think about like empathy and trauma and vulnerability and vulnerability in that we're drawn to the, to the dark side sometimes, whether it's watching someone go through a traumatic event or ourselves being stuck on a traumatic event. But isn't that, so helpful to other people that may have gone through it or maybe getting ready to go through it is to see an example of that trauma and to see how someone goes through it. Not like in a masochistic way, but like, I think we're so drawn to it because it is the answer in so many levels. Like seeing that trauma in a way is prepping you for an experience you're going to have. And once you've gone through something, like maybe you've lost a child, maybe you've seen people that take their last breath, or maybe you have been in a car accident, you've seen a suicide. If you've been through that, then don't you also become a way to help other people go through it? Like, isn't that trauma something that once held long enough can become a tool to help other people? It's a really good question, George, and I'm torn on the answer because I think that the last word in the last sentence that spoke to me is can. Like going through trauma or witnessing trauma can lead to post-traumatic growth and insights, but it can also get stuck. And I think a lot of our problems in modernity, why we won't let go of consumption, even though it's like we've over consumed the planet and we're worsening inequity and we've caused this like climate catastrophe, but we're so addicted to these ways. And I think it is traumatic. Like I think we were digesting our trauma through consumption and through distraction. And one of the reasons why we have such like split and dangerous politics right now is I believe trauma response is coming from fear and anxiety and a sense of not being safe. And so I think trauma can compound and worsen if it's not acknowledged and processed and if we're not looking at it with that higher consciousness and seeing the greater whole. So We can have traumatic experiences through witnessing. And I think one of the reasons why trauma is so much more held in the collective body is because we're witnessing things that we never would have been able to see forty or fifty years ago because of social media, because of the immediacy of it. Like the things that I see about war. I took in three Ukrainians that were evacuating three years ago. And the things that they would continue to see, even while they were here, were so deeply traumatic and still is to this day. Sorry, I get a bit emotional about that. But one of them lived with me for two years and I'm just very connected to her and what she still continues to witness, even though she's not physically there, although she's going back next week. So there's these connections of what we witness that really hurt us. And witnessing can cause trauma. And I don't think enough people recognize that. So if you've witnessed something traumatic, you need to go through those three stages of noticing, like, how is it affecting me? And what is my nervous system feeling? Am I overactive or am I underactive and numb? And how can I process this thing that I've witnessed and integrate it into this journey that I'm on? And then potentially get to the point where I can help others and reconnect and But not everyone goes on that journey. And I think trauma is stuck in our current modern system. And that's why I use the word modern in the Modern Trauma Toolkit is because I do believe a lot of the patterns that we're seeing are as a result of stuck trauma. So I think there is the potential for post-traumatic growth and helping others through it. And I believe that that's a large part of my personal journey. But there is the potential that that's not what happens and that we can get stuck in trauma responses and trauma loops. And I do think a lot of that is happening in modern times. Yeah, it's well said it's, it's interesting to, you know, so many people get absorbed in the doom scrolling, you know, whether it's seeing images come from Ukraine or Gaza or South Sahara, Africa, wherever in your own community, you know, and like, you see these things and it's like, let me just move past that. You know, it's, And it's so big. The trauma collectively is so big that no one person can hold it, but we're all taking a little piece of it in. And sometimes I wonder, like, is the, is the, there's that great quote that says the only way out is through is the way out. Potentially each individual doing their very best to solve that, that little slice that they have to make their life a little bit better to make their relationships a little better. Is that how we, we move into a world that's, you know, better by factors? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that is what gives me meaning right now is there is this possibility that if we as individuals and families and communities work through the trauma, not just that we've been exposed to or witnessed, but that we've been complicit in, you know, like, when I think about like, I'm studying climate psychology right now. And I think a lot of the solution to climate psychology is decolonization. And I know that that's a word that's really triggering for folks. But what it means to me is getting back to our indigenous ways of knowing. And I don't mean we just like live in huts and live off the land the way, you know, all of our you know, background Indigenous ancestors would have lived. But I mean, like, in relationship to that interconnectivity. And that's Indigenous to all of us, is to be in relationship to water, to be in relationship to animals, to be in relationship in community, instead of this, like, hyper individualistic focused environment. And I do think that that possibility is emergent. Like, if I look at what's happening right now, could we come out on the other side with this, like, collective awareness and this, like, just knowledge that we really are in this together. And a rising tide lifts all boats. Rather than thinking, like, there was this beautiful phrase that just happened in the New Zealand parliament because the Maori people are fighting for their treaty rights right now. And somebody, and I don't even know where the quote comes from, but like when you've been so accustomed to privilege, the equity feels like oppression. And I think that that's driving a lot of folks in Western society is they're like, they're afraid that we could all be okay. And what I want to share through my social media and the Modern Trauma Toolkit is like, no, no, no, no, we all can be okay. And to not be afraid of that possibility. Yeah, it's this idea of like winner take all. know whether it's colonialization or maybe it's maybe we're drowning in abstraction you know what I mean by that like you ever think like what what might it be like to tell somebody who lives in a third world country or ask them if they have health insurance or life insurance like what what what is this life insurance you speak of wait so what what is this thing you know like we have such abstract ideas especially financially when you start talking about derivatives or But I think that's a direct line to colonialization is just finding wordplay to make people not afraid of death. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe we're all afraid of death. You're taking this in a really cool direction. I've got all kinds of random thoughts about the financial system too. Once we removed the gold standard, it just became numbers on a page. It's canceled. it's playful magic and yet there are so many people who for whom those numbers on the page don't add up to rent and that's worse yes the unhoused communities are are just I have so many folks that I work with both at the refugee and the addictions clinic that are just one paycheck or you know very small amount of money from being unhoused right now and I these numbers on a page that are we've assigned meaning to are harming so many people right now and there's got to be a way out and the way out is not let's kick all the immigrants out because um it's we're complicit like the reason why a lot of people are escaping war or drought is because of the systems we've created and we actually need to stop the systems in order to stop this migration and i I don't have all the answers, but I love that we're talking about these bigger systems, because it is the systems that are harming. It's not just the families, the family that's facing poverty and scarcity and suffering. And so much of it is connected to these policies that I'm just really curious how we can shift policies towards post-traumatic growth and equity and interconnected awareness. And New Zealand has that opportunity now and we'll just see what happens. Yeah, I almost feel like it's part of the cosmic joke of there's some bigger force. It's like, I am just going to rub your nose in absurdity until you figure this out. I spent a lot of time in Hawaii as a UPS driver, and I would drive down to Waikiki, and there's all these high-rises, and they're building high-rises faster than you can shake a stick at them. And I remember going in and talking to the people. I'm like, dude, who's buying these? And he's like, I don't know. I'm like, are there local people buying them? He's like, definitely not local people, man. There's no local people buying these places. Each place is a million dollars and it's like a thirty two foot skyscraper with, you know, and it's like I don't understand it. And I started talking to another guy and he's like, oh, he's like, let me tell you, let me help you out, George. These are just like really cool tools for really wealthy people. They're going to buy like a like a. Like a financial place will buy. Fifty of them. And they'll just sit on them. And maybe they'll Airbnb them. But they'll probably just sit on them. And then they'll sell them later. Because they're going to go up in value. And it's like. Then I go downstairs. After I deliver a package. And there's like. Thirty five homeless people outside. And I'm like. Like look. There's no one even living in these places. There's no one living in them. And there's all these people out here. That are just. You know. Knocking on the door. Of like. of, of disillusionment that are suffering on a level that I can feel walking past them, you know? And I'm like, it's, it's absurd. It's truly absurd to think about where we're at on that level. But I, I, I think the idea of community is what brings us back to that. The modern trauma toolkit, these, these ideas about stuff. I'm sorry. I kind of go off on tangent sometime, Christine, but I can't help it. It's, it's so crazy. No, I feel the same way. I ran a residency program, like a fellowship in health equity, because I really want to understand how these equity deserving communities have been placed at so much risk and it seems to be getting worse. I mean, not everywhere. Like if I look at Northern Europe, they actually have quite a lot of like a large social net and a large social structure where they make sure that nobody gets left behind. But in this like individual paradigm, like with so deeply embedded in like, well, if you're not a functional human in capitalism, then what's your value? How did we lose sight that beings had value? Just as my dog has value and a bird has value, a human has value. We shouldn't be having throwaway humans. There's just so many racist things around it too, but the idea that there's anybody who's lesser is just really sad. The fact that we've allowed society to express that belief And I think it comes from fear. It comes from this fear that there's not enough to go around. And there is. And there always has been. Yeah. Yeah, it's mind-blowing to me. We've got another question coming in here. It says, you've worked in systems change in global health. Is the healthcare system more traumatized than the patients it serves? How can the system itself be healed? That's an awesome question. that's such a good question I wish I knew some more answers here but I know that there's some really smart people working on it um right not where I live right where I live they're decimating the healthcare system but um I I'm really intrigued by a few movements so I'm studying lifestyle medicine right now which actually has some really good research showing that the pillars of sleep nutrition which is a more plant-based lifestyle Um, movement, so exercise and moving your body. And it doesn't have to look like being a runner, but just moving your body for hundred and fifty minutes a week. social connection. So maintaining your connections, avoiding risky substances. So like tobacco, but I mean, alcohol is growing exponentially. Marijuana is growing exponentially. There is a huge opioid crisis right now. And like stress level, like managing your stress level. So these pillars of lifestyle medicine are things that we always knew were connected to health, but like a lot of physicians didn't focus on them. So I've been really intrigued in studying like, how can we get back to basics? And what's amazing is because this has become like an accredited, board certification, there's tons of research coming out. And a lot of the pillars of lifestyle medicine are equally effective, if not more so than the medications that I've been prescribing for twenty years. So I really think that like getting back to these foundational things that we all could look after. And if we were to focus on things like sleep and stress, we would change all the systems because our work system and our schooling system and the political system, it's not helping us with sleep and stress. And like the fact that agricultural lobbyists and pharmaceuticals have so much say in government policy, we have to totally decouple that if we're going to get healthy from a systems perspective. So, I mean, I talk about community level interventions you can do. I teach people in the book how to do a social innovation lab. So one of the things that I love to study was design thinking and how can we as a group get really creative in solving our own problems. And I'll actually give you a roadmap on how to do that, like an iceberg model of system thinking to how can you actually work as a group to solve complex problems. that is a chapter in the modern trauma toolkit because I do think we have to work in community to solve these complex things but the people who have the power to change these bigger systems at this political level and policy level and the way that industry has somehow become more important than human needs I mean we just need a massive culture shift for that to happen and To me, the climate emergency is the signal that's going to make people finally realize like if we don't make a change, none of us will survive this or survive it in a way that's going to maintain comfort. And that should be very distressing to people. And I think that might be the signal that will finally start to shift things. That's what I'm hopeful about. But I mean, we've got power, like we do have representation and we can and we can try to influence policies in lots of different ways. So I think of the different leverage points that I have access to. And I joined the city climate advisory council. Like how could I influence different regional decisions? We all have that capacity. And once we've healed our trauma, we will then have the bandwidth to contribute at these system levels. And that's why I want people to really work on how can I get into a calm body and start to use my thinking brain again? Because when you're really, their trauma reflexes get stuck, your thinking brain is not as accessible to you. So only once you've got a better balance between your overactive and underactive nervous systems, can you even access those cognitive structures again. So it's stepwise. It makes so much sense. When you start looking at... For me... I had a lot of trauma in my life, and I spent a lot of time, and so did my family, living paycheck to paycheck. You can't get to the next level when you are constantly in a state of fight or flight like that. You are just surviving. You're just surviving. Like you said, if you come from a family, if you come from the habit of just surviving, it's really difficult to become – an activist in a way that is meaningful for your life or for your own life or for your family's life. It breaks my heart to see it on so many levels, but the only way, no one's going to do it for you. No one will. You have to find a way to take that first baby step, whether it's getting up and moving, whether it's saying, you know what, looking in the mirror and being like, you know what, I feel pretty good today. pretty good looking guy over there I'm a pretty good looking girl you know whatever it is getting in the mirror and playing or having that just one few positive words that start that snowball down the hill but you build momentum right like once you begin taking those steps you build momentum and that change becomes from an idea translated into reality you have to have some amazing success stories of people that you've seen make profound changes can you share one of those with us I won't share the details just because I have to deactivate my phone. But yeah, I mean, it's countless, countless, countless success stories. But success is kind of knowing what your values are and being able to live according to your priorities. And that looks different for every person, right? So I can't say like success is like, oh, they became this like business person, because like it all has to do with your own values. Success to me is when you're able to work towards the things that you value. And I've seen so much of that. But I've also seen a lot of people who were so locked into trauma loops that they weren't really looking after their mind body system. So I mentioned that I moved further from family practice and more towards focusing on trauma because it seemed to be the root of a lot of things. So I've seen some people whose diabetic control was just horrifyingly bad and they were at risk of like blindness and kidney failure because their diabetes was so terrible. And then we did trauma work and all of a sudden they were able to be in their body again and they had diabetic control again. So they were able to say, I care about me. And before they weren't even really able to believe that they deserved care. So I can see like physical transformations, social transformations, you know, people who... are reconnecting in a new way within families. They've learned enough self-care that they can be boundaried. So lots of healing just looks really different. So the way that I describe it to people, and I have an illustration in the Modern Trauma Toolkit, but it's the difference between resilience and post-traumatic growth is like resilience is when you're back to your baseline. So you're floating along, Trauma pulls you underwater and resilience is like you've got flotation devices and you're keeping your head above water. And like you mentioned, you're surviving, but you're not thriving. And post-traumatic growth is when you learn how to swim. And that's what I'm trying to impart to everybody through like socials and the book is like, what does it look like to learn the skills to swim? And it's not to say that trauma isn't going to happen again. There's going to be another wave coming. But once you're not floating, you're actually going to learn how to swim through it in a different way. And I mean, I'm on that journey too. I'm trying to figure what this looks like because, you know, we've talked about a few traumatic events that I've gone through, but I mean, medicine is inherently traumatic. I'm constantly experiencing vicarious stories of suffering and hearing and witnessing this. How do I integrate that? What is my meaning? What are my values? I'm still trying to figure that out. And it's not being happy all the time. Like I said, it's flexibility. Some days you're sad and that's the way things are. And some days you're overjoyed. And I think when you can be more present and this is what we learned through Eastern cultures is like a lot of trauma lives in the past and being much more present is when you let it go. And you're aware like that, that happened to me. But that's not happening to me right now. Or if it is, I can envision a future. So you mentioned kind of looking in your mirror and giving yourself affirmations. One of the techniques that I teach in the book and kind of went viral on socials is affirmations. And you just say a phrase that's hopeful and you stick the words what if in front of it. What if things will work out for me? What if I actually could imagine a future where I feel like I deserve good things? What if... I'm going to find a friend. Like these just positive, hopeful constructs. Because our brains, once we've been through traumas, we're just so drawn to the pain. Like we're used to that pathway. It's familiar, even though it's not comfortable. And we just need to make new pathways familiar, ones that are more comfortable. And information's kind of plant these little seeds of possibility. And all it is, is just planting new seeds. Because a traumatized brain is constantly planting seeds of what's familiar. And planting new seeds will grow your neural garden in new ways. And we're all capable of doing that. Do you think on some level, it almost seems like our system is set up to enforce trauma? I remember when I dropped my kid off at preschool for the first time. Maybe this is just too far out there, but I'm like, oh, what am I doing? I'm a horrible father. I'm doing this, and I'm going to go work at this place I don't even like to be at. And then my wife's work, I don't get to see her. It just reinforces that on some level. Yeah. You start looking at some of the North, like you had mentioned, like the Northern Scandinavia countries or Northern Europe, and like they keep their kids at home until they're like eight before they even send them to school. You know, you're like, they seem pretty happy over there. Are there some things in our system? And you start thinking about maybe the Prussian school model and why we had to be able to go to work and all these things like that. And then maybe on a hopeful note, you're beginning to see change with, like, the book that comes out and doctors like yourself going on and able to give people free of charge these tools that can help them change their life. Do you think maybe our entire system is evolving in a way that is evolving out of trauma? I want to believe that. Me too. That's what keeps me going. Like – And there's two things. Like I think a lot of it is frame of mind. So when you drop your kid off at preschool and they're crying, part of the information would be like, what if they have the most amazing day? What if they meet their best friend today? What if this is the beginning to like a whole new way of their brain working? How exciting for them. Can we always reframe work in that way? Maybe, but sometimes it just feels like you're gaslighting yourself. Yeah. Have a great day at work. But what if I could be more present in the moment? And what if instead of feeling frazzled as a doctor, is I really look into someone's eyes and I give them really sustained attention and a sense of connection. And I don't necessarily know if I can do that with every person in a day. They actually did studies out of Harvard showing that for physicians, we can only really deeply connect to about thirty percent of our patients in a day. And not everyone needs that every day. But on the day that you need it, I want to be able to give that to you. As a trauma therapist, I have to aim closer to a hundred and it is a little bit more tiring. But one of the things that is a possibility is that I can find more moments that are aligned with my values and notice them and amplify them. So what we... Our brain actually amplifies the negative. It's designed to do that because we have so many parts of our brain that's designed to protect us from threatened danger. So it amplifies dangerous signals, whether it's inside the body like pain or outside the body like bad things that are happening. We actually have to deliberately practice to amplify the good. And it's a lot of what I teach in the Modern Trauma Toolkit is how can you amplify these different signals that are also available? So that's the Eastern philosophy of being present in the moment and like being really attuned to nature. So like when I walk my dog, one of the things that I really deliberately do is I will notice something, whether it's a flower or a tree or a cloud in the sky. And I will notice something in the natural world and allow myself to connect to it. So I'm not like, you know, just listening to a podcast and not even paying attention to my dog and his experience of the world. Cause Oh my gosh, that's fun when you really get into it. So yeah, a lot of it is what, what we amplify. Yeah. It's, It does bring me lots of hope and joy to think about on some way we are the narrator of our own story. If you look at yourself like living in a novel in some way, you're able to be like, okay, I'm the main character. How do I want this character arc to go? Or what do I want to accomplish? Or is this a threshold guardian over here? Okay, you know what? Let's have some fun. Let's try to get the author's attention over here. It's kind of fun to think about that aspect of it. I love that language, George, because I've been writing fiction for like, fifteen years and I had actually finished this book once, but it wasn't quite good enough to publish. So when I was offered a nonfiction book deal and my agent kind of helped me refocus and we ended up getting a great relationship with my publisher, I thought, you know, I need to just focus on the nonfiction for a bit. But I'm back to writing fiction and I'm working with all these different workshops learning this. Like, how do I how do I tell a story that's universal? How do I tell a story that's surprising? How do I tell a story that I actually want to tell about the world and its potential? So I'm writing cli-fi. So that's eco-fiction. And it's basically putting it into the future that's not apocalyptic, but climate change has resulted in some changes. And I'm trying to speculate, like, what would it look like? And I got really stuck because my novel has to do with my Ukrainian ancestors. And because of what's happening in Ukraine right now, I got so stuck. And then I thought, well, I get to write the ending that I want. So, I mean, I won't spoil the whole thing with my book, but Ukraine does really well in the end. And they, because so many of their systems have been devastated, they've had to start reimagining systems that are suitable for modern times. And what they reimagined saves us all is incredible. is my book so like that's the system level of my book and there's like a beautiful protagonist and everything and like how do I want the main character to overcome this like really significant trauma and what kinds of realizations do I want her to have well it has to do with interconnectivity and community and it has to do with hope and it has to do with relationship with the human and non-human world and how do I tell that story in a way that's not like preachy um I'm figuring that out but it's really fun are you sure you're not writing a biography it sounds beautiful maybe just look at it from that aspect you know what I mean like yeah Not really, but I mean, anyone who writes fiction, there's parts of you that get infused into it. You know, my grandmother definitely shows up in the book. It was so amazing because I had her tell the stories of, like, our ancestors. And so I have these microcassettes and then I have some on my iPhone. And, like, I just I always have her story. And I think one of the things that we lose sight of is it's all about story, like indigenous ways of teaching stories. each other have always been storytelling. And so we can tell ourselves a different story about who we are and our relationship to the world. And we can heal through story. Like we can teach a new story to the next generation instead of the story of separateness and the story of pain. And I think that's what it's all about. And you're working on that and I'm working on that. And there's a lot of us working on that. I think everyone really is. And that's their intention. And that's my hope that we'll move towards it. In Hawaii, I got to talk to some really cool people. And one thing that the state poet told me was that we're all ancestors in training. And when you told me that brief part about how you are able to listen to the words of your grandmother on like a microcassette, I can't help but see the same way that people in indigenous tribes listen to the sound of the elders that may have passed away. It's so similar in so many ways. You're pulling from the past in order to create the future. In some ways, that's the essence of a metaphor. You're taking something from the old and giving a new meaning. That's the only way, whether it's in linguistics, whether it's in ceremony, is that we have to pull from the past in order to create the future. It seems odd that way. How are you going to make anything different? You just change the... like the dog bit Johnny versus Johnny bit the dog, two radically different things that happened there, but you just change the position of them and you can come up with incredible things that happen on some level. It's, it's mesmerizing. I can't wait to check out your cli-fi book. This sounds awesome. Well, I mean, hopefully it sees the light of day. I'm, I'm really reworking it this year. But I also, I think writing is really healing to me. So when I think, like I look at the news of Ukraine and like my ongoing connection to the country and it's really easy to feel hopeless and full of fear. And so I wanted to learn like what would a new narrative look like that has hope and humility and curiosity and compassion and all these things that I'm trying to embody in a new way. And I mean, it's concentric, right? I'm on this journey and it's the spiral and some days it works out better than others. I really do believe that there's so many of us that are consciously on this journey right now. You're bringing so much awareness in your podcast. There's a lot of us that are trying to amplify the work of healing and a new story. So I have to believe the new story is possible and that we're writing it together. Yeah, I agree. It's emerging as we speak, and there's the hero next door. That's what I think. When I look at my neighbors, I'm like, look what they're doing. That's so cool. When we can begin to see that hero next door, I think we give ourselves permission to see the hero within on some level. Might as well just reference Joseph Campbell and say we're all on the hero's journey on some level. Super interesting because I started studying the heroine's journey. And the hero's journey, he goes to the village and he conquers the obstacles and many obstacles and then comes back to the village with the elixir. And it is actually a little bit of an individual story. But the heroine's journey is the story of the collective. And what the heroine encounters is this understanding is that community is the answer. And she does not have the elixir alone. So that's what I'm examining in my book. And I don't think it's gendered. I think it's more just that what we've ascribed to masculine values have been the individualistic values. But I mean, every human is capable of being more collectivist and community-minded. So yeah, I'm curious about what that journey looks like. Well, I think it's playing out. Like if you look at the sort of I don't want to call them heroes, but I will say the role models that are thrust upon society, they have been this sort of front man for a community that no one talks about. Like every star, every person that is up there, whether it's a Maybe not every. The majority of people that appear to be a superstar have a giant community behind them that make them who they are. And they're the face of this community. But the community doesn't get noticed. It's just this person out front like, look at me. I'm insane. I'm how great I am. You have been the product of all of these people building a life around you. So you're, you are awesome, but you're awesome because of these people. They should get more recognition, but that's dying. If you look at modern, maybe in the Western world, like you see it crumbling and maybe what's crumbling in, in the Western world are these ideas of individualism. You know, some people mourn that like, Oh no, the individual time. But, but look what happens when that front person steps down and you get to see the people that built it. And like that, I see that happening, you know, whether it's the modern media crashing or different presidents that make different promises and never deliver, you know, like you're beginning to see the community rise up in ascension with them fixing their trauma, you know, and like we're all worthy of. of living a better life and becoming the very best version of ourselves and living our ideas of, of a community. And I, I don't know. I think that the book you put out and what you're saying and what you're doing on your social media is a giant boon to community. And I think that that's where we're going to find the answers for, for those of us that don't have them is in the people that are working and figuring it out on some level. Thank you for doing it. Well, and again, the ideas aren't mine. Like, just as you said, it takes this community. So when you said you created these ideas, I'm like, well, no, I mentioned the work of Judith Herman and her feeling and the tolerance from Dan Siegel and all of the people who created the somatic techniques. So I put the book together as like a primer on what, where we're at right now. in our understanding of trauma and toxic stress. And with lots of tools that I've learned, did I creatively embellish some of them and add to the collective knowledge? Sure. But what I really wanted to acknowledge is these are the concepts that so many others have come up with, and I've gathered them for you in a way that's easy to read, inclusive examples, hopefully not very triggering, but that's my contribution. And did I maybe have some new ideas about social innovation and design thinking that nobody else has put in with trauma before? Maybe. So that's part of my contribution. but it was a community level contribution. And I really wanted to acknowledge just how many things I read. Like I'm actually, I don't know how if your viewers can like see, but I read hundreds of books to try to get this book written and wanted to synthesize a lot of what was known already. So, yeah, I think when I talk about like what our ancestors knew and what we've forgotten through that lineage and when I think of how many people are already working on this and even just in the TikTok community, like I met a woman named Simone Saunders who happens to live in the same city as me in Canada. who's doing tremendous work on socials as the cognitive corner. And now we are working together in the company, Safer Spaces Training. And I think about like all the work that she's doing and the ripples that she's created, it's wild. I mean, she's amazing. So I wanna do this work in community too. Well, I think you are. And I am grateful for this conversation. I hope we can have more of them. Like this has been really, really fun. And I still have other questions that I wrote down and I got one or two from the, from the, the guests that are coming in here, but you've been very gracious with time, Christine. And before losing it upstairs. Really fun, Christine. I'm very thankful for all of your time. However, before you leave, would you be so kind as to help people understand where they can find you, what you have coming up and what you're excited about? Yeah, for sure. I'd love to. Thanks for the window, George. I appreciate it. So my book is called The Modern Trauma Toolkit. And the easiest way to find buying options is the website for the book, which is moderntrauma.com. I would love for you to explore the website because it gives you the tone of the book. It's really soft and nourishing. And so if the website vibes for you, it's probably going to feel pretty safe. Like on one of the pages of the website, I'll just drop this Easter egg. The cursor turns into a butterfly. Like this is the team I worked with. They were just amazing humans. My personal page is christinegibson.net, and that will link you to the other companies that I run, including Safer Spaces Training, which is psychological safety work, as well as me doing keynotes. I love speaking. So if you have a group of people that want me to speak online, And there's a budget because I got to be boundaried as well. You know, I love speaking to groups about this. And what I think companies are starting to recognize is just how much stress and emotional dysregulation are showing up in the workplace. So there's more and more conversations about this happening. And I love to be in conversation. So those are probably the easiest places to find me. My writing, Substack, everything is on the professional page. I love it. Fantastic. Hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody within the sound of my voice, please go down to the show notes. Do yourself a favor. Check out the new book by Christine Gibson. You don't have a copy right there that you can show anybody that might be watching, do you? Yeah, of course. There was one right there on the shelf, but this is the bookmarked one where then I give readings, so I've got all the pieces. Nice, nice. Yeah. Everybody's seen a picture of it there. Go down, check it out. Reach out to Christine. I hope everybody within the sound of us has a beautiful day. There's a beautiful holiday coming up. And I hope you choose to have the courage to become the very best version of yourself because you deserve it. And the world will be better because of it. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Aloha.