T Breaking the Trauma Trance: How to Save Your Marriage

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, so today I want to talk to you about how trauma is causing your marriage to collapse. So this is going to be a little bit not your typical trauma trauma presentation. My definition of trauma maybe is not what the DSM 5 or your psychiatrist or counsellor would would tell you what trauma is, but we're going to get into all of that. So what we're going to what we're going to learn today is how trauma is marriage is managing and running your marriage without you even realizing it right now and the damage that it's doing. So what if the what if the real problem within the marriage here is that something's driving your behavior that you're not aware of in a destructive way? What if something is is interpreting reality for you in a way that's distorted? What if something is making your decisions that's causing harm to your family in your marriage? And what if something else has been running your marriage in the background all along without your consent? Well, we're gonna we're gonna look at all of those today. We're gonna answer those questions and hopefully gonna give you uh solutions to these problems if we find out this is what's going on. So let's talk about my definition of what trauma is, because again, some people are gonna go, well, that's not trauma, Cody. Well, this this is what I'm referring to when I talk about trauma. It's it's not the event that happened, it's it's uh it's not the memory of the event, it's not abuse, bullying, rejection, criticism, any of those things. It's not something that's necessarily happened to you in the past that we need to look at. It's an adaptation that came out of the event, it's a survival strategy that the trauma caused you to develop, it's a protective mechanism that you came up with, it's a solution to avoiding pain, and it's a way that the nervous system learned to keep you safe. So, what we need to understand here is that your nervous system is running your life and it's running your wife's life and it's running your marriage. And the objective of your nervous system is not to create a healthy, loving, connected environment, it's to keep you safe. And the same is true for your wife as well. Her nervous system's task is to keep her safe, it it activates the fight or flight, friend or foe, and it simply isn't designed to create a healthy, stable marriage. It's it's designed to create safety. And when we understand that, we we can start to see why we do the things we do that are destructive, why our wife does some of the things that she does that that are destructive as well, and and how we can start to undo that. So, really, my what I'm what I'm referring to here as trauma is it's it's a trance, it's an automatic state that you are in without your consent, that's creating automatic thinking, automatic reacting, automatic interpretations of reality that quite frankly are distorted, not true, and are doing damage to pretty much every aspect of your life. And through that distorted interpretation of reality, where you're not seeing the marriage as it is, you're seeing it through an distorted lens, it's creating automatic decision making that's destructive, and it's creating automatic behavior based on a distorted perception of reality, not the real situation at all. So, the example that I love to use to really highlight what I mean when I say when I say that the trauma is a trance is how they train elephants. Now, I don't know if anybody knows this, but how they train elephants in a zoo is they take the baby elephant when it is not strong yet, and they chain it with a relatively weak chain to a stump that's a relatively small stump. And that baby elephant pulls against the chain and pulls against the stump unsuccessfully to break free, and it does it over and over and over and over again until finally it comes to the conclusion that the chain cannot be broken and the stump is too big, and that it pulling against that chain is is pointless, it's a waste of time because it can never be broken. And that elephant then goes into the trance that it's not strong enough to break free. Now, of course, as the elephant grows into a full-grown adult elephant, the elephant could break that chain in a heartbeat, it could pull the stump out of the ground in a heartbeat and storm off to freedom or do a terrible amount of uh of damage to the zoo or the circus that the circus people could do nothing about. But the elephant went through a trauma in its youth where it tried to achieve something and it learned that that was not possible, and now as an adult elephant, it is still running that program. The baby elephant learned that that chain is not breakable, and the adult elephant has never updated that programming. And the same is true here. Effectively, what has happened is we've learned a considerable amount of behavior in our youth and even as adults to some extent, and we've then taken that specific outcome that we learned from that behavior, which was quite often learned as a very young child, where we had no cognitive capacity to actually process what was going on effectively properly. The elephant didn't realize that that it was a baby. And we have not updated the programs that we're running as a result of what we learned as a child. So quite often we find that a five-year-old, a five-year-old man is running the marriage, a 10-year-old man is running the marriage, a 15-year-old is running the marriage. And we're going to see that more as we go through here. So the problem with the trance is you don't know you're in it. It's like I always ask people if if you had a blind spot, would you see it? If you were delusional, would you know it? Well, the answer is no, of course not. And the same is true with the trance. If you're in a chart trance, you don't know that you're in a chance. It feels normal to you, it feels justified, it feels like reality, it feels like you. And just as the elephant, the adult elephant that cannot break free or does not break free from the stump, the elephant just goes, that's just me, that's just what I am, this is just who I am now. It feels like you. Who you're showing up as feels like you. And people go, Well, that's just who I am, Cody. That's just what no, that's not true. You're in a trance, you don't know that you're in a trance, and your capacity has been seriously degradated, degraded, whatever that word is. You're functioning at a tiny capacity of what you could be functioning at. You're experiencing a tiny amount of what you could be experiencing. You you're you're able to grasp a tiny amount of the freedom that's available to you because you're in this trance that you were put into as a child or a young adult, and you've just accepted now that that's you. It isn't you, it's simply a trance. So, how does this trance begin? Well, often something painful happens as a child. Now, remember, our our primary objective as a human being is to avoid pain. And our nervous system's job is to keep us safe. So something happens as a child that causes us pain. Rejection, criticism, abandonment, neglect, humiliation, fear, loss. And these are not necessarily, this is why when I talk about trauma, I'm very careful. This is not necessarily that you were abused as a child. You were beaten, you were sexually assaulted, any of that stuff. This can be very, very innocent stuff. You could have been rejected by siblings, you could have been criticized by friends, you could have been uh abandoned on the playground. This this is not stuff that would necessarily you wouldn't put it in a documentary about trauma, right? These these can be very simple things. But we experience these things, and our nervous system learns a lesson how to how to stay safe, how to avoid pain, never let that happen again. This is the primary objective of our nervous system. So we create rules around what's happened to make sure that that pain is not experienced again, that we don't go through that again. And we create these rules in an environment where those rules are valid. They could be on the playground, they could be with a sibling. And they're valid at the age that these rules are created, the age of five, seven, fifteen. But the problem is as the elephant never updates its operating system, that it is now a fully grown elephant and has the strength that could break 10 chains, we don't operate, we don't upgrade our operating system, and we continue, we go into the trance, which keeps us safe in the moment, and we never update that and we never come out of it. So what happens is when the pain is experienced, a solution is created by the nervous system. And that solution often is control, defensiveness, avoidance, neediness, people pleasing, emotional shutdown, hyper-independence. We learn that being not being in control of the situation is dangerous. We learn that being vulnerable and open is dangerous. We learn that uh being dependent on other people and being a team player can be very dangerous, it can be very painful. So we we create these solutions. And quite often we also turn these solutions into uh a positive characteristic, right? I'm hyper-independent, and we and we turn that into a virtue. When actually in that environment, yes, that was a it was a virtue in that environment, but in a marriage environment, hyperindependence is not an asset. Emotional shutdown is not an asset. Nobody wants you to be a people pleaser. So the important part to understand here is that the solution that you've come up with worked at the time. It protected you, it reduced the pain that you were experiencing at the time, it increased the level of safety that you were experiencing at the time. And it helped you to survive in that moment, at whatever point, at whatever age, in whatever stage of life you were at when you developed that strategy. So I kind of realized this with the story of my, you know, this was this was two decades ago now, probably, close to 20 years ago. But I had a housemate who was mid-30s, and I was having a conversation with him one time, and it was a religion, we were talking about faith and stuff like that, and he goes, I'm an atheist, I don't believe in any of that stuff. And it's like, okay, well, why? I asked him why, and he goes, Well, as a when I was five, my parents made me go to Sunday school, and they put me in this room, and the people that ran ran the Sunday school, it wasn't fun. They were bad, bad, bad, bad experience. As a five-year-old, I basically he said, as a five-year-old, I didn't have fun. And it's like, okay, well, we're dealing with something that's probably as significant as it gets. We're dealing with eternity here. Matthew was his name. I'm like, Matthew, we're dealing with something called eternity forever. This is about as serious as it gets. And you're telling me that your that your viewpoint on eternity was formulated by a five-year-old because he didn't get to play with his toys. About the most serious conversation, about the most serious viewpoint you could hold in your life was formulated by a five-year-old, and you have not updated that at any point during your life. And my point here is not that this is uh bringing somebody to my viewpoint or to my worldview or to into agreement with me, none of that stuff. Quite frankly, I don't care if people agree with me or not, it makes no difference. My point here is like to help make sure that your viewpoint is your viewpoint, to help make sure that your worldview is your worldview, that the opinion that you hold is in fact your opinion, and that you have updated that. So if you're 35 years old, are you run uh are you making the decision based on the most experience you have to make that decision, or are you still running a program that a five-year-old came up with? And and the same is true in in every aspect of life. Many of many of the programs that we're running were put in place as a pain avoidance survival strategy as a much, much younger person. And again, as I say, my view, my objective is not to bring anybody to my worldview. I quite frankly don't care if people agree with me or not. But it's to make sure that your worldview is in fact your worldview. And if you want to behave a certain way within your marriage, that's that's fine. Behave that certain way within your marriage. It's not for me to say that's right or wrong. But again, my question is: are you choosing that or is it being chosen for you? Are you making that decision as a 48-year-old man, or are you making the decision to show up like that as an eight-year-old? So the problem here, as with my friend, my housemate, is the child grew up, but the strategy stayed the same. The child grew into an adult, but the child's opinion remained with the adult. Or in other words, the adult was emotionally very immature, very unsophisticated. And how you do anything, my friends, is how you do everything. When you hold, when you when it becomes apparent that you're holding a viewpoint formulated by a five-year-old as a grown man, you're doing that in many aspects of your life. So what happens is the body becomes an adult, but the child remains in the marriage. Your body, the body became a fully grown adult, it became a husband, it became a father, it became a provider, it became a leader, but the child remained in the marriage, in the same way that the elephant became a full-grown elephant, possessing enough strength to change to break ten chains, but the baby elephant remained in the circus. The body changed, the mentality, the psychology, the trance did not. So, what this is, I call this an adaptation. The psyche adapts to survive, the psyche adapts to avoid pain. So that adaption took place as a young child. For whatever reason, you you you adopted certain viewpoints to avoid these things, but now as an adult, you're still running the same fears, you're still running the same protect protections, you're still running the same survival strategies that that child is running, you're still running the same interpretations. My housemate never decided to explore faith again because he had a bad experience as a five-year-old, and now as a 35-year-old, he's running this the protections, survival strategies, and interpretations that a five-year-old came up with. So the truth of the matter is your marriage is not being run by a man, it's being run by an adaptation of a child, survival mechanism. Or, in other words, an earlier version of you is running the show, potentially. An eight-year-old, a 12-year-old, a 15-year-old. A younger version of your psyche is now still using the same adaptations and is still in the same trance, trying to stay safe, using outdated strategies that are no longer applicable or appropriate to where you are right now. So, how how did the trance show up in the first place? Well, there are a few ways. We'll cover just a couple here. So, control, the need to know, the need for certainty, the need for reassurance, the need for answers, the need for outcomes, defensiveness. Feedback becomes criticism, questions become attacks, conversations become threats to you. Avoidance, the avoidance of difficult conversations, emotional the avoidance of emotional discomfort, accountability and vulnerability. None of us can relate to this, right? None of us do this. Neediness, validation seeking, reassurance seeking, a fear of abandonment. Are you afraid of being abandoned, or is it a five-year-old that's afraid of being abandoned? People pleasing, approval seeking, conflict avoidance, self-abandonment. If I abandon myself and avoid conflict and I please this person, they won't leave me and I won't experience pain. That's all it is. So let's look at how these adaptations can can innocently and stealthily enter into your experience in ways that would not necessarily traditionally be caused called trauma. So let's look at some childhood experiences. The emotional needs of the child got ignored, problems dismissed, feelings not acknowledged. Right? And this can be from parents, from teachers, from siblings, from peers. Not necessarily nefarious. The lesson that the child learns is nobody is coming to save me. I am responsible for my own safety. The adaptation that the child develops or turns into to avoid the pain of the lesson learned here that nobody's coming is self-protective, hyper-independence, difficulty in trusting people. Which of these characteristics support a healthy marriage? Which of these characteristics speak to partnership? Which of these characteristics is your wife happy for you to show up and exhibit? How do these show up in the adult marriage? Well, as an attempt to manage everything. Difficulty in delegating responsibility, difficulty in trusting a partner's decisions. Control becomes safety. Many of us are controlling. We can't let go. Why? Well, hopefully we can start to see why that control is there, because as a child, we determined that the only way that we can remain safe is to remain in control. The only way that we can avoid pain is to control the situation, which of course necessitates all of these negative conditions. And that worked as a child, but ironically, as an adult, the control that you believe subconsciously, that the control trance that you are operating in is the very thing that's destroying your safety. It's the very thing that is causing the pain that you're trying to avoid. And the reason you're confused and don't understand why is this not working? Why is this not? I'm doing everything that I've always done before that's worked and it's no longer working. Well, yes, because the environment has changed, the adaptation has changed. It worked when you were 14. It does not work in a marriage. You have to update your operating system, you have to do a framework update and ask the question Is the way I'm behaving my choice, or is it an adaptation that was created by a scared child trying to remain safe? Let's look at some more. Another childhood experience, repeated humiliation, repeated powerlessness, made powerless, public embarrassment, lessons learned, being vulnerable is dangerous. Losing power equals pain. This is what the this is what the child adapts to. This is the lesson that the child learns. Trying to break the chain is a waste of time. The adaptation that generally comes out of that is going to be a need to maintain power positions, need to stay ahead, the need to avoid feeling powerless. Well, how does that show up in the adult marriage? Well, in in the context of you must win arguments, you must be right. You struggle with feedback, you struggle with accountability, these are threats to you. Again, all of these would have protected you at some point in your life. All of these would be an effect, would have been an effective adaptation and an effective strategy when they were introduced. But the environment is changed. You've changed. You cannot continue to run these trances. Another childhood experience. You experienced constant conflict, financial instability in your home. Maybe you experienced divorce, addiction, a volatile household. The lesson learned by that child is that chaos is dangerous and that safety is produced through structure. The adaptation that is created, the trance that is you are put yourself you put yourself in is that there is a need, there's a necessity for order, there's a need for predictability, there's a need for certainty. This is where OCD is coming out of. This is where, again, this is this is a control thing, right? The need to control the environment because you've learned that chaos is dangerous. The child's mind learnt that chaos is dangerous. Now you want to avoid it at all costs. So how does this show up in your adult marriage? Overmanaging the situation, micromanaging your wife, anxiety around change, difficulty in tolerating ambiguity, becoming a control freak, becoming OCD, being unable to trust. Again, which of these characteristics here, which of these adaptations is teaching your wife's nervous system that you're safe to be around? Again, the very mechanism that you've put in place to eliminate pain is now the mechanism that is causing the pain. Look at one more. Maybe a parent leaves. You experience significant rejection as a child, can be on the playground, can be with peers, can be with siblings. Can be many, many places where you can experience rejection. Again, not something necessarily, maybe you don't get picked for a sports team. Something like that. Again, not something that we would necessarily traditionally call trauma. But it is most certainly going to lead to a trance and an adaptation because the lesson learned is that people leave and connection is fragile. When the adaptation that you are now running as an adult is that you expect the person to leave, the adaptation becomes one of monitoring relationships, a fear of separation, a fear, a fear of abandonment. And again, we can go into the previous adaptations as well. Micromanagement, constantly monitoring where your wife's at, what's she doing, control. Not because you're a bad person, but because this is the adaptation, this is what you learned as a child, this is what works, this is what's safe, this is what causes you to avoid pain. Again, we have to update the framework, firmware. So, where does this show up in your adult marriage? Well, tracking your wife's emotions, constant reassurance seeking, pressure for certainty, trying to control the relationship outcomes. We'll do QA after this, and I'm sure many of you will bring this up. My wife's doing this, what does it mean? How do I get certainty? Indications of a tr that of a trance that you've never updated. So here's the thing. The marriage doesn't see the trauma. And the marriage doesn't experience the trauma. The marriage sees pressure, defensiveness, control, withdrawal, emotional availability, or reactivity. And when we look at the adult that's producing these behaviors, this is a pretty nasty piece of work, right? Here's the man who's high pressure, defensive, controlling, withdraws when he doesn't get his way, becomes emotionally unavailable, is highly reactive to the situation. We don't look at this man as a good man. We look at this man as somebody who probably deserves what he's getting. But the truth of the matter is we're looking at a scared little boy who's simply trying to avoid pain and stay safe. But here's the thing: you have to adapt, you have to become emotionally mature, you have to become emotionally sophisticated. It's okay when you're two years old to wear a diaper. It's kind of not okay when you're four years old to wear a diaper. When you're 14 year old, 14 years old, it's a bit of a problem. And when you're 40 years old, wearing a diaper is probably going to not get you the respect that you're looking for and the job that you're looking for. It's probably not going to happen, right? So my point with that is that certain behavior at certain times is acceptable. But as we mature physically, we also have to mature emotionally and spiritually. And that that is what many of us have not done. And your wife is not seeing the your wife is not seeing the trauma that's caused the adaptation. She's not seeing a child that's just trying to remain safe. She's seeing a man that's controlling, manipulative, and causing her pain. That's what she's seeing. So the big recognition here, and this is like now we need to go into uh warning. I've I've been I'm very hesitant to talk about this topic because typically what happens is there's a sense of relief, right? Like you go, oh, it's all makes sense now. I I understand why I react, I understand why why I do what I do when I don't even like my behavior, I understand why I chase, pressured, fed, so on and so forth. But this doesn't make it okay. Just because you can see why you do what you do, and there's a sense of relief that comes from that, and it goes, oh, it makes sense now. I understand it makes sense. Yes, it makes sense, but this doesn't make this doesn't make it okay. We have to update. So the most common adaptation is control. Most of us within the program, the the the issue is control. We're trying to control things that we have no business to control. And what's going on is it's why I say fix the man, fix the marriage, because when you understand that it's the trance that's causing the problem, it's the trance is causing a distorted view of reality, which is causing a distorted behavior, which is causing a distorted outcome. You can't change the distorted outcome without changing the perception of the situation. And because we're unaware of these adaptations, because we're unaware of these trances and trauma responses that we're now going through, the typical interpretation is I'm trying to save my marriage here, Cody. Can you not see I'm trying to save my marriage? But what's actually happening is you're trying to control uncertainty, you're trying to control pain, and you're trying to control fear. Here's the problem: guess what? Your wife is also trying to control. She's trying to control her levels of uncertainty, she's trying to control her levels of pain, and she's trying to control her fear as well. And she's also dealing with her trauma responses and her adaptations and her trances. She's also seeing a very distorted view of reality. And the truth of the matter is, you are both, in fact, seeing distorted views of reality. She's you're seeing the way you're interpreting the situation is I'm trying to save my marriage. She's seeing the behavior, you're trying to be controlling. You're going, I'm trying to save my marriage. She's seeing you're being manipulative. She's only seeing the behavior that you still believe is the pathway to certainty, pain reduction, and removing the fear. These three things here: uncertainty, pain, and fear, we all deal with as human beings. And our goal is to minimize or reduce those. I'm dealing with that, you're dealing with that, your wife's dealing with that. And when we can start to see my wife is only trying to create some certainty, as am I, my wife is only trying to avoid pain, as am I. My wife is only trying to deal with fear, as am I. She's not attacking you. But when we run these trances that were developed at a much younger age, and these adaptations, and we're associating the behavior that she's now engaging with, with a behavior that was demonstrated towards you at a much younger age, that you had no level of emotional sophistication to process or deal with. It starts to make sense why we can't make any progress within the marriage. So this is why everything gets worse, right? The adaptation that we are now running only knows one thing. And your wife as well. Her adaptations only know one thing: survival. That's all it knows. These trances cannot and will not and never will create intimacy, connection, trust, or emotional safety. Who knows at this point that these are the things that are going to save your marriage? These are the things that are required. The adaptations that you'll run in through these trauma responses can only create protection, control, avoidance, and self-preservation. That's all they can create. And unless you're willing to look at these trances and decide that you know long you're going to evaluate the world as an adult through an adult mind with all of the decades of experience that you now have, all of the levels of emotional sophistication that you have available to you, all of the resources that you have to help you interpret what's going on? How hard would it be? How much coaching and therapy would the elephant need to break free from the chain that's that's binding him, that's tying him down? How much how much therapy would he need? Two years, three years, ten years? Or would he just need somebody to say, pull on that chain, bud? Pull on that chain, Dumbo, and see what happens. The elephant is microseconds away from freedom, as are you. And again, this this is just not this is not only as a as children that this happens, as young adults that this happens. Many of us have had many conversations with many of you in the program where you're business owners and you've developed a strategy that's effective in business. It's it's to be hard-nosed, it's to be a tough negotiator, it's to take no crap from anybody, it's to all of these things, right, that again they produce certainty, they reduce risk, they they create uh a certain amount of avoidance of pain, all of the things that you're looking for, and these also become adaptations. You learn that being hard-nosed, that being no nonsense is an effective strategy. And it is in that environment, but this is the level of emotional sophistication that we need to develop if you're going to save your marriage. You have to understand that context matters. The domain matters. An adaptation that works in this domain is going to be absolutely devastating in that domain. Business is often adversarial in nature. Your marriage is not. And if you take a strategy that is designed to keep you safe in an adversarial environment and you bring it to an environment that requires a cooperative environment or cooperative behavior, you're going to do damage. And all the time I hear statements like, I don't understand, like, I don't have this problem at work, I don't have this problem with other people. Different domain. It's a different domain. Of course, it competence is not transferable across domains. Being competent at business does not make you competent at marriage. Being competent at sport does not make you competent at business. Competency is domain specific. So the great paradox here, what the the real sad part of what's going on here, the strategy that you are employing to try and save the marriage is often the very strategy that is actually destroying the marriage. Again, fix the man, fix the marriage. The marriage is not the problem, the wife is not the problem. It's the adaptations that are being run ultimately. So what happened is the strategy, the adaptation, it effectively protected the child, but it actively damages the marriage. So again, the trap of relief, we talked about this briefly. You know, you don't want to go, this makes sense. Now my reactions make sense, now my patterns make sense, now I do what I do. Or there is a mechanism behind this, there is a cause, there is an explanation, right? So the trap is that understanding is not transformation. Awareness is not healing, insight is not change, knowledge is not growth, and understanding is not trust restoration. Now you understand what's going on. The question becomes, what are you going to do it do about it? Are you going to be a hearer of the word or are you going to be a doer of the word? Are you going to use this information that I've shared with you today to excuse what you've done? And go, now I understand, and it's not my fault. No, it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. And I don't care, I say this all the time when I talk to people, I don't care what you've done. I don't care where you've come from, I don't care what's happened, but I do care what you're going to do next. I do care where you are now, and I do care what you're going to do next. That's the question. Many people will take this information and use it as an excuse to excuse their behavior. A select few will take this information and use it to heal. Many men will stop here, right now. They will be satisfied that they understand the wound, they will be satisfied that they understand the adaptations and the trances, but they will continue in the behavior that's causing the destruction to the marriage. So again, the critical distinction is the trauma is not your fault. The trance is not your fault. You didn't choose pain, you didn't choose adaptation, and you didn't choose the condition in that you're now running from. It was the subconscious, fight or flight survival response. But here's the kicker right: healing is your responsibility. You now have awareness, you now have accountability, action, change. These are all your responsibility now. So the question that changes everything is stop asking why is she doing this? What does this mean? What is she thinking? Why is this happening? Why doesn't she understand? Why won't she fight for this? And start asking the question who's running this marriage? Who's running this marriage? Is it you? 45-year-old, 48-year-old man who has almost maybe five, six, even seven decades of experience of life at this point? Is a grown man running this marriage, or is an outdated survival challenge from an eight-year-old boy running this marriage? And your health and your spiritual life and your business and your finances and everything else. This is across the board. So the awakening opportunity here is today is your opportunity to snap out of this chance. Today's your opportunity to wake up. Because the moment that you see the adaptations that you'll run in, the trances that you're in, you can separate from it. You can stop identifying with it. And you can stop calling it you. How many of us have negative habits that we don't like that you just say, that's who I am? That's it, it's what I am. No, that's not who you are. That's an adaptation that you're running. It's a program. That's all it is. It's software. You're running software. You are the computer. You can wipe the hard drive and you can start again at any given point. You can go back to factory settings at any given point. You can go to the software store and you can install new software at any given point. Everything that you are currently calling you is an adaptation to a survival mechanism that at some point threatened you in your life. The choice is yours at this point. Who do you want to be? What software do you want to install? So for the first time, you now have the opportunity to observe your behavior, to challenge your behavior, to challenge your beliefs, to challenge the adaptations that you've come up with. Again, look at your worldviews. Why do you believe what you believe? And I'm not here to give anybody any worldview on anything. I'm here to challenge you. Is your worldview actually truly yours? And is it the most up-to-date, sophisticated worldview that you can possibly have? Because here's the thing, right? You can interrupt it and you can choose differently. Now, if you want to, if you evaluate your position, your worldview, and you go, This is at you know, this is my worldview. Awesome, man. Keep it. Keep it. But my challenge to you today would be to put everything on the table. Everything. Every belief that you hold. No sacred cows, nothing that's off limits. Put it all on the table and ask the question: Did I choose this? Is this actually my belief? Is this actually the behavior that I'm choosing to engage in? Or is this simply an adaptation to is this a chance, a trance that's a response to an adaptation of an earlier version of myself that was less sophisticated than me? So the opportunity, man, is that the child solved yesterday's problem. The man that you are right now must solve today's problems. The child cannot solve yesterday's problems for you, simply not capable. The adaptations and trances that you're running in right now, you're running, the child needed those strategies. You do not. The man does not need those strategies anymore. They're outdated. So we started this out with the promise of I was gonna talk to you about how trauma is causing your marriage to collapse. The truth of the matter is, trauma is not destroying your marriage. The unconscious trance that the trauma caused is actually destroying your marriage. The trauma is actually inconsequential at this point. And this is the beautiful part, right? Again, as the elephant does not need a decade of counseling to learn how to break the trance that he's in, that he's not strong enough to break the train. You need no counseling to break free from this trauma. You don't need to understand where the trauma came from. You don't need to understand any of that stuff. You simply need to understand that you're limited right now by your own choice. You simply need to understand that there is more available to you than you're experiencing right now in every aspect of your life. And the only limiting factor in your life is you. The only limiting factor is your own belief of what you're capable of. The only thing to actually truly holding you back is the distortion that you have created through an event that you no longer need to be traumatized by. The healing here is instantaneous. It can happen now, immediately, and all of the effects of the trauma can start to be healed by choosing to wake up from the chance, see reality as it truly is. My goal for you is not to be unrealistically optimistic or unrealistically pessimistic. My goal is for you to see reality as it is because that's where transformation takes place. You can't go to work on a fiction. You can't go to work and change a fantasy, a distorted reality that simply doesn't exist. You have to see reality as it is. Once you see reality as it is, you can start to move it, change it, transform it. And the truth is, your wife is suffering as much as you. She needs to be set free from these trances as well. And the only way that you are qualified to do that is to set yourself free. So trauma created the adaptation. The adaptation created the trance. The trance created your behavior. And your behavior has created the outcome that you're currently experiencing right now. That's the chain of custody. That's how it happened. So the core takeaway, man, is you're not broken, you're not bad, you're not evil, you're not stupid. There's nothing wrong with you. You're also not your trauma. You are not the adaptations that you created in response to that trauma, and you are not the frightened child that was desperately trying to feel safe and certain. You're none of these things. The gift that you have before you is that this crisis, this marriage crisis, is revealing what exactly has been running your marriage for all these years. What's been running your decisions? What's been running your entire life? Is it you? Again, evaluate it. If it is you, awesome. Throw out everything I'm saying. Continue as. Continue as you are. So our goal here today is not to understand trauma. Trauma's a buzzword. It's why I've used it because people love the word trauma. The goal is not to understand trauma, the goal is to wake up from the trance that the trauma has put you in. Because the moment you wake up from the trance, you become free to choose the man. Choose who you want to be. Choose the life you're going to live. Choose the reality you're going to experience. And this truly is, man. This is where freedom exists. When you realize that the future is unlimited for you in every in every way, shape, and form. And we're not going to get into it here, but a lot of the lot of these traumas have intentionally been inflicted upon you to keep you controlled, to keep you small, in the same way that the elephant's trauma was intentionally inflicted upon him to manage him. The elephant is a mosquito compared to you. And strength. So my final statement here, and then we'll head over to the QA. Is this what separates you from the animal kingdom? This is what separates human beings from animals. When you realize that you have choice, that you have free will, that you can choose to stay in the trance or you can choose a new reality. An animal doesn't have that choice. An animal is simply a slave to the adaptations that its instincts and traumas cause it. It has no ability to evaluate truth from fiction. You do. And if you choose to stay in the trance, if you choose fiction over truth, then you're simply no better than an animal. And I don't mean that as an insult, I mean in the fact that your emotional sophistication is nothing more than animalistic at that point. This is what enlightenment is. This is what waking up is. All you have to do, wake up from the chance. Choose a different path. So that's it. That's my presentation. Let's jump over to the QA.