Ep. 471 Self-Regulation & Trauma: How Perception Shapes You with Dr. John Demartini
- Team Cynthia
- Jun 4
- 43 min read
I am honored to speak with Dr. John Demartini today. He is an international speaker, philosopher, and bestselling author who founded the Demartini Method, a revolutionary tool in modern psychology.
In our discussion, we break down the anatomy and physiology of self-regulation, examining the impact of trauma and perception, and how to reframe those experiences. We explore dissociation, the moral licensing effect, moral hypocrisy, and how delusion can disempower us. We also dive into the power of prioritization, the role of values, and what it truly means to live authentically.
You will love today's valuable, thought-provoking, and insightful conversation with Dr. Demartini.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
Dr. Demartini explains self-regulation
The importance of being accountable, self-regulated, and living by your highest values
Ways we can transform trauma by changing our perceptions and attitudes
How the brain creates anti-memories to balance traumatic experiences
The freeze response and dissociation as survival mechanisms
How the moral licensing effect relates to shame and pride
Why we must compare our actions with our highest values rather than comparing ourselves with others
Living more authentically
Dr. Demartini has an exercise on his website to help identify your highest values and prioritize your actions.
“When you have imbalanced ratios of perception, the amygdala comes on because it represents prey and predator.”
-Dr. John Demartini
Connect with Cynthia Thurlow
Follow on Twitter
Check out Cynthia’s website
Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Dr. John Demartini
On his website
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.
[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of connecting with Dr. John Demartini. He's an international speaker, philosopher, bestselling author and founder of The Demartini Method, a revolutionary tool in modern psychology.
[00:00:41] Today, we spoke about the anatomy and physiology of self-regulation, the impact of trauma and perceptions, as well as reframing these experiences, what dissociation is? the moral licensing effect, moral hypocrisy and delusion which disempowers us, the impact of prioritizing in values and lastly, how to live authentically. I know you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:13] Well, Dr. Demartini, I'm so glad that we were able to coordinate our calendars and have you on as a guest today. I'm really excited to dive into your book.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:01:20] Well, thank you. Like I said, I was looking forward to this interview. So, let's do it.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:24] Absolutely. The concept of self-regulation, I believe is getting a lot of attention, not just on social media, but in discussions that we're having. Why is it that some people do a better job regulating their emotions either when they're upset or they're happy or joyful? What's the foundation that allows us to develop good self-regulation as you know, not only children, but young adults and as we navigate life in general.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:01:51] Can I develop that a bit?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:53] Absolutely.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:01:56] Every human being has a set of priorities, a set of values, things that are most to least important in their life. Now this evolves through time. So, what we have is important in our first 10 years is different than the second and third. But at any one moment, that set of values is dictating our perception, decisions, and actions. Whenever we're doing actions that are aligned and congruent with what we value most, regardless of our age, gender or culture, the blood glucose and oxygen, according to functional MRI studies, emerges, enlightens the medial prefrontal cortex, the forebrain. This is the self-regulation center. This is the executive functioning center. This area has nerve fibers that go down into the amygdala and the hippocampus.
[00:02:46] And with glutamate, which is an excitatory transmitter, and GABA, which is an inhibitory transmitter, it tends to dampen the volatilities of the impulses and instincts and distractions that many people get from the external world that distract them. So, when we live by our highest values, we are more self-governed, we're more objective, we're more reasonable, we're more neutral, more resilient, more adaptable, more autonomically governed. And this area of the brain also activates the medial portion of the occipital lobe, which is the visual center, and allows us to be more visually anticipate and see our future, to help us create the future with foresight. And so instead of being bombarded by stimuli and make us react, we're more governed, we're more objective. We live by design, not duty.
[00:03:47] But anytime we are attempting to live by lower values or feeling trapped having to because we're subordinating to some outer authority or dependent on them and being told what to do with autocratic instruction, we have an internal conflict. Because what we think we got to do, have to do, must do, should do, ought to do, supposed to do, or need to do from the injected values that we're trying to express our individuality through, we're now in conflict. Whatever we do, the more it's lower on our values that we're being told to do or being instructed to do or feel that we have to do. Sometimes not because of outer authority's force, but because we're comparing ourselves to others and putting them on pedestals and minimizing ourselves and thinking we should our own decision that we think we should be this way.
[00:04:37] Anytime we do, we tend to go into lower values. And when we do, the blood glucose and oxygen moves out of the medial prefrontal cortex and goes into the deeper nuclei, which is the amygdala, hippocampus, parahippocampal area. And that area is for survival because we feel that we're now challenged and we get a sympathetic response. And it's like we're under predation. And so, as a result of it, we go into our amygdala. And the amygdala is a center for impulses and instincts. And it makes us want to avoid a predator and seek a prey. And so, we look for immediate gratifying pleasures and almost get into a hedonic state where we're looking for a pleasure without a pain.
[00:05:17] And we tend to separate the inseparable aspects of life and try to go to be one sided, want a pleasure without a pain, want to support without challenge. And sometimes teenagers, because they don't have the executive center myelinated until their mid-20s, in many cases they live down there. And so now they're trapped being subordinate to some authority called the parents or the teachers, or maybe they got a job and they got a boss and their own self-expression, they don't know how yet to bring that out in a way that these people are pleased or served. And so, they feel subordinate and trapped and they feel internal conflict. And so, their amygdala comes online, they don't have an executive to govern it.
[00:05:55] And they're trapped in this illusion until they finally mature enough to how to communicate what I want in terms of what other people want, my boss, my wife, my mother, my whoever, and how to be clear about what it is that they want and have the executive center govern them. So, there's a gradation of people in different settings. But I can assure that if a person prioritizes their life and fills their day with high priority actions, their self-governance goes up. And if they let the world around them distract them and they're putting out fires all day, the executive center shuts down and their amygdala comes online and they're volatile.
[00:06:35] Volatile feedback is a feedback mechanism to let us know we're not prioritizing our life, we're not living authentically, we're subordinating to the outer authorities, we're not knowing how to communicate what we want in terms of those authorities and we're trapping ourselves. So, there's an education on how to get through that. And there's also a patience during the teens and twenties for most kids. Although I've seen young children 6, 7, 8, 9 who know what they want to do. And I mean amazing, I saw a boy who was at 3, he knew he wanted to be a brain surgeon. By the time he was 13, he would read every book on brain surgery and was already in the location to actually watching brain surgeons do work they knew in their executive center in their forebrain were already developed by the time they were teens.
[00:07:25] The reason why most don't have the executive center overriding their amygdala until twenties is because most of them are going to school, they're playing, they really don't have accountabilities until their 20s. When they get accountabilities, that executive center comes online. If you give young people accountabilities or they give themselves accountabilities at a young age, they will come online sooner. So, the myelinization in that area of the brain is not just governed by chronological age, it's based on maturity of life age. So, you can take somebody and change the ratios of their self-governance, I call it, their emotional intelligence can go up and their self-regulation can go up if they prioritize their life and give themselves permission to communicate what they really want in their highest priorities to other people so they can master the art of doing what they love, loving what they do, and helping other people in the process.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:15] It's just amazing because as I was listening to you, first of all, my teenagers know about the prefrontal cortex because we talk about, I have all boys, but we talk about sometimes you will make immature decisions given the age that you are. But I agree with you, kind of navigating, watching my oldest son go off to college. He's a college athlete, he's an engineering major, he's doing incredibly well. And it's almost as if he settled into understanding, okay, if I want to be in a fraternity and I want to play lacrosse and I want to do well in engineering, these are the things I have to get my work done. And he said, “Actually, I am so better scheduled now than I've ever been.” And he's thriving. He's happy doing what he's doing.
[00:08:54] I have another child who is fiercely independent. When I say fiercely, I cannot overemphasize that word. He has been that way since the day he was born. He does not do things under the motivation of anyone. It's all intrinsic motivation. And this kiddo who is navigating, looking at colleges, and thinking about where he wants to go and what he wants to do long term, he looked at me the other day and he was talking to me and he said, “Mom, I hope you understand that anything I do , I do it for myself. I don't do it to make you proud. I don't do it to make dad proud. I don't do it to make my teacher proud.” He has that intrinsic motivation and has been wired that way since he was born. I mean, he's a very unique young man. [laughs]
[00:09:35] And so as I'm listening to this conversation, really looking at the anatomy and physiology of what motivates self-regulation in our bodies. And I would imagine that obviously not everyone grows up the same way. Some people may have unique challenges. They may live in an environment where there's a lot of trauma and violence. What is the research suggesting about these individuals? Are they capable of being able to navigate around these significant traumas and stresses and go on to develop the skills to become more self-regulated? Because I trained in inner city Baltimore and I saw extremes. I saw people who just lived through horrific trauma and evolved into being able to hold a job, have a healthy relationship if they chose to have children. And then I saw the other extreme, where people lived in abject poverty and IV drug use.
[00:10:31] And in the 1990s, Baltimore still is to this day in many ways, they were at the extremes. Heroin, HIV, AIDS, crisis, every crisis you can imagine, teen pregnancy rates. We had patients that were living the opposite extreme. And so, I'm curious, through your research and your experience, how do people that have lived in what I consider to be abject poverty and violence, how do they go on to develop self-regulation?
Dr. John Demartini: [00:11:00] Well, this is probably going to be shocking to some people, but I've had the opportunity for the last 40 plus years helping people transform perceptions. William James, the father of Modern Psychology about 1895, said that “The greatest discovery of his generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their perceptions and attitudes of mind.” I found that to be true and I make a statement and it almost sounds theological, but there's nothing the mortal body can experience that the mortal soul can't love. And I don't mean the mortal soul like some sort of esoteric system, but your authentic self, that's another word for it.
[00:11:39] And I've had the opportunity to take people through unbelievable things. I had a woman who was raped by 100 men by a motorcycle gang. I had a woman who was beaten in the stomach-- impregnated by her father three times, beaten in the stomach for abortions, and a sex slave for 11 years in a basement. I've seen people that had to see their three-year-old child raped by an African man in South Africa while the family was tied to a bed, watching the whole thing. I've seen thing where the person's literally had their arm cut off in front of their family. Some cool stuff that's like, you would call it trauma, but I'm going to reframe trauma. Trauma is a perception that you're choosing to hold on to because you're not either aware enough or willing enough to ask how can I use this now to do something extraordinary? How is this on the way, not in the way? How? And what are the benefits and upsides to this event that I've overlooked that I've chosen not to do because of the moral hypocrisies about how evil that was.
[00:12:54] I don't know of any situation that I haven't been able to transform yet by holding people accountable to look, see when disorder is missing information and so we label we've got a posttraumatic stress disorder. It's because we're missing information. And I've not seen anybody. I watched a guy in Dallas who saw his buddy blown up and the guy was crawling on a mine and it blew up and part of the guts of his best friend was all over him and he saw part of his face and part of his body and he was so-called traumatized. The way the brain works and this is something I discovered about 25 years ago that there's anti-memory for every memory.
[00:13:40] If we go through a so-called traumatic experience and the ratios of perception are extreme, our brain will go into a freeze response and we'll dissociate from that as a survival mechanism. But it's a terrible thing, the mind will create the anti-experience. Can I share an actual story of this? It's really quite amazing.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:13:59] Absolutely.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:14:00] I had a woman, I was teaching the Breakthrough Experience program which is where I teach people on how to transform these things. And it was in Sydney, Australia and I finished about 7 o’clock at night on a two-day program. And there was a gentleman there named Ron Lee. He asked me “Can you help me work with this client that he's got?” So, I said “Well the second I'm done I'll come next door and I'll work and I've got a dinner at 08:15 PM, I got 07:00 PM to 08:15 PM, that's all I got.” He said “We'll take it.” So, here's this woman sitting in his chair with him and she has been for 35 years in therapy. But therapist that she's been going through is in the victim model.
[00:14:40] You know, the victim model perpetuates the thing further in my opinion because what it does it says “Well you're an innocent victim, you have nothing to do with this. And this person was evil and they did this to you.” And that's really separating causality from things and not giving you your power. It's disempowering you further in my opinion and making you frightened of an avoidance response and search for its opposite sort of a fantasy life about how it should have been, would have been and could have been instead of actually seeing the upside to it. So, the second I walked in there, she started to want to run her story and I stopped her cold. I said, “You probably run this story. It sounds like you've got it narrated pretty good. It's been run for 35 years. I'm not interested in your story. I'm interested in very precise information I'm going to ask you, and if you ask that, I'll help you. If you don't, I'm going to tell you to go back to your therapist and run the story some more.”
[00:15:27] So, I held her accountable. I said, “Actually, go to the moment when you perceive you were traumatized.” And she said, “Okay, I don't want to because it's painful.” I said, “Well, if it's still painful, your therapist hasn't done their job.” [laughs] So, go to that moment. So, she had a little baby pig that she wanted this, I guess you could call it a rodeo thing. She got this little pig and it was a little baby, cute little pig. She got it. She won this thing. Well, she didn't want to give it up. But the parents had this pig living in this house and then partly in the backyard. And it was tearing up the house because it got big. And the father finally lost it because it's destroyed the house, destroyed the backyard, it's sneaking out, it's getting in the neighbors. There's complaints. He lost it. He hit his amygdala and he tied his daughter to the ground because it was him and her only. And the baby doesn't want to lose the pig, but he didn't know what to do with it.
[00:16:27] So, he tied the daughter to the ground with tent stakes on her arms and legs and had her tied to the ground, then on a tarpaulin, put the pig on there, and he started killing the pig and stabbing the pig because he had to keep her from interfering with it because he had to kill the pig. Now, that's not the brightest way to do it. There's probably much smarter ways of doing it. And there would be no doubt you would think that's trauma. But I asked her, “Go in that moment when you actually felt tied and staked and you were screaming and he was about to kill the pig, and you were screaming and you thought, this is death. And it's in the evening, it's getting dark out,” there's a light on. In that moment, I said, “You cannot have torture without ecstasy.”
[00:17:09] The brain won't allow one side. It has to have a homeostat. So, it brings out the other side with an anti-memory. So, at that moment, go there. And she went into that moment, and in that moment, she saw a white light. Now she had A Christian upbringing. So, the iconography of what she'd been trained was sitting in her psyche. So, whatever the opposite content in the brain is, if it's dark, she saw light. If she felt that she had no control and no one would listen to her, dad wouldn't listen to her. He just went berserk. Now somebody's listening to her. So, she imagined God being a white light. And she dissociated from this pig thing. And she went up and she saw in their upper left side, the pig was down to the right, she saw this white light.
[00:17:56] The second he stabbed the pig and she was constrained. So, she saw a dove free, flying, free. A bird was a symbol in her mind of freedom. The second he stabbed it, the dove turned into a little angel image. The angel represented good life, eternal life, freedom. The mind was creating the anti-memory to compensate for this perception she was having. Whatever the content of her perception, the anti-content and the iconography of everything she's experienced came into the surface. Four stabbings to kill the pig. Four little angel white doves were circulating around the white light. Now, the father wouldn't listen to her, but these angels and this white light was listening to her. And it was a father figure. And so, she was trained by Christianity. This was God.
[00:18:49] So, she dissociated and had this hyper religiosity experience, which is a temporal parietal lobe stimulation, which when the freeze response gets activated. So, she had this experience. She thought it was a spiritual experience. She didn't see it until I asked her that moment. So, at that moment, you saw death and life. You saw constraint and freedom. You saw evil and good. You saw conflict and peace. And when I showed her the exact balance of that moment, one by one, she broke down in tears. And then I said, at the moment of the torture, there was ecstasy. And she goes, “I never saw that.” She said, “I'm a medical intuitive and I use those angels and God to guide my insights for my clients. If it wasn't for my father, I wouldn't have been an intuitive.”
[00:19:45] Now, that's really a dissociative identity to some degree. So, she's actually split and hadn't gotten grounded and therapist who made her a victim kept that alive. Now, at that moment, when we actually neutralize that, what's the driest or what's the drawback of relying on those angels and God, which is really a fabrication of your own projection. And what's the benefit of what your dad did at that moment? And we brought those back into balance and brought the equation of perception back into balance. And she broke into tears and she felt love for her father because she has served hundreds of clients with that. But she never thanked her dad. I said, “Did you ever thank your dad for that experience?” And she goes, “No, I never saw that.”
[00:20:34] So, the entire experience for 35 years, it was torture, was dissolved in less than 45 minutes. And when she realized that, she then turned to me, she said, “So the torture's gone.” I said, “So are your little angels?” She said, “Well, am I going to be able to access?” I said, “They were never outside you. They were you. All the knowledge that you had was inside you, and all the trauma was inside you. The hero and the villain were all a projection of your creation based on your perceptions. And your brain did its job. It balanced you out. But you had run the story of one and separated the two. As long as you separate the pleasure from pain and the pairs of opposites, you aren't integrated. You're in your amygdala and you're dissociated and you're blaming and giving credit to the angels and giving blame to the father and running the story and your therapist kept you trapped in that for 35 frigging years.”
[00:21:30] So, I said, “Right now, what do you feel about your dad?” She says, “I feel love for my dad.” I said, “Great,” and “What about your angels?” She said, “I can't get them. I can't access them.” I said, “They were you. That's you. That was your brain doing its job. Your brain has done an amazing job the whole time. It's kept you balanced as long as you've been running the story of the torture, you've been running the ecstatic ability. And this superpower is because you felt powerless. And so, you created a superpower dissociation to compensate for the power. And you thought you had this gift or whatever. All it was is a compensation for the feeling of powerless in that moment. It was your brain doing its job and your psyche is now integrated.”
[00:22:11] And over the next year, her clients went from psychotic dissociated individuals, which were her clients, to stable individuals. That she stabilized her life and her self-worth because she was feeling guilty charging for this knowledge outside herself. Her self-worth got integrated and she was able to charge a quality service, would be more objective, back in her executive center, self-governed, didn't have this story and narrative about her dad, tortured her, whatever, not a victim of history, now master of destiny. All because she integrated the pairs of opposites in her brain, which activates the medial prefrontal cortex. When you have imbalanced ratios of perception, the amygdala comes on because it represents prey and predator. The second you balance it, it represents a mission in life. Not a passion in life. It's a mission.
[00:23:02] So, there's nothing your mortal body can experience that your mortal soul can't balance. If you ask the quality questions. And quality of your life is based on the quality of the questions you ask. If you ask quality questions, you can make yourself conscious of what's unconscious and become fully conscious and be graced and be grateful for the experiences that are on the way, never in the way. So, the idea of a torture or a trauma was not what happened to you. It's what you chose to perceive about what happened.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:23:31] That's so interesting. Because that is such a beautiful example of that. I refer to it sometimes as reframing. But our perception of our experiences, what we experience is significant. For the benefit of listeners, can we talk about dissociative states or dissociation. Because people may not be as familiarized with that term. My understanding of it may be a little more simplistic than your explanation. But I think this is an important point to understand that this is a way that our body tries to protect us.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:24:01] When we have an event that happens or some experience, we run into somebody or whatever. And we have a sympathetic response if it challenges us. This sympathetic response is a fight or flight response. If we think we can conquer it, we'll fight it. If we don't, we'll flight it. But if we can't think we can fight it or flight it, we'll freeze, which is the dorsal parasympathetic response. Which means you'll shut down your heart rate. You'll shut down your physiology. And act like you're dead. Like a possum. Why? Because predators don't eat dead things. Scavengers do. So, if we think we're under predation, we'll go into a freeze response. And we can't fight or flight it. And we'll act like we're dead. We'll act like we're not moving or whatever.
[00:24:47] But what our brain will do in order to handle what does happen to us if something happens, is create a dissociation which is like you're watching yourself in a movie and then you're watching yourself watch yourself in a movie and watching yourself-- watching yourself in a movie and da, da, da. And you're no longer feeling it down there. You're just observing it. It's a temporary dissociation from the experience. But the content, when I worked with dissociative states and when I look at the content, I have yet to see a dissociative state. That wasn't the anti-content of what they were perceiving, torturing. And so, once you put those two together, they reintegrate. And the multiple personalities that they used to give that title to, one by one, I took and knocked out.
[00:25:33] We had people that thought he was Attila the Hun, let's say Alexander the Great and Jesus. He was in a psychiatric hospital. He had three different personalities. We integrated all three of them in four hours. And he got out of the hospital and is running a financial company. But he was going to be in there for the rest of his life probably because they thought he had a sport injury, football injury that damaged the brain. That's what the doctor said and stuck him on medication. And we shifted it by going in there and doing pairs of opposites and integrating pairs of opposites and brought him back into function. But he was dissociated. And whenever he felt guilty, he brought in Jesus powerless. He brought in Alexander the Great. And all those people were people he had been instructed in school and high school about these people and in from childhood instruction from religion.
[00:26:24] So, he brought in the anti-memory to counterbalance what he was experiencing. Because he felt he let down the team when he had the football injury, he felt he left down his career, he felt ashamed, he felt weak. And so, he created these other components, these counter superpowers in his mind in order to compensate. When those were integrated in four hours, we integrated all three. He got out of the hospital from being on medication. It was a zombie and was able to function again. So, I really don't know what the limits of the power of the brain. But a lot of times we label people instead of transform the perceptions and regain their power back. I've seen this over and over again. There's lots of stories. I got another story. I don't know how much time we have, but I do another story.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:27:06] Yeah, absolutely. I find this is all fascinating.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:27:09] So, I had a lady who came to the breakthrough experience which is that signature program I do in Florida. And she had a mother. Her story that she'd also been for her therapy, years of therapy. Her story was, “My mom abandoned me and I was unwanted child.” You want to play a violin on another story. And she was just running the story, running the story, running the story. And so I said, “Instead of hearing your story and letting you run your story, which keeps your myelination of your amygdala alive and just keeps you trapped.” I said, “Stop the story and let's go. Let's break it down. What specific trait action and action do you perceive that you missed out on because your mother left?”
“Well, I didn't have somebody to listen to me and to nurture me.” And we made this list of things that she thought she missed out on. Because it's not the missing of the mother. It's the missing of the traits you admired about the mother. Because you don't miss everything about your mom. [laughs] There's things your mom does you don't miss, right?
Dr. John Demartini: [Cynthia laughs] Right. So, we had to break it down and find out everything about it that she admired and missed. And then I asked her a question. “So, when your mother left, who took on that behavior?” And we do it until the quantity of that behavior is fully accounted for compared to what you imagined your mom providing?” And she said, “Well, my aunt took it on because my aunt raised me.” Who else? “One of my best friend's mom, another best friend's mom, and one of my teachers and another teacher and another girl who kind of was like a really mature girl that played out mama's role.” I said, “Is the quantity of those people now equal?” He goes, “Yeah, of what I expected.” I said, “So you didn't miss it?” Nothing's missing.
[00:28:53] See, the master lives in a world of transformation. The masses live in the illusions of gain and loss. They live in this illusion about how it should have been, could have been, would have been, and if it doesn't happen, then they missed out on it. Very, very unresourceful. So, I said, “so can you see that you didn't miss on it? Miss that trait? You had it in a new form.” She goes, “I do.” That's really insightful. Now, what's the benefit of these people providing it? We started stacking up benefit. I learned different languages. They had more income. They had more stability. I got to travel. I got to have vacations. I got a mother figure in a different way. I got really close to the teacher and I got special training. And I stacked them up until she got a tear, tear of gratitude.
[00:29:37] I said, “Now, what would been the drawback if your mother had provided it?” And at first, she said, “There wouldn't have been. I would have been happy.” Well, I always say when somebody's depressed, they're comparing their current reality to a fantasy they're addicted to. So, I didn't ask, what if you had not if her mom had been there, what the benefits? I said, “What are the drawbacks if she'd been there?” “I can't think of it. I don't know any.” “Look again, because you said that within a second of me asking. So, it means you didn't even try to look because you want to hold on to your fantasy.” So, what exactly are the drawbacks if your mom had been there? Then she just stared for a second and paused and tears came out of her eyes and then she shook.
[00:30:16] I said, “What is it?” She said “Something my aunt said to me when I was very young, when I was 4, that I just forgot until right now.” I said, “What?” Wow. I said, “What is it?” She goes, “My aunt said to me-- I can't believe I didn't want to hear it. My aunt said, your mother has bipolar condition, and she had you in a bathtub and the water was too hot and you almost scalded to death and you almost drowned to death. And your mother came to me and said, because of my issue, my daughter deserves better than what I can provide. I almost killed my daughter today. I don't feel worthy of this daughter. She deserves a better life than what I'm going to be able to provide her. Would you help me raise my daughter?”
[00:31:02] And she started bawling and realized that she was not rejected. That's the lie that she made. She was loved and appreciated and was given the opportunity to do it because a mother loves a child. She's not going to give it up unless she feels that they're going to have more advantage and disadvantage doing it. And so, she stopped and looked at all the blessings that she had as a result of having the mother do that and realized that her life would have been not the fantasy she wanted. She created a fantasy and then tortured her life with a fantasy, then felt unworthy and then went on from relationship after relationship that basically, as she called it, abused her because she was judging and devaluing herself so she didn't feel worthy of having great relationship.
[00:31:52] The moment she had that realization, and went down through everything that she thought her mom was to provide and everything that she thought she missed out on did that one by one. She was in a state of grace. She wanted to just find her mother and put her arms around her and said, “Thank you for loving me enough to give me a life I would never have had if it wasn't for your decision.” And then she started having a self-worth and made a decision. I'm going to do something extraordinary in my life because of my mother. She loved me enough. I'm going to do something. Just completely flipped the entire thing by a reframe and went on to write a book to end up inspiring other women to say, “Don't you dare lie to yourself about this.”
[00:32:37] What she went through, she started helping other women break through. And so, it's not what happens to you, it's not what you've been through, it's not what you're going through, it's how you decide to perceive, decide and act on it and that you always have control over. And we give away our power and want to blame things on the outside instead of empower ourselves from the inside. But I could go and I've got thousands of those cases and there's all kinds of dissociations, stuff like that. There's not one of those that can't be re-brought back into balance if you know the right questions to ask and hold people accountable and stop their BS story and their dependency on somebody that supports that story.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:13] Well, I think that as I'm listening to that, and as a mother, as me being a mother myself, the greatest sacrifice that woman did was understanding that she was not capable of taking care of that beautiful daughter and wanting to ensure that she had better. And what an incredibly powerful transformation that now this woman is going on to help other women. I feel like in many ways, especially for women, the concept of devaluing ourselves, the concept of shame. I have conversations, even though I have teenage boys, we have conversations around this with some frequency because they'll bring conversations to my husband and I and we try to help them process what they're experiencing.
[00:33:58] I'll give you an example. My oldest is now in college, but when he was in high school, teenagers use this terminology, body count. And so, I was asking, “What does that mean?” And so, they were explaining, “How many people someone has slept with.” And these are teenagers having this conversation. And they were making a comment about someone at one of the schools. They went to two different high schools. And I said, “Before you judge that person, I want you to consider something. That might be a young woman who grew up without a father figure, didn't have a stable home, might not have had good guidance on how young women are meant to be treated and may not have a good impression of herself.” And I said, “Before you go to judge, think about that.”
Dr. John Demartini: [00:34:41] Walk in your moccasins. Walk in your moccasins.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:34:43] Correct. And so, I think that one of the things that has really stood out to me as a now middle-aged woman, but when I reflect back on hundreds of women that I've been friends with over the years, conversations that we have around the concept of shame, whether it's shame about our bodies, shame about menstruation, shame about menopause, shame about relationships, the concept of shame is something that is so complex and interrelated into how we have grown up our own perceptions of ourselves through the lens of parents, through friends, through relationships. How do you like to reframe shame and devaluing ourselves? Because I think it contributes to a lot of lost opportunities in life.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:35:26] I had the opportunity to do that every week. So, those are inspiring to actually watch the transformation. Blame and feeling guilty, when you blame yourself, you feel guilty. It's because you assume that you did an action in the past with your memory that real or memory that caused more pain than pleasure or negative than positive, more loss than gain or disadvantage than advantage to someone. Shame is the same thing, but to self. So, we go through and we think we're causing more pain and pleasure, but we have what is called a moral licensing effect. And most people don't know the moral licensing effect. The moral licensing effect, everybody's lived without even knowing it. If I ask people, I get pretty well, 100% responsiveness.
[00:36:11] How many of you gone out, worked out in a gym, got your abs looking good, your butt looking good, your chest looking good, looked in the mirror and go, “Yeah, I did a workout, I'm yeah.” [Cynthia laughs] And then gave yourself permission to eat more food, drink more wine, and eat more chocolate because you earned it. The moral licensing effect shows that anytime you're proud, you give yourself permission to do something you're ashamed of. And anytime you're ashamed, you have motivation to do something you're proud of as a homeostatic mechanism to keep you stable around your authentic set point. So, this moralizing effect is oscillating back and forth. And when somebody is using shame and causing, they think they've had shame, they're assuming that they did something that caused more pain and pleasure to themselves or other people. Blaming shame.
[00:37:04] This auto is also an autoimmune stimulant, why they actually attack themselves. Now what's interesting is they can't have that without the other side. So, I flip it and freak them out by asking, okay, so where are you cocky self-righteous, arrogant, proud, thinking you're doing something great and every time it's there. And I said, “As long as you're addicted to one, you're going to have have the other.” And that shocks people when they actually get that. And then they go, “Oh.” Like I had a young woman that was thinking that she's a better mom and a better mother and a better this and better that when they're dealing with her kids, which are highest on her values.
[00:37:43] But in something that was low on her values, the way she was doing business and managing money and everything else, she was shaming herself and beating herself up because she was comparing herself to another person at a higher value on business and finance. So, anytime you compare yourself to somebody with a different set of values, you're going to automatically go into pride or shame because if you look up to them, you're going to minimize yourself. If you look down on them, you're going to exaggerate yourself, if you go and ask yourself, whatever I see in them, where do I have that with reflective awareness?
[00:38:17] So, I had a lady that was in, we were doing the Breakthrough Experience in London, and she said, “Dr. Demartini, I just don't know what my purpose is. I don't know what my purpose is. I don't know what I want to dedicate my life to anything else.” And I said, “What do you do every single day that nobody has to remind you to do, that you spontaneously do that you're inspired to do?” “I don't know, I can't think of any.” I said, [Cynthia laughs] “Answer the question. Be accountable.” “What do you do every single day that you're inspired by, that you spontaneously do, that nobody has to remind you to do?” She finally said, after three times, “I spend time with my kids.” I said, “In what way?” She says, “Well, I'm a home school teacher. I teach my kids at home.” And I asked her, “Do you fill your space with your kids?” “Yes.” “Do you spend most of your time with your kids?” “Yes.” “Is that what energizes you? “Yes. Teaching them?”
[00:39:05] “Is that where all your money goes?” “Yes.” “Is that what you have the most order and organization around?” “Yes.” “Is that what you're disciplined and reliable to do and you won't ever let that down?” “Yes.” “Is that what you think about, visualize and affirm inside with internal dialogue about how you want your life that shows evidence are coming true?” “Yes.” “Is that what you converse with other people about when you talk to people?” “Yes.” “Is that what inspires you?” “Yes.” “Is that what you have as a goal that you've had to be a great mother of children, do homeschooling.” She goes, “Yes.” I said, is that what you, when you study and read and learn about it's mainly dedicated to helping kids grow.’ And she says, “I love that.”
[00:39:40] I said, “The only reason you're beating yourself up and lying to yourself, thinking you don't know what your purpose is because you're comparing it to somebody that you're admiring. Who is it?” She goes, “I think I know.” I have this woman who's really a business savvy woman. She makes a fortune and she's got a nanny that takes care of her kids and she's got two kids. I got two kids. And I keep thinking I should be running a business, I should be making money, I shouldn't be a dependent mom on my husband. I should da, da. And anytime you inject the values of people you put above you and minimize yourself you're going to inject their values and you're going to compare your actions to their values and you're going to then self-depreciate.
[00:40:25] And so I helped her realize that right now, what's the drawback of the woman that you're admiring right now and her, the way she's managing her kids, where they get, they're in the average school system, they don't have this. And I said, “And where do you have what you're admiring in her?” And I helped her realize, “What did she admire in this person that's running a business?” “Well, she's disciplined, she's reliable.” I said, “Aren't you doing that?” And I helped her see that she had every one of the traits she admired the other lady with. I helped her see some of the drawbacks to her kids. So, she wasn't thinking that was a better deal. It's just a different deal. It wasn't better or worse, just a different deal. Those kids have a new set of challenges in life.
[00:41:01] Her kids are having different opportunities and challenges. And then I asked her, where does she think that she's better, greater? ta, ta, ta. And she looks down on all the parents that dropped their kids off at school. And she's cocky over here. So, once we put the puzzle together, she said, “So what you're saying is my mission and my purpose is being fulfilled?” And she cried and she said, “That's all I've ever really wanted to do.” I said, “The only reason you're not acknowledging your purpose and acknowledging yourself and you've been beating yourself up and lying to yourself about your mission is because you're comparing yourself to other people.” We're not here to compare ourselves to other people. We're here to compare our own daily actions to our own highest values, to look how congruent we are with what's most meaningful.
[00:41:50] And if we do, we have an inspired, fulfilled and meaningful life. But the second we compare ourselves to others and put people on pedestals or pits and exaggerate them or minimize them, we minimize and exaggerate ourselves with shame or pride. And the moral licensing effect is trying to help us, but we keep holding onto a fantasy about who we are instead of honoring who we are. And the magnificence of who you are is far greater than all the fantasies you’ll ever put.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:42:13] Do you think it's human nature, though, to compare yourself or to look to others? I mean, I think that was probably more of an issue when I was younger. Now I'm just got blinders on and I'm focused on who I serve and what I do. But I do feel like the social conditioning, whether it's the influence of social media or filters or all these things, I feel like there is this comparisonitis. Even for people that I think are healthy and well adjusted. You have those little inklings of comparison that maybe in some ways it's like you like, well, the grass is always greener. It may look like that person has it easier or more successful, but the realization is we all have problems. No one is perfect.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:42:55] Well, no, that is the perfection. The balance of the pleasures and pains. That's the perfection. The moral hypocrisy is that you're supposed to be happy, never sad. You're supposed to be kind, never cruel. You're supposed to be positive, never negative. You're supposed to be that. That delusion disempowers people across the world. These are moral hypocrisies initiated by usually religious or political leaders and moral oppressors over the oppressed who basically are trying to compensate for their own wounds. And these moral hypocrisies are the idealisms we have to finally mature past. In Kohlberg's stages of moral development, he says, “First we avoid pain and seek pleasure. Then we subordinate to mothers, fathers, preachers, teachers, and we go up the scale of preconventional, then conventional and then finally we reach a point of post conventionality and we finally realize, “You know what? I'm not here to compare myself to other people. I'm here to live by universal laws,” Universal laws nobody can violate, human laws, nobody can live.”
[00:43:59] So, they finally reach a point of maturity where they finally realize, “Hey, I decide.” [laughs] It's the voice and the vision on the inside is louder than opinions on the outside. So yes, it's a stage of development because we're taught. Think about a little baby the first year the baby's born. First year, they can pee, they can poo, they can vomit, they can scream, they can bite, they can yell, they can keep you up all night. And you don't judge them that first year. The second those little kids stand up, that's the end of it. The second they stand up and they walk around and you have to baby proof the thing now, right/wrong, good/bad, bad/good, right/wrong. Don't do da da.
[00:44:43] Anytime the mother or father gets challenged by the child, now comes the conventional, “Thou shalt not do that.” And anytime you do that-- Freud called it the “Superego,” which is the internalization of some outer authority that you depend on value system injected into you. And now the internal conflict and the internal masochism begins. Now you're caught between what I should do and what I would love to do. And your impulse and instincts are running and your executive center is not on fire yet. So, you're having to go through that. And it takes until you pass through mothers and fathers and preachers and teachers and your bosses and more professors and bosses. And eventually, you start your own company and you say, “I'll think about that, mom, and I'll think about that teacher.”
[00:45:28] And you finally start to gain some autonomy and realize that the authority, the author of your life is you ultimately. But you've been giving your authorship over to other people along the journey until you finally grew up. And that's when you finally do you self-actualize. Ernest Becker has a book called Denial of Death. It's a fantastic book about do you want to conform in life or do you want to be a norm in life, enormity or conformity? And the path of individuality is what changes the world, then the path of conformity is what stagnates tradition. Say, where do you want to play in the game and do you have the courage? Because when we're thousands of years ago, if we didn't fit into the group, we're abandoned, abolished, and we died.
[00:46:09] So, people are frightened of not fitting in and they want to make sure they please everybody and fit in and be like everybody else. But do you have the ability to be a misfit, as Steve Jobs said, “Do you have the ability to go against the grain.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Envy is ignorance and imitation is suicide. And to be great is to be misunderstood.” When you can walk that path and walk the path that's authentic to your highest values, which is unique to you like a fingerprint, you are going to do something extraordinary with your life. Until then, you're going to probably have internal conflict and brake on instead of your gas pedal.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:46:43] Well, it's interesting because I think as a parent, having to or allowing our children to develop into their own individuals. Like, I have one child who would have been an amazing physician, amazing, but kept saying, I don't want to be in school that long. I'd rather do engineering. And very differently than I was raised where my parents probably were more involved in decisions that I made until I matured enough to stand up for myself and move forward. But I think that now that I'm a parent, I can see, and I do see with peers and colleagues sometimes this overt-- I don't want to use the word meddling, but there's no other way to put it.
[00:47:22] This kind of meddling and pushing kids to conform, maybe kids that don't want to go to college, but the parent’s expectations are that every kid goes to college and this is just what we do. And after colleges is the next thing, you do and helping my kids navigate decisions fairly independently with a lead because they're not yet financially independent. But when we're talking about things that we can do to set our children up for success, I think emotional intelligence is without question one of the most important things. And what are things that we can do even as adults if we perceive that our emotional intelligence is something that we need to actively be working on.
[00:48:02] I grew up in a home where I was an introvert. And I've always been very observational of behaviors and so. My emotional intelligence level has always been very high because there was so much conflict. But if there are people listening that are curious how to curate or improve upon their EI, what are the things you generally like to work on with your patients?
Dr. John Demartini: [00:48:21] It's not about actually working anything. It's about prioritizing everything because the executive center knows how to do that. [laughs] So, I'm in Brisbane, Australia and I'm doing an evening class and it's on awakening genius in the youth and helping them wake up their genius and help them be governed. And at the end of it, a lot of people lined up and asked questions and wanted book signings and that kind of stuff and pictures and stuff. And this guy comes up who drove seven hours to be at that talk with his 14-year-old son. And he hands me a note from the principal of a school saying that they kicked him out of school because he's not teachable. And he had two schools do that. So now they all put a label on this child, right? Because when you don't conform to authority, they put a label on you. Labels are just, I call them signs of incompetency.
[laughter]
[00:49:22] But anyway, if you have incompetent therapy, you put a label on. So, you can then use that as [unintelligible] you don't know what you're doing. So, in the process of doing that, I stopped, I said, “Thank you.” So, the father was taking his authorities who are basically telling him his kid is disruptive and he's labeling his son and his son is just sitting there looking down, feeling like I screwed up again, whatever. And I asked him some 13 questions to help identify what his values were. And it became really clear within a few of those questions that cars-- that he loved cars. His room was filled with cars. His walls were filled with car posters. He had model cars everywhere. They were fancy cars.
[00:50:09] And I started asking him questions about cars and car engines and stuff, which I didn't know anything about. I haven't driven a car in 35 years I have, people drive me. So, this kid was a freaking genius in cars. But nobody's asking that at school. None of those classes are at school. He is self-autodidactic, ingenious when it comes to cars, particularly high-end fast cars. This guy was a frigging genius. He knew the engines, he's 14, he knew all the engines. He knew how they were designed, where they were designed, who was it when they invented it. He knew this guy was rattling off with a photographic autographic mining pars but that was not what the curriculum was.
[00:50:52] The schools are designed for drones. They're not designed for leaders. They're not designed for ingenious people. Elon Musk could probably fail in a normal school. So, I told the father after I got through him, I said, “Have you ever considered taking your son over to the fanciest, highest quality car dealership that sells Maserati’s and the fastest cars or whatever?” And the son is like, “Yes,” [Cynthia laughs] somebody understands me. And his father said, “Well, all he does, I mean every moment, on his own time, he's involved in cars. And we can't stop him, we can't get him to do his homework.” Because people spontaneously do without having to be told any external motivation what's important to them. But that may not fit what society is expecting or what mommy and daddy is expecting or what teachers are expecting.
[00:51:42] But if they're clear about it and they know what it is, they will excel in that area in spite of you. So, I tell him, take him over to the frigging car dealership and see if they can get a job washing these cars and be around the car dealership and see if he can out eventually sell. The second he hits 16, I'll bet he'll outsell everybody in the place and he'll own the place by the time he's 21, he'll be multimillionaire. Well that's what happened. All the labels, all the judgments, all the programs, attention deficits. He didn't have attention deficit when it came to cars. He had attention deficit on everything but cars. He had a highly concentrated value system. But nobody was honoring it, nobody was recognizing it, nobody recognized his genius and he excelled.
[00:52:28] And the father had to have the courage to get past the ridicule, the rejection, the rules and everything else to give his son the freedom to be the genius that he already was. It's not missing. Now, some people along that journey, once we identify the values, we link the classes to it. Like I had a 23-year-old guy that was sort of in college, floundering around, barely passing. The mother called me and said “Can you talk sense into my 23-year-old? All he does is watch TV all day, I mean six and seven hours, eight hours a day watching TV.” I said okay, “Let me talk to him.”
[00:53:10] So, he was spending eight hours a day, most every day watching CSI and the same type of shows, solving crimes. Now, the mother thought he's wasting his time and he should get to get a job or he should be in school. But he was just doing just enough to not be kicked out of school. But he was totally disinterested in that. And I found out what his highest values. She said “Would you talk some sense to him?” I said “No.” We were looking on the Internet to look for what educational pathway is necessary to be involved in solving crimes. This kid was absolutely on fire. He said “Any class that allows me to go and become a, whatever it is, a forensic specialist or whatever, I'll take, I'll do.” This guy went from just average person.
[00:53:58] And she finally realized and she labeled him just lazy watching TV. He wasn't lazy watching. He was trying to outwit and find the answers and solving the crime before they ended up at the end of the show. He was working on what he wanted to do, but it was labeled that because people didn't pay attention to that. Well, the second he went off and started the curriculum on what it took to be a crime specialist, he had two different pathways through the police department, another one that's separate through an educational department. He excelled in school. He was on fire. He was there. And when he was watching TV, the mom was saying she was coming from it. “It's not a bad thing. It's helping him in his career.” So, the whole frame was free framed by the mom. He was on fire. He was now excelling because we found out what his intrinsic value system was.
[00:54:41] And if you have classes and you have functions and responsibilities at home, if they can't see how those are going to help them fulfill what they value most, they're going to procrastinate, hesitate, frustrate and dodge it and dissociate. Second, they can see how the classes. So, some people, I actually take the classes and link them to what they value so they excel in the class. Others, I say go and fire after the thing you really want to do. I try to narrow down which is probably the wisest pathway. And it's not always the pathway that the parents are expecting or society's expecting, or the peer pressure from the group around them, the community that they're living in. “Oh, what will the community think about if my son does this?” All that pressure of outside authority.
[00:55:22] If you force your child to live by outside authority, you stop and squash their genius in some cases instead of find out what it is and link that expectation to that so they can get what they want, helping other people get what they want.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:55:36] Well, I think about how many colleagues of mine, whether it was medicine, whether it was law, whether it was education, how many people pivoted in middle age to go into different fields because they perhaps intrinsically picked a field to please parents as they were kind of coming through the educational process. Do you see quite a few, I would say, 30, 40, 50-year-olds that are starting to pivot because they're inspired, their value system is different than the occupation that they've been working in. Maybe they actually been quite good at what they were doing, whether it was in medicine, law, education system, etc. Do you see that, that's a common theme for people to pivot if they have not been honoring those intrinsic values that you speak to.
Dr. John Demartini: [00:56:18] One of two paths occur. Either they're feeling unfulfilled and I always say they're making money but without meaning, which tends to lead to debauchery and drinking and amygdala behaviors, or they found a link between what they're doing and what they really value. That sometimes happens. Sometimes they find out that, yes, it's not about the medicine, it's the education to the clients. And they then all of a sudden, they can find out, I really love education and they get to educate their clients, and they end up becoming an educator of the health professionals. And they found that little niche. Sometimes, it's a specialty within the health professional that they really niche, and sometimes they give it all up and do something they really want to do.
[00:57:00] Like a guy I met that wanted to own a car dealership, and his father said he had to be a lawyer and he had to marry this woman. It's a Jewish family. He had to do this and had to do that. And he ended up with a heart attack, obesity, a divorce, a bankruptcy, a tax problem, and he was fighting it. And the moment he came to my seminar and he said, “I'm suicidal,” and he ran the story of every one of the areas of his life collapsing. And I smiled and I looked at him, he said, “What are you smiling about?” I said, “Sounds like you've been set free from a false life that you've been trying to live.” And he looked at me and he goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “Who you been trying to please all your life?” He goes, “My dad.”
[00:57:44] I said, “When did this whole thing crumble?” “Two months after my dad died.” “You never could please your dad.” He goes, “Oh, crap.” Then he stopped and he saw. He says, “I got out of a marriage I didn't really want without money, so I didn't have to pay alimony and stuff.” He started to see a differently.
[laughter]
[00:58:05] He says, “She really was not what I wanted to be with. I'm now moving to a different place where I don't have to be in that community that suppresses you. And all of a sudden, he was on fire.” And he went out there to Florida, started to get out of his suits, get in his blue and colored shirts and started a dealership that's involved in fancy cars and repairing fancy cars and fixing them back up and reselling them and fixing the engines. That's what he really wanted to do, but that was not good enough by the parents in this community. You can't do that. That's a lower grade thing. You have to be a doctor, you have to be a lawyer, you have to be this, you have to be that. And so, he broke through that. But it was after having everything collapse.
[00:58:46] The symptoms of our life are feedback mechanisms to authenticity, misinterpreted many times and treated because we think there's an issue, but it's actually the body doing and our life doing what it can to get us authentic and back onto priority.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:59:01] And kind of round out the conversation, how can we live more authentically?
Dr. John Demartini: [00:59:06] First, on my website, drdemartini.com, there's a complimentary private value determination process. I hope people take advantage of it because what it does, it's an eye-opening series of 13 questions to narrow down what really your life demonstrates is important. Not what it should be, not what you think it ideally ought to be, but what do your life demonstrate? Because your life demonstrates your values, but you may not see it. Once you do that, you stop and you'll have an eye opener. You'll go, “No wonder I'm spontaneously inspired to do that. But I have to be motivated to do these.” And then you'll ask the question, “What are the highest priority actions I can do today to fulfill those top three or the top one?”
[00:59:47] And start structuring your life and organizing your life by delegating lower priority things and disciplining and dedicating to the highest priority things. Your self-worth goes up, your confidence goes up, your leadership skills up, your health goes up, every area of your life starts to empower and your resilience, adaptability, you'll lower all the drama and the volatility you have in your life because you're back in your executive center. Because the second you live by the highest priority, your blood glucose and oxygen wakes up the executive center and all the emotional drama starts subsiding and your genius comes to the surface. We're designed for waking up and doing something extraordinary. Everybody has a part of them that wants to solve a problem and make a difference in the world. But we suppress it by trying to live under authorities instead of actually being the authority.
[01:00:33] Albert Einstein said it really great and he was one of the great geniuses. “My contempt for authority is what made me one.”
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:00:39] [Cynthia laughs] I love it. Well, Dr. Demartini, I've so enjoyed this conversation. Please let listeners know how to connect with you, how to purchase your books or work with you and your team directly.
Dr. John Demartini: [01:00:49] Well, if they want to get a hold of me and find out about books and what I'm doing or whatever, just go to drdemartini.com you could spend the rest of your life on there. There's so much information on there. But just take advantage of it. But please take advantage of that value determination exercise is free. It's private, millions of people have used it and it's an eye opener.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:01:08] Thank you so much for your time.
Dr. John Demartini: [01:01:10] Thank you for the great questions.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:01:14] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. Subscribe and tell a friend.
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