Zahra Ciardi - The True Self, Limiting Beliefs & Why Photographers Crave Validation, E118

They find themselves incredibly stuck at some point.

“And when we're in that space of going like what brought me shek is not the thing that can sustain me.”

That's where people begin to ask for help. This is Zara Chiyati, a registered psychologist and founder of a send-in Bali, a high-end mental health program for leaders, high achievers and entrepreneurs. Zara specializes in trauma recovery, addiction treatment and peak performance, combining evidence-based therapy with holistic approaches.

Her focus is on helping clients break limiting patterns and unlock their potential. My conversation with her is for anyone trying to make something. And finding the thing in the way isn't the camera or the canvas or the page, it's the mind holding it. If we could all just do things, then we would and my job wouldn't exist.

My job is to break down the anatomy of doing what is the belief,

because that's the weed in the garden.

I can mow the lawn and it looks okay for a temporary time, but the weeds are there, they're just going to keep growing back or I can go in there and grab them from the roots and pull them out. Zara has spent her career inside the human mind. What she sees there is what most of us have been taught not to look at.

And what every creative person eventually has to face, if they want to make work, that means anything. I found myself resorting to things like self-hound, or I would fantasize about suicide the day's on end, not because I genuinely wanted to die, but because it would actually give me a sense of relief that

there was a way out if I really wanted it. Hi, Chiba, when I first meet them, they've been working their asses off because they're trying to escape, I'm not good enough. And so they're overcompensating through perfection, through output, through results, and outcomes.

So you always have a choice.

Yes, you can operate from the belief system that you're not good enough,

“and therefore you need to overcome and say,”

or the fact that you are whole and you love to create. So always use that analogy of how far do you want to go because you can really launch yourself forward? And that's your decision. It's all right, welcome to the show. Thank you, I'm glad to be here.

We obviously know each other, but for listeners who may not know you, and probably wondering why is this person on this mood podcast photography show, art show, give us an introduction to yourself, as well as, you know, why you think you're here today to talk to me on the show? My name is Zara, and I'm a psychologist.

I run my own business in Bali, called a certain Bali, and we work with clients in a rehab or mental health setting, that's inpatient or residential. We work quite deeply and intensively to support people to move from the life that they have, which might be problematic,

to the life that they want. And I'm just glad to be here. I'm happy to talk about whatever you'd like to talk about, so bring it. Yeah, we're going to try and revolve a lot of the conversation, certainly when it comes to psychology and mindset towards the,

I guess, creative outputs and creative industries, just to keep it a little bit more aligned with what I'm interested in, as well as what the audiences interested in. But this, this type of conversations over you, but we talk a lot about this, in sending a photography world where I'm kind of embedded on a daily basis,

and in terms of not so much the technique anymore, and the output, just more the person behind the camera, essentially. So I want to dive into a little bit about that. But before we do tell us about kind of the provenance of your story, and how you got into psychology yourself.

“Yeah, I think whenever you meet someone who's in the healing or recovery industry,”

where all in some sense, coming without own history, majority of us have lived experience, and I myself do as well, when I was in my 20s, I was exploring what I wanted to do with my life, and I'd been studying medical science at the time, but I hadn't really hold in on what I wanted to do.

And I was also going through a really difficult situation at home, so growing up, we came to Australia as refugees. And I grew up in a family that was trying to assimilate in Australia, but struggling to find a place for themselves to belong. The rules of their east were being applied to our context of the west,

and as children were trying to figure out how to fit in within our school, within our friends, then we go home, and we're being told to operate and work differently. And so this push and pull of identities that I had to navigate,

Mendes that by the time I hit my 20s, I was experiencing a lot of symptoms that I couldn't explain.

“At the time, I just thought it was who I was.”

You know, this is me, surely everybody feels the way that I did, but I was chronically anxious, so it was very insecure, I was not sure of my place in the world and who I am, how I fit into, I guess, at this community and any community. And by the time I left home, which I thought would be the end of my troubles,

that's actually when everything kind of fell apart.

I was finally diagnosed with complex PTSD and then that began my journey through treatment.

And of course, at that point, I realized I really want to help people. I want to help people in my situation, I want to, but I also didn't recognise at the time that ultimately what I was doing is helping myself, because being a psychologist has probably benefited me more than anyone, even though I've helped so many people, I can confidently say that.

So yeah, as fast forward, put us at now 13 years since beginning my studies, and years of practice in the military, in private practice, in hospitals, with early psychosis programs, and just seeing a variety of clients from across the lifespan, and in different presentations, landing in barley and choosing to do a servant, barley and focusing on the trauma aspect of things has been really great. But like you were saying before,

you want to focus on the specific person that would be watching your podcast and interestingly enough, this generally is the kind of person that comes through our doors as well. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of musicians, actors, artists, lots, a lot of artists, really creative,

incredible people who've created magic in the world, but they find themselves incredibly stuck

at some point. And when we're in that space of going, "What brought me, is not the thing that can sustain me?" That's where people begin to ask for help, which is really

“wonderful. Yeah. And I think one thing that struck me there when you're telling your own story”

is the diagnosis part, or the realization should we say that you need help. And maybe for you that was an event in itself when you moved away and you realised, "Oh my goodness, I'm not well." Tell me about the importance of, because we can self-diagnosed quite easily with inundated with information coming about ears every day at our fingertips, which I want to talk about late in terms of being quite overwhelming and how we can really pass through that type of

information, but it's also important to educate ourselves and realise when we actually need help if we do need help. So for you, when was that kind of a seminal moment where you realised, "Okay, I'd need to go and get the diagnosis," or "Go and see someone who'll go and get help," because there's so many people that don't know that yet. Yeah. You know that the stuck in the trenches and you see people after that point where they realise, "Okay, I need to go and get help.

I'll go and find Azara or someone else to really help me." But I'm, I get, I think a lot about the people who are stuck in the mires, stuck in the mud, but they don't quite know it yet. So

first of all, how did that happen for you over kind of that period of time? And what would your

advice be to people in, you may not know that they're quite in that state yet? Yep. It's a great question because at the time that I was diagnosed, information was accessible. You know, we, I'm a millennial, I believe you are. Yeah, we're saying that. And you know, we, we grew up in the age of the internet. So information became a little bit more accessible. Exactly. Very slow, but we could get that information if we really needed it. But it still wasn't to the extent that we have it now.

“There's information overload now. All you have to do is pick up your phone and speak to your”

AI and the AI will prompt you as to, "Hey, this thought process is interesting. You might want to check with, you know, therapist or they might provide some guidance." So I think as the years of gone past as the decades of rolled, we've got a greater capacity for awareness around what's going on for ourselves. And this is why we're seeing much higher access to supports like psychology and different resources. At the time that I received help, you know, I had already enrolled

in psychology. I didn't know I didn't know what was going on for me. I knew that something wasn't right. Something didn't feel good. I was having all sorts of issues. But I was assigned a task

know, what's the documentary which is supposed to be about borderline personality? And I remember just looking at it and going, "What, this is like my life." What is borderline personality? Borderline personality is a personality that can form after being exposed to chronic invalidation or abuse from childhood. It's usually a highly sensitive person. Usually creatives are HSB,

“which is 20% of the population. The HSBs have, you know, the only way I can describe it is,”

it's almost like we were born with skin that's incredibly sensitive. Imagine having third degree

burns and somebody touches you would be agony. But if you had regular skin, a touch would feel okay. Harley sensitive people were born with this really, really sensitive skin. And so our capacity to feel things is very intense. On the pro side, you can feel things, which means you can create, you can express, you have greater levels of empathy, where the healers, artists, musicians. The disadvantage is that if you grew up in an environment as a HSB, that was chronically

invalidating or abusive, you were very likely to develop chronic emotion dysregulation as an adult. That means you don't know how to manage your emotions. Everything feels overwhelming.

“You never learnt the skills, the tools, the co-regulation that was supposed to be received,”

tool caregivers, that helps you develop your internal resources. So having grown up in the home that I did, unfortunately, both my parents didn't have those resources being traumatized, refugees themselves. They weren't able to pass it on and in fact, they passed on a lot more unfortunately in a negative way. And that means that I develop these personality traits. We now know, I prefer the diagnosis complex PTSD because it's a bit more humanizing than

online personality. She feels a bit... See PTSD, yeah. And you know, all it took was that one task. And then I booked my psychiatrist appointment. I got a really good one. I was so lucky, because I've had horror stories of going people go into psychiatrists and the treatment that they

received. But the guy that I got, he was amazing. And he described to me, "It's not borderline.

It's complex PTSD. You don't need medication because medication is not been shown to be effective for this. You need this specific types of therapy. He sent me to a therapeutic group. And for that 18 months, I was there. Everyone's day 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with 7 other traumatized woman. We would set, we would share, we would learn new skills. And that made the greatest shift in my mental health. Going from a childhood where I didn't learn all of these tools and supports

to 18 months with these incredible people that were previously strangers that had become my family. But that was like round one of treatment. There were so many more loops around the recovery journey

“in order to rise to a guess where I am now. And I think we don't stop really. There's always more”

to do without making a project. I think with creatives as well, they worry about losing their creative edge. So I meet so many people that me included in parts, I think, well, I need to be a little bit damaged sometimes so that I can create something that's a little bit unique and a little bit edgy, which is a complete misnomer, of course. But we think about the big famous artists. There's

always been like mental health issues or there's always been something perceived to be like wrong

with them or certainly a rough edge to them. So I always kind of think about that a lot and people, certainly artists who think I don't need to go down that route because if I heal, then maybe I'm going to lose my artistic edge or skill, which obviously is not true. You just may become slightly different type of artist. I agree with that. Sorry to cut away from the episode from in it, but I wanted to talk to you about something very quickly. Now, I spent a long time thinking that

isolation was part of the deal when it came to photography. That if you were so serious about the work, you did it alone. You'd consume enough, watching off, reading off, and eventually it would all cohere into something meaningful. And it sometimes did, but mostly I was just alone with my doubts and no one to push back on them. What changed things for me wasn't a course or a workshop, it was a conversation with someone who was doing the same kind of work and cared about it in exactly

the same way I did. The doubts didn't disappear, but they got a little bit smaller and I felt

where the work is taken seriously, where you can bring your questions, and of course your

hard-finished ideas, and where someone would actually engage with them. We have the ad-free extended podcast episodes with bonus content. We have monthly Masterclasses, Q&A sessions, and of course the weekly book clubs, and direct access to me and my team, because you don't have to do this alone. So the link is in the show notes, and hopefully I'll see you inside. Do you feel like there's a a case for over-diagnosis, a lot, certainly self-diagnosis, people finding something that they want to

attach a label to, so therefore they can potentially either victimize themselves for it and bring themselves attention, or go and find some kind of healing method that they might think will

“fix them. I think in today's world is very easy to watch a podcast or read a book. I've got that.”

I've got that. I mean ADHD is a really good example that it is an actual condition, of course, but I would argue that there's a percentage of ADHD people that aren't actually ADHD, or that have self-diagnosed as that, because they're just on their screens too much. Do you feel that like in your experience as a psychologist and the people that you see and just how you move through the world? Do you think that's a problem in today's society with over-diagnosis?

It's interesting because I think I don't think it's a problem necessarily. I think under-diagnosis and under under-utilizing services is the genuine problem. On the other end of the spectrum, yes, there are moments where we are over-diagnosing, but I don't think it's as grand a problem as

the lack of help and the under-diagnosing that's going on, because stigma has always been there

“for mental health. We are normalizing mental health slowly and gradually, and I think that's”

what you're experiencing that is being spoken about more, that is more front of mind people are, especially the younger generations, you know, it's now called to see a therapist. You know, when a problem is self, isn't that? Well, I don't know if it is because therapies is not only for when I am ill, it's also for my ability to work my way through. It's the mentor that stands by my side to walk with me. I can either do it alone, or I can have that support. I can have it

informally, but if I'm someone who's carried so much throughout my life, having that fall support with me through chunks, maybe only short periods, or, you know, for some people, it's a little bit longer as well. It's really beneficial. I can get the maximum amount of my life,

“why wouldn't I? You know, we have this one short life, and I think it's okay for us to have that”

permission to be able to access the resources to get the maximum that we can from it. And I think especially as high achievers, we want to be able to, you know, to hear some of our biggest fears really are pretty. I hear this all the time from creatives from high achievers, and so it's like that becomes a really big support and going, how can I be my full potential? But it can also be problematic on the other side. Having said that, I agree with you, things like ADHD,

because this is kind of a bit of a spectrum. You know, on one end of this spectrum, we have a what we call a disorder. It's causing problems, it's impacting my functioning. On the other side, it's more gentle, sort of symptoms that everybody experiences. We all misplace our keys. We all, you know, forget appointments that is like, where do we draw the line between what is actually a diagnosis? And what is just human? Yeah. And that's the job of a psychologist, not AI,

or me self-diagnosing myself, right? So, I think I see a lot of people pushing back, certainly, you know, we're talking downstairs. A difference, difference, good differences between male and female. I'm talking about that a little bit, but also the the the Ying and the Yang and the the desire

for the universe to always be in balance. So every action has an equal and opposite reaction, right?

So if you go far this way, there's going to be a can't defend. We see that in society these days, generalism, we're not going to talk about politics, but I think when you have this good movement, generally good movement, should we say of mental health being a little bit more normalised, less stigmatised, the older generations who don't, you know, the stiff upper lip generations dying away and the younger generations come in and normalise them, which is fantastic.

That can also lead to a lot of procrastination and you see like a lot of the people on the

um, come, come, come, come, come, come, remember the the writers name, but the art of not giving a fuck, if you, if you read a lot of not giving a song, uh, with Mark Manson, yeah, and uh, he was, um, talking about, uh, when he was fat, he used to be really fat, yeah, and he would read so many books about workouts, about calorie deficits, about the science behind weight loss, weight gain, biology, he read book after book after book, but remained fat, eat pizza, smoke drink,

didn't really work out. And when he finally made that decision, it's very similar to mental health,

we made the decision to get a personal trainer, started going to the gym, he would question everything the personal trainer was telling him to do. It's like, yeah, but I read that this, this amount of reps was better for this muscle group and would be the, and the person who's just like, you just need to get, you just move, you're just, you're fat, just move, and eat better.

“Like, I think we can get really kind of caught up in the weeds with this type of information,”

especially when we're doing ourselves and not outsourcing it to professional. My point is, I think sometimes a lot of the, the people on the other side of this fence might just say,

let's stop wasting your time, just go and do something rather than procrastinating and doing

your therapy and doing your personal development. And I'm not talking from my experience because I do all that. Why do enough of it? But I can see the other side of the view where it's, we look, we just need people to go out and do stuff and not be fanning around and this is where the terms snowflake comes from. It's like, just stop procrastinating. We need action. Do you see that in your experience? Is what do you see much of that rhetoric? Or is it just me

kind of making stuff up? No, I'd love to break that down because what you're speaking to is, if we could all just do things, then we would and my job wouldn't exist. My job is to break down the anatomy of doing. Okay, why is it that? I know I should stop drinking, but I can't. I know it. It's in my value system, but I'm not doing it. I know I need to lose X amount of weight for my health because my heart is now impacted, but I'm not doing it. So it's, it's about understanding,

“what is it underneath that is impacting our capacity to take committed action towards our values?”

Because we can look at someone and label them snowflake or lazy or fictum that none of those actually leads to change within our society and in the people that we care about. So what we'd amplifies stigma because then people start to have this feeling of shame. So if I, if it was that easy to just do things, then why can't I do it? Then therefore there's something wrong with me. And this becomes a shame based identity of I'm bad. And so inherently there's something wrong

with me. If it was that easy to go from A to B and there's something that's that's not working. That is where I come into the picture or people like myself and we break down the anatomy of how to get from A to B. What is holding you back internally? That is stopping you from being able to do that. And a lot of the time what brings people to us is I can't stop arguing with my partner. I can't lose weight. I'm unemployed. Whatever. I can't stop drinking. That brings them

“through the door. And then my job is to help them see that that's what's in the surface.”

Let's dig a little bit deeper because something is at the core of this that's holding you back. When you know what that is, you can do something whether that gives you agency and the previously lazy person becomes someone who has capacity. So I think we have to see it for the complex. It looks simple on the outside but it's actually incredibly complex to support people to make change.

Lazyness is a really good thing I want to double click on because I always

shame myself for being lazy for certain things like the old me and people, I guess in our generation and older who just do it, just quit. Just do it. And then so you think well why can't I do it? I'm just being lazy because you can't put enough effort and will power into quitting something or the opposite of doing something. How much of that in your experience comes back to nature versus nurture and upbringing and childhood, parenting and childhood experiences or trauma in the experience.

So much of it. So much of it. Again, what we see on the surface is never really the reality of

I'm just I'm not taking action. I'm not living the life that I want to live. I'm engaging in

really toxic behaviors. We begin with an assessment, a really honest conversation about what, you know,

“what is your life now? What hasn't been like in the past? What is your environment like?”

Who were the most influential people for you as a child? What were they like towards you? Did you feel safe? Loved, connected. Did you have opportunities for place, spontaneous autonomy? Did you have limits that are healthy? All of these things are what we call basic human needs. They don't stop. You have them from when you're born. You have them till the day die. And if those needs in childhood are not met consistently, predictably, reliably,

in childhood, what we end up forming is a set of unhelpful belief systems about myself. So if I, my need for love and safety was not met consistently, I might develop a belief that people will abandon me. If my need for validation and being seen is not met, then I might believe I might develop a belief system that I'm defective, but something wrong with me. Why? The people that should love me the most are the ones criticizing, hurting and not loving me. Therefore, there's

something wrong with me. So defectiveness can form. These are just some examples. Can we jump on the validation and being seen? Because this is so prevalent in today's world. We were just talking about your recent trip to Miami and how a lot of people there. And that's just a microcosm. But going back to my world and the audience, I've got some questions from the audience that I'm going to kind of interweave into the conversation. But one of the most popular

ones is how do I get away from creating to be seen? You know, I teach this all the time because that used to be me. It's like, you know, I want to take a photo so that I can get validation for it.

Either a part in the back going, Matt, that's amazing. Well done. Or the digitized version of the likes

and the follows and that attraction. Certainly in photography and visual arts, that's such a common thing. And so people start asking themselves, once we get to that point where they realize that they're creating for the algorithm or the creating for validation. And vice versa, if they don't get

“that validation, they can spiral or they give up. Right. So how do we how do we break through that?”

And why what is the most common cause of wanting that validation and material success should we say? In whatever we do, it doesn't have to be photography, but it's we see it everywhere, right? We're all human in that respect. We want to be loved. We want to be understood. We want to be hugged. And in a in a healthy way, that's good. But in an unhealthy way, that can really lead to hatred, depression, anxiety. What do you what do you see is the most common cause for that?

And if you were to like, if I was to really distill it down into like a little, you know, nugget of knowledge that you might be able to offer someone who knows that that's a problem for them, what would you say? Yeah, I think you've summarized it really well. Firstly, you're human,

your need for validation is always going to be there. But like all things, it's a spectrum.

There's a healthy branch of the spectrum where validation seeking is supportive. And it's helping your function. And there's the other end of the spectrum where it's now defining you. You're choosing to see whether I receive validation or not as a definition of who you are as a person. And that's where it becomes really problematic. It's a really good segue to what we were talking about because if I already believed myself to be defective, then seeking validation becomes a remedy

to that. So my belief system is defectiveness. I learned to really quickly that if I get validation, I get a temporary high and a relief. So if you feel that you are finding yourself addicted to validation and seeking that from others, whether through your work or social media, whatever it

“might be, I want you to pause and ask yourself what's underneath that. What is driving that?”

There's a hunger there. And when you define what that hungry is, then you confide it internally. And effectively either through your own self-validation or through being able to resource yourself or request it from others in a really healthy way through relationships that matter to you, as opposed to strangers on the internet. But every time we look at certain behaviors that are causing us some trouble, all we have to do is dig a little bit deeper to find the core belief.

You know, a downward arrow of questioning that allows you to come to terms with, there's something deeper within me that maybe has been here for decades, maybe my whole life because some of our beliefs are pre-verbal. Before we could even form words, I've figured out that, you know,

especially in other attachment type issues. They tend to be developed even before words, which is really interesting. So when you try to do therapy with someone who's got pre-verbal beliefs, they have no words. So I don't know. I just know in my core that I'm unlovable or that people

are going to leave me. And it's not always on, but it turns on when they're in a relationship

and they start dating. How does that manifest? So, let's say, for example, you know, day-to-day because, you know, you have a self that goes on with normal life. You know,

“you can function, you can do whatever you need to do. And then you get into a relationship,”

which is now your biggest trigger, because your trauma is relational from childhood. And therefore, the trigger turns on certain belief systems and activates them. And the belief system might be, you know, unlovable. This person's going to leave me. Yeah. Because that's happened to me in the past. Yeah. It's important for me to continue to believe that because my system wants me to stay safe.

So if I pre-empt you leaving me, I can protect myself. And so the belief system is persevering

for that for that reason, for survival. However, we have to teach the adults that the child would experience as over. That was then, this is now. And the adult self is much more resource, and can be even more resource if we choose to make it so. So helping people in therapy becomes about supporting them and emotionally growing within the therapeutic process,

“healing the inner child, wound of abandonment, or defectiveness, or whatever the belief might be.”

And being able to come back to the adult true self, or readily, because the true self, the version of you that is the true version of you, is the one that is the wisest, the most compassionate, the one that is the most creative. It can drive the car, right? Or the busses are like to say with all the passengers. Yeah. So I don't know if that answers the question, but yeah. Jump into the bus analogy for... Yeah. I love the bus analogy, because it helps people see that

they're not just one person. You are multiple parts. And if you imagine the bus, you've got all these passengers. The true self is the truest version of ourselves, the one that we want. And these annoying pesky passengers, one might be the addict. So every time we go out with friends, suddenly you're decided to use drugs or alcohol increases, because the addict, sugar, sex, poor new name at, you know, and the addict grabs the steering wheel, pushes the true

self off and starts writing the bus. This is why the next day you sit and regret and go, "What do I do that? Like I don't want to do that." But that's not, yeah, the true self does want to do that. But your addict part certainly does. And the addict part has formed through decades, because it's, it's shown you how to find relief in soothing yourself with different types of substances. And maybe as a child, you went through so much pain or discomfort or needs gone unmet.

That you learned that seeing in front of the TV for hours, eating sugar was helpful and you get moments of relief. Just describe me. Every night TV, putting. Yeah, exactly. And it's isn't it resourceful that a child figured it out? And you did it unconsciously. You didn't go, I'm going to now watch TV because that feels, yeah, it just happened. How do you, so how do you turn it? Because fear, and I'm, for those watching my wife, fear, and I talk about this all the time.

She's always trying to give me space to love myself more and not just, but it's, you know,

as soon as you catch yourself, because you do catch yourself like wanting, whatever your thing is, right, doing that thing and it becoming a habit and maybe an addiction. How do you not criticise yourself in that moment? Because that will only make things worse, right? It's got somehow come back to self love, but then you think, well, how just, it comes back to me being that rational person and probably a lot of people out there. Just, just stop it. Just, you know,

having that conversation with yourself, just stop being lazy and just don't do it. How do we

“turn that around from, first of all, awareness is so important. Let's skip past that from up”

for the moment, but just like spotting yourself being, having that issue or whatever we want to label it as, this thing, this passenger on the bus that has, that is the addiction side of us, whatever it might be. How do we go from awareness to self love? Yeah, and you know, maybe I want to say this to you and the audiences. Let's not aim for self love if I'm here at self-loathing or criticism. Let's aim for self neutrality. Okay. Because even now, I'm going,

oh, here I go. I'm terrible at this too. There's another thing that I can't do. You know,

So one of the most insidious and difficult parts in the bus is the inner critic. And the inner

critic is generally the part that I have to work with first with my clients. Because if I don't,

they will criticize the therapeutic process. They will criticize the between session activities. They do, they will narrate the client's life. And they will stop them from making progress.

“So first order of business is to meet what are some of the passengers of the bus?”

That passenger might be first being a critic. And we have a conversation with that passenger. They're on the back seat. They're the back seat crew of the inner critic. Yeah, they think they're cool. Think she's cool. Yeah. Fuck her. He's one of those guys. He's coming from the back. Yeah. And then he sometimes comes to the front grabs the steering wheel, which is why you end up in criticism

because it's like, let me drive and push as the true self. So, and most of the time when we meet clients,

they're there all the time. The inner critic has been driving the bus the whole time. They get moments of breaks where the true self emerges. But the true self is in the boot. And as I know, we need to create some level of integration between our parts within the bus. That's the work in therapy. It's about getting to know your parts,

“understanding how to work with them, negotiate with them, meet their needs.”

Because each part also has a need at one point, it helps you, even the inner critic supported you, because you learned that through criticizing yourself, you could do a little bit better. You could do a little bit better, because that slap on the wrist made you perform. But now decades of that has burnt you out. It's impacted your sense of self-worth, and it's no longer working. Yeah. So, we have to acknowledge the history of every part.

And in doing so, we build compassion for each one of our parts, even the ones that are trying to hurt us, even the ones the parts that are so subtle, that are actively trying to kill us, are not actually bad. None of our parts about. That part is trying to actually give you relief, because in death, it feels that's the ultimate relief. So what we want to do is be able to negotiate and understand these parts and have the true self-drive because the true self knows how to get relief.

It knows how to build a life worth living, without having to rely on these old coping mechanisms that were once helpful, but no longer supportive. How do we know, I guess there's a two-part question, how do we know what the true self is? And how do we, without putting you out of a job,

“but how do we prevent ourselves from getting to the point where we go, I need to see someone, right?”

So, how can we kind of figure this out ourselves? Because I think we all need help from other people, whether that's just in natural relationships or professionally, how what kind of little bits of practices that you would recommend without going to the biohacking world, but certainly personal development world, how do we know what the true self is and how do we kind of realize that and be able to kind of prevent, do some preventative maintenance before we get to the

point of committing to someone like you? It's a bit of a process because let's say different people

have different experiences. If I've got CPTSD, my true self is almost unknown to me. I've never

really got to meet that part of me. It's in the boot. If I've had a fairly stable childhood and upbringing and environment, maybe I don't have too many parts that are driving the bus in the true self as a bit more in control. My rule of thumb is the true explosion of you is compassionate. It's kind. It's patient. It is wise. It knows how to, it knows it understands uncertainty. It's effective. It uses skills. You would say this for everyone. Yeah, so the, the self is,

is that part of you that can function incredibly well in society. It is the trend, trunace of humans. But as we've gone through life, our identity has fragmented into different parts because of different experiences that we've had. So we've had to do these things where we create parts to support us. I grew up in a childhood that was unstable. I needed to develop a part that was really angry. Yeah, so that I can push people away because you can't hurt me. If you get,

if you get this close, I could get into pain because gosh, my parents were the ones that hurt me. So I'm going to trust a stranger. So the angry part formed to protect me. The attic part formed to suit me. The dissociative part formed so that I would just disconnect from all of this and don't all pay. That just shut it off and I can just sit there like a zombie. And so on. So the more integrated you are, the more stable you're child and upbringing was, the less these things have happened,

the more tumultuous you're past, the more part we have to work with and the more fragmented

it's important that you do it with a therapist or a support person because I use the analogy of the octopus. You're too close to your own stuff. You've got an octopus. Yeah, you can see something. You can see it all face. Yeah. Yeah, put your hand on your face. You can't see my hand on your hands. And so it's like, yeah, sure you can try it too, but you're limiting yourself. And so being able

“to have somebody go against, have a look at it together. That is important. And then the maintenance”

can happen from there because you learn, you get the supports that you need through that. Now, there comes a point in every photographer's journey where gear or technique stops being the question, you've learned your camera, you can read light, you know how to edit, how to produce, what a good frame looks like, and you can probably make one on demand quite easily. But something is still missing. The work feels good. Competent maybe even pretty, but it doesn't quite feel

completely yours. It doesn't really say anything that couldn't have been said by someone else on Instagram with the same camera. That's the moment most people get stuck, not at the beginning, but right here, right there, somewhere in the middle of it, in the midst of it, where you have all the tools, but not really any of the language. And the reason it's so hard to move past is because nobody can teach you your voice in a tutorial or a silly little YouTube video, because it's not

accepting on the dial. It has to be drawn out of you slowly by methods and introspections that actually allow you to look at yourself and your work and challenge you with the harder questions,

“all in order to draw out your unique and photographic voice. That's what my voice alchemy”

mentorship program is. It's an online container for photographers who really already know how to use their camera, but want to use it to say something that's more meaningful on that actually matters to them. Personalized strategy, honest feedback, and the kind of work that builds their body,

a voice, and a brand that actually gets noticed. It's not a course, it's just the thing I always

wished I had had, and it's the thing I now spend most of my days doing. The link is in the show note, so if something in this is calling you hit the link, and we'll see where you're at. If we move on, just give me, give me an insight into your, not your issues, but the struggles that you, once you kind of made that step and you started the journey on your healing process, and you mentioned your addictions, and can you give us a bit more of an insight into your

“own battles with certain parts of the passengers on the bus? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important”

that clinicians speak about this, that to some degree we humanize ourselves, not within the client clinician relationship, because I want to be a blind canvas from my clients, so don't want them to necessarily carry my stuff. But healthy disclosure and conversations like this, I think,

is really powerful. For me, the journey began with complete emotional dysregulation. I didn't know

what I was feeling at one point. I was exploding or imploding, because the emotions were so chaotic for me in my early 20s. I found myself then resorting to things like self-hound, or I would fantasize about suicide the days on end, not because I genuinely wanted to die, but because it would actually give me a sense of relief that there was a way out if I really wanted it. And so when I would be feeling distressed, sometimes I would be on my phone and just kind of reading and reading

and researching. And I know this sounds really dark, but it was a fantasy that was relieving for me, and that was how I was caring for myself. If it wasn't that it was self-harm in various ways, because I could focus on the physical pain, as opposed to the emotional pain, it would give me a break from what was happening and brewing inside. And for some people, it makes no sense when they go, "Oh, how would people do that?" But you had to imagine the gravity and the intensity

of the pain that would make you go, "Oh, I would rather cut myself. I would rather burn myself,

I would rather hit myself." That's very intense. And that was the first round of treatment to actually

be able to come through that. And I know not many people, not many, but not a lot of people will be at that extreme, but this is also important to mention because some people are suffering in silence, and they need to heat that this is part of the journey. And then came the next layer of, "I can't hold down a relationship because I'd have no skills for communication." And I also felt that my partner needed to be my parent, my therapist, my brother, my father, everything.

developmentally still a bit at about five or six years old, even though I was at a 25-year-old's body, it was really difficult for me to navigate that. So when love came along, I reverted to my child self, and I wanted Daddy to help me. I wanted my way to comfort me. And so the next stage of therapy was about meeting those parts of myself and helping them grow. The therapist relationally supported that growth, because they emotionally care for you. They co-regulate with you. They support you.

You end up building this incredible safe relationship with another person that maybe you've never

had before. And that goes on into the next stage of therapy, which is now or refined. I want to be able to focus. I want to be able to follow my dreams. I want to know what my values are, what is I want to self-actualize. And when you look at the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, that the base you've got safety, and you shelter in these essentials. And then you can do things like social and relationships. And then after that, you can do self-actualization.

Being able to understand where do I fit into the order? It's the meaning that I want to

“create. What's my purpose? But you have to sort of follow it in that order as well.”

I can't be looking for purpose when you've got complete crisis. And being able to know your path

through recovery by prioritizing those things first. Now when it comes to photography,

the whole infrastructure of the internet rewards speed. Post more post faster, be first, be everywhere. The algorithm doesn't care whether you went deep. It cares whether you showed up yesterday. And I guess that's not photography specific. Now for me, I built my work around a different bit that there are people who would rather go slowly and understand something fully than go fast and understand probably nothing. That depth is not a liability. That the work you

make when you take your time is categorically different from the work you make when you're chasing the feed, maybe, or chasing the algorithm. Now the mood inside us is built on that same bet. It's a private community for photographers and visual artists who are serious about the slow work. We have monthly masterclasses where we actually go deep on craft and thinking we have a weekly book club monthly Q&A's. We have the podcast of course, but add free with bonus content and we have

direct access to me and my team. It's not another newsletter you'll forget about. Not a discord server full of noise. It's a room with a small number of serious people and a very clear and supportive focus. It's just 19 dollars a month. The link is in the show notes and I really hope I can see you inside. You find it's made you a better psychologist having been through a lot of the really difficult times that you have been. You know seeing kind of both sides of the experiences made you

“better at your job. 100% yeah oh my gosh I'm so grateful for it. I remember being in clinics where”

people be like oh my god I've got this client just borderline I don't like working with borderline nobody knew I had complex PTSD with borderline traits at the time. Borderline people. Yeah they be like oh like it's the tough client it's the one that whereas me I was like send them my way like this is the dream client for me because I get them to a certain level that maybe others don't and I appreciate that they're not being difficult that this is the hell that's within

themselves is is torturous. So what I what you experience as a clinician is a result of your interaction with them is a fraction of what they're feeling inside of themselves. So like made me have capacity for dealing with all sorts of presentations and not showing away from clients that were challenging those because when you're in therapy there's a push and pull dynamic with your clients some clients will challenge you or want more from you or break your boundaries

or but this is part that relationally that's important because they're testing the relationship and if they haven't had a relational safety in the past and you can be that rock in that moment and show them healthy boundaries show them validation unconditional positive regard it's incredibly

healing. Yeah empathy is probably the most powerful is it an emotion I guess or a connect

connective tissue I guess in the world when someone kind of leads to understanding what's what really understands you and has empathy for your situation there's you know it's just the

“hug isn't it it's like I see you are here I'm here for you so I think like having”

having someone who can relate to that through personal experience it must be you know so beneficial for your clients. It really is. How impactful is or how effective should I say on our mental health

the difference between actually knowing what what you're creating for sending in in my world

people creating whatever they're creating they won't you look at I need to think about whether I'm doing this for the right reasons and that's a whole kind of inner conversation with yourself and that's a process to really understand. I talk about a lot about creating or what you create is just an expression of what you're feeling and who you are at that time but you can't really create meaningful work without truly knowing yourself and when we think about social media

and all those projections you know social media is just one big projection of what people want to put out there again I'm asking you to generalize quite a lot but in terms of mental health

what can we how can we best practice this thing that is social media that's going to be around

forever um throw in AI there's a different conversation but how can we helpfully use social media to advantage without causing us anxiety distraction, depression etc. It's such a difficult topic isn't it because social media by design is addictive it's designed I don't know if you saw the recent case that was one against Meta and YouTube yeah which which was you know incredible because it was a moment where we were able to say that

this child who's known adult has been you know incredibly impacted by what happened to them and it was a moment where we could see that this has been developed purely for financial reasons and

profit it was never designed with the person in mind and it was by nature designed to be addictive

the whole algorithm process so it's almost like you're you're asking well how can we use heroin

“responsibly you know sometimes I think about that oh no I want to push back on that because”

I I agree with you and I I get a lot of stick for um said in photography world in turn I don't get a lot of stick but people aim a lot of criticism of social media towards me when when we talk and we meet up and I kind of find myself defending it a little bit even though I just agree with everything you know the fact of fact I hate it for that reason but business owner business owner it needed yeah like you it has to be an essential part of your marketing

model it and if it isn't then good luck so we it's kind of like this necessary evil so we have to figure out a way to use it responsibly and with ethics and without getting pulled into that without that that social media passenger on the bus but without addiction passenger on the bus pulling us into so correct I agree with everything you're saying but we still need to find a way to use that heroin responsibly whatever that's like maybe we'll say alcohol

“heroin my immune system and I do agree with you but I think it's important to zoom out and see”

the system and then zoom in and then put the responsibility on the person I agree with that you're someone who's very much like the individual has got to step up and I believe that that we have to have a sense of responsibility and accountability over our own lives and I also believe in in looking at the bigger picture of what and this is where the compassion can come from or we can quite in the inner critic by going this is a really difficult thing

that I'm trying to embark on and I'm human and I'm going to mess up and this is a by nature a messy process that I'll figure out as I go however as you said it's it's something that we can navigate cautiously it's it's about again like any other addiction it's about minimizing how much it occupies our day it's about having really clean intentional goals about accessing social media if you don't have intentionality within that process if you don't have a set of

goals that you want to achieve within this system it can be troublesome because it will use you you won't be using it because it's it's making money off you too this is a system that's definitely profiting off your attention you're trying to profit as a business owner but you have to then come with a great level of self boundary and limit and intentionality and even then that will be really hard to do yeah very hard I don't think any of us are cracked it but

“I think I find myself sometimes I'm not a doom scroller tour I you like I've always”

very being being very fortunate to have a distance from social media in that I will go on to post a specific set of images or a real or something to get a specific outcome I rather to sell something to get people into you know business wise and I can just go on post come off sometimes when I'm feeling low I will watch funny videos and I'll go funny videos funny video

a move is that a false you know reality or is that no no not at all you're you're right and that

“going you're not thinking black and white we need to move away from black and white is that good”

or is it bad it's always a spectrum yeah give me the answer Zara and so if it's a spectrum like

if I engage in it within that lower end of the spectrum and it's not impacting my function it's not coming in the way my relationships my work my life my sense of self then that's okay but if it's on this end and now it's impacting my you know my you know self image I'm developing body just more fear I'm eating less some it's controlling how I dress how I'm moving the world how I see you know all of those things it's impacting function

where I always say that the rule of thumb here is look at your functioning how is that behavior impacting your ability to be you to function within the world that you're in

to engage in value based action to to be in line with your purpose and and life mission

if it's scrolling for 15 minutes to make yourself giggle and distract yourself from a little bit of pain is is is this just that temporary moment that's not destructive I don't want to be feeling 24/7 you know we're getting into sight of where it's like feel your feelings but it's like it's okay to have destructive part of you know therapy is also learning some tools to sit with feeling some of them are about distracting from them when we need to distract just temporarily

but we have to then be very careful with knowing is it dispensary distraction or is it

“complete avoidance and that's why you need to ask yourself the genuine question am I avoiding”

or am I intentionally engaging in this for some distressed tolerance this is perfect because you know making it applicable to photography specifically I have so many community members and clients that just have a real issue with putting their work out there into the public social media yeah that's kind of like the main thing people think about I don't know whether to post but even in our closed private community that no one else here is unless they pay to get in

these a lot of people still find it difficult to go and put just what maybe just one image or a few images say like this is my photography people find it really kind of daunting and difficult thing to do because it's a little bit of vulnerability I come from the I know how that feels I don't have a problem with it now but I used to and I was you know learning photography a little bit more because you don't feel like you're complete in your art and this can be

representative as you as a human of course as well and we can go deeper metaphorically but just with sharing one image I remember how that feels but I'm not a therapist and I'm there to

hopefully help people but I or my gut instinct is always tell people just for the poster like

“I always go to the at the the other end of the spectrum and say what's the worst thing that can”

happen if you post it usually the answer is I don't get any feedback or any likes or any comments or any attention right so again it's like this this inner need of just wanting to be seen and we use the camera to try and be seen basically so when we talked about facing that you know knowing when to confront it confront your feelings confront what's going on there and another time to basically use tools to break away from it and maybe distract yourself temporarily from it yes how do we if

people have this problem with putting themselves out there with images or would again I I'm asking you to generalise understand that but it's going to be different from person to person but how can how can we help them be more comfortable with that vulnerability of sharing their work it's as such a great question because when we look at that behavior of I don't want to put my work out there we're going into at a deeper level of is there a feeling of shame because shame

at a lower level is like embarrassment or fear of judge there's a fear of judgment but there's also shame around that if I put this out does this tribe ostracize me or alienate me from my work it goes down to a biological drive evolutionarily we're designed to be tribal so I'm going to do everything that I can for social acceptance and so if I'm creating this thing that is a representation of me because people go this is birthed out of me is as me you know in art form what if I put it

out there it gets rejected therefore I'm rejected therefore I'm bad if I don't belong and deeper and deeper and deeper so what you're experiencing is on the surface that I want to put the workout there at a deeper level there are patterns playing out so strongly so how do we

and a belief system that's fueling it and being able to then break down that belief system that's

“you know super imposing itself on this experience maybe at some point I believe that”

I'm defective whether something wrong with me or I don't belong but in this moment right here it's stopping me from engaging in what I need to engage in which is being you know the best version of myself so we we go into that belief and we figure out when did you begin believing that about yourself we go to those memories and work with them and then what you end up seeing is that the person's beliefs start to loosen and therefore the emotions around it start to loosen and therefore

that don't feel as much distress about doing the thing that they want to do now and they can do it

more readily we'll also do you know in psychology we call it greater exposure so if a client is feeling

shameful about or embarrassed or whatever it might be about sharing their work it might go okay what step one if that's step 10 if you posting online your work is step 10 then what's step one okay step one maybe I can just briefly show it to a friend step two might be I might show it to my coach who then shows it to other people feedback step three might be that I find a really small community and then I show it to them or talk about it and and say this graded hierarchy

and you rise through that until you build capacity intolerance you're expanding your own tolerance but when we tell our client to go to step 10 you know it's a huge jump so how can I create a

graded exposure for them and get them to step 10 because that's more effective and this is

something that we see with like phobias I'm scared of spiders I'm not just a throw spider at the client I'm gonna be like well he's a picture it's too flooding for our system our nervous system gets spotted we get overwhelmed it might reinforce all beliefs it actually cement people in avoidance and inaction instead of getting them more comfortable in taking steps forward so then I might go to the client here's a little picture of a spider a video of a spider a little toy spider

away maybe and it's the same thing because you know showing my art is just a version of a spider at a free fear of spider or whatever it might be so that could be a really good trick to

“try so I think the other thing I see that people struggle with certainly when sharing your work”

or putting themselves out there should we say is limiting beliefs and so many people I think all of us on this planet we struggle with certain limiting beliefs and we could spend a lifetime trying to battle through them right and beliefs form all of our perspectives you know they're really kind of the underlying thing that forms everything that we perceive to be true or not true things that we you know act upon in the world when we think about finding purpose and meaning

and what we think is right and wrong when it comes to art and creative outputs so many people struggle with I'm not good enough I don't think I can do this what what people think and they tell the themselves these stories I'm interested in in your your own belief system around the power of thoughts and the power of like identifying those with those thoughts I mean know you meditate

“meditate a lot and I think without getting to Buddhist on us and really diving into how we can be”

so tethered with our thoughts that aren't actually real they're just another appearance and consciousness how do you go about kind of deciphering how to deal with limiting beliefs certainly as artists and and creatives who want to kind of break through that so that they can excel and especially as business people as well where we feel a lot that we can't do something or we hit a challenge so yeah I knew it I knew that was going to happen because again very

general stuff I'm asking you to talk about but give us some tips on how we can disidentify with thoughts in that respect and what kind of practices we can do and how we can potentially understand what our limiting beliefs are and how we can act upon kind of breaking those down yeah go your big questions your beliefs you know you have so many different beliefs right you've got the positive ones neutrons the ones that get you going every day the the ones that

hold you back by being able to understand what are the set of beliefs that guide my life you're able to see how they influence the more surface thoughts that you have so thought to what you're experiencing every day and they're quite automatic the belief systems are you know at the core

thoughts if I have limiting beliefs and and I have a set of schemas which is a pattern of thinking

“feeling behaving that's that's holding me back the nature of my thoughts is going to be more negative”

so what we want to be able to do especially in a therapeutic relationship or a coaching relationship is go what is the belief because that's the weed in the garden you know I can mow the lawn and it looks okay for a temporary time but the weeds are there they're just going to keep growing back or I can go in there and grab them from the roots and pull them out and that's the nature of limiting beliefs we have to go in to the actual depth of that belief and call it out so

actually I'd love an example from your audience what is a common limiting belief that some of your audience experience especially from a creative perspective that was it I'm not good enough yeah it's just I'm not I'm not good enough photographer to be in the same room as these people or to be putting my work out there and getting feedback let's say you say that to me for example and my initial question is when did you start believing that it wouldn't what's the earliest

memory that you have of believing that you're not good enough since I started learning photography yeah 10 years ago yeah and I would even say when did you start believing that before photography I mean I didn't in some aspects of my life but I did in others I guess I'd certainly labored myself good at some things and bad at other things yes yeah and so you and I would create a map we go back and then some people tell me something that happened the other day and then I

go go further go further and go further and we sometimes even create a map of experiences and memories where that belief was actually cemented and if we can go to a touchstone memory like

“an initial experience where I remember this experience with my father and I brought my”

report card and yelled at me and that was a moment where I was like I'm just not good at this and then so I started to overcome the mistake because I believed I'm not good enough so I was working extra hard and I developed unrelenting standards to cope with the limiting belief that I'm not good enough and then I wore that I'm not good enough lens over my eyes because it's to believe that was cementing and so everything that I saw in my environment I was filtering

in a distorted way information that only confirmed what I already believed so limiting beliefs form at a very young age more often than not sometimes you know in adolescence and adulthood but majority of them especially they're I'm not good enough I'm you know shameful and bad I'm all of those things tend to be quite young and they're very vulnerable and as time went on

“they just kept getting cemented and cemented and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because if I'm”

filtering what's happening to me through that lens of I'm not good enough I'm only picking up one of the negatives I'm not saying when people compliment me I'm not hearing it when someone says

that's pretty amazing I'm like yeah yeah yeah I'll burn yeah yeah and so because the lens is so

strong that it doesn't allow you to see it makes you dismiss the positives and disqualify your your positive qualities and your strengths and makes you hone in on the negative because that then you can do something with it then you can improve then you can optimize then you can buy your hack or you know hack your way through that so perfectionists are like that exactly this is why we form negative beliefs because exactly perfectionism then comes as a remedy

to support you with that belief of I'm not good enough because if you're not good enough the perfectionistic part stands up on the box and says well hey I can help if we're super perfect then maybe we can get some immediate relief from I'm not good enough and if I get this award

this accolade I can get the temporary high but it's never sustainable because the weed is still

in the garden I still believe I'm not good enough is that the main reason we're also status strip where I say we we we collective we was so status driven and materials and money correlated to the definition of success rather than just maybe in out it's more element of it majority of higher tubers have a deep belief that they're not good enough this is why they're striving so intensely sometimes to the cost of their own bodies and their health to achieve but isn't

that fuel of the capitalist world that we live in isn't that like a good thing because we want people to be progressing and getting better yeah we do yeah oh you don't just want to settle and go oh no you're great it's okay yes and that's the higher achievers trap actually you just described it beautifully because they believe that if I actually sit in my true self instead of the intense unrelenting standards part of me and the perfectionistic part

no I'll achieve but I'll be using a different fuel a fuel that is healthy for me as opposed to one that's being driven by I'm not good enough so the higher tuber when I first meet them they've been working their asses off because they're trying to escape I'm not good enough and so they're their competence over compensating through perfection through output through results and outcomes whereas when we get them to the true self who's driving the bus

they start to do it from a healthy ambition they start to do it because it's from purpose they do it because they love the work as opposed to wanting to feel less of what they already feel which is not good enough feeling they're the belief a short note before we close for a while now the first thing I've done most mornings before the camera or any other work or before the coffee before the endless tabs is set 10 20 30 minutes just watching the noise inside my head do

what noise does it has it just made me calmer in the way people imagine it's made me more honest more mindful more compassionate and more free in more ways than I could even describe and that honesty and introspective clarity more than any lens workshop or book is really what changed my photography the work I make now comes from a quieter place with more cleanness and calmness I notice what I'm reaching for and I notice when I'm reaching for the wrong thing

the inner critic still talks still exists I just don't believe everything he says anymore the app I've used for most of this is waking up by Sam Harris it's the one tool I genuinely kept returning to all this time this is not a paid sponsorship from them however I am an affiliate

“partner and for good reason I believe that this app is worth it more than any other what's”

kept me there for years is that it's not just one thing is a guided daily meditation which is the spine of it for me but there are also short daily reflections a daily quote that tends to do its own quiet work in the background and these little moments they call it of awareness you can drop into during the day two minute resets when the head starts running there's also

an entire library of guest series with teachers I'd never have found on my own and a lot more

besides that it keeps the practice alive instead of letting it calcify into routine so a link sits in the show notes for a free 30 day trial and 20% discount on their subscriptions if you want the longer story though of how meditation reshaped my work there's also a piece linked through my sub-stack page called there's no self development without self awareness anyway hope you enjoy it thanks for listening what are the the cues or heuristics that you

couldn't maybe offer people that can start to break down limiting beliefs and start to kind of think in a healthy purpose for mindset rather than I'm not good enough and you kind of get into

“that the weeds as well you should never have to do it alone because it's really difficult”

and if you can get a cultural therapist amazing if you can't I would say sit with yourself

and really think about when did I begin believing this what are the experiences in my life that shaped that and a therapist actually helps you resolve those experiences they we go back into the memory we might re-script it using EMDR which is a specific treatment that helps this process it's incredible yeah or I might use imagery re-scripting where we visualize the memory and we rewrite it we actually re-script it and there's all these different techniques that we use

where we resolve situations they're in the past you know we can't actually go into the past and change it but we can change the way it's stored within our brain and when we resolve them we end up with more positive on neutral beliefs as opposed to the negative which means that my limiting belief is less strong it's less it's less it's got less control over me and therefore my tendency my ability to stay in my true self is stronger and therefore I can access better fuel

for my ambition better fuel for my output so you always have a choice yes you can operate from

“the belief system that you're not good enough and therefore you need to go over compensate”

or the fact that you are whole and you love to create and you love yeah it's just wonderful you talk about this because sometimes I get a little bit you can probably send some of my questions a little bit cynical but I get a little bit cynical with always pulling everything back to childhood trauma now I would argue that the majority of people in this world have had traumatic events in their childhood because parents aren't perfect and life isn't perfect and more

or human but like focusing on if I think about my childhood yeah had some seriously traumatic events

generally good upbringing but if you were to ask me like where's this coming from and we talk about memories I would immediately go to the negative memories where I go to the parts where I felt unsafe temporarily or I felt unloved temporarily or felt anger against me or whatever those traumatic events were so I I feel sometimes we can go straight to the negative without thinking about either reshaping out or thinking about the positives that surround it as well and I guess

“you know we have to deal with both and we have to recognise both but I think one thing we can”

always we can try and forget is or I should ask you this really like is there such a thing as good

and bad and what I mean is like when we talk about photography specifically and we think about people who aren't don't feel like they're good enough and I always talk about the analogy of whichever country and like pop idol American idol or ex-factor you know these talent shows essentially and they always make like the early episodes about the really bad singers they're coming and think they're really good but the fact is they're right so my my point is that there is

how do you go from fueling someone's unrealistic belief that they are good at something because it can easily turn into arrogance or we can turn into dismoafing in sense of like what they can actually do and what they're good at and what they're bad at so I guess I don't really know what I'm asking but is there such a thing as there surely has to be a line between good and bad so if someone has a limiting belief that they're not good enough sometimes that's true yeah so at a specific

action yeah possibly but if it's an overarching belief that's limiting you from operating and functioning in the world in the way that you want to that becomes a predictor not your output if that makes sense

“so yes I can and I'm by the way I just so subjective you know it's you know it's uh what I think is”

beautiful and amazing and lovely may not be to you singing is a separate thing you kind of know

if I still argue I still argue that there there is such a thing as a good photograph in a bad photograph yeah and it's majority of it is subjective of course it was just a certain level it comes for subjective yeah yeah technique and even even the narrative behind it and you know well I'm not going to get into the weeds of that but just before move on to kind of like final question do you do you work with people that have lost a lot of their memory certainly in childhood

because of PTSD I mean you you when people ask me about something and I wouldn't say I have PTSD with maybe I do that haven't acknowledged again maybe I'm trying to find something that isn't there

me personally I can only talk from myself of course I have a lot of my childhood memory just

“I just like if you want to ask me questions about when I was six I just I can't remember no idea”

such a common experience and people yeah very common experience where chunks of childhood is missing and you know we have to work with the body experience as opposed to the the memory experience in terms of when we think about memory people think visual they think it's stored in my head and like video or in like images but memory has three components it's stuff that you can see the content who what when where it's body sensation and emotions so it's what you experience and it's

beliefs so if I let's let me give you a random example 12 years old learning to write a bike fell over my dad wasn't there to protect me he was supposed to be watching me video was on his phone so I formed a belief that's the the who what when we're I the emotion is pain anger and frustration or whatever it might be and the belief is I'm not safe I can't trust anyone so memories are stored in really interesting ways so when we're exploring them if I can't remember I might ask

your body to remember and I'd ask you what belief do you have about yourself about the world about others and we go from there and we work with that so you don't have to have the visual for us to do something with it that's the power of therapy the other thing that you're saying is again very high chief of mentality of why life was good Sarah like it was it was you know it was fine and in in in having that you know you might invalidate some of the experiences of the child

because what's traumatic to you what's traumatic to a child is very different things a child whose parent is drinking and not giving them the attention the eye contact the warmth that they need is actually a form of what we call a small letter to trauma because to to be invisible for a child

to me I'm not continuously but predictably reliably consistently being there for me so

“the adult self will go well that's fine to the child not so much and so if I'm chronically in this”

low grade activation of you know unpredictable parenting or you know the parent that was absent

the parent that was showing wasn't showing as much love then never hugged or gave warmth that never

encouraged play or maybe I'm using the word never too much but they didn't do it consistently I might actually then be in this low grade activation and when I'm activated the part of my brain that's retaining memory is also impacted which is why a lot of the time we have chunks of our childhood missing because to some degree that was our sin distress we just didn't have a label for it yeah and as adults it's our responsibility to time travel back into the past give

that child validation you know words to their experience and empower that inner child to move through

“not because we want to live in the past and we want to you know be a victim that's not the truth”

of it at all going into the past is literally pulling the arrow back so you can shoot it forward

you just let your arrows sit there you're not going to get very far so always use that analogy

of how far do you want to go because you can really launch yourself forward and that's your decision so high performers got in it but it was fine I'm like yeah okay I'm sure there was periods it was fine even in my childhood which is a range does there was chunks of warmth there was times where my father was you know encouraging or rewarding but how consistent predictor when reliable was that you know interesting a couple of very quick fights so answers got to be short here

because we've we've got to get going but um how does I'm going to ask probably the deal what is a question for those that have lost out there and me being one of them you know only maybe five or six years ago I'd probably spent most of my life not really understanding or knowing what my purpose was and we can throw this word around because it's a little bit cliche these days but if someone's lost and they're not quite sure what they're meant to be doing and why and they

don't have necessarily like a real drive or passion or something that they can really attach meaning to what's the first thing they can do to just start that journey to find purpose or meaning or what they you know really want to look at your values what are your but we all have values we're just not really connected to them sit down grab a piece of paper and pen and write down the things that are important to you what are the things that your value

commitment well ambition um health family helping people contribution just right and right and right and I remember this exercise that I once read about and I did it and it's like

“don't stop writing until you start tearing up mm-hmm that's what you're supposed to be doing”

if I were to just give you a very short answer that's what I would with that's also going to answer my next question to be what's the first thing someone can get up and do tomorrow to start their journey towards being better or finding purpose or personal development and I think that's a great answer right until you start tearing up and literally don't stop and it usually within 20 to 30 minutes most people are using that exercise works every time yeah what's your

definition of success being able to access my true self as much as possible within a modern world that's pulling me away from it but last question what book would you recommend people reads oh gosh that one's a tough one I would probably recommend oh I've got a few can I can I just yeah okay um I would definitely recommend the body keeps the

score by vessel van Nicole that's almost our Bible when it comes to psychology but it's always

the cliche and so I would recommend for relationships attached I forget the name of the author but it's attached yeah attached there's an incredible for relationships for PTSD survivors or childhood survivors of trauma I cannot recommend this book enough it is incredible it's called complex PTSD from surviving to thriving by people club I highly recommend that book and then the last one for meaning is Victor Frankall's book um the name of it just escapes me

he is a survivor of the whole course yeah um I haven't read it but I've heard it's so many times people referencing it yeah we'll look it up we'll put it on the screen please do so I thank you so

to have you here and hopefully we'll do it again but thank you for your time I'd love that it's been amazing thank you