The $10K Mistake Marketers Repeat Every Month | Frank Anderson DSH #994

Now than I did 10 or 20 years ago.

Holy crap.

It's true.

People are like, what do you use for skincare?

I'm like, it's not skincare.

It's healing because the energy of trauma has a negative effect on us.

And the more I release it, the younger I think I feel and look.

I could see that because there's some old people where you could see the trauma on their body.

Like the wrinkles, like the damage.

Yeah.

So that's cool.

All right, guys, we're going to talk trauma today.

We got Dr.

Frank Anderson.

Thanks for coming on, man.

It's good to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, important topic.

You know, we were just talking about public school and all the trauma kids are dealing with.

And is that a big reason about why you're teaching it?

It's part of the reason just because so many kids, I mean, there's a mental health crisis for teenagers right now in a big way.

It's interesting.

This kind of the younger population has way too much pressure and they overly identify with trauma.

So it's a crazy combination for them, interestingly enough.

Too much burden, too much power, and too much overwhelm.

So it's not really the reason I'm into trauma.

I've been doing it my whole life, really since 1992, but it's because of my own trauma history, honestly.

Got it.

Truth be told, you don't spend your life in trauma treatment unless you have a trauma history.

I'm sorry about that.

Yeah, right now the traumas are different and more evolved because of social media, but you were dealing with a different type in 92, right?

100%.

So, what was that trauma like?

And what was the process to overcome that?

Yeah, well, it's here I am 61 years old, so it's been a lifelong journey.

I'm 61.

I'm super lucky.

I actually think it's all the healing that I've done, honestly, makes me look younger.

I probably look younger now than I did 10 or 20 years ago.

Holy crap.

It's true.

It's people are like, what do you use for skincare?

I'm like, it's not skincare.

It's healing because the energy of trauma has a negative effect on us.

And the more I release it, the younger I think I feel.

And look.

I can see that because there's some old people where you could see the trauma on their body.

Like the wrinkles, like the damage.

Yeah.

So that's cool.

So for me, it started, and I just wrote this memoir recently called To Be Loved.

It's been like my life's journey to be loved.

But I had, and this is a long time ago, so this is in the 60s,

got caught playing with a Barbie doll in my cousin's basement.

And back then, that was a known really 100%.

So my parents,

the book starts, I said, you're not going to school today, Frankie.

I'm like, why?

We're going to the hospital, but why?

I wasn't sick.

There was nothing really wrong with me that I knew.

I went for sight testing.

And

I was in conversion therapy, a form of conversion therapy for 60 years.

Yeah.

They have that background?

100%.

I didn't go, they didn't send me away to a camp, but I was weekly therapy and kind of programmed to be like a normal boy.

You have to play sports, you have to be, play baseball, you have to go fishing, you have to do hunting here, shoot this gun, like all this kind of stuff.

My parents like regret it now looking back, but back then, being gay was a disorder.

Right.

It really was.

It wasn't until like the 80s that it got taken out of the like the D to S M and stuff like that.

So from a very early age, I was told, you are wrong, there's something wrong with you, you're a problem, and you need to change.

So I held that for most of my life.

In addition to that, my dad was pretty abusive physically and verbally.

So I grew up in an environment where it was kind of a shit chill, honestly, to tell you the truth, for a very long time.

And with this programming of like, this is how you have to be,

I ended up marrying a woman and went to medical school.

I was constantly striving to be smart to get my father's look.

Like that was my whole like purpose in life.

Be smart, be smart, be smart.

You know,

got into Harvard.

And then as a psychiatrist, which is I became a psychiatrist, then I was like, all right, start looking at yourself.

Like, what's up here?

You know, that they encourage you to go into therapy when you're in your training to become a psychiatrist.

And then I started unpacking my trauma history.

Wow.

So you had no idea you had it earlier, right?

Not really.

No.

There was a family member who had mental illness when I was in college.

It freaked me out.

Like they were scraped their spiders on my face.

They were hectic, getting psychotic, they were hectic, they were bipolar, right?

And that was like hugely impactful for me.

At the time, I didn't know like it impacted me because it tapped into like my own pain.

I was more like focused on their pain.

I gotta help them.

I gotta help them.

But, you know, surprise, surprise, here I am later.

It's like, oh, a lot of this is more about.

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About me than it is about helping others.

It's also about helping others.

Don't get me wrong.

Right.

But

yeah, that's been my journey of helping people heal from trauma all different kinds.

Wow.

yeah, you had a few there.

You had the trauma of being yay, and then the parental trauma.

Yeah.

Those are two really difficult ones.

And then the combination, my mom, and this happens typically if you've got an abusive parent in some way, you have a passive parent.

So my mom was very passive and kind of tolerated everything.

She needed the family to stay together because she wasn't strong enough to leave him.

So

it is what it is.

I'm glad I'm here now.

I can tell you that.

I've done a lot of work healing, and I've helped a lot of people heal up.

That's amazing.

Yeah, we'll dive into that.

Yeah, I remember when I was in high school, I'm catching a tail end of this, but kids coming out as gay was a really big, big deal.

Now I feel like it's a little better, right?

It's better.

You know what's interesting?

It's a lot better.

Culture and society are more open to that.

teen suicide for gay kids is still rampant.

It's still crazy.

So, yeah, it's better in some ways, and in other ways, it's still difficult, you know, which bothers me that it's still such an issue because culture and society are better with it.

But going through the experience of being wrong, knowing you're wrong and not fitting in is still having a huge impact on it.

Right.

Yeah, there's a lot of shame and guilt.

My fiancé's best friends, both of them are gay, and they didn't come out till after college because I think they're scared of their classmates, because their parents.

Yeah, even now, even now, it's not, you know, it was much worse back then.

Much worse back then.

Yeah, it's a shame, but I hope we can get to a good spot with it.

Yeah, yeah, I think I feel good.

Here's where I am at now.

I'm like, look, this is who I am.

I got a trauma history MD.

If you have a problem with it, it's your problem.

It's not my problem because I'm okay with who I am now.

And that took me a long time to be there, honestly.

61 years.

That's exactly right.

So rekindling with your dad, what was that process?

Oh, my goodness.

And you know, I did rekindle with him, which I feel really grateful for.

Most of my life, I hated him.

Wow.

Most of my life I hated him.

There was a period of time when I was at my residency program and I started uncovering my trauma.

I tried to talk to my parents about it.

They didn't want to hear anything.

That's not true.

How dare you say something like that?

What's your problem?

Move on.

They were full of denial at the time.

And I stopped talking to them for seven years.

Whoa.

Seven years, no contact with my parents.

And I didn't expect it to be seven years, honestly.

It turned into seven years partly because I wasn't strong enough to stand up to them and they weren't open to listening to anything I had to say.

So it was kind of a bizarre.

I wasn't expecting that, you know.

And then when I did come out,

I was in kind of an abusive relationship with a guy first.

I could tell you about it.

And I got a lot of control.

I was like, welcome to my world, right?

You're like, you don't grow up in a traumatic family without recreating your trauma

to some degree.

Because subconsciously, you're seeking it.

100%.

You're seeking it to heal it.

We're looking for a better version, right?

My wife, I told you, the woman on there married, oh my God, she was passive like my mother, and I was controlling, like, bother.

I'm like, well, this sucks.

I'm repeating Mapan of my parents.

Because they say you're attracted to people like your mother.

You're attracted, well, and you're attracted to what you know.

And you're trying to heal your pain, but you seek people who have similar wounds

unconsciously.

Attraction is actually seeking somebody who has similar pain as us.

Wow.

Which is crave here.

Yeah, that's crazy.

I didn't make it that way, but that is the way it is because we're trying to heal.

We're trying to heal.

So

I did the female version.

I married my mother.

I became my father.

I'm like, that didn't work.

Right.

And so then when I came out, the first relationship, surprise, surprise, I'm with this guy, totally abusive and controlling.

And I was passive like my mother.

I'm like, shit, like nothing's working.

Neither side is working for me, right?

This is not working, right?

And then after I did enough healing, after I stopped repeating, right,

I met this man who I'm married to now 25 years.

Nice.

And he was kind and gentle and different than anything I had ever known.

You know, but it does take, it does take working through your stuff.

Otherwise, we're just kind of, we tend to repeat it.

Right.

That's powerful the way you order that because some people are healing while they're in relationships, but you healed before.

Yeah,

some people, you're lucky if you pick somebody who you can have a healing relationship with, because relationships, of course, can be super healing.

But oftentimes, if you have trauma that you haven't worked on, you end up repeating it in somewhere.

So, yeah, my

relationship with my husband now is super healing.

Amazing.

Best relationship I've been in for sure.

Yeah, because divorce rates are at all-time highs.

That's why they're at all-time highs is because we pick people who are similar to our histories trying to work out our shit list.

Right, and everyone's got some trauma.

Oh, I'm so glad you say that because that's my belief.

You know, there's this whole like, there's a certain segment of the population that's like, not me, I'm tough and strong.

I don't have trauma.

That's for people in, you know, vets or something like that, right?

And then there's this younger population who's like, oh my goodness, I sneezed.

It's traumatic.

I can't do it.

Do you know what I mean?

Like there's this like,

this Gen Z population is so like

sensitive and they are traumatized in some ways.

So there's a middle ground.

I think everybody personally

has overwhelming life experience.

I don't know any person who hasn't had some difficulty in somewhere.

It's impossible.

Isn't it?

Yeah, life is designed to be up and down.

Isn't it?

And I think, here's what I say about it.

It's like we

have our, every moment, you can repress it, you can repeat it, or you can repair it.

And I kind of think like

we have a choice.

And, you know, I was in repeat mode.

But

you are.

Right?

I was until I stopped repeating it and started repairing it.

So many people are attracted to these toxic relationships and they don't know why.

They just keep going to the next guy or the next girl.

They don't know what's related to their upper knee.

Yeah.

But these days there's tests that can show you trauma is within you.

I got a brain scan.

Donna is Dr.

Amon.

Did you work with, I know Dr.

Mary?

He's a great guy.

So I didn't even know I have trauma.

And I found it and I was like connecting the dots.

And I think mine is abandonment.

Yes.

So I'm working on that right now.

That's correct.

But I urge people that think they don't have any traumas to at least get a test done and see.

100%.

100%.

That's great.

And the abandonment stuff, like that's often really early.

And so you don't even have conscious awareness.

It could happen at a really young age.

So you're like, what are you talking about?

So it's good to have that awareness.

It's great that you're doing that work.

You may be better off and not wait till 60

like I am, right?

Yeah, try to be private.

Really, yeah.

Everything these days, health.

I think people wait too long to address certain issues, man.

I agree.

I totally agree.

Yeah, because the longer you wait, honestly, the worse.

100%.

You keep repeating it.

And this is another piece I'll say, is transgenerational trauma.

Because if you don't do your work and you get in a toxic relationship and you have kids, you pass it down.

Right.

You pass it out.

Yeah, there's this follow-up video on Instagram right now of this 12-year-old basketball player stepping on another player's head.

And the top comments are all like, oh, I wonder how he's parented.

100%.

You know what I mean?

100%.

Because it comes down.

You don't do that just randomly.

No.

Yeah.

Anger's a big,

I feel like anger is passed down.

100%

for parents.

You think about anger,

if it's done appropriately, it's a healthy boundary.

Like, no, this is not good for me.

No, I don't want to do that.

But most anger is about attacking and hurting.

And so that's the cycle that gets perpetuated.

Right.

And I think the kid goes one of two ways.

Either shut down completely, which happened to me.

My mom was, you know, strict Asian household.

Education was important.

And then my dad was officer, ran away from every problem.

So I kind of went down that road.

Yeah.

Yeah, we go hyper or hypo like from a neurophysiologic point of view you could get anxious overwhelmed panic freak out or shut down disconnected dissociate yeah like those are our two main kind of adaptations or responses to overwhelming experiences yeah yeah it was very hard for me to have difficult conversations so i would just shut down this and i would suppress my emotions did you suppress your emotions growing up i totally suppressed my emotions

for sure.

I did not know what the hell I felt.

I was so disconnected.

I married a woman.

So, like, how disconnected can I be?

You know what I mean?

So, I was very disconnected, but I was also a fighter.

I had this thing in me.

Like, I have one brother and two sisters.

We were always at the

dinner table, and I sat next to him.

Like, my dad was at the head of the table.

I sat next to him.

And I had this, like, I have to take care of my siblings.

So I would speak up.

I would say shit.

Were you the oldest?

I was the oldest.

Got it.

Right.

You found that responsibility.

I felt that responsibility.

So I didn't just only shut down.

I also fought.

Like, I had a part of me that fought and a part of me that shut down.

Right.

And so I would get the cracks, you know,

when I would say something that was against him in any kind of way.

So

I did both.

Yeah, there's challenges with each child, right?

The oldest, the youngest, and the middle sometimes gets neglected.

It's interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And parents say they don't have favorites, but they do.

You can, kids feel it.

Yeah.

You feel it, you know?

I have two kids right now, and

it's interesting.

I don't feel like I have a favorite, but boy, it's so much easier to get along with one than the other because we're more similar.

Do you know what I mean?

And we have more in common.

And so it's harder for me, but I love them differently.

But I bet my younger will say, well, you like Logan better than you like me.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because it's just an easier relationship for them.

I feel that.

That's how my dad was with my other two brothers.

Right.

Yeah.

He got along with them, could understand them more.

Interesting.

I was kind of like, daddy, wild card.

You didn't fit in in a way that was easy for him.

No, because those brothers were from a different mother, so they were close.

And then I was an only child.

Yeah, lonely life growing on there.

That's right.

Yeah, it was tough.

And each, even if you you are born into money, this is what I'm finding out with studies.

There's still trauma.

Sometimes more are in a different way.

Yeah.

Because, you know,

I work with many people who have the means.

And there's a way that the money will fix things.

And you don't have to be there emotionally.

You can provide.

Yeah.

Right.

So there's a way that offering things and stuff

is this like supplement for actual love and connection.

Right.

They think they could buy their way out of.

Yeah.

And like I live in Boston as well as living here in LA.

And

we live in kind of a wealthy suburb.

Just parents are like, here's my credit card.

Take care of my kid.

It's pathetic.

You know, talked about why kids, why kids are in such a crisis.

It really is the deal.

Not for every parent.

I don't want to say that, but it does happen.

You know, and

money is like this commodity and it's exchanged for love.

Right.

Yeah, that nurturing component is super important.

As a parent.

Yeah, you're probably so aware of all this as a parent.

Well, I am.

You know, I do it for a living.

I'm aware of it as a parent.

And I will tell you, I also made mistakes for sure.

Really?

I just did a podcast episode with my oldest son on transgenerational trauma.

It was amazing.

And he's telling me of the ways that I failed.

And I was like, whoa.

Which was so good.

He was honest with you?

That honest with me.

We've worked through a lot of stuff together.

Yeah, there was this striving for me to be successful, to get my father's love,

that

caused my son to feel neglected.

Get that?

Oh, yeah, you were working so hard.

I was working so hard for his love, to some degree, I was neglecting my own kid because I was traveling all over the world talking and speaking to

get my dad's love.

Wow.

The other other thing was that my youngest son is um special needs he's on the autism spectrum and so we were so focused on the younger one

my oldest felt neglected and when he said it to me like he was so mad was like so mad

and like you did this and you did this and you're controlling and you didn't provide structure i was like you're absolutely right

it totally disarmed her was that what i'm like you're right if that's the way you feel you're right.

And I am sorry.

He was not expecting that.

Right, right.

He was, I got defensiveness.

He, I was like, and you're right.

I'm going to tell you your experience is wrong.

Like, I know better.

Right.

So we really had a good, we had a great conversation.

We've worked through a lot of stuff.

And no parent's perfect.

Like, why?

We're not supposed to be.

It's more problematic when you can't admit

what you do wrong, even if you're well-intended.

Right.

My parents about the conversion therapy will say,

we did what we thought was best for you.

We wanted you to have a normal life.

We didn't know what was going on.

And I believe that.

Like, even though it was such a, excuse me, like a fucked up thing,

they had good intentions.

They didn't know.

Right.

They wanted the best for you in their eyes.

They're like, oh, Frankie's playing with the barbie towel.

That's a problem.

We have to fix it so he'll have a normal life.

That was their mentality.

I mean, little did they know, it sent me down this trajectory of totally disconnecting from myself and being somebody I wasn't.

Shocked it was around back then because it's making a lot of headlines these days.

It's illegal in a lot of states now.

Oh, it is?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah, not everywhere, but in a lot of places.

And nowadays, they'll send you away for a camp, right?

Back then, it was like every week I went.

Yeah.

Tuesday nights, seven o'clock for such years.

Yeah, so I saw Elon's interview with Jordan Peterson, and he was talking about this.

Oh, I didn't catch that.

No, I didn't.

So one of Elon's kids did convert in therapy

and he said that kid is dead to him.

Yeah.

Because he believes he was brainwashed.

I don't know which gender changed to what, but that kid, he feels like is no longer his kid because of the.

So he totally disconnected from his kid.

Yeah, his kid made a statement as well of saying he's...

Elon's not always valid.

Wow.

Really?

Yeah, he feels like his issue with it is he feels like it was programmed into that kid kid and it wasn't the kid's decision.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, see, that's not true.

I'm sorry.

But my view, right?

Like, why the hell would you choose it?

Who's going to choose that?

Like,

did any, did you choose straight one day?

Like, I think I'll be straight.

Nobody chooses, in my experience.

I tried to choose straight.

I really tried to choose.

You were forcing it.

I was forcing it.

And I ate sex with women.

I could do that.

But no, I worked so hard to try to choose straight.

I work so hard.

So you're born with it.

You're born with it.

Yeah, I really believe that.

It's kind of who I am.

I can't help it.

Nobody creates desire.

Desire is...

You can't manufacture desire.

It just is in you.

You can't

what you like, you like.

Yeah.

You don't choose it.

yeah.

It's a feeling, it's a response.

I'm like, really, I would choose gay, like, it's a harder life in a lot of ways.

I love who I am, don't get me wrong, but why would anybody choose it?

Like, it doesn't even make sense.

So, was this gender change movement a thing when you were a kid?

Like, were people wanting to do that?

So, we're so there's orientation, sexual orientation, and gender.

We're talking about two different things, okay?

Okay, so sexual orientation is like who do I desire, right?

Gender is who do I identify as.

Yeah.

Right?

So when I was a kid, there wasn't a lot of transgender stuff going on at all.

Probably it was there and it was so underground, gay was an issue, right?

Now it's interesting.

It's much more prevalent.

Maybe it's much more recognized.

I don't really know.

I can't really say because now gay is more in the mainstream.

And now maybe there's room for

not being thrown in a box.

You know, it's interesting.

Here's the way I think about it.

Like, there's all the pronoun stuff.

Everybody's like in Debris.

What's your pronoun?

You know, I don't know that anybody

feels

100% masculine every single second of the day

or 100%

female every single second of the day.

Like, the men can be soft and receptive and want to be nurtured.

Women could be strong and powerful.

These male or female-identified traits.

Do you know what I mean?

No, I agree with that.

I think we all have masculine and feminine energies.

Right?

And so are the people that really change their genders born

on an extreme end of that?

That's the way I think about it.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I never thought of it that way.

Right?

Because, like, and even like, excuse me for going here, but sexually, whether you're straight or gay, sometimes you feel you want to be kind of dominant, and sometimes you feel you want to be receptive.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So we all have all of that in us.

Maybe these people have a more extreme version.

Interesting.

That's what I sit with.

Anybody I've worked with that is transgender, They hate themselves.

They hate their bodies.

There's a lot of self-mutilation.

They do everything they can to not be who they are.

And then they eventually, it's like, I can't help it.

This is who I am.

Wow.

So I know it's very, it's a political issue.

It's so controversial.

I'm totally aware of it.

It's like, can't we just be who we are?

Like, end of story.

Yeah, it is a very controversial one.

It's super controversial.

I think the issue is just at a young age.

You know what I mean?

They're putting this thought into their head in like first grade.

Well, here's the thing.

Parents aren't putting this thought in the kids' head.

Don't kids just hope that they're

like, aren't you Susie instead of Johnny?

Like, no parent is saying that, right?

But I agree with you.

Kids

try on different personas as normal development.

And if you jump too quickly on that, it could be problematic.

Right.

So that I agree with, you know, and when I've worked with transgender youth, There's a team of people, not one person, a psychiatrist saying, okay, go on hormones.

You have a team of people, you evaluate evaluate them for many years,

and some of these hormones have permanent effects if you start taking hormones.

So it's not a decision that should be made lightly.

So I agree with that because some people are like, oh, have you ever heard queer till graduation?

Queer till graduation.

So there's this phrase now that some of these people in college are like, I'm going to be queer till graduation.

Like, I'll have sex with men and women just to try it out, and then I'll decide later.

You know, so we try on a lot of things when we're younger.

Yeah.

You know, and gender might be one of them.

You know, I'm a tomboy.

Does that mean you're really a boy?

Does that mean you're a girl that likes to be rough and

rugged?

Let kids really tease it out over time.

And I don't think we should jump too quickly, but I don't think we should say it doesn't exist either.

Tomboys are cool when I was growing up.

Right.

Right?

I remember those days in elementary school.

You get a lot of religious trauma because that's something I'm trying to educate on the show, actually.

Yeah.

So it's one of the things.

I've done a lot of work with individual trauma, people growing up in, you know, dysfunctional families.

There's also institutional trauma.

And institutional trauma is a whole other thing.

Like we've all experienced global trauma from the pandemic.

Everybody's been traumatized in that.

But yeah, there's more and more awareness of institutional trauma.

Whether it's in corporations, you know,

people being treated differently, women being paid differently, and all this kind of stuff, you can have traumas in institutions, and

religious trauma is a whole other layer of complexity.

At the trauma center where I work with Basil Mander Kolk in Boston, we worked with priest abuse many, many years.

So that's actually going on?

It's hugely going on.

I'm sure rumors of it.

In the Catholic Church, particularly, but not only.

And so there's an abuse of power, which is what trauma is anyways, sexual trauma.

But when you add the dimension of spirituality or God or whatever it is, it adds a layer of shame.

It adds a layer of

I am so bad and wrong.

And the abuse of power is different than I'm an adult.

I am a member of God,

right?

So it adds a layer of complexity for people when they've been abused by somebody because it's more than abuse of power.

It's like using spirituality, right?

Abusing religion in a manipulative way, which really messed people.

That quite confused people.

I'll tell you a little bit about my husband in that way.

So he grew up in a very conservative, strict, kind of Pentecostal

church environment with his family.

And when he was, he came out at 18, much younger than me, totally his parents got rid of him, well, kicked him out of the house, this whole thing.

He had a suicide attempt at a very young age.

And to this day, he will never step in the church.

Whoa.

Because he had all of this, you know, the devil will, you have the devil in you.

He got a lot of trauma from what people in the religious organizations were imposing upon him.

And so he like, he didn't want us to raise our kids with religion because of the religious trauma that they experienced.

So to be shunned and seen that way by God, it's different than by your parent or by a teacher.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, it's like they're weaponizing it.

100%.

Yeah, I've done some Mormon church survivors, and that one's tough because your whole family has to cut you off after you leave.

Well, yeah.

It's so interesting that you say that.

I just was at this retreat in Hawaii with a bunch of people who were Latter-day Saints.

Oh, yeah.

And I was like, like, oh shit, I'm going to be accepted in this group.

And

they're working really hard in that church to try to do things differently.

He's really surprised.

They were open and receptive to me.

They even had it, Brigham and Young University.

One of the keynote speakers was Gay Kitt.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, that's surprising.

Theirs change.

They're trying because you're right.

You lose your parents, your family, your aunts, your uncles, your church, your community, your town.

It's a huge loss.

So I think, at least from what I can tell, they're trying to make changes, which I'm super happy about.

That's good, because their numbers are dwindling, man.

People are leaving religion by the masses.

Yes.

Yeah, I think just the first time where the numbers are actually dropping.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's cool.

Yep.

What other major traumas are you seeing?

I'm sure there's a lot of common ones, common themes you see.

What other traumas am I seeing?

I mean, we talked a little bit about what's happening for teenagers, which is really kind of awful.

There's a lot of trauma.

Let's see,

think about

the inequity for women and men

is really still an issue in a way that doesn't make sense to.

Yeah, women do not get paid the same.

Women don't have the same rights.

Women in power are seen as

nasty and mean, not powerful and strong.

Like, that shouldn't be existing in our world today.

Like, here now that I'm living in LA, the inequity in Hollywood, around

female actors get paid versus male actors get paid, is kind of ridiculous.

Really?

I've worked with several people who were abused by the Harvey Weinstein deal.

That was a big one.

Right?

Men still abusing power.

So, as much as we would hope that doesn't exist, it still exists.

The other trauma I would say is people of

cultural minorities.

Like I see that all over the place.

I think the, you know, Black Lives Matter, brown-skinned people, people who grow up who aren't the white straight majority

is very prevalent.

in a way that bothers me.

And I think about certain traumas as individual potentially or not individual, or not invisible, invisible.

Like, I can maybe pass as a straight white guy walking down the street, right?

Pens, some people say no, some people say yes.

But if you're a person of color, every time you walk outside, you can't pass.

You are seen as who you are as different.

You understand?

And so the world

is

dangerous for you

always.

You know, when we talk about healing trauma, you want to get people in a safe setting in order to do their trauma work.

But when you walk out in your door and your scene is different,

there's not a level of safety that you can actually experience in order to do the deeper work.

Right, because they're always on edge.

You're always on edge.

You can't kind of hide your skin color when you're out into the world.

Right.

No, that's a good point because certain communities are super against speaking up about, you know, their traumas and stuff.

100%.

Because they're just always shielded.

They don't want to open up.

That's exactly right.

Wow.

So we need to break down that barrier somehow.

I really feel that.

I feel strong.

You know, I'll also, I want to talk about this

because it's something that I'm feeling strong, really strongly right now, especially in this political craziness that we're in.

And I don't even care what side anybody's on.

That's not the issue for me.

The issue is

both sides are actually trying to help.

Both sides want to make the world better.

But each side focuses on what's bad about the other.

Yeah, that's true.

100%.

It's so polarized that

We don't acknowledge our own shadows and we push our shadows onto the other side.

And I feel like

we all have more in common than we are different, but we focus on othering so we don't have to deal with what's bad about us.

Wow.

This is what I hold.

And I know it's not a popular view, but it's a view that I want to get out into the world.

I'll tell you a story.

A neighbor of mine, Growing up as a kid,

clearly a gay guy.

My parents are super conservative.

He was super conservative.

My dad was sick and dying a couple years ago.

He comes over to the house and he's like, I was at the insurrection.

And he was like, all proud of himself.

And he's like, in camo and telling me about Trump and all this kind of stuff.

You know, and I was like, okay,

like, we're different, right?

And then it was when my second book came out called Transcending Trauma.

He starts asking me about my books.

What's this book about?

It's about my trauma history.

It's about growing up in a Business environment.

He knows my dad.

He starts telling me about his traumas.

He's like, you know what, friend?

I grew up with an abusive father, too.

He used to beat me, too.

We had six brothers, and he would beat me on a regular basis.

He's like, hey, we have more in common than

we don't.

He's like, and you're trying to help people overcome.

You're a better person than me.

He's like, can I have a hug?

Wow.

Right?

It was a huge moment for me.

It's like, here's this guy who supposedly is totally different than me.

And in fact, we have trauma histories in common.

And we join in our wounded.

He takes one approach to dealing with his trauma.

I take a different approach.

Wow.

Yeah, when you boil it down.

Do you see what I'm saying?

And I really think we focus on what's different instead of what is similar.

And like you said earlier, we all have trauma.

Can't we focus on that, which is what we have in common?

Yep, instead of how different we are?

Because here's another thing I'll tell you, Sean,

which people don't know and I don't think people own enough of.

When you've been traumatized, you internalize perpetrator energy.

Everybody who is traumatized also absorbs perpetrator energy.

So when you're harmed, you have a harmer in you.

Wow.

And people don't acknowledge that.

But it happens all the time.

Every time.

So, you know, when you're going to other somebody and say they're this, this, and this, you're not really taking responsibility for the ways you've been mean or violent or

hurtful to others in a way of protecting yourself from your own pain.

And I think if we all, all of us...

It's one of the things I wrote about, I started yelling at my kids at one point.

Really?

100%.

All the therapy I've been through, right?

I should know better.

Yeah.

When I started yelling at my kids, I got back, got my ass back in therapy.

I'm like, here, I knew I had that perpetrator energy in me.

And I was like, I am not going to pass this down.

I got myself back into therapy for like a third time.

So I think if we can all acknowledge that we've all harmed and we've all been harmed,

maybe we join

instead of

othering.

Love that.

Accountability is so important.

This is my message.

I really feel like that's the way we're going to heal.

The more we're going to demonize somebody, the more separate we're going to be.

Yeah, at a certain point, it goes nowhere.

It goes nowhere.

Like, let's have these debates, but let's also not get personal with it.

100%.

Yeah, let's be objective.

Yeah, I don't like the character.

It's so obnoxious.

And again, I don't care what's, I don't even care what side you're on.

I think both sides in some way are obnoxious because they're so extreme well they have to be together music these days right they got to say the craziest isn't it ridiculous yeah so you know and here's the other thing it's good to be 60 because you don't care what people say so much anymore so i'm like i could say this and if you don't agree with me that's fine you don't have to agree

but i have i want to make the world a better place i want to heal trauma in the world and i think if we acknowledge the way we we've harmed and the way we've been harmed and we heal it, we're all going to revert.

Well, so Dr.

Fang, where can people find you in your books?

Yeah,

frankandersonmd.com is where people can find me on Instagram is frank underscore Anderson MD.

I'm on all the other handles too,

X.

I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook.

So I don't know what those

we'll find it.

Link it below.

Thanks so much for coming on.

That was awesome.

I had a lot of help.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

See you next time.