How Your Childhood Shapes Your Life

Hey there, and thanks to you for joining me here on the podcast and for watching on YouTube. Today, I'm welcoming Dr.
Bruce Perry. I've known Dr.
Bruce Perry, a world-renowned child and adolescent psychiatrist and neuroscientist. I've known him now for 30 years and more.
I invited him on The Oprah Show more times than I can count. And over that time, we've had many, many, many opportunities to talk about the impact of sexual abuse or domestic violence or poverty or racism on development and how that impacts people.
I also asked Dr. Perry to implement his work called the Neuro Sequential Model of Therapeutics to help my girls school in South Africa become a trauma-informed school.
When you're regulated, for me, my mind is open to learn. Dr.
Perry has written half a dozen books, including one he co-authored with me called What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing. I'm proud to say it's a number one New York Times bestseller.
Hi, Oprah. Hi, Dr.
Perry. Dr.
Perry and I are talking with viewers and listeners about our book. How do I forgive my parents for not showing up the way I needed them to show up for me? I do say reading it opened up a new way of healing from their trauma.
Your work, this book, has had such a profound impact on my life, personally and professionally, so thank you. It's a simple question that resonates profoundly for so many of us.
What happened to you? I have to say, that question changed everything. I think it was 2018, I was interviewing Bruce Perry for an episode of 60 Minutes on CBS.
Yeah, you were there even, Keith, right? Keith, my favorite DP I've had for years. We were talking about children and you made a comment.
You said, you know, all these schools where they have the kids and those kids get dismissed and they get suspended from school and the teachers label them as bad. And they say, this is a bad kid.
This is a bad kid. What they really should be saying not is what's wrong with this kid, but what happened to this child.
That was a, that was one of the biggest moments for me. It changed the way I run my school.
It has changed the results of what's happened at my school. It changed the way I see people, the way I see myself, the way I operate in the world and business.
And you said that when a person or child is actually behaving in a certain way, that that's the question, not what's wrong with you, but more important, what's happened to you. How did you know this? How did you come to this? Well, I'd been studying the development of people forever, for 40 years.
Development of the brain in particular. And of behavior and of the way people kind of grow and change and think and move and all that kind of stuff.
And so I had this bias that was focused on the history of a person, which is really kind of the story of the person. And to understand where somebody was right now and why they were acting a certain way, you really needed to know their story.
And- That's line. That's the bottom line.
And I think it's the bottom line with almost everything. Anybody, everything.
You want to understand history? Understand the story of these people. Yes.
Understand the story of the economics. Understand the story of an individual's personal life.
You want to understand why your boss is an asshole? Understand their story. Understand their story.
Yep. And one of the things that's really interesting about that- And the fact that your boss is an asshole means that they have their story yep and one of the things that's really interesting about that your boss is an asshole means that they have a story exactly of some kind of trauma or being rejected being minimized minimize not filling hole themselves because the only people that make people feel like they are minimal are people who feel minimal themselves exactly you absolutely can't do it

if you're a whole person there's a great quote by abraham lincoln who had there's a legislator he didn't like yes and he said i don't like that man i must get to know him wow isn't that amazing yeah well that's why he was abraham lincoln the abraham lincoln understood that if i knew his story, I would have a better understanding about why I don't like him and why he's unlikable. And I think the thing, we see this with kids.
One of the things that's true is that so many of these kids that drive educators kind of batty, when they learn about them, it's actually frequently heartbreaking. Yeah, they are the most interesting kid in the class.
Exactly. And if you are a teacher or an educator who's listening or watching us right now, or you are involved in the criminal justice system, or you are in any way having to deal with people who come from dysfunctional backgrounds, this book is absolutely essential.
I know one of the things that has been the most rewarding for me, I was working with women at the California Women's Institute, and they read the book as a book club assignment, and then wrote me letters that they all put in a book. And one of the most rewarding things was to understand that for so many women who've been incarcerated for years, they had never understood.
They actually said to me, all this time, I thought I was just a bad person. I thought I had a demon.
I never asked the question, what happened to me? I was always asking what was wrong with me. So I think the fact that we did this book together has really, you know, not just sold a million copies, but has affected a million lives.
I agree. I literally every day I get emails and feedback from people about the impact the book has had on the way they understand themselves and then the way they do their work.
One of the most important takeaways that I got from the book, depending on what age you are when you experience the trauma, you handle it differently and it manifests in your brain differently. And this is something that the field generally is doing more research on and learning a lot more.
But the universal principle. principle.
Or the long-term effect on a five-year-old is going to be very different than the long-term effect on a nine-year-old. Exactly.
And what we're learning is that the earlier in life that you have these traumatic events, the more enduring the fundamental changes can be in these core stress response systems

that are involved in everything we do.

And it's kind of counterintuitive for a lot of people

because people generally think, oh, the baby doesn't understand what's going on

or the two-year-old doesn't understand what's going on.

They'll be fine.

It's actually the opposite.

Exactly.

One of the biggest, biggest, biggest takeaways for me, you all, when I was working with Dr. Bruce Perry on this book is learning.
And I'd heard it for years. You'd been on my show.
I'd heard the information. I just hadn't received it.
But I heard it differently after building a school and having a lot of kids who had come there traumatized. But to hear from you that from age zero to two years old, zero to two years old is the time when the most damage can take place to the developing of the brain.
So what I learned from you and this book, what happened to you, if you are raised in an environment where your needs do not get met at a very early, early age, zero to two, the synapses in your brain do not form the way other people's do. And you end up with long-term other issues.
Exactly. And again, these are not irreversible issues, but they're significantly challenging issues.

And the growth of the brain is so rapid early in life.

And the stress and trauma of an experience are mediated through these really important foundational networks that go everywhere in your brain and out into your body. And when their functioning is abnormal, when their functioning is impacted through these stressful and traumatic experiences, they then send this cascade of sort of abnormal signals out to everywhere in the developing brain and everywhere in your body.
That's why it's so important for every human being to understand what happened to you. Because what happened to you when you were little, even before you were able to process it, is what dictates your behavior and your decisions, your choices, the way your brain operates in later life.
And that is true for every person. That's why that's the most important question you can ask, particularly when things aren't not going the way that you want.
It's not, what's wrong with him? It's, I wonder what happened to him. And this is what everybody needs to know, particularly about younger, younger children.
And that's why the zero to two years old is so important, is that even though those children don't understand language,

they understand energy and vibration.

Absolutely.

They are responding to tone, intonation, the noise around them.

That's why sometimes you go to touch a baby and they're like, ah, ah, ah.

Oh, exactly.

Because they're responding to you, to your energy.

You know, they can look at sleeping infants, And if parents are arguing in a different room, there's a physiological change in the baby's internal responses. Really? They literally are perceiving the fight, even though they're asleep and the parents are in a different room.
Your brain is continually absorbing, as you say, the environment, the atmosphere around you.

And the reason why it is so crucial,

zero to two, zero to six, those early years,

is because that's when we have the greatest growth

in our learning ability, right?

Exactly.

It's a little bit like the construction of a skyscraper,

that 80% of the effort goes into the superstructure and the wiring and the plumbing and everything else. And all of that's done.
The foundational stuff is done. And now you're three years old and you haven't put in carpeting and you haven't selected what's going to go in the walls, but the foundational capabilities of that building are in place.
And so I can't emphasize enough, if you didn't get what you needed, and it doesn't mean that you were not in a loving environment because I've over the years interviewed multiple people from the same family. Somebody felt that, you know, that's why you end up arguing with your sisters and brothers about what went on because they're saying, well, mom and dad were this.
And you go, but that wasn't my experience. And if you didn't get what you needed, that's all that matters.
Absolutely. That's all that matters.
Absolutely. So I think a lot of people may think, well, it's too late for me.
I'll live with this pain for the rest of my life. What do you want people to hear and understand about healing from their own trauma and what resilience actually means.
So the first thing I want to do to help people appreciate is that they should be hopeful. The beauty of the human brain is that it's malleable, it's changeable.
The challenge, however, is that in order to get sufficient change, you have to have multiple doses of the right kind of experience. And the right kinds of experiences are almost always relationally mediated.
So if you have attentive, attuned, loving people in your life, and that can be family and school. Or not be family.
Or not be family. Just people around you who are present and attentive and attuned.
You have this healing matrix, this healing environment where you can essentially have the reparative experiences that will lead to health. This is what I want people to know because so many people feel, as I did, that you didn't get what you needed from a particular parent or from your you know loved ones who were supposed to love you you didn't get loved the way you needed to be loved right but i had asked you earlier in one of these uh conversations i don't know why i'm not stone crazy and you you said.
It's because there were people in your life

who were present and helpful and loved you.

So that could be a teacher.

That could be a counselor.

That could be somebody in Sunday school.

That can be, yes.

All these things create an environment

where you have opportunities for all kinds of healing,

social healing, cognitive healing, motor healing.

But you need this environment. I thank you for listening to the Oprah podcast.
When we come back, Dr. Perry has advice on forgiveness and how to move forward from the traumas of our past.
You don't want to miss that. So stay with us.
I'm talking with world-renowned trauma expert, Dr. Bruce Perry.
We're taking questions from viewers and listeners who read our book, What Happened to You?

So I'm really, really so moved today because we heard from a lot of you who have read the book, and some of you are joining this conversation.

Annie, hi there. You're Zooming in from Minnesota.

Oh, lovely home.

Hi. Very nice.
Hey, Oprah. Hi, Dr.
Perry. Thanks for having me.
Can you share how you were impacted by what happened to you in your childhood? Yeah, my childhood was, it felt very rough to me. There was a lot of neglect and emotional abuse.
And I just never felt loved, safe, protected, specifically by my parents. And it's made for some real struggles in my life.
And I heard that after reading the book, you see yourself differently. I love to hear that.
And I know Bruce does too. So how so? What happened? I always felt so flawed, like something was wrong with me.
Like I wasn't lovable. And after reading the book, I realized the way my parents showed up for me really had nothing to do with me.
It had to do with their own difficult upbringings, childhood, you know, challenges in their own lives. And that's how they showed up for me.
So it was just a relief for me in reading this book to understand that there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not unlovable.
I've done a lot of work to heal from my childhood trauma. My question is, how do I forgive my parents for not showing up the way I needed them to show up for me? I feel like that's the one place where I'm just still kind of stuck in my healing.
Well, first of all, the issue of forgiveness is one of the hardest challenges that we as human beings have.

In fact, it's interesting.

I don't want to get religious here, but the Lord's Prayer is not many words, but there's a whole line about forgiveness.

And of all of the things you could bring into that foundational prayer, you know.

Forgive us our trespasses?

Yeah.

That we forgive those who trespassed against us? It's elevated because that's such a challenging thing to do so i here's what i would just say is that forgiveness is a process it's not a switch you know you don't just go i'm going to forgive you and and it's done it's a process and i think as you grow and you heal and you learn more about the stories of your parents, you'll begin to develop some more understanding of the reality that they probably were not intentionally trying to be as bad as it felt. And little by little, in tiny little bits of forgiveness, it'll come.
But it can take a whole lifetime. I love what you said about it's not a switch you're going to turn on.
If I may share this, the best definition I ever heard of forgiveness, I can't remember who did it so many years ago on the show, was giving up the hope that the past could be any different.

So giving up the hope that the past could be any different

is a decision you have to make.

You have to decide that I now accept that what happened happened as it happened. And I'm going to give up hoping that my parents were, could have been, should have been anything other than what they were.
And I am now willing to move forward. It doesn't mean that you excuse it, you condone it, but you accept that you are not going to continually hope that it could have been different.
Because hoping that it could have been different leaves you in the space where you're going to always be stuck and you never get to move forward. You are as resilient.
You are as strong. You are as caring for others.
You have the compassion that you have because of all the things that you did not get from them, that you had to find a way to make okay for yourself. So give up the hope for them.
And also, what Bruce said, also understanding what happened to them. You know, watching you makes me want to cry, but I remember having to, I was being asked to come to speak about my mother at a church.
And she was, you know, a very, not religious. It was important for her to be seen as religious in the community.
And I had become Oprah Winfrey and everybody knew she was my mother. And I'd been asked to come to church to give all these accolades about my mother.
And I couldn't think of one thing. I was listening to other people tell stories of their mother.
This girl told a story of how her mother would make lunch, especially in the rain. She would pack it in a special lunchbox, and she would put their galoshes with those little yellow boots at the front door, and then she'd be home to take them off.
And I was like, oh my God, I don't have one

memory. I don't have one single thing.
And so when it came time for me to speak, I thought, well, what do I actually have to be grateful for? She didn't abort me. She did the best that she knew.
The best that she knew was not enough to feed what I needed, was not enough to make me feel whole, was not enough to make me feel valued or seen or important to her. It was not.
But it was the best that she could do. And I gave up the hope that it could have been anything other than what she had and that's where you have to get to thank you that's really helpful very powerful thank you thank you Annie thank you for reading the book and I'm so glad to know that it was that it was meaningful for you thank you and be patient with your process yeah just be patient with it's not a switch it's gonna take time thank you both thank you thank you Alexis is joining us from Vermont hi Alexis I heard you read the book and that it was a validation for you yes hi Oprah hi Dr.
Perry thank so much for having me. Thank you.
Yeah, a little bit about my story is both of my parents struggled with addiction. And unfortunately, that landed myself and my brother in the foster system.
And it was a cruel home. It wasn't a place where they were nurturing or caring for either one of us.
Often we would get punished with food. And when we did get fed, we'd get fed squash.
And that would be it. And that really created a lot of instability, not feeling safe, you know, abandonment from my parents' side, abandonment from people that were supposed to protect and care for me.
Yeah. And that just really kind of

took off when we did get to go back home with our mom. Being in Vermont, it is predominantly white.

So I was, you know, the only black girl in my town, one of four. And I remember just being

bullied in school, which further validated that I wasn't worthy and I wasn't lovable.

And I quickly learned how to just blend into the background and become a people pleaser and just care for other people, you know, without asking for anything. So I heard while reading the book, you were better able to understand a lot of your triggers, right? How did that show up for you? Yeah.
Well, first I realized that it wasn't my fault. I think from being so young, I didn't really realize that my environments and circumstances had nothing to do with me.
It had everything to do with external parties. And so for me, it was really understanding when I was in different environments,

how my body was physically reacting to things. I had really heightened anxiety all of the time.
I had panic attacks. I've had over 10 surgeries.
And most of the time, they were always undiagnosed and unknown reasons as to why these things were physically manifesting in my body. and I later found out one, partly because of this book, which was the beautiful part of being in therapy and using this book was that I got to understand the why behind most of it versus just kind of working through what I experienced.
So I thought that was a really beautiful way to kind of tie things together and really understand what was going on

within me. One of the things I talked about in this book, I think, yeah, I think I talked about this book, is that I came to the realization too, because I too was a major people pleaser.
And I think people who suffer from trauma, particularly if there's been physical abuse in your life, what I realize is that every confrontation, even as an adult running a company, I suddenly realize that, oh, I think every confrontation, I'm going to get a whipping. I think there's a whipping at the end of it.
I think somebody's, you know, it's my grandmother's going to come in and she's going to take that switch and I'm going to get a whip in.

I'm going to get chastised.

I'm going to get punished for speaking up or saying whatever's important to me. If I don't do the thing that pleases the other person, I'm going to get punished.
That was a big realization for me. I think one of the things that you shared here that's so important that I just want to reemphasize for people who are, for those of you who are watching or listening to us, is that you said, I realized it wasn't my fault.
And I think that is the thing that what happened to you has done for so many people. It's freed them to first of all understand it's actually the science of my brain and the circumstances that I was in, and it wasn't my fault.
The other part of what you are sharing that's so important, and this is becoming a huge part of a revolution in medicine, is the recognition that these experiences influence the rest of your body, not just the mental health aspects, but your whole body, you know, how your heart functions, how your GI system functions, how you metabolize food. You know, it's the whole range of functions that your body helps us kind of carry out so we can live, they're all impacted by developmental trauma.
And so I think that that's a really important part of what you're sharing. For other people out there to hear that, you know, if you have developmental trauma, if you have traumatic experiences, it's not at all abnormal to have headaches and to have GI problems.

Well, that's why that other book that's also very popular, Your Body Keeps the Score. Your Body Keeps the Score.
You're saying that your body doesn't lose anything. Yeah.
This is part of the malleable, the changeable part of the human body is it is always trying to be responsive to the environmental circumstances. And when you're under stress and duress, it's telling parts of your body to change in ways that are theoretically adaptive in the moment, but over the long term, they're maladaptive because it wears out your system and it makes you much more vulnerable to whatever your genetic vulnerability is.
So if you're under constant stress and anxiety, that is being internalized in your body, in your health, in a way that you don't see now, but will be manifested later. Absolutely.
Show up. Your question for Dr.
Perry? How do we rebuild trust within ourselves and others after we've really lived a lifetime of feeling dismissed, ignored, and being harmed. You know, the beautiful thing about healing from trauma and therapeutic positive change is that it's not about going back and undoing.
It's about building new things. And so you have an opportunity in your life right now to have positive, trusting, relational interactions with the people around you.
And the more you build on those relationships, the more you will ultimately get to the point where you will grow a capacity to trust. And this is a thing that I have learned for myself, Alexis, to just share with you.
You don't have to worry about trusting other people if you have done the work to trust yourself. So you can trust that if somebody isn't providing you with what you need or that the moment a level of toxicity or them shaming or judging or in any way being disrespectful to you in any way shows up, you trust yourself enough to get yourself out of that.
Right. Exactly.
And we all kind of have to do this every day in every aspect of our lives. Who do we really share a lot with?

And if they're not going to be trustworthy, it's like, well, that's whatever. That's them.

That's right.

I'll get it done.

So you don't go spilling your whole life to somebody and telling...

Exactly.

You don't open your heart to people that you don't know that they are worthy

of holding the heart space for you.

Exactly.

And that's the work you're doing on yourself. That's not about them.

That's about you.

Oh, beautifully said.

You got that.

And you can get that.

Absolutely.

You can get there.

You got that.

Thank you, Alexis.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

So Dr. Perry told us about United States District Judge Esther Salas, who is now joining us from her chambers.
Hello. These are your chambers? It is.
In New Jersey. Nearly five years ago, I remember reading that story.
That was a horrible story that you endured the most unimaginable. Will you share what happened, Judge?

Well, thank you, Ms. Winfrey and Dr.
Perry,

for letting me join this discussion.

Your work, this book, has had such a profound impact

on my life personally and professionally, so thank you.

It was, you know, the summer of 2020, a global pandemic.

Our family, like the families all over this nation and beyond, were, you know, observing a quarantine that had been called by Governor Murphy in March of 2020. And our son Daniel at 19 at the time, you know, he did such a great job, you know, really concerned about us.
But he was lonely and he finally, you know, worked on us long enough to say, you know, for his birthday, which was July 13th, can I have a few friends over? And so we thought about it. My husband, Mark, and I thought about it.
And we decided to let him have a few friends over. And so on Friday, July 17th, as Daniel's friends from Catholic University of America started coming over and ringing the bell, I had no clue that there was a disgruntled lawyer who, a self-proclaimed anti-feminist who had hate in his heart, had a plan to assassinate me.
And he was on our block that night watching these kids come to our house. And so that night they slept over.
The next day I made them breakfast and decided to walk our two dogs, to give Daniel a little privacy, walk our two dogs down the block. And as I was walking, I sensed a car was like out of place.
And I remember looking at the driver and he looked at me. And for a moment, we locked eyes and then he looked away.
And I had no clue what this man had in store for us. And so that day he watched us.
For every move, my son went to the beach with the remaining of the friends that had stayed. He saw me packing a cooler and umbrellas.
And that night, Daniel came back from the beach with his three friends. We had dinner.
And then on Sunday, when Daniel's friends, the last of the friends had left, Mark knew and I He knew he was so tired, he didn't get any rest. So we said, you know what? You don't have to do your usher duties.
We're going to go to church and when we come back, we'll clean up. So we came back and we all were cleaning up.
And Daniel and I ended up in the basement and we were talking about all his concerns because one of his friends didn't show. And, you know, when Daniel was in his human form, Miss Winfrey, his dad was his buddy, but I was his confidant.
And so we were talking, just beautiful, deep conversation, and Mark ran down to the basement steps where we were at, and he said, Dad, Mom and I are talking. And so that was Mark's cue to get a water and go.
And Daniel was swinging a wiffle ball bat. And he turned around and he said to me, Mom, keep talking to me.
I love talking to you and like on cue the door the doorbell rang. And Daniel Svedis changed from serene and calm to concerned and alarmed.
And he went, who's that? And before I could tell him, you know, don't go upstairs. Daddy's got it.
He just bolted up those steps. And I'm cleaning up.
And the next thing I hear is like mini bombs going off like and I scream what is happening and I run up the basement stairs and I turn to the left where the foyer is and there is my only child lying perpendicular to the door holding his chest and Mark is crawling on his hands and knees, trying to just get the look, like a look at the license plate or something of the man that just rocked our world, you know? And I remember dropping to my knees and pulling the shirt up and seeing the bullet hole in Daniel's chest.

And then Mark crawled back.

And we were flanking him in our foyer.

And we watched our beautiful baby boy fade away.

Your only son?

That's what happened to us.

Wow.

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry.

Thank you.

I'm so sorry.

That is a devastating loss.

And we all thank you for sharing Daniel's story with us.

So tell us how you then discovered the book and how this book impacted you. Well, I, you know, I'm a lawyer and I started researching grief and I, you know, and I have to say I'm a self-proclaimed super soul junkie.
Thank you. So I was just eating it all up, you know, eating it all up.
And one of my friends mentioned that you had come out with a book and I, you know, I just wanted, I had to read it. I had to figure out what was going on in my head and what was going on in Mark's head because he saw Daniel shot and then he saw that gun pointed at him.
And Mark was shot three times. It hit five different parts of his body.
So we were experiencing trauma from different places. And I had to understand.
And thankfully, the way that you wrote this book, the way that, you know, you and Dr. Perry are able to storytell and share vulnerability.

And it was just so easy for me to understand and relate to that I began to understand the concepts of regulation and dysregulation and to understand that a dysregulated person can't talk to a dysregulated person. And so it really saved my marriage.
And we still, by the way, I mean, that's common lingo. You know, I'll say, Mark, I'm dysregulated right now.
I need to go for a walk. I need that rhythm.

I heard that the book also, Judge Salas, shifted the way you see the men and women who come into your courtroom. Tell us about that.
Absolutely. I mean, it started with, obviously,

me understanding. And you even say in the author's note, this book is for anyone who

wants to better understand themselves. But I began to realize that the men and women that were coming before me, you know, were dealing with a power differential, which you explain and Dr.
Perry explains beautifully in the book, and that they are probably dysregulated from the moment they walk into the courtroom, you know? Yes. And so I began, you know, trying to understand how do I even out that power, you know, that power differential.
And I began to try to change maybe this voice, which is pretty loud, but the tone of my voice. And then, of course, the story of Joseph in the book about, you know, just short bursts of interactions that are positive.

And so I now have status conferences with some of the individuals that come before me. And it's not as a judge, what have you done? It's more like, what can we do? What can we do to help you? And by the way, you know, I have to thank you both because I, you know, I often ask individuals who are under supervision to read this book, to read this book and come back and talk to me about what they felt and what they understood.
Explain dysregulation and regulation that the judge is talking about. So regulation and dysregulation have to do with those stress response systems in our body that when you're regulated, or let's say dysregulation is when you get out of balance.
So you're hungry, thirsty, cold, scared. You get angry.
You get dysregulated and those systems that kind of go everywhere in your body that are part of the backbone of the stress response, they get activated. So it changes the way you think.
It changes the way you perceive

the present moment. It changes the way your heart works and your gut works.
And so you're

dysregulated. But you can get back in balance by eating something, by moving and pattern,

repetitive rhythm. All kinds of things can make you regulated.
So the key to optimal brain functioning is to have a regulated brain. And that comes from feeling safe and respected and that you belong with the people around you.
Yeah. One of the things that Judge Salas said, she says to Mark, her husband, is don't talk to me, I'm dysregulated right now.
One of the things that you make in the book is, and I know many of you who are listening or watching us right now, you've been in an experience where you're in an argument and you're like, you're not hearing me. And people who are dysregulated actually aren't hearing you because they're in a different part of their brain and they can no longer hear.
Exactly, exactly. Or if they do hear you, they distort it so that it's more negative.
Yes. Or so if you say something neutral, they go, don't be so negative.
That's why you should not speak to a person who's dysregulated. Exactly.
Well, thank you, Judge Salas, for sharing that. Thank you so much for the work that you both continue to do.
And I am just so grateful for the opportunity to be able to say to you both personally and just from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for all the work that you continue to do. You make a difference.
You make a difference in everybody's life and I greatly appreciate you both. Well, thank you for that.
Thank you, Esther. It's an honor to know that this book helped you to heal in any way and that you also have used it to expose other people to better understand themselves.
Thank you so much. Thank you for that.
After the break, Dr. Bruce Perry and I are talking to people who share how the book What Happened to You helped them heal from their personal stories of trauma.
We're taking their questions next. Welcome back to the Oprah podcast.
Dr. Bruce Perry and I are asking the question, What Happened to You? The title of our bestselling book that sold over a million copies.
It gives me such hope to know that it has helped so many of you. So this year I taped an episode of my book club with Eckhart Tolle around his book, A New Earth.
And a man named David was in our audience. and he shared with me that before he was born, before he was born, his parents had lost a child.
And so while he was in his mother's womb, his mother was still grieving for that child. Can you believe that? For that death.
And that for his whole life life he felt that there was a shadow over him like he was somehow a replacement now i find that so interesting because i'm wondering you know we're talking about zero to two years old so when you're in the womb forming and you're you come into the with your mother grieving and in sorrow, does that get transferred to you? Absolutely. And in fact, most people don't think about this, but the majority of growth in the brain takes place in utero.
almost the vast majority of neurons that you have in your brain right now of nerve cells

were present when you were born. So lots of really important things happen in utero that can be influenced by the mother's experiences.
State of mind. State of mind.
Sadness, stress, nutrition, all kinds of things make huge impact on the developing brain. Oh, David's joining us.
David, do you hear that? I do hear that. Yeah.
Isn't that fascinating? You know, it's nice to hear that everything I thought is true. Yeah.
Quite honest. Actually, it's very validating, isn't it? To say all these years I have felt that, I have sensed that, and I'm not crazy.
That was real. That was real.
Right. Thanks for being here with us again.
Thank you. How did you feel after reading? Because what happened is after I met David in New York, I sent him our book.

And how did you feel after reading this book?

Did it help you at all? Oh, my gosh. You know, the very first thought I had is it made me have a greater appreciation for the adult I've become.
and it made me think back to, you know, the very little David and how he made it through this time that was complicated and layered and, you know, so complex for everyone in my family.

And I don't remember the exact moment I knew about my brother. He was always there in my home and in my life.
But I do remember from the earliest age, becoming a caregiver and becoming worried. You know, like you said, you were a people pleaser because of you.
I immediately began to worry about, are they okay? You know, is mom okay? Dad okay? What can I do? And it, for a long time, it made me less of my own person. Yeah.
Because your own person was always about making sure they were okay. Yeah.
I didn't want any more pain for anyone in my life yeah and you know that's a heavy burden for a little child that's a heavy burden for a little child you're right yeah you know and it's it's what you felt is actually very predictable for a young child who senses that something's wrong in the household, right? Even without sort of explicit articulation, you would sense it. And you did, right? You sensed something's not right.
And as you maybe learned about your brother's death or your, that helped crystallize maybe and make some sense out of what you were experiencing right i don't remember the age of when i knew who he was but he was always there they didn't hide this did and you know as far as i'm concerned like i have a brother who happened to die before i was born how old was he he, if I may ask, when he passed away?

My brother was around four years old. Okay, so that's brutal.
That's brutal for the family. And then your mom got pregnant with you.
So he died in that grief. He died in March of 1986, and I was born in February of 87.
Oh, wow, okay. And I will say, I just, you know, no matter how much love they gave and how protective they were and how much they wanted to make sure we all had, you know, the best life, nothing changed the thing in my mind that none of it mattered.
It was always in the of my head like what am i doing here who am i that you were the replacement yeah that you were the replacement i hear the story that i told um in uh what happened to you about my grandmother and me not being able to sleep resonated with you. I tell this story in the book about me not being able to sleep after my grandmother was confronted, attacked in the bed by my grandfather who slept in another bedroom.
And that after that night, I remember forevermore, she would put cans up against the door, the chair underneath the doorknob, and I slept in fear. And it wasn't until many, many, many years later that I realized, oh, that's why I'm so uncomfortable in my own home at night or going to a hotel.
Always, you know, carrying the energy of that with me all those years. And I had to be like under five years old when that happened i remember when that happened how did that resonate with you you know the part that resonated was is that it was the fact that it didn't directly happen to you that experience you witnessed it you felt it yeah but you know your grandfather the actions taken weren't directly to you.
Right. And I wasn't physically here when the death happened, but I felt it and it changed.
Again, it made me worry so much about, are they okay? I don't want to cause trouble trouble i want to make sure everyone in my family is happy and i don't want to take up too much space so you know one of the interesting things about this is that we're talking about early formation of memory and when you are very very very young, these lower parts of the brain are organizing and creating memories, but that part of the brain can't tell time. So what happens

is as you get older and now that you're your age, you know that there is a timeline where you

think back and this is when this happened,

this is when that happened, this is when that happened.

But all kinds of things in the world that you experience right now are going to activate a memory in a part of the brain that can't tell whether or not it's present or past. So healing for you is going to be not necessarily about recognizing that this is what happened and I can go through this kind of intellectual exercise to go, oh, that makes sense.
Healing for you has to be influencing these lower parts of the brain that really carry that original memory, which means dance, music,

movement, all kinds of things. And I would suspect that you find comfort in some of those things

that are sort of rhythmic pattern, repetitive things, whether it's riding a bike or swimming

or running or walking or doing music or some other arts-based form of regulation and expression. Oh, absolutely.
I mean, music is on, you know, every day. It's hard for me to have silence, especially, you know, and it keeps me centered and motivated.
Do you have a question for Dr. Perry, though?

I do.

I mean, so towards the very end of the book, and I just wanted to read this because it stood out.

You know, Oprah, you say, and the lesson is, no matter what has happened, you get a chance to rewrite the script.

And Dr. Perry, you respond, exactly.

It is really never too late.

Healing is possible. The key is knowing where to start the process I read that and immediately it was like what because I have a hard time and I wonder what you say to someone who questions all of this work who questions you know it's still hard for me to believe that

i can rewrite the script or heal and all the work i've done i know i'm a lot better than i was back then but there's still a little part of me that says but well that little part of you is really, really deep, deep, deep, deep in the lower parts of your brain that originate and we're organizing in utero. So the key to changing the biology of the brain is a principle we call specificity, which is basically the networks that you want to change, you have to activate.
So you can't learn to play piano by just watching a video about playing the piano or by listening to music. You have to actually move your fingers on a piano key.
And so what happened to you started in utero, which means that you need to do things that are going to be intrauterine-style experiences, pattern, repetitive, rhythmic activity. In utero, your brain is developing, and the stress response systems in your brain are developing ruta, ruta, ruta, ruta, ruta, ruta, ruta, ruta, ruta.
continuous rhythmic exposure from maternal heart rate.

And so if you want to have doses of healing and positive growth in these lowest, deepest parts

of the brain, keep doing intentionally and with a pattern, pattern, repetitive, rhythmic things. And there are ways to make change.
So in these lowest parts of the brain, middle parts of the brain, and top parts of the brain. And you've been doing top parts of the brain, right? You probably have talking with people and you're learning about it.
But ultimately- I think that's so interesting. The top part of the brain isn't what's going to really heal you.
You got to get down to the very root of what that thing is. Exactly.
Yeah, what that thing is. Thank you so much.
Always a pleasure to see you. Thank you so much.
Be hopeful. Be hopeful.
Yeah. Yes.
Thank you. I thank you.
I'm so humbled to be here. Well, thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
My hope is that this conversation can help you see a new path to healing. Up next, Dr.
Bruce Perry on how to break self-destructive patterns. That's next.
Thank you for your company today. My hope is this episode of the Oprah podcast can help you learn how to start to heal from the trauma of your past.
I'm back with Dr. Bruce Perry.
Dr. Perry, once we become aware of our trauma and how that trauma is showing up in our lives, how do we break the self-destructive patterns?

I think this book, may I say, helps a lot because you understand, oh, that's why he does that, she does that, I do that. That's why.
Helps you recognize it. But now that you recognize it, what do you do? Yeah.
So kind of going back to what I brought up a couple of different times, really one of the things that you have to always remember is that the brain is capable of change. Yeah.
And the kind of change you want is going to require specific kinds of repetitive experiences.

You can turn that trauma into wisdom.

You can actually, you can go through all kinds of relational experiences. You can go through sensory experiences.
You can go through sort of cognitive intellectual experiences, and they'll all lead to growth. But the key to change, honestly, is that you have a healing environment that's filled with people who see you, who make you feel that you belong.
because what they allow you then to do is that when you are in need of a

regulatory interaction where somebody just is present, you can do that. When you're in need of somebody who is going to do something where you are needing some guidance, intellectual guidance, you have somebody who can do that.
It's like having this big,

beautiful, incredible extended family with people that are good at horseplay, people that are good at telling stories, people that are good at jokes, people that are good at teaching how to do a fire, and you use them in your life at the time you need them, in the dose that you need them. In other words, you don't just want to have one person responsible for every single thing that you're learning.
The village is filled with an elder who's really good at telling stories, but he's not any good at teaching you how to knit. And over here, the person who can teach you how to knit is different than the person who's going to teach you how to hunt.

And the person who's going to teach you, who's going to be just a good listener, is going to sit next to you. If you have all of these people present in your life, you have this rich library of relationships that you can use as you grow.
and I think that because different people have different timing to their trauma

and they have different kinds of trauma, they're all going to need different books from the library. Yes.
And the problem with the current mental health system is that we give everybody the same book. It's like we need, instead of like having a little, you know, one shelf bookmobile, which is kind of what mental health treatment is right now, we need a library of Congress of opportunities that are culturally specific that can focus on movement and music and art and all the things that are part of the world that help us heal.
If you are seen and you are relationally connected in a community, you have a rich library of resources that you can tap into to help you heal and to help you grow and to help you buffer whatever current stressors you're having right now. And it doesn't have to come from the person that you think it was supposed to come from.
Absolutely. Yeah.
It could be anybody who actually fully sees you and values you as a human being. Right.
Yeah. And it can, and.
For me, that was teachers. That's why teachers, I'm telling you, every teacher in the country.
And moments. Yes.
And it like, so it doesn a 45-minute session once a week. It's a one little thing.
It's a little dose of somebody, oh, I see you. I'm going to have a real conversation.
Like the guy who drove me here today, we had a great conversation. He grew up in Beaumont, Texas, talked about his life.
We talked about stuff. That was a little dose of goodness.
I remember telling the story of Tishukar when I was a little girl. It came to my church, and her husband was running for governor, and she just turned to me, and I never thought of myself as an attractive kid, you know.
And she just said to me, you're as pretty as a speckle pup. That moment stuck with me forever and ever and ever.
And so, I mean, just I think what you're mentioning is being able to be fully present, to be there and see a person for who they are. And, you know, Dr.
Bruce Perry, thank you for sharing your wisdom. Again, thank you for writing this book.
2020, we did this book. I mean, thank you.
And to all of our guests, to Alexis and to Annie and to Dave and to Judge Salas for sharing that story about your beautiful Daniel.

To our guests who read the book and shared their experiences and questions, what happened to you is available wherever books are sold. and my hope is that it does exactly what Alexis says,

that you read the book and whatever has happened to you,

you realize it's not your fault. Number one, it's not your fault and you're not alone.
And it serves as a light in your life and a guide, a reminder that healing is possible. And subscribe to the Oprah podcast if you don't want to miss an episode because we're talking about good things every week here.

Go well.

You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.

I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.