If you’re looking for a podcast to ponder, I just finished Tim Ferriss’ Sept. 14 podcast titled ‘My Healing Journey After Childhood Abuse’. Tim talks honestly and frankly about his dissociative episodes that happened through adulthood until he finally unearthed his trauma using psychedelic medicines. Sharing the episode with his friend and counselor Debbie Millman, host of Design Matters podcast, they share a synergistic view of their experiences and run through the long list of potential treatments, including pharmaceuticals, talk therapy and friendship.
Tim cites some crazy high statistics regarding abuse, and I think that is well worth pondering. Tim’s sexual abuse was unusually severe, and it’s well worth noting how much of his life it consumed until he came to terms with it. He discusses his near-suicide, which I think is especially noteworthy, where he was barely rescued by his family through a mis-sent postcard on a library book.
As I’ve written about before, there are enormous collective societal impacts in societies that do not prevent child abuse. I’ve discussed some of these in the historical context, from Sparta to the Aztecs . I’m happy that Tim is making a dent in the world through sponsoring empathy-enhancing substances like MDMA. Drugs can indeed be a lifesaver, and we need pharmaceuticals that can really help people unpack their sadness, so they can see a more profound path out of the darkness.
From an empathy/sensorimotor perspective, Tim makes the point in his discussion with Debbie about his feeling of profound isolation and disconnection from others, and mentions books by Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk, including The Body Keeps the Score – one of my favorites, as van der Kolk makes the point of the need for sensorimotor retiming, and I extend into the core of mirroring empathy. I think this is especially important to understand from the larger, collective viewpoint on the need for connection. If you, as a cell in the larger collective simply doesn’t have this, your brain programming essentially shuts down, and tells YOU to shut down as well.
This is poorly understood, needless to say. But it sheds deep light on how these collective networks really act as a larger, holobiontic organism. John Donne said famously ‘no man is an island’ — and while Tim doesn’t use this phrase, mostly concentrating on his self-healing with friends, here’s hoping that this shout-out inspires him enough to reach back to me. Childhood trauma is not just an individual trauma — it affects our entire civilization in the people it creates, and their ability to connect. As well as our need to create more individuals that can face the complexity of problems our world has.
It's About Empathy - Connection Ties Us Together 
My legal jurisidiction is posed to legalize or decriminalize some psychedlics (and i voted to get this on the ballot, and i actually registered to vote in 2016 to legalize cannabis—its semi-legal now). I was basically tired of seeing mostly young black males and some females getting harrassed and locked up for same thing i used to do beginning elementary school.
(only thing i’ve been locked up for is making a fire in the park when it was a rare 4 Farenheit –its illegal to make a fire, but legal to freeze to death— and ‘open container’ (drinking a 1$ beer on the street since you dont want to spend 6$ in a bar and you dont like the people or ambience in the bar—wide screen noisy sports tv and CNN—nor the people there and they dont like you either and often will not let you in.
Some places hated the fact that i was reading papers on quantum theory in the bar–they said ‘we have our own book store’–buy a book on ‘feminism’ ‘racism’ etc. buy more 8$ beers. ‘we work for a living’. big strong men who pour beers.
This book store is called ‘teaching for change’—they were once asking for authors–i suggested a ‘science book’—and they said we dont deal with science, dont know any or like it, and think its basically irrelevant to social change. We do ‘grievance studies and identity politics’ and advocate nobody study math or science because they get in the way of people getting out in the street and breaking windows–as some do around here.
I sort of get my studies of racism and sexism by walking out side where i live and see the prositutues and drug addicts—crack and pcp and some k2 are sort of what people do around here besides medical prescriptions—some sell their opiate prescriptions.
of couse the ‘psychedlic society’ are looking to make big money off of this so i almost wish it wouldnt be legal.
(i also got locked up for 4 hours on mexican border one time because police said some plants i was carrying that i had found were illegal and i was going to be classified as something like a class 1 drug dealer ‘— i was carrying enough for maybe 3 doses of plants. they let me out when they found me hanging up in the cell and i had found a way to slit my wrists.
they also didnt realize that many of my clothes i had made from plants so i had a snack in there. i still owe texas 500$. decided to never go back but did anyway —i could find other plants in texas. (i dislike the fact that some wealthy people seem to biew this as a tourist industry and they also hire their california shamans who show them around and also say the local ‘indigenous people’ are fake shamans–just savages.)
I had never heard of Ferris—and i’m not sure i believe his story—-there is a market for trauma stories—-and apparently tim who apparently is from some wealthy family is making a hole lot of money (some of which he gives to JHU–JHU also pays the heroin addicts in baltimore to be guinea pigs—they can get enough money to support their heroin habits in exchange for taking alot of cancer drugs,etc.) JHU
doesnt view heroin addiction as a problem–its a solution–its hard to find anyone else to be a guinea pig. Baltimore has had 250 homicides so far this year, this area about 150.
It could tiny tim was abused, and now via his ‘podcast empire’ is doing the same thing. ‘spreading ignorance’–actuually not completly—its like junk food—such as french fries—vegtarian potatos and ketchup soaked in sugar, oil and salt. he’s really ‘connected’—possibly some cancer of toxic masculinity . no wonder he had thiel , scharzenegger etc on his podcats. .
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Another good book on trauma is Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands.
https://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2017/11/27/trauma-embodied-and-extended/
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