Successful But Feeling Unlovable | Steve Sapourn on Trauma, Nervous System Regulation & Courage

TRANSCRIPT - Successful But Feeling Unlovable - Steve Sapourn on Trauma Nervous System Regulation and Courage
[Steve]

"I deep down inside through other work have just known that I have felt like a bad man, even though the external evidence is that I'm pretty good, dude. Like, you know, but that's an intellectual knowing, right? Not a felt sense of knowing."

[Roger]

Many high achievers know the feeling of appearing as a success on the outside but not feeling worthy or being enough on the inside.

The inner critic calls it imposter syndrome. The nervous system repeats the same old survival patterns that get in the way of growth.

But even when you can name the cause, you won’t be able to shift it until you have the courage to fly into the eye of the hurricane to truly understand the storm inside you. 

That's the journey today's guest, Steve Sapourn, knows well.

He had a successful career as an entrepreneur, but underneath it all, he never felt worthy.

Career success couldn't solve his root problem, and drug addiction couldn't make the negative feelings go away long enough.

It wasn’t until he chose the courage to look at the source of his destructive behaviors. Steve shares that process with us, what he found, and what he did next.

Fast forward a few years to today, through his platform, The Neuro's Journey, Steve works with high achievers to help them find the courage to face their trauma and reinvent their lives to find more meaning and possibility.

These lessons were a life saver for Steve, it’s exciting to think what they could do for you.

Hi, I'm Roger Kastner, and this is What Do You Know To Be True? a personal development and leadership podcast for people discovering, building, or already living into their purpose and possibilities. I'm glad you're here, let's dive in.

[Steve]

My name is Steve Sapourn. I am the father of two kids that are just my youngest, just graduated high school, so I'm a little bit in my act three. I founded a platform called the Neuro's Journey, which is kind of like the hero's journey into your own mind and nervous system.

And I help people, but particularly men, change what they think is innate to them, what they think is a trait, but is actually just an adaptation through the podcast and coaching. And yeah, that's what I'm passionate about. And that's what my whole life experience has led me to being on this call with you today, Roger.

[Roger]

You've said that trauma is not an identity, but it's a nervous system injury. Recently, I had Sharon Podobnack-Peterson, who's the founder of the Center for Conscious Leadership on the podcast. And she shared that over 70% of people have experienced trauma in their lives.

So there's a lot of high achievers out there who've experienced trauma and are, you know, maybe trying to unpack it and maybe not. I'm curious, like what does it look like when you're working with someone who's starting to do this work?

What is nervous system regulation for high achievers?

[Steve]

I like the injury frame just because there's a lot of noise and negative reinforcement about mental illness, right? So people like don't want to go and see a, you know, a psychiatrist or this or that, yet if their knee hurt, they're happy to go get an x-ray and nobody thinks less of them because they limp around for a little while because they got an injury. Injury is a word you could use for it.

Adaptation is a word you could use for it. But really what I'm trying to get people to understand is there's nothing wrong. What happened is you had circumstances in your life that your system adapted to probably very wisely at the time.

You're sitting here right now talking about I don't like some of those adaptations. They no longer serve me at 57, the ones that happen when I'm seven. How do we change them?

There's nothing wrong with me. Let's figure this out. And for me, I love the first thing that was very helpful for me was just a very simple practice called remembering to pause.

You know, and there were all kinds of behavior patterns, right, that I didn't like about myself. And, you know, some of it might be just yelling at someone in traffic. I mean, you know, I'm alone, but I would try to pause.

And what would happen was I could not pause before the behavior. It was always after. Oh, I already yelled at that person.

I was like, oh, OK, that's what I'm doing. Did this relate? Did this circumstance actually need that reaction?

And I would just give myself a little thank you to say, oh, like, look at what I'm doing. I'm here. I'm seeing the patterns of my life that are not serving me.

I'm interacting with them in a way that I'm trying to make them serve me. And then eventually you remember to pause before the action. Oh, now I can move to response from reaction.

And to me, given my history of trauma, just knowing that I had that ability was a huge leap forward because I would often say things to people, you know, like couples counseling, relationships like I want to do. I want to be the way that you're asking me to be. And I don't know that I can because my nervous system was hijacking me.

So once I learned, like, oh, I can change my nervous system a little bit and I started to get a little it doesn't have to be the highest stakes. It doesn't have to be, you know, your wife telling you she wants a divorce and you're completely calm. You can do it, you know, in lower stakes things and build the resilience to move forward.

And I just think getting some positive reinforcement going to tell you nothing wrong with me, a system, I can change the system. Let me give you some evidence of it. And then once you get that, the ball starts moving forward.

[Roger]

This idea of the pause after the behavior and in that pause, what it sounds like you're getting out of that behavior. And I'm thinking about, you know, yelling in traffic. Of course I don't do that, but the idea of having the pause afterwards, which is really giving space for the prefrontal cortex to kick in and ask the question like, oh, do I want to be doing this?

What I think really the cherry on top and all of this, well, maybe not the most important thing, but a very important ingredient in this is the gratitude, the appreciation for, okay, I don't like that behavior, but I'm grateful that I took the pause to think about it because that seems to be the juice that helps move the pause from after the behavior to before.

[Steve]

It's such a powerful practice. And it's, it's honestly one of the harder ones for me. I'm better at it now, but it was one of the harder ones for me to actually practice.

But the gratitude, I think we have to say when we're trying to improve ourselves and we're typically trying to improve ourselves, not just for us, but for our family and our kids and the people that we interact with, let's give ourselves a little credit. Like, yeah, like I'm doing this, like I'm taking the time to try to interrupt this pattern for the betterment of me and everybody and have a little gratitude. And I think it's important for people to do that because we can not give ourselves much credit or much break.

And my experience of it is, is when you start to engage with this and you start to let the people that you love know, they appreciate it and they give you a lot of grace to make mistakes if they know that you're trying. And so it feels, it feels good. And I, I, I'm glad you clued into it.

Like, yeah, like I'm thankful that I even realized that I was in an automatic pattern that doesn't serve me.

[Roger]

And so that makes me think about the people who are listening to this show are like mid-career professionals. People have been high achievers and very successful in what they're doing. And yet they've discovered their purpose.

They've discovered their superpower and they're wanting to make that shift. The thing that they have been doing and have been successful in is not necessarily aligned with that purpose, with their superpower. So they're making that shift.

And that shift is hard, especially if we have some of these repeat patterns that are at play that were adaptations from something that happened to us when we were, when we were younger. In addition to the pause and the gratitude, what have you seen be helpful in moving people as they're making that shift in their life that helps them continue to go through that messy middle?

Can survival patterns change in midlife?

[Steve]

Well, I think one thing to recognize is you are not losing the benefit of all the, all you've achieved to that point. So what I think that you're losing is the baggage part of it that undermines you. So for instance, as somebody with a deep experience with trauma, hyper-resilience is kind of a common thing, right?

No one's going to, I don't need any help from anybody. And I still have that ability to be very resilient person, but I've also learned that vulnerability and connection is really important to me. So I've generated the courage to be vulnerable and make connections because I know that that's really important.

That doesn't mean I lose the benefits of all of my blessings, which are hurts, I believe. And then in general, if you are making a shift, if you're deciding to change, to me, if I was going to boil down everything I believe into two traits that we need, it's love and courage. And it's going to take a little bit of courage to make a shift.

But if you love yourself enough to know deep down inside, I have wisdom, like where my wisdom is telling me to go is right. I'm going to have the courage to walk out into an uncertain environment and move in that direction. If you're not happy with your current environment, one thing that we know for sure is that that's not an environment you love, right?

So staying there is also a risk. Oh, I stay in an environment that is not serving me for the rest of my life and then I die. That's a risk.

You might not seem like one, but okay, so what am I going to do? I'm going to engage some courage and I'm going to move towards something that I think is actually where I want to be. And I'm going to trust myself enough.

And I hear the stories over and over and over again. I have never heard somebody say, oh, I made that shift and engage that courage and I'm disappointed that I did. That's not a story I hear.

I just feel like we come in this world where this perfect being without a lot of problems typically and then whatever life happens and it's set up scientifically, developmentally, our brain until we're age seven. This is an interesting thing. There's a million neurons a second forming until we're seven years old.

And oftentimes, these things that we're talking about are set in in that early developmental stage, but our prefrontal cortex where we make meaning and all that doesn't come on until our 20s, especially in men. So I think that what happens is we're given this setup and there's a point at which you can stop thinking that your setup was a problem and it's your superpower. I think it's a value to understand how it affected you and how it's moving forward.

And certainly, if I could go back and make it so that I didn't get sexually abused, I would do that. But that can't happen. So I don't need to perseverate on that event unless it's in service of me healing myself or others.

But I would say that I look at those events as blessings. It's probably what I think most about myself is that, oh, I had the resilience and the wherewithal to figure out something difficult and I moved through it. How old are you?

[Roger]

I'm 57.

[Steve]

Me too. So guys in our age group, it's like they've had, especially if they've had some success, there's sort of like, okay, emptiness. I think it's a misnomer.

In my view, it's not emptiness, it's darkness, because they've been trying to fill that emptiness with shit their entire life and accomplishments, money, and it's endless. But it's the same sort of thing that is a dynamic that happens over and over. And then the people that I feel like are further down the path than me or I've learned from, they all end up in the same place.

Like, oh, I learned this. This is my life experience that I can tell you about. And then I've learned a superpowers in your nomenclature.

And now I'm going to help people with it. I would imagine you feel like this is a moment in human history that could use some massaging for the good, you know, and especially the way men are. And there's such an untapped reservoir of talent out there of guys our age, right, that have, you know, experience, resources are probably healthier than any group of people at 57 in the history of Earth, right, and have the potential to live another 30 awesome years, right, really productive years.

And what are you going to do with that? Like, how many four seasons can you go to? How many fancy, you know, like all that kind of stuff, it just becomes sort of like, I'm going to play out the string, it might look good from the outside.

But I think there's a real yearning to say, like, what is I'm what's my third act gonna be? I'm very interested. For me, it's been awesome.

Because, you know, the other two, I would say, like, led me to the one that's most fulfilling. And I feel like I have the most wisdom and I'm energized enough about and is the least kind of troubling. Like in my internal system, and all that.

So and I'm, you know, I feel like I'm just getting on it in the past two or three years. So yeah, that's what I mean, I would love to be part of that conversation. For men, especially just because that's what I have most experience with.

And this kind of I'm sure you deal with it. I mean, you're like an executive leadership coach, right? This like emptiness, or I've sold my third company, and I was satisfied for a week.

And you know, it's like, all right, well, stop looking outside.

[Roger]

What I'm running into is this sense of what I used to do that made me successful is no longer working for me. That's the same pattern that we've found on the on the spiritual side, on our own internal path, where I like that that transition you just mentioned from, you know, emptiness to darkness, we fill that emptiness with stuff that doesn't help us as a way to try to solve for that wound, that trauma. And we fill it with stuff that, you know, feels like dopamine hits, it feels really good in the moment.

But, you know, it's empty calories, it doesn't heal us. And so we find ourselves repeating the pattern that you so eloquently talk about repeating these patterns that we, you know, at one point seem to heal or help us, but it was just really, you know, masking the real problem. And, you know, being able to address that problem is usually stripping away, or no longer participating in those negative habits.

[Steve]

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, what came to mind is one analogy for that phase where people are at. It's like golden handcuffs, right? In the in the financial world, right?

They, yes, they keep you, they keep you trapped, but they're golden, and it's a trap for you don't really want to be. But there's just enough ratification, whether it be money, or adulation, or whatever to say, don't make the move to what is truly fulfilling, which takes some courage, right? Like that's to bust that move, takes courage.

And you know, and I like to tie this to a new to a version of masculinity, right? So that it's like, this is what it means to be a man to exhibit the courage to do this to show my my kids and my children, like, oh, I'm taking a risk for the betterment of like, you and me and people and life. And I'm not staying stagnant.

And that's scary. I think when you're performing this version of masculinity, really, what you're doing is avoiding the courage. And I think that if we can get in to say like, you know, like, yes, I'm vulnerable enough, like I'm scared, and I'm doing it anyway, for something good.

You know, let's get involved in that and do it together.

[Roger]

I often talk about how I am not interested in hanging out with dudes and talking about cars and watches. Now I can appreciate those things, but oftentimes those are in service of something else. And I think for a lot of people, it feels like those things and the conversation about those things are ways of like, ignoring the pain that's inside, ignoring that unmet need.

And it's a way of trying to continue those patterns of the things that help us, individuals focus on not the thing they need to focus on. And I love how this is taken right to your superpower of, you know, like stripping away the noise and getting to the signal, addressing that thing through nervous system regulation, through that spiritual journey. And I love the name of your platform, The Nero's Journey, because I know when I've been on my own spiritual journey, I keep thinking of the Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey and how much of my unpacking of my shit just feels like where I'm at right now is like just left the village.

How does the hero's journey build resilience?

[Steve]

The Hero's Journey is a big part of what I do. My experience mostly with what, you know, especially with the part that was trauma healing with trading systems, I was intending to develop a strategy, right? But as I, you know, I didn't really realize, oh, this ability I have could apply to the healing thing.

So what happened is I just found things, and then I eventually put them together into something that was a system. But The Hero's Journey is a big part of that, you know, and I think it's scientific. I mean, it's been proven.

I'm actually going to have a guy, Dr. Ben Rogers on my podcast here in a couple of weeks. They did studies on The Hero's Journey. Essentially, they had a large group of people in the thousands just relate their life.

They created, you know, the real Hero's Journey. I can't remember. It's got like 18 elements or something.

They called it down to like seven. And they basically train graduate students to listen to people's life story and rate it on a scale of how much they tell it in The Hero's Journey format without giving them any, you know, coaching on what to do. An interesting thing I think is interesting is that when they found the people, when they rated them, the people that related the story in the highest level of Hero's Journey, they had the most meaning in their life.

They were the most resilient. They just had better lives, which I think is an interesting thing. But what was really cool is when they taught people how to tell their story without changing anything else, how to tell their story in The Hero's Journey format, not telling them to change anything or do anything.

And then they went back to them a year later. Those people self-reported the more meaning, the more resilience, the better lives, just by that dynamic of looking at it like that. And there's so many things that you read where it's just your perspective on what you're already doing that changes your happiness and resilience, right?

You don't even have to actually change. But for me to like use it all the time now, like, okay, like the larger arc and then mini Hero's Journey is like, oh, I'm writing this book. Like, this is the part of it that I'm scared that nobody's gonna like it.

This is the part of it that I feel like I don't know what I'm doing. And then I'll get through that part and it'll end and it'll nest into my larger Hero's Journey. And I, for me, and like, you know, people that I work with and my men's group and all, it's just been a really powerful way of seeing life.

[Roger]

I'd love to learn more about why you chose to name the platform Neuro's Journey. Obvious, it's got the tides to Hero's Journey. And the way I make sense of it is this idea of, you know, through understanding nervousness regulation, understanding neuroscience, understanding what's going on within our system and tying it to that story arc of the Hero's Journey and understanding each of those pieces that are going on inside of us helps us make sense, create meaning for what we're going through.

And it begins to tap into this idea of a sense of agency, a sense of belief that, okay, I'm on, I'm on step six. I'm just leaving the village. I am like ready to like go through the messy middle, my period of like, you know, self-discovery or unveiling what I've always known, but just haven't looked at.

Making meaning of what we're going through and having the tools to be able to understand what's going on inside of us and go deeper and deeper to get that meaning and create that sense. I see the Nero's Journey and the Hero's Journey being a well-equipped sense-making process.

[Steve]

Yeah. Well, thank you. You know, there are two parts of it.

So in the how I came up with it, in the first part, you addressed pretty well, and I'll get back to that. But the second part was also just, and we'll talk about, I'm sure, like the trauma as a nervous system injury, you know, really, it's really an adaptation. But where I came up with the injury part was that in actually seeing brain scans of my, you know, a QEEG scan of the function of my brain, and it had the hallmarks of someone who's experienced a lot of trauma.

And to see it, and to have a methodology where it was much more medical, you know, they didn't even know my symptoms or what, I mean, I came in there, I get a scan, reads the scan, says, you know, it says all the hallmarks of trauma, you're probably anxious, you probably had addiction, you probably had all these behavior patterns that I had. And it was a dawning for me like, oh, wow, this is just like my actual brain function. It's not that I'm a bad person, which is honestly what deep down inside I felt for a long time.

And through neurofeedback and other sort of more mechanical medical ways, I've moved my actual brain function to be a unhealthy thing. And since my brain has been in a healthy range, my spiritual path and everything has gotten better. So, you know, if I'm working with somebody, I would say, let's figure out what's happening with the function of your brain.

And let's move it towards healthy, because that's going to help all of the other part of it. And then the other part of it is the external nature of everything that I focused on for my whole life, removing that shame level. And I, you know, it helped me to say, okay, these are not traits, these are adaptations.

So now I'm not a problem, I'm something that I can figure out, I can figure out a system on, I can work this adaptation, and I can readapt it, because I understand it's not like I was born innately wrong, which is honestly what I felt, you know, I have an experience of sexual abuse, and I uncovered it under hypnosis. And when I was in that process, what I was calling this guy, because I didn't know his name, I was saying, he's the bad man. The bad man's hurting me, the bad man's doing this, the bad man's doing that.

And I deep down inside through other work have just known that I have felt like a bad man, even though the external evidence is that I'm pretty good, dude. Like, you know, but that's an intellectual knowing, right? Not a felt sense of knowing.

So as my physical brainwave function got better, I was more able to get into this work. And and that work was more trusting that what was inside was worthy. You know that that we talked about emptiness versus darkness, like, I think, you know, we both work with a lot of men and anybody who does, if you're our age for 57, here's this emptiness, right?

I've achieved all this, I've gotten all this in my productive years. And there's just something that's not, you know, that's empty about it. And my notion on that is that it's not emptiness, because we've tried to fill it with stuff and accomplishment and things for so long, that it's infinite, maybe, but it is darkness.

And we had that light covered up as kids and whatever way could be trauma. I like the spray paint analogy for trauma, because it just happens all at once, and it covers it up. But it could be just a home where you got, you know, a little bit of only love for performance or ignored or just little drips that eventually cover your light up.

And I think our spiritual goal, our life goal is to realize that we have a light, that we're worthy, that we're good, all of us are good at the core, we're worthy to explore what is inside of us, and then take that time and do it. And as you shine your light more, you naturally want to serve and you use your life experience to say, I understand you, brothers, this dude, because I had that happen. Like, I know, I can tell you how to get out of it in the way that I did.

Because I did it, you know, and that's like, sort of the path that I am on. I think it's just such a beautiful thing for allowing this shift in humanity we were talking about, because everybody's circumstances different. And so then they're going to be able to relate with a different section of people.

And, you know, I feel lucky in that I had a variety of different kinds of traumas. And I know that's lucky sounds like an unusual thing, but I consider them blessings. Because now I can relate to a number of different people, right?

If you've been sexually abused, I can be like, yeah, I know what that's like. I know exactly what it feels like. I know the struggles with it.

If you watch domestic violence in your house, I can I know what that's like. Now I have a relatability and I consider those things blessings. We can't change them, right?

You know, like, I think that there's so much focus on I like to interact with them is so I can understand how they're impacting me so that if they're impacting me negatively, or my people negatively that I can work with them. But you can't change them. You know, you can't go back in time and make it not happen.

If I could, I would honestly, but I can't. So that's, that's off off the table. So I think it's there's an appropriate amount of interacting with the past, that makes sense.

And then there's marinating in it and it hindering you. And so there's a balance between that. And so I think that notion of going inside and trusting your inner wisdom gets you to a place where you understand that balance more.

And you can't, you can't ignore it totally. But you also don't want to wallow in it.

[Roger]

You're reminding me of some research that a friend Bill Hefferman recently shared with me from George Bonannno. He studied people who experienced 9-11 inside the World Trade Center, found that up to two thirds of the people who went through that traumatic experience did not get PTSD. The difference between them and the people who did experience and were diagnosed with PTSD was that they had a belief that things would get better. And they had strong connections with people who could help them.  

[Steve]

Yeah, you know, and in that circumstance, somebody who's had something happen to them as an adult is in a much better place than when it's a kid, right? Because, one, their prefrontal cortex is developed, hopefully, you know, and so that's the meaning-making thing, and it's studied even with children. If they have a parent that can work them through things, they're much less likely to get PTSD, but they can remember what life was like before, so they can say, okay, I wasn't always like this.

And they have the tools to sort of talk about it and make meaning with it, and really, a lot of the trauma, and I think just anything that hinders us in life is a stuck loop of not letting things go. And of course, it's still trauma, it's still something to work through, it's still horrible. As a kid, things happen, like, for instance, my abuser silenced me, so he tried to, I mean, it's almost like setting in the PTSD, I'm gonna kill you if you talk about it.

And so it wasn't just about abuse, it was about like a form of torture. My life experience indicates that things can shift dramatically. I'm not gonna say I've had the hardest story, but just on a studied level, some of the things that happened to me at the ages that they happened to me are some of the most difficult things that people can deal with, especially the sexual abuse part.

And when it was happening to me at five and six years old, my brain is still developing, and I was a drug addict for a long time, and I had a lot of behaviors that indicated my historical past, and I just firmly believe that no matter what it is that is stopping you from being your authentic self, it can change. We talked about the superpower that I have, I think that my superpower is seeing the important data within a big field of noise. That doesn't necessarily get you to do anything.

So that would be the weakness of my superpower. Like in finance, the reason why I set up rules was really to counteract emotion in trading. So oftentimes, the things that you have to do in the realm that I was doing in short-term trading are very difficult emotionally, because you're buying when everybody's selling, and the news says it's gonna collapse, and you have to go in there and buy.

So you set up rules to say, I'm gonna take my emotion out of this. Just me understanding the system and the environment is very important, but that doesn't do anything. You still then need to have the courage and the fortitude and take some action to actually change things.

It's this process of understanding the environment that you're in, trusting yourself that I can go inside and I'm not scared of what's in there, and doing things. You need to do something. If you wanna change behavior patterns that are 20, 30 years old, then probably you're gonna have to do some things.

That's where a lot of people get stuck.

[Roger]

Once you discovered your superpower of being able to find the signal amongst the noise, what has been one of the most difficult challenges you've had with it?

[Steve]

So I think I was lucky in my superpower because as a young person in my career, my first career was developing trading systems. And so I wouldn't even have known I had this superpower, but in hindsight, I looked back and I said, oh, I was able to take thousands of pieces of information, boil it down to 10. And trading was actually a really, it's an interesting thing.

It's been very helpful in my spiritual path because what I was doing was putting rules around governing my emotions so I wouldn't make a bad decision given the facts that I've studied. And so I think that the most challenging thing is when I move from taking that ability and I tried to take it to my trauma healing is, okay, now we're getting even deeper into my emotions and my, you know, negative patterns that are self-reinforcing. So how can I not just understand the environment?

That's great. It's very important. You need to understand it, but you need to move through it.

You talk about the hero's journey, right? The hero just doesn't like look at the map, you know? Be like, oh yeah, I know about this, you know?

And really what I think all of the hero's journeys are, are they are a hero's journey to your own self-respect. Can you look in the mirror and say like, you look at Roger and you say, I like and respect what Roger has done. And to me, the only way individually we can ever all get to that place is when we tackle that which is ours.

Your particular thing is different than mine. Honestly, when I was young and doing a lot of entrepreneurial things, I was getting a lot of, you know, positive reinforcement for it. Oh, that's so risky what you're doing.

And honestly, that was actually the opposite of risky to me. I was avoiding all the risky things by engaging in that. And I was good at it.

And I got a lot of benefits out of it. But I think that we all have a calling and we know what it is if we're willing to tap into it. And if not, get somebody some help.

You can figure it out pretty quickly. You've been dealing with it your whole life. And it's to respect ourselves enough to know we went through the things we needed to go to.

[Roger]

So Steve, in this moment, what do you know to be true about your superpower of the ability to develop a signal through the noise of information?

[Steve]

Well, I know it's been very much of service to me. It's very helpful to help people frame it who's not, that's not their particular strength. It's very helpful for other people to engage with me in that way because I can say like, let's just boil this down to a few things.

I also know it's just a step in the process. To me, it's a very comforting step because I've always been kind of a control freak and I like to know the environment in which I'm dealing with, you know? And so even though I'm gonna launch into something scary or whatever, I kind of have a map and that feels good to me.

And it's the peace before the courage to do the things that you have to do is engaged. And for me, it's a comforting piece and it's a time-saving piece because you can spend a lot of time going in a lot of different directions if you don't have a map, right? So a map is a pretty valuable tool in getting to where you wanna be.

[Roger]

Yeah, yeah. Not focused on the shit that doesn't matter.

[Steve]

Yeah. And that's what's like, we've been intentionally doing that our whole lives, right? To just avoid what does matter because it's scary.

What is imposter syndrome really about?

[Roger]

What do you think is scary about the thing that matters? I mean, I totally agree that most people are avoiding the thing that matters, but why is it scary?

[Steve]

My sense of it is, is it is the place where we feel less than. So we have some sort of behavior and whatever it is, it could be overt like mine was big drug addiction, or it could just be like, I don't really ever ask for the raise that I deserve. Whatever it is that you don't feel good about yourself, there is this sense of that I'm not fulfilling my true self.

And my sense of it is, is what we're worried about is the reason why that is, is there's something innately wrong with us. And that we all don't want that verdict. We don't wanna feel like there's something wrong with us like at the core.

So we're too scared to look. And my sense is, if you're willing to look, you're not gonna find that there's anything wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with your situation right now.

If you're struggling right now, the nature of life is that we all struggle at some point. There's nothing wrong with what's happening to you. But it is scary.

I mean, I know that I avoided that because deep down inside for most, I mean, 50 years, I felt that I was a bad person. That's it. That's how I felt.

I was a bad man, not the man who abused me, but me. And even though I could intellectually tell myself that I wasn't and the evidence is here and there, this isn't an intellectual thing. And I think it's just what an opportunity we all have to be the hero of our own journey.

You know? Like, you know, that's pretty cool.

[Roger]

A while back, I had Alex Cook on the podcast who he's a muralist and he paints this message. And he actually organizes communities to paint murals that have a message that says, you are loved. And throughout this conversation, a question just kept popping up in the stories that you're telling about the question that seems, at least what I think the question at the core of all this is, am I worthy of being loved?

And I think the work that you're talking about and the work that we're doing, the spiritual journey that we're on, the pivot that helps us shift into this possible self. I think that question of, am I worthy of love? Am I worthy of loving myself?

And am I worthy of receiving love? Is at the core of making that pivot. How would you react to all that?

[Steve]

At the root of it, we're intended to love others and we can only do that as much as we can love ourselves. And I know that sounds trite and I know it sounds like a cliche, but just from my own lived experience, it's so true. As I have been able to really get more that I have some worth as a person and that deep down inside, I am good.

I am more able to radiate that out in other directions. And that doesn't mean I'm not a jerk a lot of times, all those kinds of things. But what it also means is that I can just say I'm sorry in a way that I never really could before.

And that's been an interesting thing for me as part of this process to observe my own lived experience, to reflect on how different sorry is for me now than it was before. Because before I didn't feel worthy of love. So if I said sorry to you, I was apologizing for me as a person, as like who I am, not as me as a person who's super loving, who did something that made you feel bad and I don't wanna do that, I'm sorry, easy.

Before I had to make all of these, I had to make her wrong and well, I'm sorry, but you did all this stuff and you did all that stuff. And when I reflected on it, it was just this deep seated feeling that I did not wanna admit to myself what I felt deep down inside, that there was something wrong with me and that I wasn't worthy of love. And that shit is scary.

Like when you feel that about yourself, that's scary. And it takes courage to engage with that.

And courage with yourself is what gives you respect. And so like now, you know, as part of my spiritual path, I mean, at the basis of it, like what I'm trying to do is cultivate a personality that is loving and that the energetic field puts that out. And I don't have to do anything.

I can meet you at the coffee shop and we can chat for a little while. You can just feel good about it. Because like, you know, like, it's not like I did some nice thing or whatever.

It was just like, that's what's coming out of me. And so I, you know, for me, I know that it's a continued practice of stillness, continued meditation, continued going deeper, because it's infinite and not worried about what's there, you know, actually being excited to see what's going there. And I can just tell and the reflections I get from other people is, the more I love myself, the cooler I am, the more I make people feel good.

It's a self-reinforcing cycle, then I get more, you know, excited to do my things. I'm reflecting the difference in my internal experience, not a hubris, right? I'm not trying to say that I'm, there's anything special about me.

I'm just saying that I would love for everybody to feel the change that I have felt in my own personal life themselves. And how I look at myself in the mirror in the morning and say, that guy is good. And that guy has to prove himself to be something.

I don't have to prove myself to be anything anymore. I am already that. And that was a dynamic I lived with for a long time.

[Roger]

I think that comes with that idea of, you know, being able to answer the question in the affirmative, am I worthy of being loved? And not only receiving, but emanating, radiating love to other people. And, yeah, we talked earlier about yelling at people on the freeway.

Maybe we could bring it into that arena as well, but also with everyone that, you know, that we interact with, with, you know, the people that we do work with, the people who we are in service of. And I think it's a lot easier to do that when it comes from, you know, from self, from that innate place of, you know, not only are we worthy of love, we are love. We are the source of love.

[Steve]

Yeah. And I think it's also important to acknowledge where you're actually at, because, you know, you might be listening to this and sitting here and looking in the mirror, and you don't feel that way. And don't lie to yourself.

Like, you know, I wouldn't couch it like I'm not worthy of love. I might couch it like I don't feel worthy of love, you know, and maybe you can have an intellectual understanding that you are. But also, I think it's important for us to acknowledge what's happening in real time, because we're just telling ourselves what is not, you know, you can change the identity of what you're doing without counteracting the facts.

Like, you know, I'm a person who works on my ability to feel worthy of love. Okay, well, now I'm moving forward in a certain direction. That's not telling yourself like, well, right now, I just don't feel it.

I mean, I know I didn't feel it for a long time. And so I think there's a nuance there between playing with reality and massaging what you're saying to yourself, which is extremely important, into a way that gets you to maybe be in a different place later, without telling yourself that you're wrong now. You know, it's a very difficult thing to kind of get your mind around.

But that circumstance that's challenging, do you anticipate a life without challenging circumstances? No. So like, you just want to pick and choose which circumstances are challenging for you.

That's not how it works. Like, let's stop fighting reality. We are all going to have challenging circumstances.

We are all going to be hurt. We're all going to feel unloved. We're all going to feel not valued.

We don't get to pick and choose by who and when. So then we can say, instead of that being wrong, like, what am I here to learn? What am I here to, what a blessing that this person has brought this up for me to be able to overcome it.

And a few years from now, respect myself more, because I went through something hard. It's not an easy reframe. And you know, like, I'm getting to be old, so I have enough experience to see the back and forth on that.

But if you can orient like that, your life gets immeasurably smoother and less challenging, and certainly a lot less stuck.

[Roger]

So there's something of like, could we give them a little grace, even though, you know, what they did might have hurt us, might have harmed us, might have been stuff that we carry and not understand for a good majority of our lives. Yeah, grace and the question of love. Can we, even if they did create harm, can we still have love for them?

[Steve]

Yeah, and I think it's like, you know, if we can really get into these labels, harm and this and that. Yeah, I mean, but at the end of the day, we're all here, we're gonna have these experiences. And so I get back into this notion of, do you think you're the person that gets to choose who hurts you?

No, it's not the nature of reality. It wouldn't hurt you if you got to choose it, you're going to be hurt. So like, let's stop fighting what is and also like, is there anything wrong with me experiencing this moment of sadness?

No, like I want to have the human experience of being sad. Do I want that then to like ruin my entire day and week and month and all that? No, that's probably not the appropriate level for that.

And so let's deal with reality and acknowledge that all these things are going to come up. If we just acknowledge them and let them drift away a little bit, then we probably have more peace. That's what I would aim for, not happiness, but peace.

Can we acknowledge reality a little bit? We're not special. We're not changing the forces of the universe.

It doesn't like you're going to be harmed at some point in your life.

[Roger]

It's this idea that we hear, you know, people misquote Buddhism as saying life is suffering. Life is not suffering. It's the attachment to either what we thought it was or what it might have been in the past, not an acceptance or a surrender to what is.

[Steve]

Yeah. I mean, I just think it's like, it's like maybe ignorance is suffering. You're basically saying like, I want to change the rules of reality.

Like if we can, you're not doing that. Sorry. Like if you can do that, then I want you to be my coach because I want to take your course and I want to do all of it.

But, you know, to me, it's like, can we acknowledge reality and then operate in a way that serves ourselves within it, which is we're all going to be hurt. How do we operate? How do we look for peace?

And it's look, it's hard. I mean, I clung, you know, I was a drug addict for a very long time. I mean, I clung to all the good feelings and I tried to avoid all the bad feelings.

I don't, I don't think anybody's less than for trying to do it. I just have done enough of it in my own time to know that doesn't work.

[Roger]

So Steve, before we wrap up, if an audience member wanted to follow you or ask you a question, where do you want to point them to?

[Steve]

Well, my podcast is called The Neuro's Journey. It's in all the places, YouTube, Spotify, Apple. I have a website, theneurosjourney.com.

You can send me a message, Steve at The Neuro's Journey, email me. I love to hear from people. And, you know, I have a book that I'm working on that I'm proud of that will lay out a lot of the things that we've been talking about.

Yeah. We'll see. It'll probably be finished by this fall.

Yeah. Reach out to me. I'd love to talk with anybody who wants to explore some of these topics more.

[Roger]

Steve, thank you so much for spending this time with me and sharing your wisdom and superpower of being able to identify that signal throughout all the noise. Thank you for your courage and openness and transparency and sharing your experience and your journey through life and what you've learned along the way. And especially thank you for being in service to other people who are at that place that you were at and trying to make sense of it all and helping them through their own neuro's journey to get to their place.

[Steve]

I love the callback, Roger. Thank you. I really appreciate this conversation.

I think we really hit it off in the few times we've talked. So thank you so much for having me on. And I very much hope this isn't the last time we're in communication.

I don't think it will be.

[Roger]

I hope not as well. Thank you so much, Steve. Take care.

Bye-bye.

[Steve]

All right. Take it easy.

[Roger]

Thank you all for being in this conversation with us, and thank you, Steve, for sharing your story and what’s possible when we show up and have the courage to do the work to get back to our true selves.

What Do You Know To Be True? is a Three Blue Pens production. I’m your host, Roger Kastner.

We are recording on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people.

If you enjoyed this conversation, you’ll love this one on changing your beliefs with Brooklyn Dicent. You’ll also want to check out this conversation with  Sharon Podobnik Peterson on being a trauma-informed leader

Be well, my friends, and as always, love you, mean it!

Questions This Episode Answers:

• What is nervous system regulation for high achievers?
It is learning to notice when an old survival pattern hijacks you and using a brief pause to let the prefrontal cortex choose response over reaction.

• What is imposter syndrome really about?
Often it is not a confidence problem but a felt sense gap, you know you are capable intellectually yet your body still braces as if you are unworthy.

• Can survival patterns change in midlife?
Yes. Steve frames them as wise adaptations from earlier circumstances that no longer fit at 57 what worked at 7, and they shift with steady practice, reflection and support.

• How does the hero's journey build resilience?
When people retell the same life events as a journey of challenge, learning and return, they report more meaning and resilience without changing any facts.