0:00Hi, everyone.
0:01Welcome back to the Change Your Mind podcast.
0:03I'm your host, Kris Ashley.
0:05We are gonna have a really interesting conversation today I have with me, a therapist who works specifically with gamers and fandom people.
0:13And it's all about the narratives, the stories we tell ourselves.
0:17And I'm, I'm really excited to get into this conversation first.
0:20A couple of quick announcements though, head over to the links in my show notes, you'll find a link to my book.
0:25Change your Mind to change your reality.
0:27You'll find links to my free master class, free downloads, courses, coaching ways to stay connected.
0:36Please come be a part of the community.
0:37Help spread the good word.
0:40Hi, I'm Kris.
0:41When I was younger, I went through trauma that caused me to feel broken and lost.
0:46But my life changed after I had a spiritual awakening.
0:50Since then, I've dedicated my life to studying and learning from masters all around the world that have helped me to create a life of fulfillment and abundance beyond my wildest dreams.
0:59Now I'm dedicated to sharing everything I've learned so that you don't have to suffer for decades like I did, I've seen people's lives completely transform and I share it all right here.
1:11All right.
1:12So with me today, I have Ben Simpson.
1:15Ben Simpson.
1:16I'm sorry.
1:16Ben Simpson is a therapist, lecturer, student and spiritual director.
1:22Ben has developed courses on a variety of topics including ancestor veneration, the power of story and folklore.
1:30When not working with clients or writing, Ben is engaged with his areas of study, religious studies, medieval and classical studies, folklore and spirituality.
1:39Awesome, welcome, Ben.
1:40I'm so happy to have you here.
1:42Thank you.
1:42I've been really looking forward to to sitting down with you since we had our chat a few months ago, a few weeks ago, I should say so.
1:48I'm looking forward to this.
1:50Yeah, me too.
1:51And you know, I, I I'm really excited to get into all these topics.
1:56but I always start my shows the same way and that is by asking my guest, what is your origin story?
2:01And I think that term origin story works so well for you, right?
2:05You know, what, what led you on this path?
2:08What made you wanna work with people in this specific genre?
2:13Absolutely.
2:14So it's a very long winding story.
2:16I talk a lot about it in on my own podcast.
2:19But in, in brief, I live in Ontario, Canada.
2:23you can tell by my accent.
2:24I'm not originally from Ontario, Canada though.
2:26So I'm originally from the United Kingdom.
2:28I came over when I was 8.5.
2:30And and one of the biggest issues that I had was culture shock.
2:35I was suddenly different.
2:37I was suddenly foreign.
2:38I was suddenly British, which I wasn't when I was in the UK.
2:42So a lot of people understand when I say it that way.
2:45So, what I really was looking for in my life was a way of connecting and one of those routes was to study original social work and that didn't really work for me.
2:56And so in 2010, I dropped out of university and kind of floundered about trying to figure myself out for a few years until eventually I got back on the right track.
3:06And that right track was studying originally going and, and doing AAA self help class myself and then eventually psychotherapy and concurrently to that psychotherapy work, I was involved with spirituality and one of the groups I fell in with worked with the power of story, the power of play.
3:26And and Joseph Campbell's hero cycle, for example, right?
3:31So that really kind of propelled me for forward and eventually I fell into working with narrative therapy.
3:38So I I'm kind of all over the place, but it's really pointing me towards the idea of story and narrative.
3:46And one of the big things in my life that I used as an escape for myself.
3:50Was fantasy and science fiction.
3:52And so I've noticed a lot of people in my queer community, a lot of people of my generation, our generation, I would say, really found themselves through fantasy and storytelling.
4:04And so now I use it in my therapy work with people.
4:08Thank you for sharing.
4:09And, and I, I just think it's so fascinating and I was just saying to you before we recorded, you know, it, it makes sense because we all tell ourselves stories, right?
4:17That's, that's so much of what can either propel us forward or hold us back, right?
4:22These stories that we tell ourselves.
4:24But when you're talking about it, you're talking about like fantasy stories that people are engaging with.
4:29So talk to me a little bit about, you know, how that intersects with the therapy you're doing with people, how people are using these stories.
4:39Absolutely.
4:40So I'll, I'll start off by saying and, and really picking up on what you said human beings are story driven.
4:47We like our, our basic biochemistry, our basic psychology and this is cross culturally, we really relate with story because story is relatable within story.
4:58We can access emotions and access like kind of thoughts and feelings in a way that you know, factual information.
5:05We, we just can't get to.
5:08So particularly with literature, for example, and there's a whole stream of therapy called bibliotherapy, which is using stories and literature as a, as a, a kind of an entry point to ourselves, we often will see externally what is really internally and through that.
5:30You know, people like, people, if I ask people, what is your favorite character when you were a kid?
5:35Oftentimes people will relate to or save the character that they really relate to a lot of people in my circle when I was growing up, Elizabeth Bennett, for example, is a feminist icon or a superhero character or whatever it happened to be Peter Pan Harry Potter and tended to be one I really committed, I wasn't gonna say at this time, but there's something about the story we follow along with those stories.
6:03So I've noticed, that people of my generation, I'd say probably between the ages of 25 to 40.
6:12and even going up to 50 fantasy and science fiction tended to be a place that they saw themselves in and experience because those were really the big genres, right?
6:24You know, if you ask people of a certain generation, you know, if, if they saw Star Wars and it, yeah, of course, I remember, I remember seeing Star Wars or I remember seeing whatever it is Star Trek, for example, right?
6:38And it's that way of that connecting with story and thus connecting with self, it becomes what a a particular anthropologist named Tl Lehman says, is a paracosm, it becomes an external world that people can enter into and through that process, they can explore themselves.
6:58So for example, the never ending story, right, an entire world completely created through the imagination of one person who was reading and everything in that story is symbolic of the internal world of the of, of the reader, right?
7:13So when I started to piece those pieces together, we take the live from my own spiritual path.
7:19I started to realize that this is a kind of baseline psychology.
7:23This is what young Carl Jung, this is what Freud would have been talking about.
7:28It's dream world, right?
7:29It's, it's very, very similar to dream dynamics, right?
7:32Whereas people would be looking at dreams and thinking, well, what messages is this dream sending me?
7:37We, we utilize story and fantasy and sci fi in that particular way and fantasy and si want f in particular because it's very relevant video game culture is a big part of the, of the of, of popular culture.
7:51Now, maybe 30 years ago, people have been seen as dweebs or nerds or, you know, ostracized for that.
7:57But nowadays, it's really become a AAA space that people can go and they can escape to, but they escape to something that really brings them back to self.
8:07So when I'm working with clients, we often work with the characters that they connect with.
8:13What is it about these characters that they love?
8:15What is it about these stories that they love.
8:17What is it that they relate to?
8:19And then we bring, and we put the mirror up and we reflect back.
8:24Another big aspect is like live action role play.
8:27That's a huge one right now too, amongst certain populations, certain generations.
8:32And it's all the very similar work that people are doing.
8:37It's so fascinating.
8:39Thank you for explaining all that.
8:40And, and I like that you said the word mirror because I, I wrote that down in my notes.
8:43It's like there, there, especially when you're like, what's your favorite childhood character?
8:47That makes so much sense because of course, that person is a mirror for either what you're already feeling or maybe like what you want to be, right?
8:56What you're like striving to be.
8:58So it's not so much that people are using a story to escape.
9:01They're almost using it as a way to access their own emotions that maybe they're having trouble relating to in this, in this reality, right?
9:10It's like a way, it's like a way inward through, through this third party.
9:15It's, it's really fascinating.
9:17And I like that you brought up the video games.
9:18I was telling you right before my husband is the president of a video game company.
9:22And when I first met him, I was like, oh video games, you know, whatever.
9:25But he told me that the video game industry is bigger than the music and movie industry combined.
9:30And that blew my mind.
9:32Oh yeah, it's crazy.
9:33It's so many people are really into video games.
9:38It's really become again a huge part of popular culture because it's much more versatile than music or through the like movie industry, right?
9:48There's a certain element of interaction that music and, and and television can't give you this is why immersive experiences are so are so popular, right?
10:00People can really get into the story and become and live a life through that story.
10:04And I love that you, you know, you raised the idea of escapism.
10:07I think originally for a lot of people, it can be escapism, but then it quickly turns into a, again, what Tia Lerman says is a paracosm.
10:17It's that external virtual space that people can live through.
10:21This is why Sims is so big.
10:23This is why Skyrim and any of those rpgs are really big, right?
10:28And and IIII I think that going forward, what the industry is understanding is that there is a certain psychology to video games and this is becoming a big part of why and what's driving certain types of experiences.
10:42I think this is why virtual what do you call it?
10:46The, the virtual reality?
10:48Yeah, the headsets, they're going to be really big in the future because of that.
10:53I mean, it makes sense because when you're watching a movie, you're just passively sitting there watching a movie.
10:58But when you're actually playing a game.
10:59It's, it's like watching a movie that you create, like you create your own adventure.
11:04So, so talk to me a little bit more about what you just brought up.
11:06That video games can be this therapeutic tool that people are seeing.
11:10Absolutely.
11:10So there's multiple, there's multiple ways of doing it.
11:13And, and so I was just saying to you before we started recording, there is actually a full conference and I suspect there's probably other conferences going on that are exploring this.
11:22And again, it's, it's that looking at video games, not only as escapism, not only as like addiction, which they can become, but more as a space similar to any other type of space that we encounter in that train.
11:40So it becomes a what do you, how is the person relating to that space?
11:44How are they relating to characters?
11:46How are they, how are they, how is that experiencing affecting them?
11:52And that's a very similar then process to people who are live action role playing, who are playing video games, who are reading fantasy material and then engaging with it in kind of fan fiction writing, which is another big piece of what I do with my clients, right?
12:07It's how are they engaging with these characters and what impact is it having on them?
12:11So a a typical example of that would be with live action role playing, which is very similar form of immersive experience with video games, especially single single player RPGS.
12:26It's how are they relating to that character?
12:29What are they expressing through that character and particularly with games where they get to choose what they look like?
12:35Right.
12:36So a lot of my clients tend to be people of the queer community and, and, and, and members of that community are often using video games and kind of virtual experiences as a way of self expression, right?
12:49And I think that's true for many people, right?
12:51If I were to ask you, if you were to come up with a video game character, what would they look like?
12:58I don't know, I've never thought about that before.
13:01But when you asked me who my or when you were saying who's your favorite character?
13:04Mine was always Belle from Beauty and the Beast because I just to her so hard, like the, the reading nerd, like didn't really have friends felt out of place like that was what I related to immediately.
13:14But I don't know, I don't know what my video game character would look like.
13:18That is an interesting question, right?
13:20Yeah.
13:21Yeah.
13:21And I find that oftentimes that question can become like a, a very old therapeutic technique is just do like a self portrait, right?
13:30Create a self portrait of yourself.
13:32And then we'll talk about what, how you see yourself.
13:35Well, a lot of people have caught on to that and they don't like that because it's like, oh, don't, don't fit me.
13:39Right.
13:40But if you ask, you know, if you're creating a video game character, what, what would you make it look like?
13:46Well, that's a way of, kind of wheedling in.
13:48Right.
13:50Yeah.
13:51Yeah, totally.
13:52And no, I, I love it.
13:55I love the, how it's, it can be self expression.
13:57I, I love how it can be this way to just, just feel more yourself and try to figure out your own identity.
14:05Like it, it, it makes a lot of sense.
14:08So, you know, like how does, how do these stories that people are creating interweave with the stories that, you know, society is telling us and their own lived family stories.
14:19Like talk to me about the intersection between all of that.
14:22Absolutely.
14:23This is where the other part of my work comes in which is ancestral story.
14:27So one of the major kind of traditions that I was trained in was family systems theory.
14:34And that's the yet again, it was what family systems theory systems.
14:39OK.
14:39So it's the idea that we are all born into contexts that have been created by society.
14:45We, our families are aspects of, of, of, of culture that we're born into and then we're taught how to be based on those family traditions.
14:54And, and you know, it's, it's, it's so subliminal, it's so subconscious that everybody deals with us even to the end of their lives.
15:03Right.
15:03We're constantly learning about the impact of how we were taught to be in society.
15:08Now, some family systems are healthy, a lot of family systems are unhealthy or have aspects of, of unhealthiness to them.
15:15Right?
15:15And so because of those stories and those self narratives that we develop, we operate through life oftentimes through that in the lens, we, we, we aren't fully consciously aware of that self consciousness of, of, of how we've been taught to be in society.
15:33Now, that being said, how kind of again, fantasy and how literature and how, how other narratives come in is that oftentimes we are subconsciously aware of aspects of ourselves.
15:46Sometimes we recognize them and oftentimes you recognize them in others.
15:51I'll give you an example of this, right?
15:54If you're annoyed by somebody and you don't know why oftentimes that's because there's, they're reminding you of something that you're really not liking in yourself.
16:03Yeah, I love that.
16:05Right.
16:06Yeah.
16:06And subconsciously, we are very aware of that, but it manifests through as emotion, right?
16:13So what we're looking then is with like including behavioral therapy is to trace back and look at the beliefs then and that narrative that those feelings are generated by the same thing is in with literature, the same thing is with, you know, even historical persons, right?
16:29Look at our heroes and look at our villains and, and what is it about those, those people, their stories that we really connect with.
16:37And so this is really where the ancestral piece comes in is oftentimes with ancestral work, we're working with the story that we've been handed in the family.
16:48Sometimes oftentimes that story is actually a narrative that is there to protect us from truth.
16:55You know, if you look at say black sheep of your family who are really just going and living their own life, you know, oftentimes the the family is, is, is, is trying to protect itself, right?
17:06And that's again, a very subconscious kind of hive mind approach.
17:10So when people are able to dive in to themselves often through that lens of looking externally, they can start to separate themselves from the family narrative and make better choices as to what they want in their lives.
17:28Now, there are multiple ways of doing this, right?
17:30As I said, we're really story narrative driven biological organism, right?
17:37So that could be through fantasy, it could be through, you know, particular family members or ancestors that we really resonate with.
17:45What is the biggest thing that ancestry.com says in the tagline, find out who you are or find out your family story.
17:52Oftentimes we really connect with ancestors whose story really just inspires us.
17:59And we, we have that connection because they're biologically connected to us.
18:03So it's an interesting, it's an interesting way of looking at itself as being both kind of individual but also really interconnected and sometimes go to codependent with other forms of story.
18:13That's where it becomes an unhealthy piece is when it becomes a codependent piece.
18:18Right?
18:18Yeah, or if crosses over that into that addiction.
18:21So, so the video game and fandom characters are almost a way to break away from this maybe unhealthy family story that we have, right?
18:31Probably unconsciously.
18:33So you mentioned heroes and villains and I think that's really interesting, you know, first of all, like, why do we need heroes and villains?
18:40And then I guess, I guess second part of that question is do people always need to see themselves as the hero?
18:46And I, I'll tell, I'll give you a little context.
18:48I was talking to another therapist who was telling me, you know, people always in their own stories, always make themselves out to be.
18:56Right.
18:57Right.
18:57Like everyone else, was at fault for this.
19:01They were the ones that hurt me.
19:02This was unfairly done.
19:05You know, they, they come up with reasons why they're the hero of the story.
19:09So I'm really curious your take on that.
19:11Absolutely.
19:12I, I, we aren't hearing the full conversation.
19:15I, I definitely understand where, where that person is coming from based on what I've heard.
19:19Oftentimes people can get into, especially people who are in a place of insecurity, in a place of defensiveness, in a place where perhaps of abuse that victims of personality can come up as a way of protecting.
19:32So that's another part that is kind of the the family systems theory that I work within.
19:36There's this really wonderful system called internal family systems, which is looking at parts of self as ways of that have been generated within self to defend us and to protect us from from outside harm.
19:52So how these develop, I think everybody if really pressed can identify times when they've been in a group or they've been in a situation where afterwards they come out of it and they're like, that wasn't me.
20:05I don't know why I was like a raging bitch in that or I don't know why I was so funny in that.
20:10Like, I'm not a funny like extrovert.
20:12What was that?
20:13Right.
20:13Totally.
20:14Yeah.
20:14Right.
20:15And what happens is we develop these plans or these sub personalities to protect ourselves in certain situations.
20:24And they, they are parts of us, they're not multiple personalities, they're parts of us, they're just ways that we cope with certain they, they're masks that we put on often subconsciously in certain situations to feel comfortable in those situations.
20:41Right.
20:42So I think that when it comes to to characters, it's a very similar process, we resonate with certain characters in a way that is going to serve us and oftentimes that need to be the hero of our story is really important.
20:59People often don't like to think that they can be the villains in somebody else's story.
21:03But oftentimes other people because they need to have a villain in their story because of their personal narrative will make you the villain.
21:12And this is where people get caught because oftentimes they feel that they have to take on the responsibility of being that villain when they don't because that villain isn't who they are.
21:24I, I love what you just said and I, you know, I'm just thinking of like a personal instance where there was a group of people who made me out to be a villain.
21:33It was a very, it was a very traumatic experience is this community I was a part of but there was this like knee jerk reaction in me that was like, well, maybe if all these people say I'm this bad person, I just need to be this bad person.
21:47And it, it was like this weird coping thing and then like, eventually I came around and I was like, you know, it took a while but I was like, no, I know I'm not that person.
21:55I know like what, who they see is not, it is not me and that things got twisted.
22:00But, but it's interesting that you said that because that was like this, like, it was, it was almost this, like it came from this like depressed place, right?
22:08Like and probably a little bit of victimization.
22:12, there too.
22:13But no, it's just really fascinating because that was the knee jerk reaction and it's a knee jerk reaction because we're social creatures, right?
22:20This is how socialization, this is why family cultures exist is that we are, we, we don't do well when we're alone.
22:29Right.
22:30There are certain people like that old woman in Russia who's been living there for like 50 years in the wilderness, Ravens, like, you know, those people are great, but the majority of human beings, we don't do well when we're isolated because we're social pack creatures, right?
22:44And I think that that understanding of our basic universal psychology, that we're social creatures, we will often do things that are out of character for ourselves in order to feel like we belong because the stress, the internal subconscious stress of not belonging in a situation causes us a lot of other issues, right?
23:08So oftentimes when, when when a group, especially if a group is viewed as powerful or if a group is viewed as, you know, being something we want to belong to, if they're telling us you are this person that you need to be this person in order to belong or to even be recognized, then we will become that person.
23:30I think where it becomes dangerous is again, that idea of you know, accepting very unhealthy dynamics and, and engaging in really unhealthy dy dynamics.
23:40This is the reason why cults and gangs and other groups, political parties even the way that those, those groups operate the mind Stockholm syndrome is another example of that, right?
23:52Very classic example of that, right?
23:55Then it becomes a question of, well, whose narrative are we taking on?
24:01Yeah.
24:01And, and I'm almost thinking about like the cult leaders themselves, right?
24:05If all these people are putting you on this pedestal, like of course, and, and celebrities, right?
24:11It goes like it.
24:12Yeah.
24:12No, it's, it's, it's so fascinating to think about and it also makes me think about, like, you know, if you have a old group of friends from, like, high school or something, it's like when you're back together you kind of fall into your old roles.
24:24Right.
24:24Without even meaning to it.
24:28And, I mean, let's look at the, the,, the circumstance of us recording.
24:33I mean, it's what the December 22nd, right.
24:35You've had a lot of people who've just been with their family for Hanukkah.
24:38You have a lot of people who are going to be celebrating Christmas.
24:41So you're coming up in this weekend, right?
24:44How many people go back to their base families and suddenly they're all teenagers again.
24:49Right.
24:49Oh, yeah.
24:51And it causes stress.
24:52My week next week is filled with clients who are gonna be coming in like their family with me.
24:59Oh, my gosh.
25:00Yeah.
25:00It's probably the busiest time of year for a therapist.
25:02It's so true though.
25:03You know, my, my mother and I had that dynamic for a long time.
25:06It was like we would revert to when I was 12.
25:08She would teach treat me like I was 12 and I would act like I was 12 and it took a lot of work to get to be like, wait, we're both adults now, you know.
25:15No, it's super, I mean, everything you're saying.
25:17I just, I'm like, yes, yes.
25:18I, I know that.
25:20OK, so you mentioned something interesting when you were talking about all these parts of ourselves.
25:25You were talking about how there are masks that we put on.
25:28Do we ever take every single mask off?
25:31Because there's also this idea that like you are different in everyone's eyes, every single person's eyes and, and different than like how you perceive yourself.
25:41So I, I just love your thoughts on that.
25:44Oh I think you need to bring a Buddhist, a Buddhist.
25:47I want to talk about that because that's really the essence of Buddhism.
25:50That idea of like who are we underneath all of those, those masks?
25:55The important thing with this is that all of those masks are generated by us, they are parts of us, right?
26:02And so it like, I i it's the idea of integration of authenticity and I feel that that is actually a part of the natural aging process.
26:12Eventually, we just get to a point where we've experienced all of these various masks, we've experienced all of these things.
26:19And so we, we just get to a sense of kind of like a baseline, right?
26:24It's not like a, you know, it peaks and valleys, it's, we've just come to that kind of middle place, right?
26:32I feel like people can often get get really highly attached to defining it and identifying themselves through things like what they do who they're with, right?
26:46What their current thing and fixation is, right?
26:50And that the whole point of identity is, is who are you, right?
26:54Who are you outside of your family?
26:57Who are you outside of your workplace?
27:00Who are you or who are us outside of podcasting?
27:04Right?
27:04And if people only relate to us through particular facets of who we are, then in those moments, we only become those people to vote them and vice versa, right?
27:16So it's becoming them stepping forward and finding the interrelations between all of those pieces, right?
27:22Yeah, I mean, that absolutely makes sense because people are gonna see you in different places in the world.
27:27Like you said, like you might be part of this group and that group and your family.
27:30And and that totally makes sense.
27:32I, I like that answer a lot.
27:34Like how you said as we get older, there's more authenticity.
27:37It just makes me think like old people, like just get to that point where they don't give a shit anymore, right?
27:40Just like I say what I want.
27:43Right?
27:45Well, and if, if nobody believes what I just said, think about situations in your life where you only know somebody through a very particular thing.
27:55So like, you know the teller of the bank and then you see that teller of the bank in in the supermarket and you don't recognize them, you know, they know, you know them.
28:04So from somewhere but you can't place them right?
28:08And then you see them at the bank and you're like, oh, I saw you at the supermarket the other day.
28:11You know, it, we, it's just how our brains function and when we start to understand how our brains work, that oftentimes it's spatially connected, a lot of neurodiversity is, is very similar to neurotypical is, which is that we, we spatially locate our world, then we can begin to hack that.
28:31But understanding then that we don't have to be who, somebody assumes that we are, but we can be a similar person in all of these places.
28:41And I think that a lot of people get to that place.
28:44Yeah.
28:45Yeah.
28:45I mean, and that's, that's the hope, right?
28:47That you can be so comfortable with your authentic self and maybe it's not even a matter of discomfort, maybe it's just you're playing that, that role because, you know, you're with that group of friends or whatever.
28:58But that totally, well, and it's an interest for me.
29:02I'm sorry, I know you've got another question, but I'll say this, right?
29:05People like so many aspects of our culture only allow certain aspects of us to come out.
29:11So I'm from Wales and I'm learning Welsh.
29:14I, I never learned how to speak it properly.
29:17But but I, I have, I have a little bit of Welsh people who are bilingual will often say to us that they have different personalities when they're speaking in different languages because of just how the brain is working when using those languages.
29:32And it's a thing.
29:34It's really interesting.
29:35Yeah.
29:36That's super wild.
29:38Yeah.
29:38Wow.
29:39I love this conversation.
29:41And, and you know, I know you do a lot of genealogy work too and you kind of touched on it.
29:46I, I'd love to talk about that.
29:48Like the story of our ancestors.
29:50How does that play into our identity?
29:53Absolutely.
29:54So I wrote this book, Ancestral Whispers mainly as a way of spiritually connecting with ancestors.
30:02I'm part of the pagan metaphysical community, but a great deal of that also comes back to story.
30:07And I feel like what we often do with ancestors, what we often do with family, particularly family and, and biological ancestors is that we relegate them to who they were in the past.
30:18So who they were in life and the stories that we know about them is who they are eternally.
30:23But if you look at movies like Coco, for example, you know, wonderful Pixar movie.
30:28Pixar.
30:29I, I haven't seen that 10, it's lovely.
30:31I love it.
30:32I'll have to see it.
30:33Honestly.
30:34Like Pixar, old movies from Pixar, maybe not Toy Story, but all of the recent movies from Pixar are just like a psychology course in, in one, right?
30:43Like inside out, I was just gonna say I cannot watch that movie.
30:48That movie messed with me so bad.
30:50I was like angry and upset for like days after that.
30:53It was, it was so upsetting to me.
30:56I don't know, it was just, it was, it was too much emotionally for me.
31:00But there's a lot, there's a lot packed into that and same with Cocoa, there was a lot packed into that, right?
31:05It's one of those if people want to connect on a 1 to 1 basis.
31:10But what we're connecting with is story and all of the rules that have come down from those ancestors.
31:16And so what ancestral work from a kind of a spiritual sense is, is relating to the ancestors as we are now as human beings, one being dead, one being alive.
31:27Secondary to that and more and very importantly, but secondary to that is understanding one of the stories that we've been handed, this is coming back to our conversation about villains and heroes, right?
31:40Like I know for a fact that one part of my family is gonna see me as the black sheep of the family, right?
31:47I'm, I'm a villain in my family.
31:49Well, my parents, but I can never pass in my family because I'm gay because I don't follow the course because I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm living my metaphysics all the things.
31:59Yeah.
32:00So the descendants of, of those people are gonna see me if they even are allowed to acknowledge that I, I exist at all as being, you know, a villain or a black sheep as all of that.
32:12And we think about families in that way, we think about communities and cultures in that way, who are the villains and who are the heroes and why do they have those stories told about them because they fit a need, right?
32:25You know.
32:26and I feel like that's, that often causes problems for people because of legacy pieces and whatnot, what ancestral work allows us to do is create our own relationships with these individuals on our own without the family telling us, right?
32:42And and that comes back to again, the tagline of ancestry.com and all of this, of learn out, you know, learn about your history and learn about who you are, right?
32:51Because there are aspects of those cultures that have come down to us.
32:56There's a wonderful tool that's used in therapy and, and social work and, and even like Christian counseling called a genogram and that what that is is it's not just a genealogical tree but it's tracking sub personalities, addictions story and the rules all flew down the generations.
33:16Oh, you know, sub personalities often generate again and again and again, if you have a perfectionist mother, for example, who demands perfection from you, you'll become a perfectionist because you're afraid of what that, that would mean if you're not a perfectionist.
33:34Right?
33:35That makes sense.
33:37And it, it, it makes me think of like, you know, there's always like two sides to history too, right?
33:42Like there is or like wars, they say it's always the people who like won the war that are writing history.
33:48And, and I think about it too when you, when you were saying like, if there's some story passed on about some person we in your past, that's kind of how they're like, stamped into history.
34:00And I think about that a lot when I watch historical fiction where I'm like, when they bring characters to life and it's like, wow, they were people like we were like, we are, they lived a full life, like I'm living like they had their problems, they had their joys, they had, you know, all these complicated facets to their personalities and we tend to forget that when we're just looking at them as like, you know, this, this woman that lived in 1800 or whatever it is, right?
34:29And again, that's very culturally based, right?
34:31The West is based on Christian culture, which says the ancestors and the dead have to be, remain like have to be separate because they're dangerous otherwise, right?
34:41If you look at other and I talk about this in this book, when you look at culture where ancestral veneration as a spiritual practice and a way of living is it is normal to have an ancestral shrine in the corner where it's a regular chore for the kids to go and put offerings or light incense and say prayers to the, you know, the, the heads of the family.
35:01You know, that's a regular part of life.
35:03You've brought those stories in, you've brought those individuals in, right?
35:07They are related to every day.
35:09It isn't a, you know, we're going to remember and this is why ancestral work and mourning and,, is very different.
35:16Mourning is about,, remembering the dead but they're gone, they're away.
35:22And what do we do to society in society when somebody dies?
35:25We often feel uncomfortable even talking about them because we don't want to upset.
35:30Well, what we're actually doing is we're relegating those individuals to oblivion.
35:35Right.
35:36Yeah.
35:37And it makes me think about, like, in a few generations you and I probably won't be remembered.
35:45That's ok.
35:46And it's wild.
35:47It's just so freak people out though, doesn't it?
35:49What's that?
35:50It freaks people out though, doesn't it?
35:51Because that self centeredness of, oh, I'm the hero.
35:54And if there's nobody's telling that story about me then?
35:57Am I really the hero?
35:58Right.
35:59Yeah.
35:59Yeah, totally.
36:00And, and all those people in the past probably felt the same way about themselves too.
36:05Right.
36:05There's still, I think, I know, I kind of just said this but it's just,, it just, it's so cool to think about that.
36:12People who lived generations and generations and generations ago, like, still were humans.
36:17Right.
36:17They still have the same psychology we did, they still had that same hero complex.
36:21They had their own villains.
36:22Like, it's just, yeah, and, and we don't tend to think of people like that.
36:27We, like, I was reading a study in the process of reading this, that the modern human brain is actually 100,000 years old.
36:38And you think how many billions of generations that is?
36:43But they were able to reason and logically think the same way they had the same capacity to look at as we did, right?
36:51And some things are truly universal like 6000 years ago in Ancient Babylonia.
36:56Right?
36:57There were people who were writing to a company to complain because it, you know, they, right.
37:04And that's one of the tables.
37:06It's a complaint letter.
37:07Yeah.
37:07My, you know, so, and so gave me a, an oxen cart and it fell apart on me and I'm really mad about it.
37:13That's really relatable.
37:14Right.
37:15Yeah.
37:16Yeah.
37:16Absolutely.
37:17It's like,, Amazon reviews or something.
37:21, ok.
37:23So, so when you're doing this genealogy work with people.
37:26Like, how do you, how do you re, I mean, are you trying to rewrite these stories?
37:31Are you trying to, like, breathe life into these people?
37:33Like, how are you like, what's, what's the, what's the goal, I guess?
37:37Well, it, so it, it's different for different people, right?
37:40, part of it is uncover, even uncovering those stories.
37:44How are they relating to those stories?
37:47Right.
37:47Particularly with family, like individuals who are really dealing with issues of separating from family or the pressures of living their own life outside of family expectations.
37:59We often then will look at kind of the family patterns of, you know, what, what what what's been happening?
38:05Why are you thinking about yourself this way?
38:08For other people, it might just be reconnecting with family, right?
38:13Sometimes people might find that they go through a period of their life where they reject family so much and then they come to a phase in their life where they can actually relate to where their parents were.
38:25And that idea of empathy building.
38:27that idea of forgiveness work is really big in this.
38:30Now, forgiveness is a it's a dangerous word with some clients because it's so loaded, it has a lot of presuppositions with it about condoning behavior when in reality it's about letting go.
38:43Yeah.
38:44Yeah.
38:45Yeah.
38:45Totally.
38:45Forgiveness is always for you and not for the person, you know some Yeah.
38:51So OK.
38:52That's, yeah, thank you for answering that.
38:54But I want to be like a fly on the wall in your session.
38:58Like I know that a violation.
39:02But it's just, it's just such fascinating work.
39:06OK.
39:07So what about donor conceived Children or adoptees?
39:13How, how do they navigate this or where does this play in for them?
39:19Absolutely.
39:20So, again, this is a very culturally based paradigm, right?
39:24When you look at the majority of the way family is, I kind of constructed around the world, it's very different from the West sometimes, right?
39:32I was on a podcast a couple of weeks ago, a month or so ago.
39:36And and the host is partly from Jamaica.
39:39She, her, her mom is from Jamaica.
39:41And so we were talking about that, like how many aunties and uncles does she have?
39:46Well, the whole parish, the whole parish is her family, right?
39:50When you look at the way that family is constructed and what's privileged, it's often in the West.
39:54It is the core family unit and anything outside of that then?
39:59Oh, well, does mean anything you go to other societies and adoption is a huge part of, of, of, of, of society, right?
40:06Julius Caesar adopted Augustus.
40:10This really ties to those people who think about Roman Empire all the time.
40:16Right.
40:16That is a fun trend.
40:18I love it.
40:19It's so funny, isn't it?
40:20You know?
40:22So I feel like with people who are adopted, family history, if you're looking at family, like if you're looking at history of self and like story of itself, there's ways of then looking at self through that.
40:33Eventually, one with genealogy, once you go back a certain gene, a few generations, eventually you have so many ancestors that they constitute an entire community.
40:43And we know that in certain parts of the world, if you go back 300 years, most families are stuck, they they don't move.
40:51There is no social mobilization.
40:53So you know a lot of people who have European heritage, for example, you can trace back 203 100 years.
40:59Chances are your ancestors have been there for thousands of years, right?
41:02Biological ancestors.
41:04So eventually the family story becomes the community story becomes the region's story, becomes the kingdom story.
41:12And so for people who have adopted, if they know who their ancestors generally were, then that is their history, right?
41:21But it causes a lot of issues because again, it's that over i education or story.
41:26Well, I'm adopted, I don't know who I am.
41:30Well, you do know who you are because you were raised within the family and you have to adopted, you've adopted the same culture that they've given you because you were socialized.
41:39But people don't think of it in that way because of how we construct and what we privilege, right?
41:45So a great deal of that is also to understand.
41:48Well, how much are they putting emphasis on that family story?
41:52Is it like, what role is it playing for them in their life?
41:56So it really depends.
41:57There's a lot of pieces to it.
41:59Yeah.
42:00Yeah.
42:00Thanks for answering that.
42:02I understand that that need for identity of connecting to, to all these parts of you, of your past.
42:11It makes sense.
42:11You know, I think if I was adopted or donor conceived, I would, I would be searching for that too.
42:18Again, it comes down to where we're at and what culture we come from.
42:22So much of us is really constructed, right?
42:26And I, I can speak from personal experience through this.
42:29I come from a blended family.
42:31My oldest sister who's much, much older than me was contacted one day by somebody she had never met in her entire life.
42:38And this person was 18 years old and this person said, you know, I'm your sister and she wanted to have a relationship with my sister because of that, that perceived connection.
42:49My sister was like, I don't know who this person is.
42:51I don't know how I, I don't know if I will even want a relationship because of the relationship she had with her dad, right?
42:57So it's one of those things, a lot of those societal rules that become really ingrained in us that we then filter and, and, and, and take up because we think we have to, in order to belong.
43:10Right.
43:10A lot of pieces to it.
43:12Yeah.
43:13Yeah.
43:13And it's, it's all different complex personalities and, yeah, you can't assume that someone's gonna think the same way that you do either.
43:23Right.
43:24This is the thing.
43:25Yeah, this is the thing.
43:26And I don't think people really know until they're in the moment.
43:29Right.
43:30You know.
43:32Mhm.
43:33So, you know, is there anything that we didn't touch on today that you think is really important to get across to listeners?
43:40From anything from the storytelling to the genealogy work at all.
43:45Yeah, I would say from a therapist perspective, it's all about coming home to self, right?
43:53And a lot like the vast majority of work I do is literally just listening and creating space and, and asking the right questions so that the other person can can really come home to self, right?
44:06Oftentimes we tell ourselves stories in order to feel better or because we feel we have to see those stories and sometimes those become so subconscious, we're not even aware that their story, we actually believe him.
44:20So I feel like it's a great deal of my work, whether it be the spiritual piece, whether it be the therapy piece, whether it be even just the gaming piece, right?
44:31It's about how you relating and, and in what capacity are you relating to the world around you?
44:38And how is that world relating to you?
44:40And what faith are you putting forward?
44:42, and in pound.
44:45Yeah.
44:45I think that idea of coming home to self is, is such a beautiful one.
44:49And that's really kind of what this human experience is about.
44:52Right.
44:52It's like we're born perfect and worthy and lovable and, and not broken in any kind of way.
44:58But then all this stuff gets placed on top of us and then a lot of it is undoing all that.
45:04Like I'm learning that I'm doing that conditioning and it's, it's interesting, like I think most people do believe the stories they tell themselves, right?
45:13Like that's, that's how they make sense of the world, isn't it?
45:15Absolutely.
45:16Absolutely.
45:17It is.
45:17It's a way that our brains are designed is to believe those stories.
45:21But this is where the empowerment piece comes in is that we get to control.
45:25Then what those stories are, right?
45:29A great deal of the unlearning oftentimes is being conscious of the stories, the operating systems, right?
45:37And because then we can actually decide, OK, well, I actually, this is the story that I want to live with and put that forward and live through that story, right?
45:45This other story that or this narrative that I was, I was told I had to take on because it was my mom's story or my dad's story or my great aunt's story or whoever's story, right?
45:57Isn't something that's working for me anymore.
45:59And so I get to change it.
46:01Yeah.
46:02Yeah.
46:02That's a really empowering place.
46:03Or maybe it's a story I told myself when I needed, when I needed that for protection, like an armor of some sort.
46:10And, like, maybe this doesn't serve me anymore well, and that's the other piece too.
46:13Right.
46:14One of the stories that we tell about our own selves.
46:17Right.
46:17A great deal of the issue that people find is that they often cringe about their former selves, right?
46:23I know I do one of the most freeing things I ever learned was if I can be proud, if I can, if in 10 years time, the person I become can be proud of who I am now.
46:38Maybe I can be proud of the person I was 10 years ago and have grace for myself in that moment of being in between who I'm becoming and who I was is so huge.
46:49I mean, yeah, that's, that's a really beautiful thought because, you know, we're all just doing the best we can with the tools we have, we don't know what we don't know.
46:58Exactly.
47:00Yeah.
47:00And I think the the added benefit of that is that we then understand ourselves, not just as singular beings, is interconnected.
47:08If I can have grace for myself, maybe I can have grace for somebody else.
47:13Maybe I need to have Reece and, and, and compassion for other people who can I, I can then bring that home and have compassion for self, right?
47:21Interrelated.
47:23And that brings it full circle back to the things that trigger you about.
47:27Other people are unhealed aspects of yourself and, and that we're, we're really all connected.
47:35Right.
47:36Yeah.
47:36Absolutely.
47:38Yeah.
47:38So many pieces.
47:39I, it's, yeah, for so many pieces to it.
47:42Yeah.
47:43Yeah, I love it.
47:44, awesome.
47:46I really enjoyed talking to you.
47:47Thank you so much for coming on.
47:49, definitely I feel like this hour flew by and I feel like kind of kept going.
47:56I know it's crazy when they fly by like that.
47:58But yeah, thank you so much for the fascinating conversation.
48:00Please.
48:01let listeners know where they can find your book, how they can connect with you.
48:05Any offers you have all the things.
48:07Yeah, absolutely.
48:08So, I it's all on Ben stimson.com that hosts my podcast that hosts my book that hosts all my my services.
48:16and you can also find all my social media on there.
48:19And and I'll say a lot of my social media is pictures of my cat.
48:23So if people just want to see pictures of my cats where she is, I'm like, waiting for her to run around in the back.
48:29I know she's like just over there.
48:31She, I love, I love when pets like just enter the frame and just kind of meander by.
48:36It's always really cute.
48:37Well, thank you so much.
48:39Again, it was great having you listeners if this resonated, please like comment, share, subscribe, send it to someone you think would find it useful.
48:48I think we had a really amazing conversation today that a lot of people would find fascinating.
48:52So share it.
48:54Spread the good word.
48:55Thank you all so much.
48:56Have a beautiful rest of your day.
48:57I'll see you next time.