TOPIC: CHILDHOOD TRAUMA & ITS EFFECT ON YOUR LIFE GUEST: Dr. Johanna discusses how childhood trauma affects the trajectory of your life and provides us techniques to heal these emotional wounds.
00:00:15:09 - 00:00:49:06
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Hi, I'm Dr. Selina Matthews, spiritual psychologist, and I want to welcome you all to Soul Transformation. My guest today is Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty. She's a transpersonal psychologist and author. Our topic today is Childhood trauma and its Effects on Your life. This discussion will be thought provoking and illuminating on so many different dimensions. So stay tuned. We are going to take you on a journey.
00:00:50:13 - 00:01:35:02
Dr. Selina Matthews
Childhood trauma disrupts neurological pathways and their ability to process information. And even more fundamentally, childhood trauma disrupts a person's ability to repair the damage and heal their emotional wounds, thereby affecting the entire trajectory of their life. Childhood trauma has been amplified culturally through Prince Harry's brilliant memoir, Spare. And also through many other people who've written incredible books on the topic of trauma, including my guest, Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty, whose book is titled Flight With Weighted Wings.
00:01:35:10 - 00:01:36:24
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We will discuss both.
00:01:36:24 - 00:02:06:22
Dr. Selina Matthews
Books in this podcast. Dr. Johanna O’Flaherty, I am so very excited to have you back on Soul Transformation and what an incredible topic we're going to have today. So let's just get right into the conversation and I'm going to ask you this first question. How does childhood trauma affect the neurological development of your brain.
00:02:08:07 - 00:02:34:06
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Well, hello, Dr. Selina, and I'm very, very happy to be here. And of course, this is a subject matter that I'm very, very interested in. For the past 30 years as a psychologist, a dedicated my life to healing trauma, healing ancestral trauma, and indeed, co-occurring disorders of addiction. I've educated the public and indeed young therapist and so on.
00:02:34:15 - 00:03:01:15
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And trauma does indeed affect the development of a child. And I'm just going to put my glasses off to make sure I give your audience some accurate information. We know from research there's incredible evidence to suggest that adverse childhood experiences. And if your audience are not familiar, I would suggest that they look up. It's called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which is a phenomenal, compelling study.
00:03:02:01 - 00:03:39:20
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And it also shows, you know, how the adverse childhood experiences does affect the developing brain. There's neurobiological changes that occur in response to early life stress that can lead to, quite frankly, lifelong issues. You know, individuals that have experienced childhood trauma go through life unconsciously looking at life through the lens of a trauma survivor or indeed still victim, if they have not began to do their healing.
00:03:40:06 - 00:04:10:14
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And many times you will find the individuals experiencing hyper vigilant. You know, if somebody comes up behind me, I will jump. Hyper vigilant. I know you know this, Dr. Selina but I'm sort of explaining it for our audience because I know you have a large cross-section of demographics that watch your podcast, which is phenomenal on Fantastic. So, you know, when we live, you know, we're constantly hyper vigilant.
00:04:10:26 - 00:04:39:20
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
There's neurological changes and it actually can increase some psychopathology. I don't like to pathologize people, but we do know from the research that, you know, it changes in both children and adults. By the way, the estimates from the National Center of Child Abuse and Neglect, they reveal that nearly 1.5 million children are confirmed to be mistreated every year in the United States.
00:04:39:27 - 00:04:42:07
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
My grandson, people say a political.
00:04:42:07 - 00:04:50:09
Dr. Selina Matthews
Poll total of 1.5 million people, 1.5 million kids. This is crazy.
00:04:50:15 - 00:05:33:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
One 1.5 million children. Now, Dr. Celina, many people think that that's underestimated. And frankly, from the work I do, I believe that it, quite frankly, is under estimates. But additionally, a number of studies have shown that the onset of mood disorders undoubtedly can lead to substance abuse in later years. And there's a high correlation between early childhood trauma, early let's put it like this early childhood untreated trauma, substance abuse and suicide, unfortunately.
00:05:33:09 - 00:05:53:16
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Now, I want to say a word of encouragement for your audience. Having had adverse childhood experiences, i.e. trauma, it's not a life sentence. People survived. They get proper treatment. You survive and you try. So let's hold that in the space while we go through this interview.
00:05:54:19 - 00:06:27:04
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, I think that's a really quick point because a lot of people become hopeless. And I think one of the things that you just touched on was the pathologies that people who had childhood abuse can get like depression, suicidal. I mean, there's a host of things that that people can of can get. Now, would you like to extrapolate on that?
00:06:27:16 - 00:06:54:18
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I will. And it leads in to you. We're going to talk about how does it sabotage us as children? You know, we don't have the ability to understand what's going on. And this complex issues so we can end up as adults with chronic physical conditions. And the ACE studies have substantiated that individuals with adverse childhood experiences in later years can end up with two.
00:06:54:18 - 00:07:45:18
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Following on a continuum. Of course, eating disorders, sleep disturbances, somatic complaints. You know, quite frankly, there's some correlation between autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and Epstein-Barr. Remember, we used to have that in the eighties. There's a correlation between adverse childhood experiences and these autoimmune diseases. Also, what probably we see a lot in our practice in our offices is a separation anxiety, training and relationships, abandonment issues, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness and being very passive, also irritability.
00:07:45:18 - 00:08:01:09
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And that's actually kind of difficult to soothe and, you know, repetitive post-traumatic play, which means reenactment. We can get into that perhaps later. I know you have some other very interesting questions.
00:08:02:07 - 00:08:24:22
Dr. Selina Matthews
So, yeah, that that was really, I think, really helpful for everybody because the what you're saying is the childhood trauma completely changes the trajectory of a person's life. Like who they would have been become and who they become because of the trauma are different. There are different paths.
00:08:26:00 - 00:08:58:06
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Would you. Absolutely. You know, I have a quote. Yeah, I agree completely with you. I have a quote from one of my books and it's a it says, Trauma is a time traveler. Trauma erases everything that went before it. So we need to be very cognizant of the fact of how old was the individual. Now, if the individual was three or four, quite frankly, they're not going to remember because the hippocampus, that part of our brain that interprets sensory input is not quite developed at age four or five.
00:08:58:17 - 00:09:31:08
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So but the body will remember because trauma is stored in the nervous system. And so we go through life unconsciously, of course, looking at light, through the light, through the lens of a trauma survivor. And we don't know what's wrong with us because we look at people that have not had these injuries and we're not aware of the injuries because majority of us either dissociate, we block them out, bracket them, or many of us become substance use disorder.
00:09:31:22 - 00:10:00:07
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We we, you know, develop substance abuse. And so when we're in our substance abuse, we use drugs or alcohol or indeed sex shopping a lot of other things to ingest besides the painful feelings. But there's a wonderful way of recovery. And recovery is incredibly beautiful. But we've got to go through sort of the the the mud and the sludge to get to where we need to go, which are recovering from trauma.
00:10:01:04 - 00:10:06:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, it is not an easy process for anyone, I'm sure.
00:10:06:19 - 00:10:07:23
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
No, unfortunately.
00:10:08:28 - 00:10:39:04
Dr. Selina Matthews
Now, I want to go through something, too. I want to go to Prince Harry's story of his mother's death. And, you know, Prince Harry story is just one of many. And can you speak to, you know, his you know, his story a bit on that. And, you know, the effect of like death on on the trajectory of a person's life.
00:10:39:27 - 00:11:00:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I will. And let me just put a disclaimer here. I have never met Prince Harry, but before I speak about Prince Harry and by the way, I did read the book and enjoyed very much. There's also a you know, we need to be very mindful of the fact there's also a high correlation between substance abuse and trauma and combat trauma.
00:11:01:07 - 00:11:42:10
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Combat trauma, incident trauma like airplane crashes, car crashes and so on, and would combat trauma and even today, Dr. Sabrina, because of some of our first risk, first responders are frontline workers. Doctors and nurses are suffering what we call moral injury. They had to make decisions like I went to a group for frontline workers and many times we have nurse practitioners or doctors put in during COVID and they needed three ICU beds would ventilators, and they had one available that when that decision they have to make the decision.
00:11:42:10 - 00:12:12:05
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And it's then really a moral injury because that is against all of their morals. They want three beds for three acute patients. But back to Dr. and Harry. Prince Harry. Prince Harry, of course, is one story and a very public story. And, you know, his biography was very, very transparent and enlightening. He shared very openly about his grief and loss and, you know, about his mother.
00:12:12:05 - 00:12:44:14
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Princess Diana's death was so public. And here is a 12 year old boy and his brother was 15. And I am in no way judging any of the caregivers of Prince Harry. But what happens when we have a traumatic situation in our lives? It is so painful that many times instead of the healthy way, would be to sit down and talk about it and allow ourselves to cry, to scream, to shout, to argue tiptoe tantrums.
00:12:45:22 - 00:13:14:04
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We avoid each other. We avoid we avoid the subject matter. And then we actually begin to sort of avoid each other physically. I've seen that in my own family. And so that actually is one of the worst ways of passing trauma on is if you don't speak about it, the unspoken trauma is the one that's going to be passed on in the most profound ways.
00:13:14:04 - 00:13:16:09
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And we have a laundry search on that.
00:13:16:23 - 00:13:29:10
Dr. Selina Matthews
That is fascinating. Show us. It is really fascinating. You extrapolate on that a little bit. You know, how how the how that works into psychically.
00:13:29:10 - 00:13:54:29
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Yes. And by the way, before we move on from Prince Harry, I wish him and his family nothing but the best. And I wish for reconciliation. And I could show it to you in my own family. And we're all now seeing yours. And we were estranged for many, many years. But we are now, as seniors, we are really, I would say, quite beginning, quite a healthy psychologically family.
00:13:55:06 - 00:14:26:03
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
But we have to have sort of soul of a healthy psychological foundation. So passing on trials generationally, like I said, you know, it is a time traveler and a historical trauma passed down through generations is cumulative. So, you know, my great grandparents passed it down and passed the down. If it is not if the chain is not broken, by the time it gets to the third or fourth generation, we're actually more dysfunctional.
00:14:27:23 - 00:15:19:23
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And so when I do my workshops, I do anagrams, and I ask the attendees when we're passing down trauma without intervention, are these generation the the younger generations of the healthier? Are they most dysfunctional? And many of these people that attend the workshops, they're not therapists and they get it. They get more dysfunction. So we know from research, and particularly from the research that's come out of the Holocaust survivors that the descendants who have not even been directly exposed or experience of the traumatic event can exhibit signs and symptoms of trauma such as depression, fixation on the trauma, low self-esteem, sleeplessness and destructive behavior, which was when I started when I've been doing this work.
00:15:19:23 - 00:15:43:18
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Now, as you know, doctor, sitting in for over 30 years, I'm very committed to it. I find it sacred work and I have the privilege of working now with indigenous counselors in Canada. And what I do is I do workshops for them on healing ancestral trauma. And one of the things that happened in that particular culture, they didn't talk about it.
00:15:43:29 - 00:16:03:00
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
They didn't talk about the horrific abuse that went on in the residential schools. And it's kind of like the Holocaust, the Holocaust survivors. It was so horrific. They did not talk about it, but they handed it down non-verbally, transmitted it to the next generations. Yeah.
00:16:04:07 - 00:16:33:00
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah. No, of course I have. You know, just a little story I want to share one of my former clients, parents who are Holocaust survivors and of this woman lives by herself. And, you know, we were discussing some of her finances and she says, I spend, you know, 2000 a month on food. And I'm like, you're one person.
00:16:33:00 - 00:17:08:22
Dr. Selina Matthews
How can you do that? So I asked her to take a picture. What's in her fridge. She could seat 50 people out of her fridge. And it was her way of making sure that she was fed. And this is a really important story because it manifests unconsciously. She did not realize what she was doing at that moment, but there she was could feed 50 people and she's throwing stuff in the garbage and spending all this money for her psychology to keep her grounded.
00:17:09:08 - 00:17:38:27
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Yeah, I totally get it. This woman she probably had or her parents or grandparents experienced starvation, whatever it was, Holocaust or so on, it was passed down to her. So she has a fear of starvation. She's going to make sure that she's not going to go hungry. I have a friend whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors and she's a physician, and when she comes to my home, she opens my refrigerator.
00:17:38:27 - 00:17:56:17
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Now I want to assure your audience I'm a very healthy eater there, sport in my refrigerator, but there's no food here. And she goes to Costco, but I understand it. And we laugh, you know, And then when she leaves, I get rid of a lot of the food that she buys. So I get it. I get it. I get it.
00:17:56:23 - 00:17:58:27
Dr. Selina Matthews
A great story that.
00:17:59:02 - 00:18:17:09
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
They say, well, it's a great story. We can do the same with clothes. If we grew up poor and didn't have, you know, too much clothes and we would go to school with the same thing, we you know, for instance, I went to school without shoes for your audience, but I made up for it. I'm the Irish Imelda Marcos.
00:18:17:09 - 00:18:25:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So shoes all over the place in here. So it's all the kind of, you know, reenacting trauma. So it was a well, I.
00:18:25:14 - 00:18:32:15
Dr. Selina Matthews
Know your collection and it is pretty amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Okay.
00:18:32:20 - 00:18:34:04
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So I'm so glad we can laugh.
00:18:34:29 - 00:18:54:08
Dr. Selina Matthews
We have to laugh. I mean, you know, but we all of us have some something. I think, you know, every one of us has some kind of addiction. That is a compensation of some sort. None of us are. Are, you know, 100% healthy in every area. That's impossible. We try our best, but we're human.
00:18:54:16 - 00:18:55:21
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Where? Yes.
00:18:56:15 - 00:19:08:21
Dr. Selina Matthews
I want to now move on to what are the signs of childhood trauma in adults?
00:19:08:21 - 00:19:49:18
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
A childhood trauma in adults? You know, it's the unresolved trauma, even though the adult is not conscious of it will sabotage us and so if your audience, if they're not in therapy and I would advise them to look at an area where they're sabotaging themselves and then I would advise them if they can afford it, to seek a therapist and discuss what area of their life they're continue to sabotage themselves, because that to me is a reenactment of trauma.
00:19:50:12 - 00:20:12:19
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And now some of us are very good. We we bracket the trauma and thank God majority of us have not experienced trauma, but a lot of us have. We bracket the trauma by overworking, overcompensating, or I'll be better when I have the next degree. I'll be better when I have the next house and five cars and so on.
00:20:12:21 - 00:20:55:21
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So consumerism, a that we're busy, busy, busy. What are we avoiding? And so I would like to invite the audience to look at that. And so we don't want to become also we call it paralysis by analysis, you know, constantly analyzing ourselves. But I as a woman in recovery, I say to some of the people I work with, what area of your life is a trunk you don't have to in, you don't have to imbibe is substances for areas of your life to be intoxicated, to drink.
00:20:56:07 - 00:21:22:26
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Is it your finances? Is it your relationships? Are you compensating and having what we say? Compensatory sex, a food, a substance abuse, a myriad of things. And so I look at simply how you sabotaging. And if you're not sabotaging, which in a way you are indirectly, how are you enabling others if you have children? I know you do and I do.
00:21:22:26 - 00:22:01:21
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We work with individuals from very high socio economic backgrounds and I ask them providing is very different from enabling. So how are you enabling that? It is an inadvertent way to advertising, you know. Yeah. And so I heard a very wise woman many years ago say I passed this on, Don't ever do anything for a person if they can do it for themselves.
00:22:01:21 - 00:22:11:27
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Think about that. Don't do it if they can do it for themselves, because will do it. You know, it's easier to say yes than to say no. Yes. And it would be about yeah.
00:22:11:27 - 00:22:20:04
Dr. Selina Matthews
Especially a lot of parents are feel guilt if they don't give their children everything. Would you agree?
00:22:20:04 - 00:22:25:02
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:22:25:02 - 00:22:42:05
Dr. Selina Matthews
And why don't go on to Ken and you spoke a little bit about this. Can childhood trauma be enacted generationally?
00:22:42:05 - 00:23:13:15
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Yes. And we spoke a little bit about it, but there's a lot of research on transgenerational trauma. I like to call it ancestral trauma. And there's also a lot of controversy amongst site among, you know, scientist. But genetic trauma refers to the effects of trauma that some say we inherit from previous generations, while genetic trauma, it's really a term people search for online and use in everyday conversation.
00:23:13:26 - 00:23:42:17
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Many of us as psychologists, we will try and avoid that because it's already too complicated. But now there's a study of epigenetics and how the events that happened to you and you'll be their saviors. So as traumatic events and trauma responses can actually change the way your genes work, these changes, however, do not affect your DNA, but they can affect how your body reads that DNA.
00:23:42:29 - 00:24:18:28
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
That's kind of a pretty complicated, but I think it kind of we can we can explain it by, you know, the same thing we talked about with the Holocaust survivors. Now, trauma can be transgenerational retransmit it. I used the quote and I've used it before. Would you, Dr. Selina That which is not transposed is transmitted. So if the generations or prior generations our ancestors, God love them, they did not have the opportunity to transform their trauma.
00:24:19:07 - 00:24:57:02
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So they passed it on either overtly or covertly to the next generations. And, you know, it can be and also what can be transmitted is which I find fascinating, while it's not directly trauma is patterns. Patterns of behavior can be transmitted to the next generations. I'm not sure if you or your audience ever watched Dr. Henry Yates. He he hosts the show Finding Your Roots.
00:24:57:15 - 00:25:47:24
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
He does it with mostly celebrities. I'm fascinated in genealogy, so I try to watch him. He's a, by the way, phenomenal scholar. And he goes all the way back for seven, eight or nine generations. And just for example, let's say he's interviewing a box or doing or genealogy, going back six generations in the family lineage, there was a boxer, but this current person has no, no, no, no knowledge of I see in my own family, while there's a lot of dysfunction that was handed down, going back for multiple generations on both sides of my family, a mother and father, matriarchal and patriarchal, there was a lot of dysfunction because there's a lot of alcoholism in
00:25:47:24 - 00:26:11:14
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
my family. I'm Irish. There's a high percentage of alcoholism in the Irish. However, they also passed down in credible traits. There's been Unitarians in my family for generations, generations, which is so heart warming guru. So we need to look at the positive traits along with, you know, the stuff, as I call it, the stuff that they hand down.
00:26:11:27 - 00:26:15:18
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We can work that stuff. We can work it. Yes.
00:26:16:01 - 00:26:27:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
That that's the really great news is we can work it. Now, I know you have an example of transgender racial trauma that you wanted to share.
00:26:29:10 - 00:26:57:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Well, I think there's a very, very, very sad trans generation of trauma that is probably very much alive in our consciousness. And that is about the tragic death of Whitney Houston and I look at and I'm not familiar with her ancestors and what trauma was passed down there, but I do know of her trauma, and this is public knowledge.
00:26:57:10 - 00:27:39:14
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Again, I do not or did not know Whitney Houston, but she was in an abusive marriage. She had a substance abuse disorder. And unfortunately, she passed that on to her lovely daughter, Bobbi Kristina. Yeah. And the replication, the absolute replication of a mother's tragedy. Now, Bobbi Kristina was not doing this consciously at all. Unfortunately, either of them did not get the appropriate care.
00:27:39:14 - 00:28:06:15
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
But in this case, we have to be very conscious and aware of legacies. Our most public figures that we have as a family, where we see legacies of suicide are the Hemingways. If you look at the ways there are multi generations of Hemingways that have suicided, there's a unique sort of almost a rite of passage. There's a suicide legacy in the family.
00:28:06:15 - 00:28:38:10
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So people suicide. So but again, we can absolutely, you know, intervene with the appropriate care. This does not have to continue. Again, what I do my workshops, my intensive workshops for clients, for clients, for attendees and therapist, is that the reason we're here? We are going to break that chain and the indigenous people. Dr. Celina advised us to go back 17 rotations.
00:28:39:27 - 00:29:11:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So if I go back seven, we take 30 years as a generation in the West. So if I go back 30 years at me, if I go back seven generations is 210 years. So I actually go back one generation before the famine. So I go back seven generation and I ask then the audience and I've asked myself many times, Whose voice am I?
00:29:11:01 - 00:29:50:06
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And whose voice are you? Dr. Celina? And when we go back a long matrilineal lineage, just take the women in our law and our ancestors. I know that my female ancestors had no voice. They came from poverty. They came from probably a substance abuse and end abuse. So I am very willing to take up the mantle in a very humble way and be that voice and break the chain.
00:29:50:06 - 00:30:17:09
Dr. Selina Matthews
Awesome. Awesome. And I can honestly say to you, I'm on the same path that you are. I, you know, coming from a pathological family that I come from, my brother and I are breaking the chains that, you know, contained us and I and it's been work. It has been a struggle. And people don't understand this is a life's work.
00:30:17:09 - 00:30:31:15
Dr. Selina Matthews
It doesn't end. And two years of therapy. It is an entire life's work to actually break those chains and create a new life. Would you agree with me? Yeah.
00:30:32:19 - 00:31:05:12
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I totally agree with you. And I have three. You know, healing time is pretty complicated, too. But I have three steps that I would recommend to, you know, your audience. First, recognize that there is trauma. The adult must acknowledge this. There's certain childhood experience as a child. This happened. Be patient with yourself. Self-criticism and guilt can be very common when it comes to adults who have it lived through a traumatic childhood.
00:31:05:22 - 00:31:36:07
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
You know, we take on the blame of the shame of the perpetrator. We're children, you know, and so and reach out for help and trauma for it's not a life sentence. Uh, you know, it's, you know, we are stronger where the is at. We're stronger where in our broken places we are stronger once they're healed. And I think that is so important for, again, to heal trauma.
00:31:36:07 - 00:32:05:25
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We need to make the unconscious conscious. For those of you that are out there, that are listening, that are in recovery, the 12 step program that's all about making the unconscious conscious, because when we are in our the throes of our substance use disorders, we certainly are unconscious, but in a dysfunctional way. So in a healthy way, that's a very good program to make these programs as multiple programs to make the unconscious conscious.
00:32:05:25 - 00:32:27:21
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, Yeah, definitely It is. It is the way you live your life. It's the way I live my life. It's never ending. I want to bring up this story that I just recently found out about. Actually one of like one of my patients told me about this, and then I did some research on it about the Duchess of the Devon Shire.
00:32:28:15 - 00:33:03:06
Dr. Selina Matthews
She was an ancestor of Princess Diana's. She was in the 17 or 18th century. She married the Duke and became the Duchess and he fell in love with another woman, which is a very similar story to Princess Diana. The Duchess of Devonshire may the first her for her firstborn son. She named William Princess Diana. Firstborn son is William.
00:33:03:15 - 00:33:27:00
Dr. Selina Matthews
So in one of her interviews, she said and it was a quote, there was three of us in the marriage. And that quote came actually from the Duchess of Devon chair. And there's an incredible film on her called The Duchess. I believe it's on Amazon Prime. For those people that want to watch it, it's fast donating incredibly acted.
00:33:27:09 - 00:33:36:08
Dr. Selina Matthews
Keira Knightley, I believe is the lead actress in that really incredible So do you want to bring context to the story I just told you?
00:33:37:16 - 00:34:08:00
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Well, I think it's a great story. And again, talking about, you know, what a going back generations this I would consider a password and patterns continue. Patterns are passed on again non-verbally. And here it is because it's acted out, but it's not too destructive. You know, it's not to disrupt if somebody's married and there's three in the marriage, unfortunately, there's three and marry there's three in many marriages.
00:34:08:00 - 00:34:38:15
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I'm not judging guys. Do whatever you want. But it is an interesting story. And so that indeed is I will watch it. It's going to be a good diversion from all of our spy happy days and yes, yes, yes. If we we cos obviously she's a public figure. We're familiar with her story because you watch the movie but there are so many that Oh my God, you know, you're talking to somebody and you know how we are trained a psychologist.
00:34:38:25 - 00:35:11:20
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
If we're stuck with a client and the parents, there's no information. They try to bring in the next generation. And so is it genealogy and ancestral lineage is so informative. It is better, quite frankly, than some of our psychological tests, the raw shock and so on. And so here it is. I marvel at some of the families. If you would look back on your own family, you'll probably see that there were healers in your family because here you are as a psychologist.
00:35:11:20 - 00:35:24:02
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Here I am as a psychologist. There were healers in my family and humanitarians. And so that is an incredible public story.
00:35:24:27 - 00:35:56:04
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, it is. It is an incredible story. And I want to go into another story, and that is here in credible memoir. Oh, my God, I could not stop. It just was flying off the pages. What a beautiful beautiful memoir you've written about your life, you know, and and the transformation you have to go through because of the trauma that you had as a child.
00:35:56:22 - 00:36:07:19
Dr. Selina Matthews
So can you start with telling me how the trauma, your what your initial trauma and how it affected your life? Yeah.
00:36:08:03 - 00:36:32:06
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I want to put it and thank you. I want to put it in the context of, you know, when we experience trauma, we will also need to understand there's some good going on. But I grew up in Ireland and my father unfortunately was a periodic alcoholic. And when he would drink, he could be very abusive physically to my siblings, to my mother, to me.
00:36:32:19 - 00:36:56:25
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And so I had no frame of reference because everybody in the village were doing that. Also in the schools, we were beaten. It was totally proved in the schools in Ireland at that time. So I had actually blocked it off for many, many years. I blocked it out. It blocked out that, you know, what went on in my home was absolutely inappropriate.
00:36:57:03 - 00:37:37:02
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And that of all of us as children experience trauma because, you know, being the direct recipient of trauma is horrific, but also witnessing trauma, witnessing your sisters, young sisters being beaten is very time adequate, child, because you're helpless. And so I had done a very good job of blocking it out and going on about my life and so going on and, you know, doing very meant doing many different things in my life.
00:37:37:02 - 00:37:56:24
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I was a flight attendant. I travel all over the world. I was many different things and a crisis psychologist and so on, writing my memoir has been with me for many, many years. I've written two other books and they're available on Amazon. So if you Google my name, you will see the books, but they're all about trauma and addiction and so on.
00:37:57:06 - 00:38:20:02
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So when I would lecture on sealing ancestral trauma, the audience would ask, Do you have a book? And I said, Well, yes, I have a correlation between title and addiction. There's another one out there for children. Daddy goes to meetings. They wanted my story, not writing a my an war and abandonment War is exhausting because it's my story.
00:38:20:02 - 00:38:50:28
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
It's painful. There is a visceral response. I would go to bed exhausted. I would be in the midst of it. And there were times when I wanted to cut out some of it. But I owe it to my readers to be authentic and invite them on my journey. My journey as a trauma survivor, as somebody who has transformed and will not transmit, is a journey of hope and inspiration.
00:38:51:17 - 00:39:25:12
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I've done many things in my life, and today I must say that I'm a very contented individual. I'm congruent. What you see is what you get. You know, there's no soul self, which there was for many years, and it was a labor of love. And the of the book is Flight, which weighted wings. I spent many years in aviation, but I'm using this title as a psychological metaphor.
00:39:25:12 - 00:39:52:20
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We have weighted wings, we have trauma, we have problems, Well, we can soar. And that's why I that's, that's I had many, many working titles, but this really resonated with me. And I still I still do a lot of work with aviation personnel and, you know, really love them. And so it's very popular with them. But the book is the book actually is about my untold story.
00:39:54:02 - 00:40:17:19
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I was at the center of some of the most horrific events in our lifetime, not just my personal trauma, but as a counselor for the airlines. I respond to aviation disasters, and I also responded to the nine, 911 and the shooting up here in Vegas, which was the one of the worst. And I hope it stays the worst in the history of the United States.
00:40:18:01 - 00:40:46:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So it is indeed. And so, you know, so I, you know, honored to call you a colleague and a friend. And you walk this journey with me and it's out there first, ladies and gentlemen, when it came out in print, came out first. And Kendall, we're going to get when it came out in print, I felt like I was naked on vulnerable, you know, And then I go, No, this is what I have.
00:40:46:06 - 00:40:50:12
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I have to be transparent. I have to be real.
00:40:50:12 - 00:41:14:27
Dr. Selina Matthews
It's a beautiful book. It's exquisite, exquisitely done. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. You know, to to watch you and witness to your growth with this book. It's going to be a bestseller. That is my prediction, because it comes from your heart. So, you know, from my mouth to God's ears, it will it will do.
00:41:14:27 - 00:41:18:06
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Inquiry a lot.
00:41:18:12 - 00:41:32:03
Dr. Selina Matthews
Your how old were you? How old were you when you became conscious that you had dysfunctional patterns?
00:41:32:03 - 00:41:33:09
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Who knew? That's such a great point.
00:41:33:27 - 00:41:39:16
Dr. Selina Matthews
About figuring it out because you're we live unconsciously until something, you know, wakes.
00:41:39:16 - 00:42:05:11
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Us up. I was in my late twenties. In my early twenties, I started flying for Panama Rican, very glamorous all over the world and living a very glamorous life. And it was the seventies, you know, And I was living in New York City, you know, what do they call it? Sex, rock and roll and something else. Whatever the something else was, I don't know, ladies and gentlemen.
00:42:05:11 - 00:42:06:08
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So it might.
00:42:06:09 - 00:42:07:26
Dr. Selina Matthews
Have been rock and roll or.
00:42:09:00 - 00:42:10:26
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Like sex. What drugs of sex?
00:42:11:06 - 00:42:16:03
Dr. Selina Matthews
Sex, drugs, drugs, drugs, night love, sex, drugs and rock and roll.
00:42:17:10 - 00:42:44:05
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Oh, well, I had two out of the three, and you're going to have to guess which they were. I'm not telling you. But anyway, I was living. I was living a life that was not congruent to my moral compass. And I realized in my late twenties, which was very difficult to realize because I was a periodic drinker, just like my father, that I had a drinking problem.
00:42:44:05 - 00:43:17:12
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So I, of course, was not conscious of my trauma because I anesthetize. So it would boyfriends traveling and alcohol. So I got sober and then I began my journey of healing the long, arduous journey. And as I the more the the longer I began and my own healing and which psychotherapy my program of recovery, then I realized my childhood was I'm not blaming my childhood for my addiction.
00:43:17:12 - 00:43:44:08
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
There's many people that have wonderful childhoods. They still end up, you know, with substance abuse disorder because of peer pressure and whatever. And so my journey began and I was in therapy and I've been in therapy in and out of therapy for years. And, you know, so it's been a hard journey, a lovely journey, a journey that I would never, ever have any other way.
00:43:45:00 - 00:44:07:27
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And what's so beautiful is when people come to my practice, I most of the time I've kind of been there and I look at, you know, the archetype of the wounded healer. We are wounded healers, all of us. And that's a beautiful archetype. As long as we keep as long as we do our healing and the journey continues, the journey continues.
00:44:07:27 - 00:44:08:26
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
It's never finished.
00:44:09:12 - 00:44:11:03
Dr. Selina Matthews
No ear. I have more.
00:44:11:03 - 00:44:13:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Books to write and you know.
00:44:13:28 - 00:44:29:12
Dr. Selina Matthews
So yeah, course you do. And we need to hear them. I want to ask you, was there a neurological component to your your childhood trauma that you could feel, you know, in your adult world?
00:44:31:13 - 00:45:03:02
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Yes. And, you know, if you look at the studies and the fallout of, you know, adverse childhood experiences, I was a classic. I had low self-esteem, even though you'd had to be pretty sophisticated to, you know, see that because I put on a wonderful public persona and, hey, I look pretty good in uniform. So, you know, and low self-esteem, substance abuse, depression and fortunately, I got help for that.
00:45:03:17 - 00:45:21:14
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And I did not have an eating disorder where a lot of my fellow flight attendants did back in the seventies. But they were primarily the the low self-esteem, the depression of substance abuse. And quite frankly, that's enough. That isn't enough.
00:45:21:14 - 00:45:41:01
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you see transgenerational patterns in in your family? You talked about the the alcoholism. Are there other transgenerational patterns that came through the Irish lineages on both sides.
00:45:41:01 - 00:46:08:23
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Yeah. I think yeah. I think that there's some depression and some aspects of the family, some members of the family not aspect, some members of the family and the alcoholism unfortunately has gone on to the next generation. And now, of course, because for the younger population, there's very, very dangerous drugs out there. Now, if I stayed out there, I'd probably have been involved in that too.
00:46:09:02 - 00:46:40:04
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So I want to, you know, just offer a word of caution for all of the young people that are listening to this. Be very, very careful. So I see my them like my grand nieces and nephews. Not that there's so much, but yes, we do have the substance abuse in our family. And when we put the whole thing in context and I look at the other aspect of my family, they abuse one hearts and souls and they're humanitarians.
00:46:40:16 - 00:47:07:29
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And when I we come together for family reunions, I you know, at my age and my generation, I like to use the expression we have an aerial view, you know, because we see all the generations there's forgery shows that show up. And by family reunions, they don't know me, but I know them. So I have an aerial view and I see them coming with their hearts and their strengths.
00:47:08:15 - 00:47:36:16
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And I just love each and every one of them. And they remind me of me when I was younger, you know, And so I guess getting to this stage in life is a wonderful because we've all gone through painful path and so kind of been, you know, silver where we now I really am okay, which is kind of like, where are we now?
00:47:36:16 - 00:48:10:19
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We often ask, Be wary of now I'm at a stage of what I could call grace, and it's what I've learned along the way is humility. It humility to me, spirituality, it's a conscious contact with whomever is higher than me, and I choose to call that God. And so having a conscious contact with the God of my understanding, having humility while I was in my woundedness, I had humiliation.
00:48:10:19 - 00:48:21:27
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
There's a huge difference. So we move from woundedness to wisdom.
00:48:21:27 - 00:48:56:26
Dr. Selina Matthews
That's beautiful. So, Hannah, from woundedness to wisdom, now I'm going to ask you for your wisdom here. You, you know, have worked a lot with addiction and you were the former vice president at Betty Ford and you were there a long time. Do you think addiction has or you know, childhood trauma is connected to addiction? And what what kind of percentages do you think?
00:48:56:26 - 00:49:23:28
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I get asked that question a lot because many people know that I worked for the Betty Ford Center. I'm kind of an expert in addiction. And so the answer actually is no. Everybody that has experienced childhood trauma, they do not end up with a substance abuse disorder. And likewise, everybody with a substance disorder, substance use disorder has not had prior childhood trauma.
00:49:24:05 - 00:49:51:14
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
However, there is a high correlation and the correlation is about 75%. I'm not quite sure on the percentage, but it's high. And now some professionals in the field out there are putting a blanket number or saying everybody that has a substance abuse disorder has had childhood trauma. Now, that is not been my experience and I have worked in the field for over 30 years.
00:49:52:06 - 00:50:17:16
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And so, yes, we need to be cognizant of the fact that there's a very high correlation, but we cannot say that's been reductive, saying everybody that isn't has a substance abuse disorder, had a childhood adverse childhood experience. No, that's not accurate. Now, Oh, let's talk about peer pressure for your young audience.
00:50:18:00 - 00:50:18:12
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yes.
00:50:20:01 - 00:50:43:05
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
You're a psychologist up there in Beverly Hills, The young audience there, it doesn't change. There's pressure on all of us when we're young to measure up, to do this and to do that. We're easily influenced. We know today that there have been many young, beautiful lights taken out because of fentanyl. Yes. These were not substance abusers. It was, Hey, take this.
00:50:43:05 - 00:51:14:26
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
You're tired. Take this. They took it and that was the end of their life. So I know it's it's very tempting. All I'm asking you is to please be careful. Please be careful. And it is all over the country, frankly, all over the world. And, you know, when I was out there, it was booze. Booze is very dangerous, but it is not as little as what's around today.
00:51:15:09 - 00:51:26:15
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Methamphetamine, methamphetamine, Pentagon, Fentanyl is is an amazing drug for people that are that need it post up and so on. Yeah.
00:51:28:04 - 00:51:53:26
Dr. Selina Matthews
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's kind of out of control in our country right now. Fentanyl. I want to move on to you know we talked a little bit about how important it is to make the unconscious conscious and you know, a lot of people don't want to do the work. How do you inspire people to actually do the work?
00:51:53:26 - 00:52:18:22
Dr. Selina Matthews
Because, you know, a lot of people, you know, they're intelligent or they have a good profession and they just kind of pooh pooh, you know, looking at themselves in the mirror and looking with depth and they can't read a book. What how do you inspire people to make change in their life?
00:52:18:22 - 00:52:48:12
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
That is such a so an excellent question. It's such a complicated question. Uh, pain, psychic pain, emotional pain is a wonderful motivator. And so when the individual is continued to come into my practice and they are doing the same thing over and over again, causing the same pain, I will reframe it and really ask them to look at it.
00:52:48:24 - 00:53:19:22
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I am kind, but I'm also firm and I want them to look at the self-sabotaging behavior and look at who you are attracting into your life. You know, in today's day, we're all looking for somebody. You know, they're looking for. I did a podcast a few weeks ago for is called On Brand Women, and we're all looking for and particularly young women and women, we're looking for the knight in the shining armor.
00:53:20:29 - 00:53:52:01
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
But I can assure you, ladies, look into the mirror. That's your knight and shining armor you are. And you need to become your knight in shining armor. And then you will attract your equal. You know how we talk about attracting people that are as individuated as you, as sophisticated psychologically as you Now, Selina, you and I are both a union oriented psychologist in many ways.
00:53:52:24 - 00:54:16:23
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And Carl Jung said that, you know, we're so externally focused up until the age of 40, and that is afterwards we become internally focused. I think that was appropriate for then and that age and that time. But I believe our young folks today are far more advanced than we were. They have all that information out there. They are so much more sophisticated in so many ways.
00:54:16:23 - 00:54:45:24
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I love working with young people. They don't have the years of experience. And so but they are more sophisticated psychologically when they come into treatment. They have all of the vocabulary is so on. So motivating them is really wishing them the gift of suffering. That is what I can wish you, wishing you the gift of suffering. But I will walk with you.
00:54:47:02 - 00:55:10:26
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
I will not suffer for you. I will suffer with you and I will walk with you and witness you. And that's so beautiful to me. When you see these young people today that I had a conversation with a 25 year old the other day, it's like I'm talking to somebody in their 70. She is sophisticated, psychologically sophisticated, and with a lot of depth.
00:55:11:21 - 00:55:44:18
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
So forget age. Like, you know, I talked to the other day to somebody, I said, what is what is being conscious? And this person said, having a conscious contact with somebody higher than you. And that does not have an age on it. And so that's so Bill falls. I kind of rambled, I'm sure, but it's yeah, I know for me, the only thing that made me change was psychic suffering.
00:55:44:18 - 00:55:57:00
Dr. Selina Matthews
Okay, so I'm going to ask you your last question. What is the most important thing that you learned to on your life journey?
00:55:57:00 - 00:56:17:06
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
It's a beautiful question, which I'm going to answer it this way today. You know, when you when you interview me again, I hope I will have something maybe different. I look back at my what my life and I've been able to accomplish many things. Uh, I'm quite well respected in my work. I'm a keynote speaker at many conferences.
00:56:17:06 - 00:56:48:18
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
And, you know, you and I have both advanced degrees and we've been quite successful professionally. And so the most important thing that I have learned, certainly I've done the work and I'm glad I was allowed to accomplish these things. But I'm going to go back to humility. That's the most important thing that I have learned is humility. And to me, all human beings are important.
00:56:49:08 - 00:57:24:02
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
All human beings are souls. And I can see the whole rose person, which I did actually last week when I was in Calgary and freezing in the cold and, you know, connect with them, connect on a soul level with them. So if we continue to be humble and we are all connected and I heard this expression from somebody and I don't know who it was, you know, on this journey of life, we're all walking ourselves home.
00:57:24:02 - 00:57:32:03
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
We're all walking each other home to wherever home is. That's wow.
00:57:32:04 - 00:57:54:25
Dr. Selina Matthews
That was incredible. And on that note, I want to say, Dr. Johanna, you are amazing. I this was an amazing podcast. Thank you so very, very much for participating and putting on the work you did in the I so appreciate you and thank you so very, very much.
00:57:55:02 - 00:58:04:28
Dr. Johanna O'Flaherty
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Dr. Selina.