- So I always treat what lies beneath.
Because when you do that,
you fix someone forever.
Forgive yourself.
Fall in love with yourself.
Don't think, "Well, when I have love, I'll be happy."
And then, "Well, I need a baby now, I need something else."
And so many addictions, in fact, almost all of them, are run
by, "I'm not enough."
- Talk to me about RTT®,
and break that down for me,
and how people can use it for themselves.
- Yeah, so, when I became a therapist,
I've always challenged other people's beliefs.
And I just didn't understand how therapy should be so long.
I looked at other treatments
and thought, "No one says to the dentist,
"'Hey, my tooth aches, can I discuss it for a year?'
"'I seem to have cracked my knee, I'm in terrible pain.
"'Could I come and discuss that for a whole year?'"
So I always wanted to find a technique
which could dismantle pain,
not just physical pain, the emotional pain,
because that's pain too, the mental pain,
the pain of having something like
anxiety or panic attacks or depression.
And I realized that I could do that very fast
if I treat what lies beneath.
And therapy isn't wrong,
but I looked at it and thought,
"How could I simplify this?"
Because what people want is to get out of pain fast.
So I thought, "How could I get people out of pain fast?
"But it also has to be permanent." And I tell all my grads,
"There's only three things wrong with everyone in the world."
I mean, once you've,
you're not going through hunger and poverty in a modern
place, like America, like England, like France, like Sweden,
when you're not starving and you have shelter,
there's only three things wrong with anyone,
including you and me.
The first one is, "I'm not enough.
"And if I'm not enough, I can't get enough.
"I need more praise, more something."
And so many addictions, in fact, almost all of them, are run
by, "I'm not enough."
The second thing wrong with people is, "I'm different
"so I can't connect." See, when we lived in a tribe,
we never felt different. So, "Oh, that's my great aunt,
"that's my cousin. We look the same."
We didn't have that difference.
But we've also known that the runt to the litter or the
albino always suffered because they were different.
And now we live in multicultural worlds,
it's very easy to think, "I feel different.
"I'm not the same."
But the truth is, if your greatest fear is to be different,
and that's everyone's greatest fear,
what does that mean? It means you're the same.
You're the same as everyone.
And so many children need to be told, "You are the same.
"You're unique, but you're the same as...
"Nobody is better than you.
"You're the same."
And then the third thing is a very interesting one,
which is, "I want something and I'm going to pursue it.
"But I know it's not available to me. I want love,
"but my dad left before I was born, so I'm unlovable.
"I want health but my whole family
"have got the depressed gene or the alcoholic gene.
"I want money, but I never went to college
"and no one in my family has money,
"my dad's gone bankrupt three times."
So this, it's like running with someone
holding a big elastic band around you.
"It's not available."
And so when you can fix those three things,
you are the same and therefore you can connect,
you are enough,
and what you want wants you and is available to you, you actually
fix every single problem people have.
Everything is fixed by identifying
and fixing those three things.
And that's one of the cores of RTT® is that,
let's shortcut,
let's fix what lies beneath, its only those three things.
Let's give you the power to feel good about yourself,
to think about, "What do you need to hear?"
Well, put those words into yourself. Forgive yourself.
Fall in love with yourself. Don't think, "Well,
"when I have love, I'll be happy.
And then, "Well, I need a baby now,
"I need something else."
Because our potential expands as we move towards it.
So nobody can know what their potential is,
but you have to keep going into expansion yourself.
And when you move your mind to new dimensions,
it never moves back.
But it goes back again, you have to do it yourself.
You can't give someone else the agency
to make you feel good about you.
- I love that.
Where does role, function, and purpose fit into RTT®?
How do you, how can we use that?
- Role, function, purpose is actually,
even with tiny children,
it's really talking about, "What is the role of this illness?
"You've had it for years,
"it doesn't appear to want to go away, it keeps coming back.
"Obviously, there's some reason why it's there."
"Every time I had to go to my dad's for the weekend,
"I didn't like him. I got these terrible migraines
"until I couldn't go."
"My parents expected me to be so good at exams,
"and then I got these terrible panic attacks,
"and I couldn't go to school anymore,
"no one expected me to pass the exam."
So now we're beginning to see,
they're beginning to see,
that their issue had a role and a function
and an intention, it had a job.
You go, "Okay, so, yeah..." So we had a girl
who had such bad migraines
that began when her father began to tell her
her job was to take over the family law firm.
She said, "I don't want to be a lawyer."
"Well, you must be, I paid for your education,
"you're my only child. If I had a son, he would have done it."
"Oh, now I've got to be a lawyer."
But when she started to get chronic migraines, he said,
"Well, you'd be lucky if you'd be a waitress,
"you couldn't possibly be a lawyer."
It's like, "Oh, I've got out of that."
And even tiny children,
I worked with this little boy
who had contact dermatitis everywhere.
"Well, every night I stand like that,
"and Mommy puts bandages, cream and wet bandages on my body.
"And while she's putting them on,
"it takes so long, she doesn't put any cream on that baby."
So now you unpick that,
he doesn't want her to put cream on the baby,
he wants her to put cream on him.
It doesn't take a genius to work out
that at some stage, he said, "Mommy, can I have a massage?"
"No, it's just for the baby."
"Mommy can you put cream on me?"
"No, you're grown up." And he thought a thought,
"I want Mommy to put cream on me."
And here's the thing, your mind is the genie.
Your wish is it's command.
"I want Mommy to put cream on me."
Then the genie's like, "I'll do that.
"Now you've got dermatitis,
"Mommy's putting lots of cream on you."
Maybe you've got psoriasis, and the genie doesn't think,
"Shall I find a good way, a logical way?"
It just finds a way.
Then you just have to talk to the genie better.
And it will find a better way.
- Yeah. God, I love the way you think.
I love the way you break it down.
In just me researching you, this is the second time
that we've done an interview together,
well, third time really because you interviewed me.
- Yeah, I did.
- And in diving deep into you this time,
as I was listening to you talking
about these different things,
I had a realization, I'm like, "I've been in this space for years,"
and I only had the realization
because of you breaking it down like that,
I started to really think about myself,
and I was just reflecting, "Okay, what does this mean?"
I used to get bullied for my looks
when I was a teenager.
And so, I've definitely attached worthiness to looks.
But it never occurred to me, until I was hearing you talk
about really young kids, when I was really young,
I was so fricking cute.
And I got, and people used to say,
"You'd get away with murder".
- Yeah.
- You want to talk about words? Growing up, literally,
from the age of, like, three
to the age, like, probably six,
I was told every day, "You're so cute. You're going to get away
"with murder. You're so cheeky." I could do naughty things
and my mom, "Oh, she's so cheeky."
And then, at the age of six, I started to change,
I then hit puberty, I started getting the frizzy hair,
I started getting the mustache,
I started getting the unibrow.
And everything went away.
And not only was I not getting any attention,
I was getting the opposite.
- Yeah.
- And so, as I was hearing you talking
and breaking things down from how things go from
even just, like, a real young child
to your teenage years to your adult years,
I've carried that with me
in the attachment of, "Your looks would then
"equate to worth.
"And if you don't have the looks,
"then you're not worthy." And it wasn't until the last,
you know, let's say five years
that I've done my own mental work
and everything you're saying to change that.
But it never dawned on me
that I had the two flips,
from the kid to the teenage years.
- Yeah. You've got to very careful what you say around children.
It's like people say, "You're so lovely, I could eat you."
What a weird thing for a parent to say.
"Oh, yeah, your kid is great." "Yeah, come at two o'clock in the morning,
"you can have him." You know, we say really strange things
in front of our kids. And it really freaks them out.
Then just, "I nearly died having you. It killed me."
You've got to be so careful because so many of us
don't understand that before five there's no logic,
just feeling. A child doesn't have logic.
So when Dad says, "Well, I'm leaving, I still love you
"but I'm leaving Mommy," they hear, "I don't love you."
You've got to be so careful. They are so easily rejected.
"Why can't you draw inside the lines like your brother."
"Your sister didn't get food all over the floor."
And then you get teachers going,
"Oh, I had your sister; the brains ran out
"when they got to you."
And children hear so many wounding things,
we, you know, we can't make it perfect,
but you have to, as a parent, say,
"Look, you're special just the way you are.
"You don't have to be good at maths,
"don't compare yourself to other people, just be you."
- And as an adult then, you think it important
to go that far back? To the five-year-old self?
Because I hear a lot now people talking
about the "inner child."
- Oh, yeah, beyond that
you can go back to, you know, I've worked
with so many people with unexplained infertility.
Which is a fascinating label
because it means it's unexplainable.
"Your ovaries are great.
"Your husband's sperm is military-grade sperm.
"Swims straight, there's tons of it.
"So, your infertility is unexplained."
But then people would come in
and we'd always go back to the genie and the wish.
And they'd often says things like,
"Yeah, it's so bizarre. I can remember my mother
"carrying me on her hip and saying, 'Oh, it was awful,
"'I nearly died. I bled for three days. It was a nightmare, never again.'
"Or my mother would say later, 'Oh, yes, Lena,'
"'that, 'You ruined my body. I was in agony after I had you.
"'I cried for 5 day, I got postnatal depression.'"
And a child thinks, "I don't want to go through that."
And so many times when we're babies, we're sponges.
Babies pick up everything. They're pure sensation.
They pick up the tone of your voice.
They pick up the look on your face.
And I was doing a group session once,
and this very successful city girl
started to sob and sob and sob.
And she said, "Every time my dad changed my diaper,
"he'd make a face. He'd go, 'Oh, this is disgusting,'
"and I really felt he didn't love me.
"I always felt disconnected."
I just worked with somebody recently for my book
who said that when her mother, her mom was pregnant
with the second baby, her father put a gate up
so she couldn't get out of her bedroom
and come get into bed with her mother, which she always did.
And he said, "No, you can't go in Mommy's arms."
He thought she would dislodge the new baby.
And he was very concerned
that she must get used to not being in Mom's arms.
And then, suddenly, the new baby's come
and she's behind this stair gate,
she can't get in, and she said, "I've always felt this
"anger towards my dad and I never knew why.
"He's a lovely guy, but I've been so angry with him.
"I started to really act out as a teenager to punish him.
"And I never knew it was because when I was two,
"I couldn't express the rage. I just knew it was his fault.
"He got between me and my mom and I internalized it."
It's really interesting how you can really go back
to being tiny, which shouldn't be surprising,
because before five, you are pure feeling.
All you can do is feel. "Don't feel that. Don't get angry.
"Don't cry. I'll smack you if you cry.
"I'll punish you if your angry."
Then we think, "Oh, what can I do with these feelings?"
So we just have to internalize them.
- That's so fascinating. Especially because we started
talking about the feelings that come from the words
that you use in your head.
But thinking about being a kid
and not even having words to use,
so your feelings are being attached
to words other people are saying.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Oh, honestly,
I'd be petrified to have children.
Like, like, "Oh my God, using this word's going to mess them up."
Obviously, that's not a reason to not have kids, but...
- All you have to do with kids is own it
and go, "Darling, I messed up today."
They know life isn't perfect. It's not about that.
It's about you owning your mistakes and saying,
"You know, you're allowed to make a mess.
"You're allowed to break stuff. You're allowed to be
"age-appropriate." You know, you're running the park, I shout, "Stop,"
you wouldn't expect your puppy to stop until the third time.
And so why would you expect your kid to stop?
They do age-appropriate things. They get food on the floor.
They mess up. And it's really about forgiving them,
forgiving yourself. But always saying, "That was my fault.
"I messed up today. You deserve better."
And then they are completely okay.
- Because you're teaching them that it's okay to mess up.
- Yeah, it's okay. They can mess up, which then means
that you can mess up.