Mm-hmm (affirmative). Even more so.

Transcription

1 This is Annie Grace, and you're listening to This Naked Mind podcast, where without judgment, pain or rules, we explore the role of alcohol in our lives and culture. All right. This is Annie Grace, and welcome to This Naked Mind podcast. Today's guest, I always say that I'm really excited, but that would be a massive understatement, so I'm here with Steve Ozanich. Welcome, Steve. Thank you. And Steve, I would say, has as much credit and responsibility for This Naked Mind being written and being born as anybody else, because what happened was, in my story, I was suffering from really bad back pain. I read Dr. Sarno's book, "Healing Back Pain," and I really realized the connection between the unconscious mind, and the pain that I was feeling. Also realized, the entire principle and foundation of everything that my work is built on, was that basically, I identified this issue where my conscious mind wanted to stop drinking, or to drink much less, and my unconscious mind simply hadn't got the memo, so it was creating this huge inner conflict. I reached out to Dr. Sarno, and actually was put in touch with Steve, and Steve was kind enough to take about three hours, I think, of a Skype call with me, and I remember Steve, you looked me in the eye and you said, "Yes. This. All of Dr. Sarno's work, all of these theories, all of the books that I've written, can absolutely work for alcohol addiction." It was kind of in that moment that I was like, "Oh, okay. I'm going to do this." So, anyway, first of all, thank you. Thank you for everything, just publicly, thank you. That's really nice. It was nice to hear and you've done so much since we talked. I remember it was a few years ago, and you're changing lives and that's everything. It gives us a much more meaningful life, and of course, like you said, Dr. Sarno started it off; he saved my life. I wrote books that saved lives and now you're out there writing books saving lives. It's just like a domino effect. So, it's really nice to hear that. Thank you for the kind words. People need to understand that are watching this, this thing, TMS that we're going to talk about, that Dr. Sarno discovered, the mind-body syndrome, it's equivalent to addiction. It the same, there's no difference between... When you see the bigger picture. Maybe some people won't see it yet, but those of us that have been through the belly of the whale, been spit out on the other side, you can see it; pain and disease and addiction and obsession. They're all the same thing. They're coping mechanisms for deep emotional pain. Yep, absolutely. So, Steve. I think that your work is so important and I'd love for you to just... People don't know much about TMS at all, and so I'd love for you to just kind of start with your story, like even your personal story of how it kind of did save your life, and then how you got into the work you did, and just give us an education.

2 Sure. Okay, let me take a deep breath and sit back for a second. I was in severe pain for 30 years. Of course, I was told the same old things, "Oh, you've got a bad hip and back, and herniated disks, and narrowing and osteoarthritis, and you're too weak," and all of these nonsensical terminologies, okay? I was actually almost dead in the late 1990s. My left leg was paralyzed; I had to drag it around the house for nine months with no reflexes, no muscle strength, anything. I was weeks away from surgery and I ran across Dr. John Sarno's work. It was really through serendipity; a friend of mine just brought it up and said, "You know, this article reminded me of you." And I read it, on healing back pain, his seminal book. I read it, and wow, it just blew my mind away. Of course, I didn't believe it at first, like most people do not believe it at first. A lot of people listening to us right now will not believe it at first. So, I read it, didn't believe it, got worse, and went back to it, and I looked at it with an open mind and an open heart, and it transformed my life forever. Now, I teach his work around the world, and so that work is something called TMS. That's what he labeled it as. It was called the mind-body syndrome, was what it's morphed into, but it started off with different meanings early on. For the purposes here, it's called the mind-body syndrome. In other words, what this great doctor discovered, was that all of these things that they're labeling as body problems and these diseases and pains, were actually coming from mind. They're unconscious effects of unexpressed resentment and fear and anger, and all these powerful emotional processes that we are completely unaware of. We don't even know they're existing because they're unconscious. Like you just mentioned that word, they're unconscious. A lot of people say, "I don't believe that. I feel my anger, I feel this and that." Well, it's what you can't feel, that's the problem. What Carl Jung called the shadow; the shadow side of us, the dark, hidden side of us. You are not aware of it because you've disowned it from your conscious awareness. You're not aware of it. You can look all you want, you won't find it. So, it's there. He made this nexus; this modern doctor, between what's happening in our physical body that we're calling ulcers and skin problems and back pain and rotator cuff tears, and meniscal tears; all of these terms. It is not coming from there. The brain is actually just using those changes in the body to make you think that that's the cause of it, but it's really an emotional process. So, at the moment he died, six months ago or so, 80 percent of the people still don't believe it. They don't believe it. Which is why we have rampant back pain problems and knee pain problems and shoulder problems and ankle and hand pain problems, because they don't believe it, but it's still true. And the same thing with alcoholism and drug addiction and things like that, these are coping mechanisms. So, often times... A typical example of somebody I work with, they'll say, "I had a stomach pain that doubled me over for seven years." I say, "Okay." I'll start working with them and they'll tell me, "I was once a raging alcoholic." And I'll say, "Okay. Now let me tell you when your stomach pain began; when you stopped drinking." And they said, "Within 24 hours." That's what he discovered was the symptom imperative. You're obsessing and obsessing on one thing, and when you stop it, if

3 you still have fear in you, you need to obsess somewhere else, it'll just shift forms. You didn't solve it, it's just running around in the body from back pain to neck pain. So, it's very common, when I'm working with people, to find out they did drink at one point, and then when they stop, they developed a pain syndrome, or vice versa. Vice versa, and it's just switching forms. It's this deep need to feel connected and loved, and to know that you're okay. That's the ultimate game that we need to get to, but when we don't get that, we don't feel loved or connected, we feel alone and isolated, we try to cope and we do that through drinking, drug addiction, or giving yourself severe pain syndromes. After I found his work, I healed, I've been free of health problems for 18 years now, and been helping people, and very happy to bring this message to anybody that wants to hear it. If we only help one person here today, we did good. Yeah, absolutely. My story was very similar. I had just debilitating back pain for three or four years, and it was after the birth of my second son, when my life just got completely insane. One of the ways that I liked to express this, from my knowledge from Dr. Sarno's work, and I've read your book and your work, was that if you have a crying baby who is not sleeping at night, and you're totally exhausted and you're miserable, you of course feel anger and resentment and even hatred toward that baby. But guess what? Your mind is not going to allow you to express those feelings. Why? Because you have a vision of yourself, you have a perception of yourself, that "I, Annie, am a nice person. I'm a good mom. I don't hate this tiny baby." So, your mind actually puts up a blocker, and it distracts you from those feelings, that shadow, those more abhorrent feelings, and it says, "Okay. Deflect, deflect." And in my case, it was manifesting it in very, very severe pain to where I couldn't even pick up my kids, and I tried everything. I tried traction, I tried muscle relaxants, acupuncture, chiropractic. I probably spent between 10 and 20 thousand dollars out of my own pocket, in addition to the health insurance that I had at the time, trying to fix this. I was so desperate, and again, serendipity, just like you say, Steve, where my dad was riding up a chair lift with a guy and he said, "Oh, that's really interesting. She should try Dr. Sarno's book." So, my dad bought me this book, and in the first intro, he's like, "Look, this is the premise. We've just given all of you the premise. The premise is that you're deflecting pain from some unrepressed feelings, some unmet need, and it's manifesting in your body." And you can say, "Okay, maybe, but I'm really skeptical, that sounds like a bunch of woo woo, that sounds fluffy, I don't think I really believe that," but he goes, "Just read the book. Just read the book, because I'm not trying to convince your conscious mind. I don't actually care if you consciously believe this is true or not. I need to convince your unconscious mind. I need to bring that pain out into your unconscious mind, so you can process and deal with." I read the book and I put down that book and I picked up my kid, and it was like... I mean, I still get teary thinking about it because it was one of... There's never been a moment in my life when I was so aware of the power of my mind and so aware of

4 the power of my body, and so feeling that connection in such a profound way. And I remember I was drinking so much at the time, and it was just like, I remember our first conversation, I said, "Steve, could this work? Is it the same thing? Is it that unconsciously I have this lifetime of conditioning around alcohol, I have all these beliefs that I don't even... I don't want to drink anymore. I'm drinking so much I don't even feel it. I'm not even getting drunk, there's no pleasure here for me. I just feel hungover, yet, why do I want to do it anyway? Could it be this unconscious conditioning, these things that I'm not aware of, these beliefs that I've formed?" And you said, "Absolutely." And you said, "Annie, you're going change the world." And I just remember that so vividly, and it was just so inspiring to talk to you and yeah, it was amazing. You bring up a great topic that is very important, by the way, that I don't talk about very much, is this desire to be good. You said, "I want to be a good mother." Dr. Sarno was so prophetic in so many things that he said, and he said, "After doing this work for 50 years, I've come to the conclusion that these people are all suffering because they're good people." I could write books on that, and that was so, so insightful. And it's so true that we want to be good people, but the demands that are made upon us really enrage us. We don't know it, because we're still trying to be good people. We want to be good people, and so we just keep repressing it and repressing it until it overflows. In between that conflict... Remember, his fourth book was called "The Divided Mind." It's divided between conscious and unconscious, but it's also divided between how we're acting to the world, but how we feel inside. That's the real conflict that I see. We're trying to please people, we're trying to do our jobs, we're trying to do our duties, but inside, we don't want to do that. We really want to be free, we want to be ourselves. So, we're conflicted. We're dualistic creatures by nature, and so he comes along and he shows the world there's nothing wrong with your body. It's just a coping mechanism. You're still good people. And he kind of frees us from our own guilt. So, in between that conflict, what happens? We have to cope, somehow. Gabor Mate says, it's not a choice; addiction. We're drawn into it to survive. And he's doing the work like you're doing. He's going around telling people, the childhood starts this in motion. We don't make a good attunement connection and we feel like we're kind of going alone. I've been doing this work decades now, two decades, and it's all loneliness. That's what it's about. That's the heart of it. You can have people around you and still be lonely. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Even more so. You can say, "Oh, I'm happy." Yeah, that's right. I work with some famous professional athletes and actors, and they're lonely. They have millions of followers, it doesn't mean anything. People say, "Oh, I'm not lonely, I've got five people in my family." That doesn't mean anything. It's how you feel; your personal... Through the eyes of the child in you. That's the most frightening feeling, is nothingness, darkness, not being attached, not loved. It's the opposite of love. So,

5 when we don't feel that, and of course, it's love for yourself, that's the problem. I hate myself. Louise Hay, she was an American icon. Louise Hay, and she died a few months ago at 90 years old. She said, "Of everyone I've ever worked with, there was always this level of self-hatred in themselves. And that's exactly what I had in myself, that's exactly what I see in the people that I work with. I don't like this other side of me, I want to be this false image that I have presented to the world. That's who I want to be. But I'm not that person; I have flaws and I have faults and I'm not as strong as I'm pretending to be to the world." We can't see ourselves that way, right? So, we have to destroy that image. It's really amazing, and so alcoholism and drug addiction, they're numbing agents. Destroy those feelings of rage. Once again, people will say, "Well, I don't feel that." Well, you're not going to feel it; it's unconscious. Right. It's unconscious. If you're drinking too much and you're doing drugs and you have severe disease or pain syndrome, you are not being true to yourself. You've got to take a deeper look, there's something going on within the unconscious mind, which is the shadow. Carl Jung made that great statement, "There is another, within us, whom we do not know." That changed my life and that's a very powerful statement. So, it switches back and forth between drinking... People drink heavy to kill physical pain sometimes, but what they're really doing is killing the emotional pain. They're numbing it, which eases the physical pain. And then, vice versa, I work with a lot of people where it switches back and forth and Deepak Chopra said, it all comes down to a spiritual yearning. There's something we're seeing deep within us, and I think that's love. It's love. Yeah, Johann Hari, he did a bunch of studies, and he came up with a theory that the opposite of addiction is connection. Actually, they weren't his studies, he reported on his studies, but basically, there was this one study where they had mice, and they put mice into an empty cage by themselves, alone, and they give them heroin laced water and normal water side by side. Very, very quickly, the mice became addicted, chronically addicted, overdosed, and even died. Then, they put the same mice, same time period, into another cage where they weren't alone, they weren't solitary, they had other mice with them and they had activities, games, mice, they called it "rat park," and again, the heroin laced water and the normal water, and the mice tried it, but then left it alone. They didn't take the heroin. Yeah. They did the same thing with feral monkeys decades ago. They're not allowed to do it anymore because of ethical concerns, but they would starve them and starve them, food and water, and then they would put it back into a cage with a figure, a furry figure like a mother, looked like a mother, and it would look at the food and water and would go over and lean against the mother, because our deepest need is to be connected, is to be loved. But then Eckhart Tolle, he's right too, our biggest addiction in the world, he says, thinking. That's what I see in my work. Thinking. People don't even know they're addicted to it. Their minds are

6 racing and racing and racing, like hamsters on a wheel. What happened in the past? This person did this to me, and I did to that person. What do I gotta do in the future? That causes all the stress, and the anxiety that gets transduced into tension within the body, causes so many diseases. Thinking; they don't even know it 'cause it's free. And that's one of the most... I mean, alcohol literally slows down how fast your neurons synapse. So, it slows down your thoughts, so, so many people drink to slow their thinking and there are just some amazing facts about this. I think it's 80 plus percent of our thoughts are the same from the day before, and an even higher percentage are negative. So, one of the most profound things I did in my life since this, is I just... I don't remember where I heard this, it must have been in some book I was reading or something, but it was like, "Just stop for a minute. Every time you start to feel uneasy, anxious, stop for a minute, rewind your thoughts, and listen to what you just said to yourself, and write it down, and then ask yourself if you would say that to a child or to your mother, or even to a stranger." It was so eye opening to me, that I was just... I was a serious bitch up in here. I was so mean to myself, and when I just started doing that, becoming really conscious, and instead of we feel tension, we feel upset, and then we just keep going or we reach for something, when you've decided, "Okay, I'm not going to reach for something anymore. I'm going to sit in this," then you have to figure it out. So, that process of figuring it out, writing it down, and saying, "Okay. What did I just say to myself, and was it kind or was it mean?" Where was it on that scale? You bring up a really great point, because think about this; that people often contact me, "You're right, Steve. I can't stop my thinking process. It's the thing that's causing all my health problems. I can't stop my mind racing." It's not really the thinking process that you're wanting to stop, because what if those thoughts were all good thoughts? Let's just say they were all thoughts of love and happiness and joy. The only reason you want to slow it down is because they're not good thoughts, like you just brought up. They're negative. Usually, I'm surprised it's that low, the percentage. I would have figured it was 99.9 percent negative. But, if they were good thoughts, we wouldn't care. But it's this... Well, and to Dr. Sarno's credit, he was the one that identified the personality type in his office. He observed them, he was a great observer. He said "I always want to be remembered as a great observer of people," and he will be. He will be, you know, forever, but think about this. They push themselves very hard to be good, to be not only good, but perfect. You can never match that image of yourself, and so there's nonstop guilt and shame all day long, and so what do we do? We go around thinking "I'm not good enough," and this is what Gabor Mate does a great job too. He noticed it in his patients; the drinking, the drug addiction. The term he used was, they felt insufficient as human beings. I'm not living up to the standard that I set for myself and my life, and you can't. Who can be perfect? You can't do it. So, you never, ever reach that bar that you set for yourself, and so you feel guilt and shame all day long.

7 When you feel that way, you start badgering yourself. "I'm not thin enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good looking enough." But that's also learned behavior. Within the first seven years of life in the programmable state of mind, or theta state awareness, we watch the world around us and we absorb that like a blank tape, we download that. And that's playing in our adult lives, back here, all day in our daily life, "You're not worthy, you're not going to make it, you're not good enough." So, that conflict is just so powerful. And like you said so well a little bit ago, it kind of shocked you that your mind can destroy your body that quickly. But it can; it can kill us or it can heal us. Which one do you want? Which one do you want? Well, I've talked to some oncologists that were in severe pain themselves, that went to talk to Dr Sarno and he helped them heal their lifetime of pain, and my first question to them is, is cancer TMS? And they'll say, "Steve, it's pretty obvious." They have the tight tee on steroids, to borrow and old phrase, that they become obsequious about everybody around them making them happy. They even go to the point of apologizing for getting sick to their people. It's a personality thing. Our health is almost always a byproduct of our personalities. It has nothing to do with our body. But we live in an era of technomedicine where everyone thinks, "Oh, no. I just have a bad knee and a bad back," and "My mother had this ulcer, or my dad." It's not coming from there; it's coming from mind. It's just a coping mechanism, because as Dr. Sarno would say, we're all human beings. Part of the human condition, we're just trying to survive based on all the demands that we're making on ourselves. And if we don't give ourselves these TMS bodily symptoms, then we'll do other things like drinking or drugs or workaholism, sexual promiscuity, gambling. Doesn't matter. Remember, it's an obsession. That's all. Look at it that way. Look at your back pain, knee pain, hip pain, drinking, whatever, as an obsession, because it's a very OCD-like personality. It's always looking for someway to just keep its mind obsessed on something, because what does OCD do for us? Alleviates anxiety. Whenever we do things repeatedly, it alleviates anxiety. What's anxiety? It's anger that's not expressed. What's anger? It's the reaction to fear. It's all a chain reaction from fear, that's all it is. Fear is the cause of all of our life's problems, whether it's drinking or drugs or pain, doesn't matter. It's coming from fear. What's the opposite of fear? Love. Love is the opposite of fear, and so when we don't feel loved, which is connection is part of that umbrella of love. Connection, right? Knowing no conflict, love is this big umbrella. It's a state of awareness. If we don't feel that, we're afraid, and when we're afraid, we get angry, and when we don't express our anger, we don't have an outlet for expression of that anger, we feel it in the form of anxiety. And when we feel that anxiety, we have to smash that somehow. What do we do? We drink. We drink. We have back pain, we have migraines, we have ulcers, we have skin problems. It's infinite, what the brain can do to you to cope. Right. So, anybody that believes what you and I are talking about, they will heal.

8 Yeah, and it's almost evolutionary, because your brain... Good point.... Sees... It's like embedded into the part of your brain that is for survival, so at some stage with drinking, reaching for that drink, what I didn't understand at the time, why I was so desperate to reach for that drink, is 'cause my brain had learned that that was the equivalent of reducing the stress in my life and stress is obviously like, those hormones can be very toxic. So, my brain had actually learned that that was the solution, and so it was almost a survival mechanism, this craving, when I didn't even consciously want it anymore. Yeah, exactly. Good point. Yes, good point. Same thing with depression. Things like depression are survival mechanisms. We get angry and... It comes from really Carl Jung's brilliant body of work, when I read that it just blew my mind away. He talked about just your shadow. If somebody has a temper in the family, like a father or mother, he was saying, everybody in the family will withdraw their shadow into themselves to make room for that temper, 'cause they're afraid of igniting it. So, later on in life, that's how they cope. Every time they angry and stressed out, they withdraw all their expression of themselves, and they either get chronic fatigue, they get sleepy when they get tired, or they go right to the bottle. So depression, when people get very overwhelmed by life's stresses, the demands they make on themselves, they'll often fall into depression, because the opposite of that would be to fight and to hurt somebody, to lash out with their expression of their anger and frustration. But because we've evolved, we don't want to hurt another person, we just fall depressed. It's part of the evolutionary process, and so yes, we're all trying to survive as a human species any way we can, but we are on the verge of a new paradigm of understanding. We are on the verge of a new evolution in human consciousness. People are beginning to understand that this body is part of mind, and what is happening to it is not a failing process, but it's part of a bigger picture in that evolution of consciousness. People like Tolle and Wayne Dyer, and those people did a great job of explaining this process, but we're changing as a species. Mm-hmm (affirmative). I believe it. We are. Because the internet's helped. The internet has done a lot of bad things, too, right? But there's always a double edged sword to everything. There's two edges to it. As soon as a baby's born, love is born, but fear is born immediately, too. So, there's two edges to everything. Yeah, that's another good point. It's part of consciousness and how we evolve, and people need to understand this; love is the answer. It's the answer. That's why you're conflicted, that's why you're anxious, that's why you have health problems, that's why you're drinking, that's why you can't stay in a good relationship. It's a level of self-hatred within yourself, love. Self-love is the main one I'm talking about here, right? Right. I was going to say, what if I don't have anybody in my life? What if there's no

9 other person? But that's not what you mean. Right. But if you listen to Lao Tzu's writings, you know, he said, you're getting the love in your life that you feel you deserve. So, if you don't have any love in your life, you feel you don't deserve it. If you're surrounded by it, then you probably have a lot of self-love. We're not talking narcissism, right? We're talking real love. God's love and this universe. That's the answer. It will stop the fear, which will stop the conflicts, which will stop the need for the addiction. Did you see that great documentary called "Awake: The Life of Yogananda"? It was on Netflix. No. I know of that, but I haven't watched it yet. It's on my list. It was pretty cool. The guy that was in there, I think they're all gone now, 'cause all fairly old people, but the one musician, he met Yogananda, and everyone he ran into, he changed their life, 'cause he brought a message of love to America; that's what he did. The guy said to him, "I have a question for you." To Yogananda. "I grew up in this church and told me I can do this, I can't do that, I can't do this. What can I do?" He said to Yogananda. And Yogananda said, "Well, do you smoke?" He goes, "Yes." "You can continue," he said. "Do you have sex promiscuously?" He said, "Yes." He goes, "You can continue." "Do you drink excessively?" He goes, "Yes." "You can continue." But he said, "I cannot promise you, though, when you start getting into the love, and finding love, that the desire to do all those things will not disappear. You will no longer need to do those things once you find love." Which is a beautiful message, it really is. So, love's the answer, fear is the cause of all of this need to cope. Coping mechanisms, right? And they're infinite in number. I mean, there's many ways we cope. Some people just shut down, they fall into depression, and they hurt people sometimes, they lash out and hurt people. They drink. There's an infinite number of coping mechanisms. What would you give as advice to somebody who's listening to this who's like, "Okay, I get that, I understand what you're saying, but how? How do I show myself love?" Yeah, this is the number one question. Of course. It's kind of an American way of thinking, "Just show me how I'll do it and I'll get right back there." I don't know if to quote the Buddha helps or not. It's not about doing, it's about being. And it's really a personal revelation; a series of personal revelations on how to get there. How to find love and peace, contentment and joy in your life, so that you don't need these coping mechanisms. If I could show someone how to have self-love, there would be millions of people lined outside my door right now. I would be the man. But I think love is inside of everyone of us. That's another thing that Yogananda brought to America in 1920, was love is in us already, we're born into love. It's there. Rumi said it 1500 years ago when he said, "It's not your task to seek love. It's your task to look and find all the barriers that

10 you're putting up against it in your life, and to reduce those barriers." So, we're already loved. We have love in our lives. The question is, is why are we blocking it? That's the question. Of course, you have to forgive; forgiveness. Forgive myself for not being set to the standards that I have in my life. Forgive myself for making a mistake. We've all screwed up in our lives, haven't we? Yeah. Oh man. I've made some stupid decisions, and I had to forgive myself. Instead of trying to, like Mate says, trying to punish yourself with this drinking and self pain and disease, and so, love is already there. Like Rumi said, find why you're blocking it. That's a better way to look at it. It's just like healing; we're already healed, find out why you're blocking healing. Andrew Weil talks about that, too. Every person has the mechanism to heal within themselves. We are the greatest healers in the world; our bodies heal naturally. Andrew Weil says, "I look at the patient as why is he blocking it?" Because if you get out of your own way, the body heals by its own design, by nature's design, it heals. Yeah, there's something that you said that I absolutely love. You said, "We need to move as a society beyond the false paradigm that the body is somehow defective." Wow. I said that? You did. I'm good. I agree with that. I hope so. Yeah, it's so true. The body is by its... It wants to be whole and healthy. It wants to be. That's its natural state. If you have a disease, or if you have pain or you have any problem at all, you've got to figure out why am I doing this? Why am I creating this? Why am I blocking the healing process? And I'm telling you now, it's because you don't love yourself. You hate yourself, you don't think you're good enough, you don't think you deserve it. But it's learned behavior. We weren't born this way. You learned it. Through the child's eyes, Dr. Clancy McKenzie really changed my life with his work. He made me understand Dr. Sarno's work at a much deeper level. He's the world's leading guru, if you want to call him that, on separation. Separation rage, separation anxiety, separation fear. He explained Dr. Sarno's work to me much deeper. When we perceive that we're going to be separated from somebody we love, when we're little kids, that they're not going to be there for us, 'cause our biggest fear as a child's being abandoned. That's the biggest fear, there's no greater fear. We're anxious all the time. They're our gods to us, the parents; they're going to feed us, they teach us, they protect us. If there's something there that we begin to think they're not going to be there, whether they're fighting with each other or whether there's an alcoholic in the family, those are very common, a temper in the family,

11 or one of them has died, or they got divorced, it doesn't matter. The child's seeing, they're not going to be there for me. We start developing this personality of compliance and goodness. So, "I'll be good. I'll be good." And that's what Gabor Mate does a good job there, too, talking about that one of the ways we cope, is to become nice. "I'll become nice, I'll do everything that these people want. I don't want to make waves 'cause they might reject me and I'll be alone again." And he was actually just giving a really cool example about George Harrison of the Beatles. He was the nice one, they always called him. The nice Beatle. When he was dying, Ringo came to him and was going somewhere, and he said to Ringo, "Do you want me to go with you?" And George was dying. He was nice to the end. He was the nice one. So, niceness, you can look at that as an addiction, too, if you want to. It's a coping mechanism; your needs are put on the back burner now. You're not even aware of what you need anymore. If you've got a disease or pain, take a look at yourself. Are you fulfilling your own personal needs, or are you taking care of everybody else? Just like you were talking about with your baby. The baby's crying, I love this baby more than my life, there's no doubt about that. Like Dr. Sarno said, you're suffering because you're a good person, and you're doing your duties, but you also have your own needs. But you're neglecting them to do your duty as a good person. And that's why I say, Dr. Sarno's statement about, "They're suffering because they're good people" is a very profound statement. Yeah, and it's so interesting, because in my life, I would definitely be kind of categorized as a high achiever, definitely corporate. I've reached the C-level, the C- suite, and whatnot, and so many of my readers, same thing; doctors, lawyers, judges, psychiatrists, some of the most high authors, physicians, and I think that all ties back into it. Very young, we said, okay, the way to love, the way to connection is through achievement. So, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to achieve the heck out of this life, right? 'Cause I'm going to earn that connection somehow. That came from Karen Horney's work that I wrote in "The Great Pain Deception," my first book, where she said there are three ways that a child can cope when they don't feel connected or safe or loved. The first one is through compliance, she said. And that is to become the yes person, like we're talking about. A good person, a nice person, right? Don't make waves, do everything that people want. The second way she said, was through aggression. That's not very common in my field, but I've seen it. I call it the Sean Penn method for coping with life. Just do the opposite of what everybody wants; just become aggressive. The third method she said that a child can take to cope is, she called it, unassailability, that was the phrase. Which means, achievement at high levels. I'll go out, I'll get five college degrees, I'll get a million dollars, I'll get all this power. That way I'll get that connection that I need. But, you know, it doesn't work because we're only getting what we think we deserve. The only thing that really matters is how you feel about it. Wayne Dyer used to say, "If you're depending on someone else's opinion of you and the criticism, you're saying that that person's opinion of you means more to you than

12 your opinion of you." So it really comes down to self-love, self-forgiveness, and selfhatred, all of those things. And beyond that, if you have self-love, and there's no conflict in you, and you're very happy with who you are, and content, nobody can hurt you. Right. It's amazing... So, the compliance, that manifests in just upholding the rules, making sure that the rules are in place, getting upset and mad when things are not within the rules. And then the aggressive, that, I would assume also translates into just being a rebel. There's so many people who kind of go off the rails, and that's an amazing way to get attention, is to do something that's completely rebellious. Well, or think about murder's the best example. I mean, let's just say you weren't loved as a child and you feel isolated and alone and disconnected, right? It's all about connection. They'll just go out and express it by hurting somebody. Yeah. It's that simple. And the other one's on assailability, which is pretty cool. I'm the same way as you. I work with a lot of people that are high achievers. I mean, wow. I mean, famous actors, professional athletes and that, and we're all the same. They're trying to gain that love and that connection through achievement, and they find it very hollow in the end, because love is the only thing that's going to be left in the end. That's it. It's love. It's the only thing real. It always coming from in first. Always comes from in. Yeah, because the world is being created from the inside out, not outside in. Dyer had a great example he always used when he talked. "When you squeeze an orange, what comes out of it?" He would say. Apple juice? No. Orange juice, because that's the only thing that's inside of the orange. That's why orange juice comes out of it. So, when you're squeezed as a human being and pressure and stress, what comes out of you? Anger? Criticism? Judging other people? Because that's all that's inside of you. But if you're squeezed and pressured as a human being, and all you give is love back to the world, then that's all that's inside of you, is love. So, it all begins with inside. Once you begin to love inside, and the conflict fades inside, then you begin to project that out onto the world, because that's all that's inside of you. It's really a great metaphor, I like that. I've stolen it from him, I'm using that orange metaphor. I love it. But it's really cool because when you're stressed, what do you do? Do you lash out? Or do you forgive them? Because it's all being played out inside of us, this whole universe of being played out inside is projected outward. So, if you want to heal from anything, work on yourself. Work on yourself. And you will change the world. I don't know who said it, I'm researching it now, so if anybody can find it, let me know. Somebody said, "A man who transforms himself, transforms the world." I think that even might be in that documentary, "Awake: The Life of Yogananda." If

13 you get a chance, watch that, it's really pretty... I will.... It's pretty cool. But you know, anybody that wants help can contact me or you. We'll try. We're human beings. Yeah. How do people find you, because I know for so many people, both that have stopped drinking, or just that have been suffering from pain in general, I can testify that what Steve teaches, his method, Dr. Sarno's method, it's everything. It's everything. It is the answer. So... I should put that on my business card. What do you do? Everything. It's everything. But it really is, because it treats the mind and body together, which you said something else, which was really great, "It's never the goal to manage chronic symptoms." And I think that's just so true, that's what we're doing as a medical industry, is we're managing chronic symptoms. Oh, that's why Yeah, we have the most advanced technology and information in the history of the human race, and yet, everybody's sick and on drugs. Yep. Why? Because the body's not the problem. It's not the problem. It's getting blamed, but it's not the problem. And people think, "Well, I want to get rid of my pain, I want to heal, I want to get rid of my pain." Getting rid of the symptom is not healing. If I give you a shot to numb something, they're not healed. You have to get rid of the cause of it. That's real healing. So, when people say to me, "I'm not healing, Steve. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'm not healing." That's not what I'm hearing when they're telling me that. I'm hearing from them, "I'm not changing." Healing's not the goal, it's to change. Get to the cause of it. Pain is an effect, disease is an effect, alcoholism is an effect of a deeper need. So, what's the cause of it? And I'm telling you, it's fear. That's the cause of it. And what's the opposite of that? Love. There's not enough enough connection, love, attunement, meaning, purpose, in your life. We're conflicted between how we're acting to the world and how we really feel inside. You were able to make that nexus through Dr. Sarno's work that I do love this family and what I'm doing more than anything, but I'm not happy here. Something's wrong, you're conflicted. You saw it. Yeah. And it's through Carl Jung's work, really, on the shadow, or I actually despite it at some point. I despise myself, my life, what I'm doing, and that once you recognize the conflict, that's called enlightenment. Ah, there's light being shed into the shadow. You can't stop light from spreading. You can't. Light is love, light is truth, it's going to keep going, it's impossible to stop. That's why the internet is helping

14 these messages so much more. We're going around the established system. Going around the institutional systems and we're taking the truth right to the people again. Right. That's so cool. So yeah, if they want to contact me, I'm at steveozanich.com or just go... They can find us if they want to, they can find us, I'm sure. Yeah, we'll put the links in the notes, too, because... Thank you, Steve. Thank you for coming on. Thank you, just for such a pleasant conversation. I mean, enlightening and uplifting, and it just all rings so true. And profound, profound thank you for your early encouragement, when I first had this idea, and I said "Would this work?" And you told me yes. Thank you. Thank you for telling me that. That's nice to hear. And thank you for the work that you're doing. You're changing lives, too. What greater joy can you have in your heart? Yeah. It's amazing. All right, well have a wonderful day, and we'll talk soon. All right, thank you. This has been Annie Grace with This Naked Mind podcast. Thank you so much for listening. You can learn more at thisnakedmind.com and please remember to rate, review, and subscribe, as it really helps us spread the word.