Kristen Carder 0:05
Welcome to the I have ADHD podcast, where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with ADHD. I’m your host, Kristen Carter and I have ADHD. Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential and move from point A to point B.

Hey, what’s up, this is Kristen Carter and you are listening to the I have ADHD podcast. I am medicated, I am caffeinated. I am regulated and I’m ready to roll.

Today I’m here with a very special guest, Scott killaby. Scott is a noted international speaker, a well respected enlightenment teacher who has helped 1000s of people all over the world. He’s an entrepreneur, a creative spirit, and a prolific author of seven books. What I’m most excited to talk to Scott about today is addiction and mindfulness and trauma. And what’s so amazing about Scott is that he has broken new ground in a number of areas, including being the co founder and owner of the first two treatment centers in the US to focus primarily on mindfulness, self inquiry, and non dual awareness as the central path to freedom in recovery. So pumped, he’s here with us today to share his wisdom as it relates to addiction and recovery.

Hi, Scott, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for having me. So good to be with you. I have been wanting to have an expert on to talk about addiction, as it pertains to ADHD and just really in general, because so many people with ADHD struggle with addiction. Statistics vary on the subject, but at least we are at least 25% more likely to have addictive tendencies. And that matters a lot. Because when we’re talking about an adult with ADHD, who is already struggling with so much, and then we add in something like addiction, it just complicates everything. So would you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you bring to the world?

Scott 2:29
Yeah, so I have to stick it out was I ever diagnosed with ADHD just to think if I had any personal experience with it, I remember taking some tests when I was 20. And I don’t think they formally diagnosed me. But attention has always been an issue. And addiction was my path. That’s more my experiences growing up as an attic. And there’s a lot of correlation between that and ADHD, about attention stuff, emotional, but my path was really addiction. So I was saying to you real quick, I wanted the audience to hear is that I deliberately didn’t research ADHD before this, because I want to come from just the organic work that I do and try to talk about it. So I might come off as like not knowing some of the clinical terms, but try to stick to what I’ve seen with people in session, like in direct experience. And just forgive me if I don’t think by missoma terminology. But I’ve been close as closely associated with people who had ADHD, and I’ve worked with them a lot. So I’m going to draw on that experience, but mainly mine was addiction. It’s my path. That’s how I dealt with my suffering. And what showed up as a diagnosable thing.

Kristen Carder 3:34
Would you mind sharing some of your addiction story with us?

Scott 3:37
Yeah, because I guess the best way to say is what do you have? Do you have more of it? That’s my story. What kind of thing do you have that I could use, and I’ll take more of these. But it break down to these painkillers and alcohol or drugs of choice, started those high school, really resulting from trauma being bullied, which we can get into a little bit. I know that now that was in that for about, well, full on addiction for about 20 years from Weed until I got clean at age 34. So it’s really age 14, age 34. That was an active addiction.

Kristen Carder 4:15
What do you believe prompted you to turn to substance.

Scott 4:22
I didn’t know at the time, I would have said other things at the time. Like I would have said well, painkillers made me feel more sociable, I feel more comfortable with people. That’s what I would say. But what I know now is that they help stuffed down emotions that didn’t feel safe. And so that’s one reason that I didn’t feel comfortable with people is because there were certain aspects of myself that I couldn’t open to is very self conscious around. And I couldn’t express myself who I was. And so the drugs kind of gave me a false kind of thing. You know, like, it all goes away. And now I can just be here for a moment comfortable with people. But now I know it’s Trump. In retrospect,

Kristen Carder 5:02
I think that for, I don’t think actually know like, the statistics show us that people who are unmedicated for ADHD are more likely to turn to drugs, alcohol substances, because of what you just described of not being comfortable in your own skin, feeling like there’s something a little bit off feeling that something wrong and whether they know they have ADHD or not, they’re just not comfortable in their own body. And so they reach for something to make them feel more comfortable. In addition to that, we often struggle with emotional regulation. So as someone with ADHD, I have a very hard time naming my emotions, really understanding them, feeling them, processing them. And because of that, I like you, we want to suppress them or escape really, it’s usually like an escape from the emotion. And so often people with ADHD, especially those who are not medicated, are going to be turning to substances just to soothe the difficulty of everyday life.

Scott 6:10
Yeah. And that’s why I think that people with addiction and ADHD, even, like, if I have addiction, and someone else has ADHD, I think there’s a lot of commonality first, that’s the thing, because we talked about different diagnosis, it’s like, We’re different worlds, but are we really, you know, because if we’re all dealing with a similar thing, which is that it’s scary to feel certain things, and we’d rather not keep it simple, right? And then we can just realize we all have different ways of coping and responding to that. And then I think it’s like, we joined together. I like that connection that people have when we start realizing that my diagnosis doesn’t separate me from you. I’m not, you know, I mean, like, we’re all kind of human, and we’re all dealing with some of the similar stuff. So I want to say that first. But yeah, it’s definitely another thing that connects it is. It’s an emotional issue with addiction, clearly, in the same way. And I think it is for ADHD, ultimately, it’s an emotional issue. Now being able to regulate. Yeah, I have a lot to say about what we’ve discovered in KTI, in terms of like, the unconscious conditioning around emotions, and I think can add something to your for your audience. Yeah. Have some interesting work around deep unconscious programming around emotions.

Kristen Carder 7:17
Tell me tell me that.

Scott 7:20
Well, it came about first for me when I had chronic pain. And so this is another area, like, you have chronic pain cycle is that something different than addiction and ADHD sort of, but not really, because that was also anger repression, I found out. And I was just all my life holding back anger and didn’t know it. And

Kristen Carder 7:42
trying to prove why you are holding back anger. Yeah,

Scott 7:45
I was bullied when I was a kid. It’s like up in a family. I was born into a family where just being a peacemaker helped me survive. Because my mom and dad were going through some divorce stuff. And I just was a good listener, and a good little boy, it’s like, the family is gonna stay together. And you know, and then I got bullied, and of being bullied by my athlete friends, basically, who knew that I was gay, I could tell it. When I was a kid. It was just a scary situation in which I felt like the only response was to run and hide. Their anger wasn’t available. But I’m an animal, I’m a being and there was anger there, like with anybody backs you into a corner, it hurts you, you’re gonna be angry to be natural, but I couldn’t express it. So I stored it and stuff that away. And it became chronic pain and addiction later, I think is what happened.

Kristen Carder 8:34
So I interrupted you, where were you in your journey of viewer saying that you had a lot of repressed emotion, and most of that was anger.

Scott 8:42
Thank you. So during the heat, so I had to develop work to heal the chronic pain. I didn’t have to, but I did. And well, the way I did that is I made the repression of that emotion conscious. So all my life, there was conditioning in my body and mind that basically said, No, don’t, it’s not safe. And I was not aware of it. So basically, not being aware of it. My body was doing something with anger, that I didn’t even know. It was stuffing it and storing it down. And then there was a programming with it that was very strong, actually, that I didn’t know. And all of that together the repression conditioning that says, No, you can’t save along with the energy of that was stored in the body, created a lot of pain in my body actually felt like physical pain, nerve pain. So

Kristen Carder 9:32
did you pursue that medically at first, like, I’m feeling pain, there’s something wrong. So you go to the doctor, and they’re like, they can’t find anything, I’m guessing.

Scott 9:42
Yeah, well, they did find something and that’s what threw a wrench in it is they found on my MRI that there were three or four abnormalities in my spine. So I got sidetracked on the idea from my doctors that it was still it was physical because they saw the abnormalities. Well, when I went into inquiry, I heal the pain I mean, because it was an emotional issue. And we can get into all that how but that’s not the subject here of how chronic pain is actually emotional. But so through the process of healing, what I did is I pulled up the programming in my awareness that says I can’t express anger. And I just learned how to bring it up in a way and see it and witness it. And the way that I was doing it, I just noticed my pain was dissolving the way that I was doing it. And what I learned from that, is I learned much more about the human operating system from that. So I learned that there’s a whole set of programs that are going on unconsciously, that are regulating or not regulating emotion, like story at these programs are 100%, responsible for how we show up and relationship.

So if I’m people pleasing, chances are I’m repressing anger, for example, there’s conditioning around it. It’s not just happening for no reason, I’ve been conditioned to that, but I can’t see that programming. That’s the problem. Now, here’s what I want to talk about, when people get ADHD, or addiction diagnosis or something, I think that we’re a lot of times operating blindly in the beginning, because we know that there’s a regulation issue, but we don’t see the root of it. And if we could see that we actually have conditioning, for example, that’s very, very much against sadness, very, very much against fear, and very much against anger, then we can understand how that turns into an attention issue. Because it has to do with whether we can pay attention and be connected to our inner bodies, and therefore in our relationship be connected, and attending, it’s all emotional to me. So when I think I learned how to work with ADHD, just by learning how to work with in other situations, it’s trauma, kind of, and we’re operating in the dark. I think, until we do that deeper work, I think we’re just regulating, we have to kind of regulate. So I want to talk about healing. That’s what they’re talking about healing from these things, and not just regulating for your whole life.

Kristen Carder 12:01
I think that what you’re bringing up is something that I keep not bringing up on the podcast because I I’ve been doing so much of my own self inquiry. I’ve been in pretty intense trauma therapy for the last two and a half years and doing my own work and realizing how much more attention I have, when I am connected to myself and to what’s happening and what’s true for me. And realizing how much of my inattention was related to dissociating from myself. And these are things that, you know, I’m doing my own work, I haven’t really synthesized it yet, when I come and bring a podcast, I want to come with expertise. And I’m, I’m still in it, but I am noticing exactly what you’re saying. Which is when I see the reality of my story, which is not cute. It’s not a cute story, when I see the reality of it. And I look through the lens of reality, and I’m not dissociating from the reality and the pain of it. And I am, then I can say, Oh, I was hyper vigilant. Oh, I had to be on high alert at all times to make sure I was safe. Oh, I had to manage the emotions of everyone in my household. Oh, I couldn’t sleep at night, not because I had ADHD but because I literally did not feel safe. And so all of the symptoms for me personally, you guys are getting like, you guys are getting a lot right now of Chris and Carter’s mind.

But all of the symptoms that I see on my ADHD, personally for me, I can relate back to my own trauma. I’m not sure what to do with that I’m still glad and medically treated for ADHD. I’m so glad that I have a coach, I’m so glad I’m in therapy, all of those treatments have been really helpful. But also there’s this other aspect of it that I’m like, interesting when I feel grounded and safe in my own body, I can pay attention a whole hell of a lot better when I feel unsafe. And I have to disassociate from reality because reality is really complicated. I’m very chaotic and really inattentive. And so I think what you’re saying is groundbreaking in the field of ADHD, and I know Gabor Ma Tei talks a lot about ADHD and trauma, and I love his work. And I also hate that he like doesn’t really acknowledge ADHD as like a genetic thing, because I think is probably both I think there’s like, there’s definitely some genetics in it, but also, we’ve been through some stuff and a lot of us are not acknowledging that we’ve been through some stuff. Mm hmm. So tell me, somebody listening who’s i Okay, well, I don’t really know like, what is the healing? If someone is, you know, struggling with addiction and ADHD, but have you developed to help people like this?

Scott 15:03
Well, it’s not just for ADHD is to, is to have the mind and body connected in awareness like to where you’re really a whistle a lot of times with addiction and ADHD and even chronic pain, there’s a mind body disconnect. Yes. I mean, like, so something’s going on in the mind. So obviously involved, but we’re not really connected. We don’t really know, for example, you said, I don’t know what I’m feeling. That’s an example of his mind body disconnect.

Kristen Carder 15:28
So I’m gonna interrupt you there, because I want to talk to the audience and say, How many of you struggle to identify your own emotions? And how many of you at any given day when your partner asked at the end of the day? How are you and you say, Fine, we’re not identifying, like, I was angry at this point. I was happy at this point. I was relaxed. At this point, I was calm at this point. Like, when I work with clients, and I say, like, how does that make you feel? They’re like, I don’t know.

Scott 15:56
Right? And I didn’t either around anger. That’s why I can relate to that, like, because I had avoided anger my whole life, and it just turned into pain. And then when it was pain, I didn’t recognize that as anger. So I know that mind body disconnect. So the way that I develop the healing path is what we have to go back and reconnect with that mind body connection, we have to see, first of all, that we’re angry, for example, I have to know it, if I’m going to heal it. And once I know it, then, so there’s a mind body connection around everything. So it’s not just the body producing sensations, or pain or nervousness, like anxiousness or whatever. It’s the mind and body. And basically, what we’re doing is we’re helping people bring into awareness, this conditioning that says, I don’t want to feel sadness. It’s like that. There’s a conditioning there. But it’s actually more like a response. You know what I mean? It’s like, No, I can’t write, you know, it’s very unconscious.

So we’ve learned how to bring in this specific programming into awareness, like through a mindfulness practice, where they just hear these thoughts. And because you’re making this thought that was previously unconscious, conscious, and that’s what Carl Jung said, you make the unconscious conscious here, then you make that conscious, then you know, and you can see and awareness that not only are you angry, but that you don’t want to feel it. By bringing something into awareness that starts to dissolve that conditioning. It’s like anything else. We’ve learned it. It’s we learned this see, it’s not permanent, it’s not fixed. It’s unconscious. When we bring it into awareness. skillfully, we unlearn it, it was just a safety program that we needed for a while, but then it creates suffering. So we want to this is what people have to unlearn the idea that they can’t feel and express anger, unlearn the idea that you can’t feel expressed sadness. And then when you unlearn that, and you open to that mind body connection around all those emotions, in the way that we’ve developed it, which is a certain skill, those issues aren’t going away, my chronic pain Hill, shadows went away that were left over. I’m watching people’s triggers go away, people are reporting healing. Now, for the first time in my work, because we’re doing this, you know, so that’s why I think it’s just gonna apply to ADHD day, folks, but we have some of them, but I haven’t focused there yet. And that’s why I’m,

Kristen Carder 18:14
yeah, that’s amazing. When you say that we learned this programming, I wanted to expand on that. Because for myself, prior to really being aware, I would have said that I like none of this was learned, this is just who I am. So I want to give examples of that programming and how we learned it. And a couple examples that I have just kind of off the top of my head is a parent saying, Don’t cry, or I’ll give you something to cry about. Right? Or a parent saying, don’t be sad, when you’re sad, I get sad, right? So we’re having to take care of a parent’s feelings, right? Or you’re in school, and, and you’re feeling a certain way, but you’re being made fun of for the way that you’re presenting. And so you can’t actually be who you are, it’s not safe, to to express what you’re feeling, and to stand in, like, who you really are. And so as kids, of course, we have to, like our brains are wired for safety, we have to have to have to make sure that we’re safe. And we have to make sure that that attachment to our parents is there so that they can provide a safety. So if a parent says Don’t cry, I’ll give you something to cry about. Well, of course, I’m gonna stop crying, because I want that attachment to remain

Scott 19:36
right. We learn it right. There we go by we learned that we get mom and dad’s love and stay safe. That’s what I mean by learning. Yeah, that’s it.

Kristen Carder 19:45
So I’m really curious. How do you believe like shame and self judgment? How does that affect recovery? Because one of the things that I was reading about you is that what’s different about your recovery centers Is that a shame is a no go. And what I didn’t realize is that shame and judgment are typically a part of the recovery process, I suppose, can you talk a little bit about that and like, get doing motions here, nobody can see the motions when I’m like, go ahead and talk.

Scott 20:18
So we exceed shame as a driver. So it drives the addiction, it’s not just a result of it. So if I feel shame, or if I’m doing something that other people don’t approve of, for example, and I’m going to create an identity around that, I’m going to do that in private, but I don’t want other people to see. So I’ve created an identity around it. And I’m feeling emotions around it. Like I’m ashamed of it because of how other people see it. So there’s this collective belief system out there around shame and addiction that we pick up early, I think. And so then, you know, well, somehow, we might get clean and sober, we might get into recovery. But sometimes in early recovery, the recovery is shame based. And for some people, they may need that, just to get off heroin or something like in the beginning, right. But what we know is that shame is a driver is that if they relapse, the shame, if it hasn’t been dealt with, drives the relapse, so they feel awful about themselves. And the relapses can be bad when it’s a shame based recovery, because it’s hard to get back in the program, because you’re feeling so bad about yourself. So what we seven no shame zone, which means that we talk about how shame is a driver from the beginning. And then if somebody relapses, we don’t shame them, we actually help them inquire into the shame, they’re already feeling for it, so that the shame doesn’t drive more using. So we use shame to wake us up to the addiction not to make us feel bad about it’s actually a way to open up to our emotions that are driving the addiction.

Kristen Carder 21:47
It’s so fascinating, because just with, like normal life, many of us think that we need to shame ourselves and judge ourselves to do the things, right. So like, if I don’t judge myself, if I’m not yelling at myself, if I’m not shaming myself, then I’m not going to actually be productive. And I spend so much time dismantling that with my clients, like, how’s that working out for you? It’s really I know, it’s not right, because shame, like you said, it can, it can alert us to, like, Oh, I’m out of alignment with what I want. But the second that it goes beyond that, it’s then it leads us to avoid hide, procrastinate and perpetuate the quote unquote bad behavior, or whatever behavior it is that we don’t like, we’re just perpetuating more and more of it. And so I love that you’re using this approach where it’s like, shame has no place here. It can, it can wake us up, and then right after we’re awake, we’re going to observe it, but we’re not going to we’re not going to use it and think that it’s going to be useful because it’s just not.

Scott 22:52
Right. And since we’re talking about ADHD, partly is there’s also shame in the diagnosis. There’s that level of that. But also, I think, shame is this part of the emotions that folks with ADHD are having difficulty regulating, or knowing that they feel but yet it runs their life in so many ways. So that’s the thing, if you’re unconscious to it is where you’re at, that’s gonna play into the attention issue, because, again, you’re not connected to what’s going on for you. But you’re being driven by it. See, oh, yeah,

Kristen Carder 23:21
that was hard to hear. That part is so hard. Let’s I want to just repeat back what you said, you’re not connected to what’s going on. But

Scott 23:31
you are being driven by it, you’re being driven by it.

Kristen Carder 23:34
I think that that is a very poignant sentence that we need to grab here. Because I think what so many people are afraid of is that connection, because it hurts. It’s not comfortable. What we don’t recognize though, is the way we’re living is really uncomfortable to

Scott 23:57
and it’s creating a lot of discomfort is that we’re not connecting with that. That’s the thing, it’s hard to get because we you’re right, we think of shame is helpful. It but the research is coming though, too. And the research is showing that shame is driving disease and chronic pain is starting to show that now. So it’s a real driver of real suffering, too. And it probably has something to do with ADHD. I know it does with addiction. But I don’t think it plays into the ADHD thing for the reasons that we set to. I just don’t know if the science is there yet. But when the science gets there, I think maybe more your audience will probably tune in more. And it’s like, oh, they studied it must be true.

Kristen Carder 24:33
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Scott 26:26
Well, the first step would be just simple mindfulness, like somatic mindfulness, this is really beginner, but like, just, if you just close your eyes, for example, and have people bring awareness down into the inner body, like you just imagine that if you just imagine for a second, that your own awareness starts from behind your body, and your back that way, imagine awareness, like a fog rolling into a city, slowly, you can bring that awareness into the sensations of the inner body. And then when you’re in there, I think the first thing is you people want to get used to what is it like to just feel and let something be as it is, you know, and that’s difficult, because it’s uncomfortable, but it’s a practice. And the more you kind of just rest and allow something to be at his, the less resistance there is, first of all, so just being aware of the inner body, President to different sensations helps a lot. Not only and in some cases is sort of quieting the agitation of the body, but also helping us become more connected to what we’re actually feeling. Just that simple practice of coming down and feeling and being present to. But I it doesn’t stop there. Because you said something earlier, which I think we have to bring in, is I still have to know what I’m feeling. If I’m unconscious to it, and it’s driving things I need to know more than just that there’s this feeling there that I don’t know, because there’s my body there. So I would say to people like a good starter would be as you’re feeling out of your inner body, can you pull up somebody or something that makes you feel something recently, even if you don’t know what it is, like pulling up your husband or your wife or something, a conversation that you had, bring that memory in. And when we start to look at things specifically in awareness, we get more of a sense of what we’re feeling just more of it, because bringing the person and brings that energy out or something.

But what I would say is like, we call this an emotional Boomerang, it’s just ask, it’s a simple question. But now that you have the personnel, because these emotions arise in relationship, so you want to have the person up so that that can come. But then you might just start with, what emotion Am I feeling right now? And it’s just that simple question, while you have awareness in the body, while you’re looking at the person will often give you a response that you wouldn’t have gotten had you not done any of that. Like if you just would have come up from up here and thought about it. You might not have gotten it. But if you brought awareness down to the inner body first, and then you bring husband in, and then you say, what emotions coming up? For me? It’s like the connections are made somehow in the consciousness floor. But what it is

Kristen Carder 29:11
how do you help people soothe the agitation? Because again, I think with ADHD and addiction, that is a big driver is feeling agitated constantly and wanting relief from that, is that the mindfulness practices? It almost seems like it would intensify agitation at first before it relieves it. Is that would that be correct?

Scott 29:36
It could and that’s really good to hear you say that? Because the way that I would answer it would be different. The way that I answered it before, I might have said before is is to be present and mindful to that. But what I know now about trauma is that there’s a definitely a mind body connection, creating that agitation. That’s not just the body, feeling agitated the minds involved in it. But that’s the part that’s unconscious when we’re agitated. So, here’s what I’ve learned is that people, for example, who are anxious, what we’ve come to find out is a lot of times it’s because they repress sadness. And so simple mindfulness will not show that to them. Because if they come down, they might feel, for example, anxiety. And they think, well, that’s the real issue. But when we go deeper with them, we find out that they’re holding back sadness, it didn’t feel safe ever. And the fact that that feels terrifying, is the reason that they have anxiety. So it has to go beyond mindfulness, it has to be go beyond just being aware of what’s arising, it has to be some intelligence, I think, this asking questions that will pull up things that we’ve hidden from ourselves in a way that it was just hidden a lot of stuff from ourselves.

So I’m trying to get people to see that more, there’s a lot more to say about it. There’s a whole modality here, you have to understand a simple sample. If so, don’t do it. Right. Yes, absolutely. That’s a general soundbite. It would be Yeah, we’ll start with mindfulness and simple awareness. But the thing is, is what I know is that trauma and repression is driving a lot of that. So we have to go deeper than just feel and allow, because there’s conditioning here that’s, you know, steadfast against feeling this or that or that. And you can be mindful all day of the product of that the agitation, never getting to the root, the root is the trauma, see that the stuff that happened to you that you held in your body is creating the agitation now. So simple, mindfulness just gets to the effect. Yeah, as to what’s produced, not to the conditioning that’s producing the actual trauma held in the body. And that’s going to be deeper somatic work.

Kristen Carder 31:44
You said, there are so many things that we’ve hidden from ourselves. And I want to speak into that for a second. And then I’m going to ask you to speak into it, because I think, I think that is, that’s the thing, there are so many things that we’ve hidden from ourselves. First of all, many of us had to do that, to survive, literally to function. Within the family systems in which we were placed. We literally had to, like hide repress dissociate, one of the characteristics of somebody with ADHD is that they are driven by the now they are kind of led by the end of their nose, that they are not really connected to the past, they’re not really connected to the future. They’re in the present, but not in a mindful way. So don’t lie. It’s not like it’s not cute, right? It’s not like the mindful way of being present. It’s just like, very reactive very much in the now very driven by like, whatever is happening, whatever emotion whatever somebody else is saying, like, in the present, only being driven in the now. And I truly believe that what you are saying about really hiding so much from ourselves. If I’m looking at ADHD through the lens of trauma, that’s exactly what I’m seeing that the past is way too painful. The future is unsafe and unpredictable. And so I can’t be connected to either of those things. I can only be driven by the present, but not in an adorably connected like mindful way driven by the present as in reactive, chaotic, like a spin cycle on the washing machine.

Scott 33:26
You know, and therefore I question that the only practice is mindfulness for ADHD, because of that limited sense. Because I think with ADHD and even addiction, we do have to open up to the past that tell them the body right now the stuff we don’t want to feel. So if I’m shutting all that out to stay safe, I’m disconnected from my body is what happens I’m just the past is my body. The future, the anxiety around the future is the anxiety my body now, the anger, the hurt from the past right here now. So that when you say disconnect from the past, or the future, what I hear is that this, oh my goodness,

Kristen Carder 33:59
I wish you guys could see his motions. He’s making motion like blocking out left and right. And then also pressing down like suppressing whatever is whatever is like in the body as well. And I think you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely absolutely right. Sometimes when I bring up like the past and trauma, people will say things like, I don’t want to live in the past. The past is in the past. I don’t want to live in the past and I forget who said it this is not my this is not from me, but I heard somebody say once that I’m not living in the past, the past is living in me. Yeah, right. And I connected with that so deeply that for so long. I just pushed it away, push it away, push it away, and was like, whatever, we’re over it. It’s no big deal, whatever and then, realizing how much of my present is being led by my past because I’m not living in the past. The past is here right now it’s living in me,

Scott 35:01
totally. And so what in ke will how we can contribute to that is, what we’ve learned is that there’s specific programming behind it. So basically, when we say we don’t want go back to the past, the actual program is I don’t want to feel something, that’s what the actual nervous system is doing. So it uses that as a way to repress and suppress emotion and hold it in the body by saying, I don’t want to go back to the past, we see that in awakening a lot. So I’m a non dual teacher, we talked about being in the now and present in the nice, cute way that you’re talking about. But even that, people have to be careful, because they’ll say even with that, I don’t want to go back and deal with any of that past stuff. That what we’ve learned with KPI is that what they’re saying is, I don’t want to come down here, I’m pointing to my body. And I don’t want to feel something here. So. So yeah, I think it’s very relevant to conditioning because it was like, was still my question was like, Why? Why are we saying that? We have to figure out why or we’re going to keep doing it. So the y is in unconscious, what we found is that that’s the repression suppression mechanism, I call it that doesn’t want to feel to stay safe. So it says, I don’t go back to the past. But she’s saying that’s how I stay safe. But it ends up not feeling safe. There’s a lot of suffering from it. That’s the crazy part.

Kristen Carder 36:15
You’ve mentioned K i several times, I am so sorry. But I don’t know what that stands for.

Scott 36:22
K is the killaby and Quizizz. Just the word we use for our somatic inquiries. Yeah.

Kristen Carder 36:27
And that is the modality that you have developed any practice at your treatment centers. And what else like tell me about that?

Scott 36:37
Well, so we’ve, we’ve, we don’t have our treatment centers anymore, I’ve got to tell you, we’ve moved online, because the atmosphere for treatment, we didn’t really like it for this model. Because it’s like the trauma approach. And there were a lot of there’s a lot of drive by treatment, like 30 days, 60 days. And what we learned is we want to get people involved in the process, and keep them in that process for a while. So a lot of circumstances happened. And we moved it all online. And so there’s a members area killaby members area where I work with people online now that’s where we do it. That’s amazing. But now I forgot your question, because that wasn’t just okay.

Kristen Carder 37:14
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who forgets things around here. So I think I asked you just to talk a little bit about the modalities that you’ve developed and, and your treatment centers or the treatment that you’re that you’re doing.

Scott 37:27
So the modality one of the first tools that I explained to people, it’s called reverse inquiry. Reversing was really powerful, actually. So if you sit here, actually, I’m gonna take your audience through this.

Kristen Carder 37:40
And I think that’d be amazing. Please do,

Scott 37:42
what we’re talking about emotions that we’re not connecting from from childhood. So, and again, we’re also talking about how we may not even know what those emotions, so reverse inquiry, this version of it would help us see what’s stored in our body to connect with. Ultimately, this word gets to repression and trauma, but we start here, by like it, let’s go back to the situation where we pulled somebody up. And we were naming the emotion. So if you pull up wife, and you say, okay, so what emotion Am I feeling now? And then maybe we’re able to name it, and we might not even get it right, it might just be something like, Well, I’m upset. That’s all I know. Or it could be something like where we name an emotion, like I’m angry, or I’m sad. That doesn’t mean that we can feel that emotion directly. It could be very suppressed, but we can trust the mind body connection there. So when we say something, we do an inquiry like, what emotion comes up? When the mind says something, we trust it? And see, that might be the first time that we understand what we’re feeling in that relationship right there. So let’s just say it’s anger, which was my one of my main repression. Here reverse inquiry would be if, if I know that I’m feeling angry, how do I want to bring that into awareness to acknowledge and allow it, rather than keeping it stuck in my body where it creates all these issues like addiction and ADHD? How do I do that? Well, I need to bring the mind and body into awareness. There’s a mind body connection around all emotions. It’s not just an emotion, there’s a mind there, along with it, that stuffing it down.

How do I bring that out is I do a reverse inquiry. So I look at that person. And I say, I’m not angry. But not as an affirmation. I say it and I allow my body to object. And now the body’s speaking, it’s like, even though you stored it, it’s like it can’t help it. It has to respond. It’s forcing it to respond. And then as it responds, you start to feel Oh, yeah. Then you can start becoming aware of the thoughts that acknowledge the anger and it’s just simple thoughts. Like I was gonna curse here but it’s not necessary. I’m angry. You just put it up there. You See it like you bring it into awareness, like a spelled out or heard. And now you’re aware of the mind. So now you’re aware of both the energy in the body and the mind. Whereas before you were not to do this back here. So as you do reverse inquiry, you start seeing the thoughts that acknowledge that you’re angry, and that actually helps your body. Because it’s the reason that we’re carrying around so much emotions is because we’re not doing this, we’re not conscious, once you bring the thoughts that I am angry, and they’re just in awareness and observe and just like meditatively, observe them and allow them, it starts to move that energy that you’ve suppressed, it starts to change it in the body. So that’s how we’re reversing repression with people, lifetime of repression is just by bringing into awareness, this mind body connection around

Kristen Carder 40:51
the motion was doing this exercise with you. And I was seeing the person in my head and I was feeling the emotion in my body. And when you said, I’m not angry, I repeated that as if it were me. And then I got a flood of thoughts, right, telling me why I was angry.

Scott 41:10
That’s your unconscious is coming forward. That’s the point. Yeah.

Kristen Carder 41:15
That was really, that was powerful for me, I really appreciate that.

Scott 41:19
Well, imagine what it would be like if this was one of your practices where you did this, every time when you started to understand more and more how you’re avoiding anger, for example, are you open to it, not to put it on other people, when to process it, to feel it aloud. So it’s more than just an experience. In other words, it’s great that you have that experience. But what if you took it to your life like in all these different with all of the emotions, you would be much more conscious of your whole body, you’d be much more Mind Body connected, and your your addictions can start to go away, because you’re now opening to your emotions, and your attention is going to get better, because now you’re connected to how you feel. You’re not trying to run away from all your feelings all the time and be hyper vigilant. So it’s just that kind of process just becoming aware, over time, like on a regular basis. Well, I’m afraid I see it, I’m afraid, I’m afraid. Right? You see every time. So you learn your system. That way, you’re no longer given unconsciousness.

Kristen Carder 42:18
It’s almost like so many of us who struggle in this area have to get to know ourselves in our 30s 40s 50s 60s. But I’m in my 40s. And I feel like I’m just getting to know my own body, in that. It does tell me how I am. And it does tell me how I’m feeling. And it does guide me. And I didn’t ever know that I always identified as someone who didn’t really have feelings. I’m not much of a crier. Now. I understand why. And being able to go back to my body and say like, Hey, like, if you want to tell me something, I’ll listen. It’s been a very interesting process. Because for 35 years, I didn’t listen to my body. I was like, I disconnected my brain from my body so that I could function and in my head so that I could be comfortable, although it was not comfortable at all. And now getting to know that aspect has been it’s been a I mean, Journey is such a cliche word like it’s been a reckoning. Let’s use that word. It’s a reckoning. Yeah, in a really deep way.

Scott 43:33
Oh, me too. And my didn’t really start even though I started as a teacher like in a 38 or something. It wasn’t until I was like 4810 years later, after being a mindfulness teacher that I even connected with anger. So it’s like artificer experiencing this, like, I It’s always I feel like the human race is kind of new to this conversation still.

Kristen Carder 43:54
Great. Yeah, great. I’ve been reading the book, my grandmother’s hands. And it’s about it’s about trauma in black bodies, trauma and white bodies, like she talks so poignantly about the trauma to our bodies, and how it’s passed down generationally. And that’s what this makes me think of is like, we are only just beginning to have the conversation about how we’ve treated ourselves, each other our children for the last hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s stored and passed down to us and it matters. And now having these conversations is so so important. But I look forward to our kids and their kids and their kids like uncovering so much more because I think like I used to think of myself as a cycle breaker but like, I think I’m just scratching the surface of breaking the cycle and like it’s going to take generations I think to break the cycles of Gen durational trauma,

Scott 45:01
for sure. And I think a lot of it has to do with the work that we’re doing, though, because if I even if I know that I have to break the cycle of that part, if I’m not doing the work of that, it’s still not going to happen in this lifetime. So there’s the knowledge and the awareness, and then there’s the practice and the work, I think that we have to do. And that’s, even if we do it in this lifetime, not everybody’s going to heal from trauma in this lifetime, even if they do do the work. And that’s not great news to share. But it’s kind of the reality. So I mean, if we’re gonna heal, we need to probably get to the business.

Kristen Carder 45:32
Right? I’m curious if you see addiction, as being exclusively related to trauma,

Scott 45:40
repression to shame, there’s a whole host of drivers that we see that are connected to it. But yeah, all kind of roughly trauma, the words or words, you know, but you see

Kristen Carder 45:50
it as like it’s been passed down? Or is it just the trauma that’s passed down?

Scott 45:55
You know, that’s a really good question when you were talking about Gabor Ma Tei. Because we definitely see intergenerational and collective trauma playing into addiction. So like, if my mom’s family was shut down around a certain emotion I might be for the whole all of that. So in how that plays into the genetics is not known by me. But I could know that some things were definitely picking up from prior to our lifetime. Yes. Was that part of it?

Kristen Carder 46:20
Yeah, for sure. So do you recommend that if somebody is struggling with addiction, and you know, might also have ADHD? Like, can they lead themselves through these practices? Should they connect with, you know, people who are trained in these modalities? Like, what is the step like? What’s the plan? Somebody listening is like, I need help, like, what do they do?

Scott 46:48
Well, what I’ve been saying to people is, if you have to understand that you already have an operating system that’s trying to keep you safe, which is good when you’re suffering, because you want to regulate and feel safe, especially with these addictions and things to feel safe and regulated, sometimes the greatest refuge at first, but to heal, the way that I see it is left to our own devices, our system is avoiding. That’s what it does. So if if you don’t have any guidance, your system will just go to avoidance, that’s the bypass that we talked about in spirituality, it’ll go away from the thing you don’t want to feel. But healing as Gabor says, and I say is to go towards what you don’t want to feel. So your system will might naturally take you away from that trying to escape. But if you get around somebody who’s already traversed that territory, and knows where the nervous system is going, they can help you with that.

Kristen Carder 47:39
I just see that on such a simple level with my clients, being able to say to them, Hey, I know it feels like, but like, I’ve been there. And and I can hold your hand as you walk that journey because I’ve traversed it before. So I know where the pitfalls are. And like it hurts. And it’s not fun. But also I’ve been there. And so I can imagine on like the more intense scale of addiction that that is such an important aspect of it. For sure,

Scott 48:10
yeah. Yeah. You want to have somebody? Well, first of all, why would somebody want to go into like oak berry anger if they didn’t think that it might result in the addiction falling away? Like part of it is traversing to see, is there any benefit from more to here? Yes, that’s true. We live to tell about it. And we say yeah, actually, I’ve discovered that there’s very benefit from this. And then that gives them confidence to to, to go for it.

Kristen Carder 48:38
I have a question here about something that I read, what is natural rest? And how does that play into addiction healing.

Scott 48:50
It’s just really another word for presence. It’s like here in the moment, in our more natural state. Presence is really all there is like presence is the foundation. And when you really recognize that basic presence, there’s a restfulness, like a sense of completeness, which is very different nervous system that’s dysregulated. To really rest as that present moment awareness. It’s a shift in perception. Actually, it’s a non dual shift, actually, eventually, where you stop thinking of yourself as limited, separate deficient. And you recognize the awareness, it’s just here. Prior to that, there’s an awareness under all that, that is not seeking in time or anything. It’s very subtle here. And so it’s stressful. It’s natural. You don’t have to go somewhere else to find it. It’s your true nature here. And so it’s very important to addiction. It’s not the whole answer, because there’s trauma in the body, but certainly just to rest in B and that connects you more with your feelings and thoughts here in the present moment. You can see it allowed and more. So natural rest is good for that too. for healing.

Kristen Carder 49:54
Yeah, the part where you said you don’t have to go anywhere else to find it. Yeah, and isn’t that what But addiction is going somewhere else to find rest going somewhere else to find regulation going somewhere else to find peace and to find, like confidence or whatever the case may be. So being able to establish that within and not believing that you have to go somewhere else to find it. That’s

Scott 50:18
what I used to take painkillers, I would find that to be really manufactured version of it. Yeah. Because all the world would go away. And it was like, I didn’t call it rest. But it’s like, now I can just be and enjoy. And so but then you can’t sustain that with drugs. Right? So natural rest is that it’s already innately within us. That what we’re looking for with drugs is already within us. And that’s a hard thing for a system to understand that’s traumatized. That’s why we have to do trauma work.

Kristen Carder 50:47
That’s why we say that oh, really moral of the story for this podcast? Do your trauma work, everyone? Yeah. How can people find you and connect with your work, Scott, go to kill me.com.

Scott 50:59
But most of the work we’re doing in the killaby members area. So it’s like a little social media site where we do regular meetings and have all the work that explains it. If you go to killaby.com, you’ll see the members area icon, book a session, I don’t do sessions, and I’m not training people in the work. But I’ve got these trainers in the work. So if if anybody’s really resonating, you might want to book a session and see if you liked the process. And then there’s training, if you want to actually come and help people with a training program, we you help yourself first, it’s not just about learning and then going to help others the big part of the training program is helping yourself first.

Kristen Carder 51:36
It’s amazing. I really, really appreciate you coming here sharing your wisdom with us. It’s just been such a joy, to experience you and to be here at chatting with you and to even be led through some of your exercises. That’s been really helpful to me. So I really appreciate you.

Scott 51:52
Well, thank you. I want to say your audience real quick is that I didn’t really take you through the exercise in a way that would bring the greatest benefit. I just kind of introduced something. So yeah, if anybody’s interested come to to the work more. Now you know where to find me. And thank you for having me. I just wanted to say that it’s a pleasure. It’s easy to talk to you. So anytime. Cool. Thanks.

Kristen Carder 52:10
I appreciate that. Thank you, sir. This has just been a joy. If you’re being treated for your ADHD, but you still don’t feel like you’re reaching your potential you’ve got to join focus. It’s my monthly coaching membership where I teach you how to tame your wild thoughts and create the life that you’ve always wanted. No matter what season of life you’re in, or where you are in the world focused is for you. All materials and call recordings are stored in the site for you to access at your convenience. Go to I have adhd.com/focused for all the info