Summary
In this deeply personal interview with Brett Kistler, Joe Hudson shares the first part of his life story. He describes growing up in affluent suburban Connecticut with a strong early bond with his father, but a mother who was overwhelmed and emotionally rigid — training him on schedules rather than attuning to his needs. He didn’t realize he had emotional needs until his 30s, and was made fun of for crying as a child, shutting down his emotional world early.
Around age 10, the family moved from Iran back to New York during the revolution. Joe was regularly beaten up at school, and his father descended into alcoholism. Dinner became a nightly hour-and-a-half yelling session. Joe became the family scapegoat — the problem that kept his parents’ marriage together. He was kicked out at 13 and briefly tried to figure out how to live independently before being picked up by police and taken to social services.
Joe describes learning deep self-reliance, emotional abandonment, and narcissistic protection. The seeds of transformation came through Catholic parables and religious studies, but the real shift happened when his wife Tara insisted he do a 10-day meditation retreat. During that retreat, he had an eight-second experience of oneness — ego dissolution — that became “God’s little heroin dose.” He spent the next 7-8 years trying to recreate it through effort, not realizing it was received, not achieved. This drove him to collect every available tool — therapy, meditation, psychedelics, bodywork — eventually healing the psychological and emotional layers that blocked access to his natural state.
Key Concepts
- Unmet needs drive self-reliance
- Emotional repression causes depression and shoulds
- Rebellion secretly wants connection
- Narcissism is a spectrum we are all on
- The scapegoat holds the family shadow
- Peak experiences become goal traps when co-opted by ego
- Collecting tools without discrimination accelerates transformation
- How we relate to parents mirrors how we relate to God and money
Key Quotes
“It took me probably until my 30s to realize that I even had needs. When people were like ‘do you have any needs?’ I’d say yes — water, food, and shelter, air maybe.”
“Some of my earliest memories were being made fun of for crying.”
“There was a subconscious agreement that it was like my fault. I was the problem.”
“All of his anger towards me in retrospect now was him feeling unloved. What he couldn’t see was that all I wanted was his love and appreciation.”
“Everything disappeared and I was the universe and the universe was me… that gave me just enough that the rest of my life was about — if that’s possible I am gonna do whatever I have to do to get there.”
“I immediately took this thing that was my nature that I got a taste of and I made it a goal and I made it effort and I made it something that I had to achieve to be good enough.”
Transcript
welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease I’m Brett Kistler here with my co-host Joe Hudson this week we’re going to go into a much requested topic about Joe’s history we cover the first part of his life from a relatively standard modern start to being kicked out of his house as a 13 year old getting a green Mohawk and collecting spiritual tools from around the world tell us what fucked you up goodness right uh it’s pretty early on uh if you think if I think about my first seven years I the that one was you know that was probably as far as like 0 to 18 probably the most um most functional part of my childhood um there were some issues but and and also it’s that time when so much and and it like so much of your basic attachment issues you know get get created in that time frame and but I remember that was the time when I had the strongest relationship with my father I would I remember coming home and I remember there was just like they’re always looking forward to him being around and him always looking forward to us and that was I think I think pivotal I don’t know if I really I don’t know what how life would have been without that and where was this to get to kind of get some context where were you growing up what was that yeah the first seven years were in like Suburban Rich Suburban Connecticut um and but after that like by the time I was 28 I’d lived 26 places or something like that like I mean I couldn’t go back and count it but I’ve been saying that so long that it feels like that’s probably what’s right good but I was there was a time where we were moving every six months so but the first seven years were in Darien Connecticut and and the way that that what happened there the the the the thing that affected me there was that my mom was uh you know was working and she was she was one of the first people like in that upper middle class white um culture that the where the woman was working and so and my mom in fact uh uh we’ll probably tell you the story that she had many men who were her suitors and she picked the one that she didn’t particularly love at first but who would allow her to have a career and kids and so that was like a very important thing to her and so she and due to some weird circumstances she had to go to work she was a professor shortly after I was born and and so my mom was was a bit overwhelmed in her parenting style was you know I would say a bit rigid at the time that you know it was very like uh like bit like the job was to train me when to go to the bathroom so that she could change diapers on the schedule you know at like at a very early age and so there was not really the you know not that she thought of it as bad in any way but it was very at that point what it really taught me was that my needs weren’t going to get met so it took me probably until my 30s to realize that I like early 30s late 20s that I even had needs you know when people were like oh do you have any needs and I’d say yes water food and shelter air maybe and like I had no idea that there was things there was needs out there to thrive it was only needs to survive in my mind so what what did you have in place of needs it sounds like like schedule or some outside imposed structure what was what was the thing that was was there instead that’s a great question yeah the the what was there was my duty to make sure that everything was was calm you know like there was a duty to make sure that things didn’t get too overwhelming which was you know obviously impossible for a young for for me I was a young boy with a tremendous amount of energy so um and and you know had like a abnormally high IQ and so so I was constantly getting into stuff but that was the job like that was the felt sense of the job at a young age was to because of course my mom was just deeply overwhelmed with everything that was going on and and it was and she had had a situation where her mom her dad died at an early age and so she had really not deeply explored her Emotional Self and there was no room for that in her childhood and so there was not not a lot of room for my emotional world so some of my earliest memories were being made fun of for crime and so so the needs weren’t just a physical need but the need like the emotional needs were also not an acceptable thing at least some of the emotions weren’t an acceptable thing and so what happened for me was just to even know that I emotions were something that were that was important you know happened in my 30s and and to know that I had needs you know and then and then to learn how to identify them and learn how to ask for them was like a huge Journey for me I was a really significant Journey later in life because of that and and the other thing I think was that the the relationship was very much um wanting a level of affection and nurturing particularly from my mom that that wasn’t there I had it with my dad in the early years I felt that deeply in that experience that I didn’t I didn’t feel it as much with my mom when I got sick I would have it she’d be very nurturing and caring I remember enjoying being sick because I would get like this level of care and nurturing and Attunement that I didn’t really get otherwise you know and and and I can tell just given her mom like how much more attuned and how much more now from this perspective but as a kid you don’t know that at all and so all that was there was just this desire to be yeah to be held in a way that wasn’t that wasn’t available yeah yeah I’m curious there to what extent that loving loving having her take care of you when you were sick like liking being sick for that reason I wonder how much that relates back to like having learned that love was being having your bodily State be managed hi yeah that’s an interesting yeah it was I think that’s another thing that was interesting my parents very much didn’t weren’t into sports I had eye issues when I was young I had a lazy eye and um and so they didn’t want me to fail and so they they didn’t they didn’t want to to teach me failure so they didn’t allow me to do Sports which I think created modern research would say Well it probably created more appropriate deception issues and so I had a lot of those as well where I was you know very nerdy clumsy glasses you know didn’t have the same kind of balance and stuff like that and so there was something about the body the body in my family was very much not you know is the mind that was the intelligence that was really important the body wasn’t and the body was to be controlled and and so there was definitely huge portions of my life where I wasn’t I wasn’t in harmony with my body I was overriding my body or telling my body like not listening to its intelligence and I would say that’s actually still to this day that’s probably a place where like it requires the most and it’s like the most energy and attention is to to remember to keep on coming not on an emotional like I know my experiential body from tons of meditation but as far as the the care of my body to you know make sure that exercise happens and everything that still requires more attention it’s not automatic in my system as it would be if it was you know if I was taught better than the age yeah so something I’m noticing so far is that um what you’re describing sounds sounds like a pretty common Western kind of modern experience of upbringing like a lot of our a lot of our parents have had similar kind of starting places in their in their parenting style and you know people entering women entering the workforce more and like sort of the American experiment shifting more to the the Dual working family from what other traditional forms had existed and I’m curious what if anything contributed to the pendulum swinging in the other direction later in your life to be so heavily invested and interested in your your emotions that happens in the than the teenage years like I think the seed for that happened in the teenage years so you know parenting now what like I see is that there’s like the will starts coming online with a kid or the independence there’s like some big thing that happens at around three and another one that happens around seven then another one that happens around 10 and another one that happens around 13 where they where the kid’s job is to create more autonomy or they have that friction between like I want autonomy and I want care and and so when that started kicking in for me call it like it around 10 years old ish a couple things happen simultaneously one is I was um I was we lived in Saudi Arabia and then or we lived in Iran excuse me and then had to move back to New York because the the revolution that happened in Iran in 1978-9 and and then the only school we could get into was this public school where my sister and I were the only white kids in the school and and I was like beat up on a regular basis and and occasionally protected because people had a crush on my sister so occasionally I get it was kind of like I got I got allowed to get beat up x amount but not not past x amount because it was like you know you you if they protected me too much there that was an issue but if they didn’t then you know like it wouldn’t get my sisters you know attention approval or whatnot so so that happened so I had a lot of you know I just seen a war evacuated that stress moved into a hotel in New York City for x amount of time just stuck in a hotel as kids and then moved into um into New York City all the time of this movement happening in me to be create more Independence and so I’m dealing with all this trauma and um and at the same time this is when my dad is like where a kid normally stops seeing their dad is like this beautiful wonderful like can’t can’t mess up anything Mo you know my dad was my hero and then I was starting to rebel against my father and my father was not taking it well right and it I think all that stress also really increased his alcohol use and uh or maybe it was just lots of alcohol use built on itself and so I was dealing with the one person where I was getting that Attunement and they were angry at me regularly yelling at me regularly um disappointed in me regularly and and and mood swinging like the way alcoholic alcoholism does and so so my sister obviously dealt with this as well but it was different she played the role in the family of like the good diligent kid and I started to play the role of the Rebel and so I think a large portion of my desire to yeah and I think blessing is that there was that role because that role was going to push me into places where my parents didn’t approve and for a while that was drugs for a while that was mohawks for a while that was you know skateboarding and and you know smoking cigarettes and um and and drinking at Young ages and all that stuff and but then eventually you know by the time I’m in my 20s it was trying to find alternative ways of seeing the world that weren’t my parents would have seen the world which words my dad was very business oriented very money oriented and my mom was very science oriented and so I looked for the place that wasn’t science or business and and I think I think there’s also a natural desire to to explore this area just because I was looking for relief it was really painful like by the time I hit my 20s like existence hurt it just hurt like the negative voice in my head was so loud right that the the criticism of my dad and my mom at the time um was just very like I had taken it on it would become the voice in my head and it was it was brutal like the I mean I I had some depression easily in my like in my like by 19 years old there was some depression happening because there was just this constant negative self-abuse and and I wasn’t crying I wasn’t having any emotional experience I was just only allowed to be angry and so and and that that 10 years old was like just the beginning of it by the time I was 13 years old I would sit at a dinner table and I would get yelled at for like an hour and a half every night Jess just yelled my dad was deep in the alcoholism at this time and maybe yelling and I’d be like fine dad you’re right and he said see I told you you were weak and you would quit like it was that level of like verbal just barraging on a regular basis and and there was I’d say a subconscious agreement that it was like my fault it was I was the problem and it was and that was a conscious agreement the subconscious agreement in the family was uh okay he’s he’s mad at him so not at me like like you know that everybody else was like oh thank God that it’s not but there was also this moment like can’t you just be nice can’t you you know can’t you also just acquiesce to this whatever this is happening in this so I felt very isolated so you were the you were the scapegoat in the dynamic keeping keeping the game in Play yeah I was that I was also like the I would say in like family therapy thought process I was The Crucible that kept the parents marriage alive meaning that I was I was the problem that they could they could like come together over so you know I would I at this point I’m like obviously didn’t want to be home so I would just like leave and one point they kicked me out and they had this list of things that I had to do to come back and I wouldn’t sign the list and you know like cops had to take me into the social services it was it was brutal right and I’m 13 at the time you know and and I was like trying to figure out how to live away from home trying to figure out how to literally I was like trying to figure out can I rent a room if I tutor because I had really good grades at the time and I could I tutor kids and make enough money to pay for rent and food and go to school and when I went to the council to talk about that the cops came and picked me up called me incorrigible took me to Social Services wow like it was yeah there was there was right and and then so that part was interesting so if I if I if I want to I want to go back to this so the the first part was the kind of the Attunement attachment issues what happened in those first years what was happening in the second years was was um I was learning deeply learning that I had to do it all myself that there was nobody who was going to be there for me and that I was going to be emotionally abandoned that love was emotional abandonment and that and that though there was these moments with my mom where I did feel her love like there was a way that she would support me there’s also where she would fight through me at the time where like you know like I would kind of be her Knight and and so there was like both of those things happening so there were some ways that I felt you know like virile and but there was there what that wasn’t going to be there for me was that somebody was going to take care of me so I was gonna and I was gonna be emotionally abandoned um what’s interesting is that I never felt materially abandoned meaning that my what my dad would do which was amazing was that um like if I ever got in trouble which I did regularly like went to jail a couple times uh just for like little stuff never never had charges pressed but you know being a rebel like it just and my dad would just come and pick me up and say okay what are we gonna do like it never I never got in trouble for any of that he was just like yeah the cops that yeah there’s like never it was just like he was very supportive in those moments which was really fascinating and also yeah what a mind fuck I never thought on the one hand to be like okay well if the cops are if you’re in trouble with the cops everything’s hey you’re you’re good you’re good you’re good and then at the dinner table bruh it’s like it’s like nobody else gets to beat up on you but me almost is the energy yeah and yes there was that there was like this a very upset over things like you know maybe the coffee you know whatever I’d messed up a coffee machine or that like I I criticized something or I didn’t like I didn’t wear the bathing suit that he had bought me that that was like uh like a St I remember that particular fight in the hotel room it was like so bad because he had a bathing he had a speedo that he wanted me to wear and I wouldn’t wear it but getting going to the jail for the night and getting picked up he was just totally cool yeah I can’t get the picture now out of my head of you in a speedo how is blue with like little and you can’t you no you the thing is the thing is I never wore it and so that was the thing he really want he had a matching one he really and and all of his anger towards me in retrospect now was him like feeling unloved that’s what it all was it was like he thought that I like he still wanted me to admire him and love him and want to be him and what he couldn’t see was that I all I wanted was his love and appreciation so so it was just this yes it was a really fascinating time but what I learned there is that you know and which also that it wasn’t until my 30s where I S well yeah 30s where I started to undo this one too which was like I I was constantly when I noticed for myself and others when you’re when you’re get taught you have to be in self-reliant it’s really great and it makes you successful in business in many ways or can but what it also does is it makes it really hard you make it really hard for people to help you because you never trust it because you get angry a lot so there was like a whole bunch of anger issues that I had to deal with there was a whole bunch of self-reliance issues that allowed it really really difficult for people to be able to support me um it allowed intimacy was really challenging to let Levin was really challenging all those things and and then constantly creating it so people would emotionally abandon me so that that was all happening and and that that’s what that that’s how that got created yeah got it so so going in your 20s you’ve got this super abusive voice in the head you’re depressed you’re miserable at what point I mean that’s where many people stay and they also don’t necessarily recognize like oh if there’s an abusive voice in my head until they show up to a workshop and explore it so I’m curious what had you start to recognize something was going on that there was something you could yeah explore and change I think there’s another thing that was happening was that like the narcissism had set in at this point right and by the time my 20s are coming up like I’m feeling better than people like that that protection that is necessary in that world because the it’s like like there there’s I think there’s this reality that happens with kids which is like if I really allow the truth in it means like oh my parents can’t take care of me the way that I need to be taken care of and that’s like an untenable Truth for a child and and so instead what happened was that I created this like very big wall of protection which I would call narcissism uh and I don’t mean narcissism like narcissistic personality disorder kind of stuff I’m I’m I just mean straight narcissism not yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but like I was feeling like I I was often protecting Myself by feeling I was better very judgmental um emotional like constipation I wasn’t able to cry yeah all those things all those things were happening and so I was not really available but very much still yearning for the affection and still yearning for someone to take care of me and to what extent were you aware of that yearning not at all not at all so what yeah so what happened was so I think the seed of it was actually in in Catholicism you know I I took a lot of solace in and and CCD and the stories of Jesus like it was the only thing that felt somewhat real to me um like this The Parables the particularly The Parables of Jesus liked it they felt very like there was something there in my young ages and I would like correct the CCD teacher so I’d get I would get in trouble there was like Not only was I rebellious but I was like capable of being rebellious and like the most annoying of ways and so uh but there was something there that touched me and I got really into deeply into religion and religious studies so by the time I go to college I got kicked out of my my first college with I got 3.95 but I got kicked out for Behavior basically rebelling against everything I could rebel against including myself frankly at the time and um there’s more detail on that story in some of the early episodes so the but that Rebellion it it like it with the way it paid off was like I’m immediate like I got into Hermann Hess I got into like stories of Jesus and so when I got to college I just was like I’m not taking this like 101 class I’m gonna go and substitute it for like an advanced religious studies course so I studied Dallas and I studied like Hermann Hess I studied and that’s where I was I was deeply interested in these alternative ways of looking at at um of life and and spirituality and whatnot and so I I started to deeply take a look at that and but it was all very heady it was all very intellectual but it opened the door it was like the seed was planted that there was like this other alternative that transformation was possible um that there was another way of looking at it and just like reading like the texts of twangs I I I I basically in my 20s I collected Parables of every different religion and saw that a lot of them were the same studied a lot of religions and and how they were doing the same thing and so that was I think the very seed of it but then the real work didn’t start until like The Meditation Retreat yeah yeah I’m curious when you said like that they planted the seed that helped you realize that transformation was possible what was what had you recognized that it was transformation and not salvation or some other concept that’s a great question that was possible well I think yeah I think it was the I think Transcendence was in there for sure uh uh but Salvation wasn’t in there because I was self-reliant there’s no way salvation was gonna happen you know that like it like my there was a whole bunch of stuff that I had to go over get over like I’m not going to hell that there’s no like you know like there’s no Heaven and Hell and that kind of stuff and like that I was taught in Catholic Church um that I that I knew and the guilt part like but the but the idea of being saved was like that’s not happening like that that’s not it couldn’t even be a part of my reality and and and you know as we think about it now I see that oftentimes the way that we relate to our parents is the way that we relate to God is a way that we relate to money so we’re constantly trying to get our parents love we’re often trying to get money or if we feel like our authority figure was never going to save us and usually we don’t believe that God is ever going to save us and so that’s I think that’s where it really came from like there was just luck in it there was like if I was in a different role in the family I’m not sure if I’d ever really be here but the the yeah that’s all that I think is needed a different path entirely to something like here right yeah yeah right the the but I think what’s needed is oh there’s a the belief that there’s change possible and and that there is uh and then the the drive for that and if you have those two things I think that that’s all that’s really necessary in other words if you’re listening to the podcast you have everything that’s necessary because you have those two things if you’re listening to this podcast yeah so the so the seed was planted and you recognize that transformation was possible it wasn’t something that you were seeking like salvation or anything outside of you you looked for transformation and that you could do it um yeah but I don’t think the work really there was a there was like that was all intellectual that was like reading books and like hat trying to figure it out and then there was like oh then there was like the body experience that happened and there was the emotional experience that happened then it was like oh and that happened because of really I would say happened because of my wife so him 20s my 20 like 26 whatever I can’t I’m not good with dates but met Tara like within three months got engaged and uh married like whatever year and a half after that I can’t remember something to that effect and it was got really dysfunctional really really quickly but before it got dysfunctional she you know and like we’re in the love phase and it’s like the the engagement happened and one of the things that she was very adamant about was that doing a 10-day Meditation Retreat and I was like yeah we got I got to do a 10-day Meditation Retreat and what I just was kind of like it was that young male energy and it was like ah I can do that I can just I can be silent for 10 days that was like the big challenge hiking amount I had no idea that it was like I was doing like one of those hardcore of apostle ones I had no idea I’d never meditated before I had no idea of the pain of sitting still for whatever it is 12 hours a day didn’t know that that was the toughest part and um but that was the beginning that was that’s that’s when the thing started in Earnest or moved out of the head into the body and I don’t know if I’ve told this story on the podcast but I feel like it’s an important story to tell again if I have um but basically in that meditation you sit still and you just learn to focus your mind for the first three days and then at the end of day three or the beginning of day four or something like that you move your attention up and down and I had this moment of uh Oneness with the universe and that that thing it lasts about eight seconds and it was during the first solid sit that I did moving the attention around and all of a sudden I was just like and everything disappeared and I was the universe and the universe was me it was just a very felt sensation of that and and I Disappeared would be another way to say it and and all the Buddhists have should have like a very specific you know word for this particular kind of opening and um and but what that was was like God’s Little heroin dose it was like like that was like that gave that gave me just enough that the rest of my life was about for that’s possible I am gonna do whatever I have to do to get there what was so attractive about it so you described this in sort of the the heady way of like I was one with the universe but what what made eight seconds of that like heroin and that you wanted it so badly then my my ego was gone like the thing that the the constant editor of Life the the separation the the the the the you know the thing that you know in the ultimate sense the thing that I was taught my whole life which is that like I was a separate and I was a problem that was gone it was like I was just one with everything there was no fight left there was there was nothing to fight because I was it the the feeling was of you know being vastness it was like it was like imagine if you could feel what it would be like to be to be nature not to be in nature but to be nature like that’s what that’s that was the feeling and I was gone in that moment and you know I I that was the experience for eight seconds it was just like and whatever that was I was gonna do whatever and and unfortunately unfortunately but unfortunately what happened in my journey at that point was I tried to recreate that for years I think eight years or something like that maybe seven years I tried to recreate that experience and that like is just flogging yourself and it’s like I immediately took this thing that was my nature that I got a taste of and I made it a goal and I made it effort and I made it something that I had to achieve to be good enough I I turned it into all of these things that were that were that denied the the the nature of what I had experienced I immediately Co-op or my brain immediately co-opted it and was like and I would literally I remember like sitting meditating trying to effort myself back into that experience experience again not ever recognizing for for years that it was it it was received it wasn’t created it’s like your memory of the experience ended up taking the shape of all of the blocks that would stop you from being in that experience all the time yes yeah that’s a great way to fascinating yeah yeah and so and but so that was the unfortunate part about the fortunate part about it was that um I was like that’s when it opened up I will take any tool I will do anything I will travel to wherever and do whatever to get that back the the benefit is that when I was doing that I I am because of my Fierce like will that I was taught and the fierce like self-independence the I I just went for in my conditioning I just went for every possible tool that I could ever find and just tried it out and and I was doing that like I did that with instead of working for most of you know most of my for them most of the next eight years I I just did that all the time so like late 20s early 30s yeah until about 35. yeah I was just constantly this therapy this course this I was there I was in it and and and what I didn’t know until later was um because I’ve seen some people go into that space and it and it happens but like all the psychological stuff all the emotional stuff is still unhealed undoubt with and so that can get really complicated and so what was lucky is that not only did I learn a tremendous amount of tools that like which puts me in a position right now to do the work that I do but I also healed a lot of stuff before I could access that space or before I realized that that was my that space was my nature that that was where I rested and so there was a lot of work that was done which was really I’m very very grateful for but the pain The Experience itself was painful as hell because I was constantly not there I was constantly trying to be somewhere that I wasn’t I was caught I was just using it as a way to beat myself up so all of that stuff just was like it was painful as hell yeah something that’s interesting about about you in particular to me is that you know there’s many people who have an intellectual level understanding of like Mystic Concepts and meditation and all the different layers and levels in the elephant path and all the different things you can do in the Neuroscience behind it and then there’s a lot of people that have that I see that have a lot of the felt sense capacity to like reach these states meditating yeah and there’s something that’s less common than I see in you which has had me very attracted to this work is that emotional and psychological layer and for myself I’ve been focusing Less on the meditative practice and more on the psychological emotional stuff just kind of trusting that the more the more I work through my emotional stuff the more I just am in myself as in my natural state and less in my conditioning or whatever whatever story that is yeah and I’m curious like for you what made that what made it that your path brought you into so much contact with this emotional and psychological side of this so I I think I was just lucky born at the right time meaning that like I was born at a time when there was free meditation Retreats happening for the first time and you know I mean maybe it started in the 60s and 70s and so I’m doing it in the 90s and I would say the version like 3.0 of Psychology was happening where it like it passed Freud and it had passed some of the other stuff and there was like this kind of more integrated psychological approach and so there was just a lot of tools available and I was living in California so there was just a ton of tools available and I didn’t distinguish between a meditation tool and a spiritual tool for whatever reason my brain was like I will just take any tool there’s some wisdom if this tool if I saw something that affected somebody in a positive way I was like I’ll do that and I didn’t give a damn what it was I was like I was very lucky in the fact that I wasn’t religious about it and like some people are religious about like psychology doesn’t work psychology does work you know or some people religious about it like psychedelics work and some people were like psychedelics don’t worry like I didn’t give a shit if I saw somebody change I didn’t care what you called it I just did it and so and there was just a lot of it available and I was really lucky there was like I I could read non-dual teachers which I did a tremendous amount and and I could read them from like 2000 years of history and cross-culturally and you know I could talk you know read a guy who was a heroin addict non-dual teacher ex-heroin addict from Holland and I could read you know a 1200 year old zen teacher and like I had that and then I could go do the Hoffman process and I could you know I had a great therapist and you know so it was just I was just very fortunate and and a lot of it like the introduction to it a lot of it was Tara who had just started discovering herself had just done a retreat or part of a retreat and Silent tree had a therapist and it was really good so there was so there was like that I was very fortunate that way Tara started to open the door and then and then because I was rebellious I was in this art artistic community in the 90s in San Francisco and so there was all sorts of alternative things that were happening that I got to try out and I got to see people transform and anytime I saw it I was just like what are you doing how get me in you know like that was the thing and so I think that’s what what I think I just got lucky and but there was there was something else that happened too which was and I know I’ve told this story but some part of the recognition that I stopped crying from that early childhood time that emotions were shut down and I saw that picture of me being made fun of her crying and I and I was like okay this I just know something’s not right about this and so that’s like what began the emotional inquiry and also like the relationship with Tara I see this in a lot of relationships one person kind of holds the emotional and one person holds the intellectual and the intellectual person’s like I’m better than you because you’re like out of control with emotions and the emotional person’s like I’m not as good as this person but also you I’m better than you well Tara was really really willful and and so she was just not going to give up like she’s like yeah I don’t care I don’t believe your logic I don’t give like you’re not smarter than me because she’s also like just you know she also knew she had like this crazy brain on her and and she but she had done this acting and so she knew this emotional stuff was important and valuable and so part of it was just her absolute will to to just not like I’m not giving in to you which was you know part of her parenting patterns and so and that’s what I was attracted to you know in my before Tara I was you know I was trying to get over my my you know the lack of availability of my mom’s nurturing and so I was just seeking it in any woman that I could find it I was sleeping around tremendously and it was like typically like sleep around they would chase me I’d be like now I’m out of here and Tara was the first one was like I can take her leave you and so I was like oh that’s you know like somehow I felt like oh I can I can depend on that because that person that person that person doesn’t need me and since I couldn’t love my own need at the time I I you know that just felt safe and so that willfulness I think was a huge part of me of me going okay like I’m not gonna win this fight but I’m not she’s never gonna agree that I’m better than her because of my intellect so and and I got to see some of the benefits of her emotionality and so that’s that’s also a big part of it all right thank you Joe we’re gonna pause this right here and we’re gonna come back again in another episode to finish the conversation thank you everybody for listening and if you know somebody who might appreciate what you’ve heard today please pass this along and share what resonated for you we love your feedback so hit us with comments or questions through our website Circle Community or tweet us at Art of a comp you can reach out join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com thank you