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“We are metaphor, that we're made of metaphor. And so the issues that we have and the problems that we have with people are metaphors for the places where our brains are tied in knots and need to be untied and untangled so that we can become whoever it was brains were meant to be— in their snowflake, completely unique incarnation in the world.” says Sarah Peyton, researcher, teacher, and author specializing in relational neuroscience and nonviolent communication, who joins Mental Health in a Modern World for an unforgettable exploration of healing, trauma, and the forces shaping who we become.

Sarah Peyton draws on revolutionary findings in neuroscience, family constellation work, and her own lived experience to explain why so many of our struggles are rooted in inherited patterns, unconscious contracts, and a deep need for resonance and accompaniment—rather than advice or “fixes.” In this conversation, Greg Schmaus invites Sarah Peyton to unpack the science and soul of how trauma disrupts our natural capacity for connection, why metaphor is a biological language of the brain, and how precision and warmth together create the conditions for transformation.

Discover how the roles played by our earliest caregivers, unacknowledged grief, and “sabotaging” habits all point to what the nervous system has done to ensure our survival—and what’s truly required for lasting change. Listen to learn why we unconsciously replicate our family dynamics throughout life, how to uncover hidden “carrots” underlying self-sabotage, and what it really means to become the unique person your brain was always meant to be.

5 Key Takeaways

Discover transformative tools for healing, growth, and self-awareness from this episode. Start implementing these actionable steps in your own journey today:

1. Cultivate Resonance: Practice offering others both precision and warmth in your communication to foster emotional connection and relaxation in the body 05:53.
2. Embrace Metaphor: Use and notice metaphor in your language as a way to better understand yourself and create deeper connection with others 10:11.
3. Prioritize Accompaniment over Advice: When supporting others, focus on being present and attuned rather than jumping straight to advice-giving 11:28.
4. Identify and Update Unconscious Contracts: Reflect on self-sabotaging or restrictive patterns in your life, discover the hidden commitments driving them, and consciously choose healthier, updated behaviors 27:24.
5. Recognize and Heal Family and Ancestral Patterns: Notice how family imprints and constellations shape your actions, and work to untangle and release what no longer serves you 54:38.

Take your next step—choose one actionable point, practice it this week, and witness meaningful change in your life.

Memorable Quotes

"We are made of metaphor. The issues and problems we have with people are metaphors for the places where our brains are tied in knots and need to be untied, so we can become who our brains were meant to be in their snowflake, completely unique incarnation in the world."

"When the correct word is given to an emotion that a human is feeling, that person's body relaxes. It's like the message has been received, and they get to move on to whatever's next."

"If there's accompaniment and resonance, we don't actually have to make these contracts. If somebody were with me, going, 'Yes, of course this would be kind of scary sometimes,' then I don't have to make that contract to be closed; I can just be with what is."

Connect with Sarah

Website - https://sarahpeyton.com/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/empathybrain

X - twitter.com/resonantself

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/sarahpeyton

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sarahpeytonauthor/

Resources Mentioned

W.W. Norton Publishing - https://wwnorton.com/

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

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We are metaphor, that we're made of metaphor. And

so the issues that we have and the problems that

we have with people are metaphors

for the places where our brains are tied

in knots and need to be untied and untangled

so that we can become whoever it was brains

were meant to be. In their snowflake, completely unique

incarnation in the world. In a world moving faster than our minds were designed

to handle, mental health is becoming one of the defining challenges of our time.

Welcome to Mental Health in a Modern World with holistic health

practitioner Greg Schmauss. After overcoming severe anxiety and

OCD in his own life, Greg dedicated the past decade to

helping others heal through a fully integrated approach to mental health,

combining lifestyle coaching, psycho emotional healing,

mindfulness, and archetypal work. Over the years, he's facilitated

thousands of sessions guiding people back to peace, clarity,

and a deeper connection with themselves. Each week, Greg shares

powerful solo insights, conversations with leading voices in holistic

healing, and immersive live coaching sessions that take you inside the

healing process itself. New episodes every Friday follow

the show and start reclaiming sovereignty over your mind in a modern world.

Here's Greg. Sarah, welcome to the podcast.

Oh, great. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's such an honor to have

you. You've been such a huge influence on my personal healing and my

professional career. So it's really just an honor for me to have you on

the show. So I'd love to just start

just to give people a little bit of a background of your journey, of

your work, because you have such a diverse

area of expertise. So I'd love to just start with a brief little background,

if that's okay. Yes, of course.

My. My background is that I

became intensely interested in neuroscience

when I was starting to study nonviolent communication back in the

2000s. I had this transformative experience

with nonviolent communication. And then because I'm always like, how did that

happen? What was that? I went out and started looking at

the new research that was coming out from the decade of the brain,

from the world of fmris, being used to

look at how relationships are constructed and how we

affect one another. I think probably it was

incredibly healing because my mom, in the

aftermath of the trauma that formed her when she was a tiny little person,

sort of was adamant in insisting that she had no effect on me.

So I was like, look, we have an effect on each other. I was so

excited. Although I had no neuroscience background, I just

became an absolute, like, diving in person

and ended up publishing a book with Norton. Now

three books with Norton Publishing, W.W. norton. Despite

the fact that I have no neuroscience degree. So, so,

so. All hail the amateurs. Those lovers of.

Those passionate lovers of subjects who can dive

in and actually begin to tease things apart and make them

usable for the common person outside of the lab. That's my

world and my life. And the two modalities that I am most

interested in. I love healing trauma. I love healing trauma

because I would have loved for my mom's trauma to be healed and my

dad's trauma. Everybody that I love. But

I also love change. I deeply love

experiencing my own brain changing and

supporting other people to have their brains change. So the two

modalities that I work in that are healing modalities are resonant

language and resonant healing, which I developed based on

relational neuroscience, and constellation work,

which I love because it provides this

absolutely gorgeous social metaphor for people

to begin to have a sense that their experience is

captured and reflected by other humans.

And can you share with us what is resonance? How would you

define resonance? I remember in one of our

constellation courses, you defined it so beautifully. So I'd love for you to touch on

that for a moment. I wish I could touch the past beauty.

I'm like, what did I say? So resonance

is the way that human bodies vibrate

with one another and the way that we can kind

of capture and ride and augment and

be with those waves of

energy that move between us, which are our emotions. How

do we. How are we with them? How do we sit with them? How do

we reflect them in words? And what

neuroscience shows us is that the more that we have a sense

that another human gets us, the more

our bodies relax and change and reach for.

I kind of see our human brains as.

As having been born to do something,

something beautiful. Each person. Each person's brain is

completely unique. Just like snow, just like snowflakes.

We are blocked by trauma and by a lack of

accompaniment. And when we begin to allow ourselves to

resonate with one another instead of shutting it down in order

to make it through a difficult world, then all of a sudden,

all kinds of very interesting and important things start to happen.

Yeah. I remember what you said in the

emergent constellation training. You said that

resonance is the balance of precision

and warmth. Oh, that's beautiful. Yes, it

is. I'm wondering, could you expand on that a little bit? Because what I.

After that class, I remember exploring

where. Where I've experienced that, but also where I've experienced

precision without warmth or warmth without

precision. Yeah. So I'd love For you to just unpack

that a little bit. Yeah.

Our human brains

do not naturally give words to human emotions.

They. They have to be in relationships where

other people are giving words to human emotions. I mean, I think this can happen

through art as well, like reading books and certain kinds of

music and paintings. But

when. When the correct word is given to an emotion that a

human is feeling, that person's body relaxes

and it's like the message has been received and they get to move on to

whatever's next. And there are

both. There are non specific words for emotion that people

use all the time because it dials the intensity down.

Words like worry or

troubled, or saying things like this is

problematic or that's a dilemma, or I feel

a little upset about this. All of these are words that we

use constantly that don't actually have a

clear emotional tone. If you think about the primary

colors in a crayon box, you know,

in the crayon box of emotions, the primary colors are

fear, sadness, and a sense of

a need for connection,

anger and disgust. And

then we get some happiness and joy. But

if we don't actually get into the words are

connected to those primary colors. Like sorrow is a word that's really

connected to one of those primary colors. Or rage is a word

that's connected to a primary color. Terror is a word that's connected to a

primary color. Those are kind of high volume emotions.

If we turn it way back down, then, you know,

anger, frustration, annoyance, and then

like, so as we begin to capture the.

With precision, what area of the brain, because

these emotions actually happen in different areas of the brains and have different

neurotransmitters that run them. Then the body gets even

more calm and even more and takes

bigger steps. I'm a person who loved fairy tales. And in fairy

tales, when I was little, there were seven league boots that you could put on

and you'd take one step and it would carry you seven league.

And I kind of have the sense that that's what

resonance does when we're actually being both

warm and precise. So I love it that you had the experience of thinking about

warmth without precision. Oh, honey, oh my

darling. Yeah. Of course she would feel this

way, you know, just like not much there. Right. And.

And then precision without warmth. Would you like some acknowledgment of

anger? You know, like,

there's a person, we need a person.

So yeah, that's really beautiful. And

one of the things that I notice when you're offering resonance

is the use of a lot of metaphor.

Oh, metaphor. We are just. We are bodies built of metaphor.

And is that what creates the relaxation

in the body when someone's nervous system feels

understood through metaphor? Is that what's happening? Well, if you

look closely at whatever metaphor that you're offering, it's

offering feelings, energies and needs, energies

in a nice little package that also carries the

flavor of that other person in relationship to us. You know,

we really get to have the experience of them

stepping into a relational space

where they're using their imagination to wonder about

what things are like for us. The researchers say that we

use a metaphor once every six words when we're

talking. Just generally that it is. The

metaphor is the unseen ocean that we are always

swimming in. Yeah. Beautiful. The other components that

you mentioned is accompaniment. And you know, as

someone who for 10 plus years

has been in the coaching world, there's a

huge desire to be the advice giver.

Oh. And so one of the things that I've really

learned from you and learned through nonviolent communication

is some of the dangers of advice giving,

especially without consent, and how

accompaniment is really kind of what the nervous

system's looking for rather than a solution,

advice, or a fix. Can you explain why that's the case and what's

happening kind of like under the surface when someone's

receiving accompaniment versus advice? What a great

question. We're sort of sold a bill of goods about

being individuals. We're given like, lots

of messages that we're supposed to be independent and do things on our own.

We're supposed to tie our shoes on our own early. We're supposed to be able

to cross the street by ourselves responsibly early. We're supposed

to be able to figure out the answers on our math

test by ourselves. It's like every. All kinds of

messages that we have that we are

individuals and not social animals.

But in fact, humans are exquisitely social.

For example, we have particular neurons in

our skin that are devoted to feeling

particular nerves that are devoted in our skin to

feeling other people's body heat. Like, these

are nerves that do not Register temperatures

over 105 degrees and do not Fahrenheit and do not

register under 80, 82

degrees Fahrenheit. You know, it's like they only light

up at those temperatures. If we're sitting next to a hot stove, those

neurons do not. Those nerves do not light up. If we're sitting next to

a warm rock in the summer sun, unless it's the right

temperature, those neurons do not light up. So

we have A knowing about whether or not there are beings who

are close to us and the companion animals who are

most important to us. Cats and dogs have

body temperatures that are right in that same area as well. And

there's something immensely comforting about their presence as well.

But we're made to be in community. We're made

for our brains to work with other brains

and have a shared load experience.

So I don't think it's any accident that

the main neurotransmitter

for stress is cortisol. And cortisol

is the main neurotransmitter for what it's like for us to be alarmed.

So with this, keeping this in mind

that we are immensely social,

we relax when we have a sense that there's somebody with

us and we can begin

in a shared load situation. We can begin

to brainstorm and discover

exactly the best path for us, given the

resources and limitations of our present experience and the resources and

limitations of the other people in the experience. It's like we

move into solution once accompaniment

is present and we can really feel, oh, there's somebody with me

with advice. We're not stepping into that territory. You know,

we're trying to get to the good stuff, which is the brainstorming and the

solutions and the really great strategies, without

going through the emotional labor

of self regulation and

attuning to somebody else, allowing ourselves to make them the center of our

attention. Because when we allow ourselves to make the other person the center of our

attention, our nervous system starts to

resonate with their nervous system, our heartbeat starts to

align, our heart rate variability starts to align, our blood pressure

starts to align everything. And our

brains start to create the same patterning

and use patterning and brainwave patterning.

It's not the thing we're taught to do.

We're not taught to stop and resonate with

somebody else. We're not taught to stop and attune and make the other person

the center of our emotional attention.

So then what happens when we step over the part

that's deeply relational is that we get a spike of

cortisol when somebody gives us solicited

emote advice, unsolicited advice,

spike of cortisol. The thing is also true if somebody

doesn't want to go into that territory and we go in there,

they can also have some stress and be like, what are you doing? I

don't, I only want advice. I don't want to talk about emotion. And then

we get to listen to them. You know, I mean, it's always with consent that

we're moving consent and co creation. Like,

would you like. So would you like a metaphor? Guess. Is it okay if I

attune to you? It's okay if I make you the center of my attention for

a moment? You know, is it okay if I talk about emotions

or ask about emotions? Because that territory

in between problem and advice is

an unfamiliar territory. The territory accompaniment is not

a familiar territory for most of us. And we

got to know what it's like and we're like, where can I find more of

this? Why aren't people beautiful?

Beautiful. What was coming up for me when you were sharing is when we're in

that stressed state or state of pain,

when someone comes in and kind of like skips the step of

accompaniment or resonance and goes right to advice. It's kind of

like trying to pull someone out of their

state rather than meet them where they're at in their experience.

And so is that what's creating like the. Almost like that stress

response or the stress hormones? Yes. I think it's that we're

getting that clear information that somebody has left us.

You know, it's like, I'm not, no, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to attune

to you. I'm not gonna resonate with you. I'm going right over, I'm stepping right

over this area. You're here, but I'm gonna go over here and

tell you what I think you should do. Yeah. Beautiful.

And you. You know, last year when I had

participated in your emergent constellation program, which

was really incredible. You know, up until that point,

you know, I had been coaching people for, for 10 plus years.

And up until that point, it was always this sense of I'm working with an

individual. And now

since taking a lot of your training, you're working

with way more than an individual. Yes. You're working with

a whole field and a whole constellation. So can you

unpack that a little bit? The transition from this perception of

I'm working with this singular entity of one person

to I'm really working with a greater whole here. Yeah,

that's such a great thing. Well,

it kind of takes us back to this idea that we're, that we're

socialized to believe that we are alone.

We're not socialized to not go, oh, I'm walking through the world.

And my mom and my grandparents and my ancestors and my dad and his.

And his ancestors are all behind me

and are contributing to the epigenetic profile

around my DNA. You know,

we're just not used to thinking about ourselves as like

that Each individual is a convergence point

for their own past, present and future. Their

family's past, present and future, and their

society's past, present and future. Each of us

are carrying, just as in a family system, we

carry a different role. Somebody's the golden child, somebody's the

rebel. In society, we carry these different

roles that once we get a sense of

any unconscious commitment we've

made to only being that role, we can

begin to kind of loosen. I have an image of, you know,

the drills that you

can turn backwards and they become unscrewers. You know, the

unscrewing drills that we can start to take off the plate

that's been screwed down by our society or our family

or our culture. And we can begin to say, oh yeah, look at me, look

at me there, I'm carrying the rebel responsibility. What

happens if I just acknowledge that, yeah, that's something

I carry, something I love. And what if I'm bigger than that?

Beautiful. One of the things that I really appreciated

that had a huge imprint in some of the training

that we had done together is the impact

and the imprint of the mother and the father and the

different imprints that they carry in terms of the mother

and more of our inner world, the father, and more of the world outside

of us. Can you touch on that a little bit? Yeah.

Well, first of all, the research shows that it doesn't matter what

gender a person is. What matters is what role they're playing in a baby's

life. Right. And if there's just one parent, then they're playing both roles. But

if we have two parents, then the first

parent, the one that's primary for the babies,

for responding to the baby most of the time,

that is the mother person, the mothering person, the mother. The

mother can be male, the mother can be non binary,

and then we've got the second parent who we call the father.

But the father can be female, the father can be non binary. It does

not matter at all what gender people are. What matters is

what role they play. So with the mother, the mother's

creating the way that the child learns to

regulate themselves and

whether or not the child can expect to be

met in a sweet way in

interpersonal relationships and how

to learning how to care for the self, learning, care for others.

Lots of stuff about the care circuit and the sweetness of

connection and relationship or the lack

of sweetness in relationship and the conviction that we're bad. Yes,

Those things also come with mothers. As I mentioned, my mom

was immensely traumatized so all kinds of strange things came

with trauma. Then you've got the father, the second

parent, that person's responsibilities, if we're lucky,

is playing in an entirely different way

with the baby. And they are so important for this.

When a father or second parent plays with the baby,

then the baby experiences peaks of

delight, just, you know, peals of laughter that come

when babies are playing and how they giggle and giggle and giggle,

you know, and that experience of being brought into

peak delight and then, you know,

gently being accompanied in a, in a calming and

then a peak delight and then a calming. That's the essence of

play. And

I'm just thinking of not just my husband, but

my first son, adopted when he was 15. He,

he was, he actually came to the hospital when

my, when my second son, my birth son was born. So he was

there from the very beginning of his baby. He was

the first person outside the people who were in the birth room to see the

baby. And, and he played, he would play with the baby. He

would Nick's little fist and he would make him

punch him in the, in the. And then he would follow

quick giggle and giggle and giggle and then he would get up again.

So it was a whole experience of being able to watch this,

this really beautiful play unfold.

As you listen, you can hear the nervous system of the baby

making waves and kind of on a

wave. That's just such an

important piece of having

delight in the world, being resistant to

depression, having a sense of meaning and

not being spun out by high energy.

As if nobody ever plays with a baby, then they don't get to know how

to manage high energy. And then there's all

kinds of nervous system impacts of just

like anxiety just because there's no way to integrate and manage

what's happening. Cool that

fathers, second parents are responsible for play, for

provision and for protection.

And so the father, would you say it relates

to our sense of safety in the world and how

we maybe find value in the world,

like how we find worth, how we engage,

how we bring our energies to engage with the outer world,

with community, with group, with the workplace.

It's almost like I'm thinking now of gears and the

way that you have a transmission and it, it helps energy to move from one

direction to another. Father, with their

responsiveness and their play is creating a transmission

within the child that allows their life energy

to be changed, to be transmuted into

forward motion in whatever way the child wants

to be moving in the world or this particular human wants

to. Beautiful. I remember when,

when we were going through these modules. It was so clear to me how

that was showing up in my own life. For example, like,

you know, my mother was someone who is very loving, but

also sometimes a little smothering.

And so I realized that over the course of

my life, whenever things showed up in my body, like symptoms in my

body, I noticed my attention almost like smothering

it. Oh, wow. Like, what do I have to do to fix it or to

get rid of it or to almost like a micromanagement of the

body. And I was kind of like a little bit of the loving,

smothering mother to my body. And then my

father, who is very intellectual,

he came from like Austrian lineage, like very

mind, very intellectual. And so I remember when I would

go out into the world, it was always like, how can

I share my knowledge? How can I share my intellect? Not

my emotion, not my heart, but the power of my mind?

And when you were teaching, you know, these imprints, it just made

so much sense to me of like, how I engaged my

inner worlds and how I anticipated

being received by the outer world and how I needed to present myself.

And so really, really powerful and so

interesting in terms of what you've been talking about with your coaching journey,

that sense that those first 10 years were like, how

can I give you my knowledge? This is the thing I have to give.

Right, right.

And so within these constellations,

we have what you call unconscious contracts.

Can you share with us what an unconscious contract is? And also,

I love the way they're worded. It's almost like they feel

encoded in a way that is very

specific, very precise. When we're up against

something, some kind of issue, something we

can't do, or a pattern that we've noticed that's self destructive

or self sabotaging, we may very well be up

against what I call an unconscious contract. And

this is an agreement that we have made with ourselves

to do things in a certain way that

allows us to accomplish really deeply important,

but not conscious relational goals.

I think of conscious contract a bit like a carrot.

You can see the carrot green. A carrot that's growing in the

earth. You can see the carrot green. But you don't know

what kind of shape the carrot has until you pull it out.

It's got an individual shape. And so we

walk around in a field full of carrot greens where we see what we're doing,

but we don't know what the shape of the carrots are underneath the

ground, for example. What have I been up against

lately?

Yeah, so I have a Husband who's quite ill.

And so all of my contracts about

both. All of the agreements that I've made

about how to care for somebody else and whether or

not I get any care in such a situation

are at play. That's the carrot field that I'm walking

in is. I can see all of these waving greens of the

ways that I care for my husband, the way that I don't care

for him, the way that I don't care for myself, the way I do care

for myself. How is all of this happening?

You know, we all live within

the safety zone of our unconscious contracts which

have been made, which have been. It's almost

like they've been learned rather than made. They've been

developed and learned because they were the best possible way of

dealing with our family of origin. So we look

at what we're doing. I, Sarah, solemnly swear to my essential self that

I will both put my husband

first, but also

keep from fully connecting with him. Like

hair contract is something like a

closed fist kind of

moving. Moving an open hand

towards somebody. You know, there's a kind of this way that I tighten down

because agony is more than I can bear. So I get

to say, I, Sarah, solemnly swear to my essential

self. Then these are the words that. This

is the formulation that Greg was talking about. I, Sarah,

solemnly swear to my essential self I will care for my

husband while withholding my full heart.

And we do the. In order to. Now when we say the words

in order to, we're alerting our brain to the idea that

there's a carrot underneath the earth. We're like, oh, shoot,

there's a carrot there. I never thought of that. I just thought this was something

I did, that I would just. That this was who I was. My personality.

I would kind of give with a closed fist, not

violently, not like hitting somebody, but just like, here, you can have

this. And so now I get to say, how did this

behavior save me or

save my mom or save my dad?

And for me, it's like, I will do

this in order to. In order

to be able to take as

much care of my mother as I can without

being vulnerable to the vibrations of her insanity.

So I will keep my body very tight and closed

at the same time that I'm very aware of and taken care of

in order not to be pulled into the screaming chaos

of incoherence that

was at the core of my mother due to very

early childhood trauma. So now, all of a sudden, I

know something new about myself. Like, I knew that I was doing the

carrying with a closed fist what the

carrot was. So now I've pulled the carrot out of the earth. And

in fact, what we're doing with our brains is that we make

these contracts non verbally. So they live in the basal ganglia, they

live in procedural memory. It's just like when you're

riding a bike and you're a little kid and you learn to ride a bike

that has a foot brake. And then when you want to stop, you pedal

backwards. And then you get to be a grownup and they give you a big

bike with handbrakes and you get on it for the

first time and you're going down a hill and you start pedaling backwards, but it

doesn't work. So this is kind of where we are with these

contracts. We're all pedaling backwards, downhills, going,

where the heck are the brakes? I don't have no idea. So we need to

be able to update our procedural memory. And

we can do that by actually giving words to the

experience. Because when it's on the

ground, we can't see its shape and we can't decide whether or not we want

to eat it. So we pull it out and we go, oh, Sarah, how do

you like this contract? And I go, wow, that was a very good

contract when I was a little girl. It is not so helpful for

my sweet husband now. Now

what's interesting is that so often when we pull these

carrots out and we go, yeah, that's an expired contract. That's a carrot I don't

need in this field anymore. But what will

I do instead? So now we need

the blessing because my body's like, sure, I don't really want

this, but no, I do.

So now we begin to offer something new and we

say, I release this contract, I revoke this vow

and I give you my blessing instead, Sarah. It's

almost like that closed fist let me rest

while giving. It kept me safe while giving. So now I'm

going to invite myself to give

fully and to rest fully

and to give fully just to explore. It's like we can do

a gentle exploration invitation. I invite you, Sarah,

to explore. Opening

fully and closing gently and fully and opening

fully and closing gently. And then I check

and see whether my body likes it, what's the

experience? And my body is like, yeah, I like this.

There's probably more here because I can feel like an opening in the front of

my chest, but kind of still some closeness in the back of my chest

needs. And then towards my back just needs more holding.

But that's an example of the way that the unconscious contract

work and an example of the wording. I swear to

myself that I will do this thing in order to

no matter the customer. Do I want this contract?

No, not so much. I release this contract. I revoke

thou. I give myself the blessing. Some people like the word invitation.

Give us invitation. Give

Beautiful. And sometimes people are like, that's very white, Sarah.

That's very white. And it's very legal. I am going to say, fuck this

shit. And they do, they say it and it works perfectly well.

So that also is a possibility. I love that, you know,

when you were sharing one of the things and thank you for sharing an example

from your own life. I really appreciate that. A few things that were coming

up for me. Number one is it seems like these unconscious

contracts are once upon a time, our adaptive

strategies. They're how we survived,

how we survived alone in a world where we're not supposed to be alone. Right,

right. And it seems as though these

contracts that once insured our

life can eventually become

the biggest threat to our life. Oh, that's so true.

And it's kind of like there's this arc that these

contracts take of like benefit, benefit, benefit,

benefit, and then cost, cost, cost, cost, cost, cost, cost.

Because that's why I was really curious about the encoding of it.

I will do X, Y or Z in order to achieve this benefit,

no matter the cost. And it's almost like, is there like

a cost benefit ratio that you're kind of

like playing with? And once the scales tip, then

the contract needs to change. With the initial contract

we're managing without enough resonance,

we're making a contract to compensate. There

being no accompaniment and no residence. If there's

accompaniment and resonance, we don't actually have to make these

contracts. If somebody were with me

with my mom being crazy, somebody were with me going, yeah,

you know, of course this would be kind of scary sometimes.

Would you like some acknowledgment of confusing days? Then I don't

have to make that contract to be closed. I'm just like,

oh, yeah, my mom's basically,

you know, instead of sort of trying to make her

sane, which is what I did for the first 18 years of my life,

trying to find the way in which she was sane. And I was

part of what we're seeing is child is

in a nervous system unit with their mom or

dad and as

grow into being their own person in a

nervous system unit without an with the mom or dad

as they grow out being in

that Nervous system communion or

this kind of full joining, merging state, then

the environment changes. And as the environment changes, the

contract becomes more self sabotaging.

But if we were, people who are still living with

their moms in their 60s are going to have contracts

that still work really well in terms of staying

closed in people who've never had any resonance. Most often

as people begin to learn resonant healing and step into this

experience of being changed, then the contract,

the invitation becomes, I give you my invitation or my blessing

to know that you have new norms that you

don't. That you don't have to compensate for there being no, no neurons

anymore. That you get to, you get to mourn, you get to mourn that your

mom is saying, and you get to mourn. And

you don't have to fight it, you just get to be with it. And because

you've got more neurons, it's possible it wasn't

possible when those

contracts. Yeah. Beautiful.

And you know, in. In some of my study and training in

archetypes Based on Caroline Mrs. Work,

we have these four survival archetypes that

kind of are really the foundation, almost

like the root chakra, like the foundation of survival and safety and security.

And one of them is the saboteur. And how we learn to

sabotage ourselves for our own survival. And

going into the coaching world for many years

and a lot of like, personal development and self help. And

there's such an emphasis on habit change

and taking these sabotaging

behaviors that we perceive to be bad

for me or negative or coming at a cost

and trying to coach myself into a more positive behavior

into a more positive choice. There's benefit to that.

There's, you know, it's great intention, but one thing that I

found is you can try and make

behavior changes or habit changes,

and a lot of times we end up failing, we end up sabotaging,

and we start beating ourselves up over it.

You know, it comes with shame. It comes with feeding this inner

critic. Yeah, of course. But when we identify these

contracts, we see the hidden benefits of like, oh,

this negative sabotaging behavior. Once

I can see the benefit of it. I can see

the unmet needs and I can have compassion.

Yeah. And so I wonder, and I love your

perspective on this. Before we try and make habit

change, is it really essential to understand

the hidden benefits of our sabotaging behaviors

before trying to change them too quickly? Yeah. I'm getting

the image of like, you know, you've got your little carrot garden and you're

telling the greens, go that way. Greens Grow that way

without ever getting the carrot out of the ground and looking to see if it's

carrot that you want in your garden or not. So

kind of delights me, this idea delights me that, that we, that if we take

the carrot out, we get to do some really interesting discovery

and self connection. Another really interesting

piece of this puzzle of habit change and even addiction

is that again, we are not the

individuals that we think we are. We are

extraordinarily interconnected not just with the

people in our world, but with the substances

and activities in our world.

So when you get in your car,

your brain expands your, your

body map to include your car. Which

is why it can be, you know, if you get in an unfamiliar car, you

can end up bumping into things that you wouldn't normally bump into. Your

integrated body is, hasn't quite updated to the new car.

Or people who play the violin or the cello. There's a

cello in the back of my room. When they

start to play their instrument, any instrument, just stringed instruments, that

it becomes a part of the integrated body.

And so also with

like substances and behaviors, they become a part of

us. So we want to know not

just what's our carrot,

but what's the carrot of the, of

the substance or behavior. So I've been thinking about this with

sugar lately. A new piece of research came out about sugar.

That sugar molecules are, are supposed to make

fat. If we have enough abundance in our environment

to be having sugar, then we should be storing up for

what's coming next. So

then sugar has a contract

to do that. That's what sugar does. If

sugar is a part of me, as it has been a

regulating part of me in a world without resonance,

then that thing that sugar does,

I also is a part of me. We

and look and see sort of both our, the

contracts that cause us to do the thing, whatever the

habit is. But we also get to look at

like the neurobiology of whatever the habit is

or whatever non habit is. Because there can be so many

interesting things like where we get to

acknowledge not just

deep need that we're meeting by doing this habit. Like for

Sarah to acknowledge not just the deep need that's being met

with relaxation, comfort and ease

when I get to have something sweet, but also like there's this

whole other cascade of things that's happening

that an unconscious

part of that whole. Do you want to name a particular habit that you're thinking

of? And then we can kind of take this apart or I,

I, I thought of sugar for myself. But I don't know, something that would make

it more. Something people often get coached about. I was

thinking about one for myself. You know, one that comes up for me

is actually similar to one that you had shared for yourself is

caretaking or showing up for others

at the expense of myself. Oh,

so that might be one that. Yeah, that comes up. So if we've got

a beautiful, fat, lovely carrot under the

ground that is saying, I will do this in order

to. Maybe something like, in order to care

for my mother. But, like, even bigger,

the image I get is of water finding the

level like that. For example, your integrity is such

that. That you can't just raise your water.

It doesn't. It's. It's not even physically possible for

you to just raise your water. You're connected to all the other

waters. So the. The power and the strength needs to

go, and the care needs to go to the lower

level so that everybody's water can come up.

What happens for you with that? Guess you get to just take it and say,

my in order to is. My in order to is

I will care for others at the expense of myself in

order to secure my value,

in order to

protect myself from guilt. I think

that's a big one. In order to

not be the target of someone else's pain,

no matter the cost to myself.

And do you need a little acknowledgment that indeed you work?

Absolutely, yeah. So what a

fabulous vow this was. Yeah. And then

now that you've named it, what we want to know is

whether your body got involved. And so how,

may I ask, how does your body do when you say those words?

There's definitely a vibration of tris.

Like the. The contract is true, and

it. It brought me relief at times,

so I can definitely feel just the truth of the contract in my

body. So then we get to say

essential self of Greg. So this is our central, most

untraumatized self that wants the best for us. How do you like

this contract? Do you want to keep it?

No, I. I don't want to keep it because I

could really feel the. The cost of it starting to.

Starting to increase over time. So then you get to

say, I release you from this contract. I revoke this vow. Or you get to

say this,

this. This contract. I release it.

And instead of this contract, I

offer myself the blessing of self

care and

spaciousness to attend to

my needs. Give me a deep breath. How

does it do for you? There's a nice

exhale. Yeah.

So thank you for taking me through that Briefly,

just I think it was really beautiful for the listeners to get to

experience that in real time.

Beautiful. The other thing that came up for me when you were talking

about sugar is one

of the most common challenges

in my family has been sugar addiction going back

like a few generations, like my mother and even

siblings or family members. And so

some addictive patterning. And one of the things that really

struck a chord for me in the emergent constellation training

was when you talked about these contracts. When

the flow of attunement between parent

and child reverses, where the child has

a contract to almost become the caretaker of the parent. And the

flow of energy, you know, reverses instead of parent to child,

goes from child to parent. And what that does in the brain

with like the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. And

I'm curious if. Cause I've. I've seen this a lot with

clients ever since I learned this from you. If

that reversal can really open up the

door for addiction, I'd love for you to expand

on that a little bit. Yeah. Our addictions

speak to us about how deeply we are connected

with this world. So

each different addiction addresses

relational deficit.

The thing that sugar does more than anything else, supply a sense

of warmth and well being. A flow of

oxytocin, endogenous opioids, sugar,

salt and fat all do this. And

we have the experience of a mother who

needs care and a child who realizes the mother

needs care. And the child, instead of being able to turn

toward their life, turns towards the mother to

try to care for, but the child still needs to be receiving

from. And if the child discovers that

they can receive from sugar and be able to

maintain sort of backward flow

of love to their mother, then make

solutions. And then that

of course can continue on. And then when we're working

with. With substances, we can even look at the contracts.

Ahab to take care of us then. Because

remember how a car becomes a part of us, sugar becomes a part

of it. And whatever becomes a part of us can

have a contract. And so

the sugar then has a contract. I, sugar, solemnly swear that I will take few

of Greg's family in order to

make up for the flow of

love that couldn't travel from generation to generation, but got

turned and is trying to go the wrong way. The

sugar is like. It's like supporting the whole family to have this

different orientation that doesn't let the children

turn towards the outer world. And the

sugar can do this because it's part of our world.

It's not something Foreign. It's not something strange

part of us. It's a part of our extended

body in relationship with the plant.

What we can begin to do is both work with contracts

that Sugar has to take care of us and see if we want to really

release those, because those are. I, Sugar, solemnly swear that I will

take care of you no matter. In order to make for

there being no flow of love to the children, no matter

the cost to you, says Sugar.

It always makes me laugh. And then so

ruthless. And so

then we can say, oh, yes, Sugar, I release you from this contract. I revoke

this vow. Sugar can step down and not be such a part of the family

system. People can begin to

the client, whoever the client is operating for their family as a

whole in a way gets to begin to turn towards their own life

instead of being turned towards them. Their

beautiful, beautiful. I love how you

brought in the contract that Sugar has. And

it reminds me of. I've spent many years kind of

exploring the realm of shamanism. And in

shamanism, everything carries a spirit. So the

spirit of sugar, the spirit of tobacco. So there

are these spirits, this consciousness of Sugar

that carries a contract just like we carry contracts. It just

makes everything so alive. Yes. Which is really beautiful.

As I travel this path, it only takes me deeper and deeper into

animism. It's

wonderful and excruciating. Absolutely.

So the last stop that I'd love to kind of take on our

journey together, which has been an area of

real fascination for me because of my own personal journey,

which is how we have these constellations,

especially going back to our family of origin

and how much we unconsciously replicate them.

Oh, yes. Well into adulthood. Oh,

well into until we die. Yeah. And

so it reminds me of, I think it was a quote from Carl

Jung, that something around until you make the unconscious

conscious, it will direct your life and you'll call it fate.

And it really taking the emergent constellation

training with you really just highlighted how much

we replicate our constellations. Just the names and faces change.

And so I'd love for you to touch on why we do that, how we

do that, and what the maybe hidden

opportunities are in really recognizing that.

What a wonderful question. This is where the area that I've

been working in for the past couple of days, I had a friend

who got really mad at me and dissolved the friendship. And I was

describing it to another friend of mine and he said, sarah,

that's all bro. That's all mother stuff.

That your friend is mad at you because you aren't a good Enough, mother.

And that means that they're not doing their work to be able

to claim their own power and

responsibility. And I was like, oh, I can see that.

And so I carried that in my pocket. That was like two or three years

ago. That friend said that we've been carrying that around in my pocket.

And then just recently, I had the opportunity

to think about an old relationship that I had forgotten about.

And I thought, oh, I'm. I've been so irritated with that

person for not

coming into my emotional world,

for never having an imagination about my emotional world,

which of course was my mother.

So I thought, I've been thinking. I was sitting at breakfast this morning and I

was like, oh, my God. I have all these friendships that I've made

where I get irritated because they're not thinking about me.

And the more love we

are, this is this. I made those friendships.

Those are people that I chose to be with. Those people don't have a relational

imagination. Just not there.

And I was like. I was like. I was being self responsible and I was

just like. And look at me, creating these friendships. And. And

then, you know, three, five years in going,

there's a kind of a release, you know, that happens as we begin

to see that the way in which we're.

We're replicating what we

knew when we were little. I mean, this comes back to this idea that we

are a metaphor, that we're made of metaphors. Metaphor. And

so the issues that we have and the problems

that we have with people are metaphors

for the places where.

Where our brains are tied in knots and need to be untied and

untangled so that we can become

whoever it was brains were meant to be in their

snowflake, completely unique incarnation in the

world. Beautiful. When you were

sharing that. The image that I was having is

just all of us walking around and we

have these invisible fields that contain

our constellations, our ancestors, our contracts.

And these fields almost like are

communicating with each other beyond our conscious

awareness. And if

my field and your field have something

within them that almost fit together like a glove

that is there, like almost like an unconscious

magnetism. Absolutely. That kind of pulls them together.

Is that. Is that what's happening? Yeah. And I love

that the word familiar has the word family.

Right. Right? Yes. We find what feels right.

Of course. We find those matches of what

our unconscious contract, you know, make easy for us. I'm

thinking that I probably have a contract not to exist. I

swear to myself that I will not exist

relationally for others. Maybe I will believe it's impossible for me

to in order just myself from heartbreak. From

the heartbreak and loneliness of being my mama's daughter.

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful.

Well, Sarah, this was such a wonderful conversation and

I thank you so much for all of your work and all of your

love and wisdom and everything that you're, you know, sharing with the

world. It's. It's touched my life and those around me in such a profound

way. So I just wanted to personally thank you for that.

Oh, Greg, thank you so much. It's just a pleasure to be here with you.

What a wonderful conversation. And if people would

like to learn more about your work, take some of your courses, attend some

of your workshops, where would you like to direct people? Sure.

Well, with my husband so ill, I've been mostly working online and don't get

out and teach in the world so very much right now. But

so mostly you can find me online, which sort of wonderful because people can work

with me from all over the world. The only problem is time zones,

of course. And you can find [email protected]

and it shows you kind of the unfolding classes.

There are classes in constellations, and there are classes in

relational neuroscience and mesonic language. As you get involved in

one or the other, then sort of the other one starts to stir and

come farther forward because there's something. So

we are so interestingly

integrated with the world. Bodies are part of the

world. And so we need both to be able to look

very specifically, warmly and precisely, and we also need to be able

to look systemically and interwovenly.

Beautiful. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you,

Craig.