- Speaker #0
Have you ever wondered why your deepest ambitions might be hiding behind your biggest fears? Could understanding and making peace with your shadow be the key to unlocking a happier, more fulfilled life? Today's guest will share his wisdom to help you achieve inner tranquility and rethink how you approach both your life and creative journey. Welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative with Lauren LaGrasso. I'm Lauren LaGrasso. I'm a Webby Award-winning podcast host and producer, singer-songwriter, keynote speaker, and creative coach. This show sits at the intersection of creativity, mental health, self-development, and spirituality, and it is meant to give you tools to love, trust, and know yourself enough to claim your right to creativity and pursue whatever it is that's on your heart. Today's guest is Tom Roschert. He's an author, speechwriter, and a profound thinker who has insights to share on his book that just came out called Chasing Peace. Tom is also the co-founder of Unite, a co-creator of the Dignity Index, and an editor of The Call to Unite. Previously, he was a high school teacher, a Capitol Hill press secretary, a White House speechwriter, and the co-founder of West Wing Writers. So an incredible resume and very creative life. I wanted to have Tom on the podcast because his journey and insights into overcoming fear, seeking peace, and understanding the deep connections between mind, body, and spirit are transformative. Tom's work and life offers wisdom and clarity in navigating the complexities of our emotional and spiritual well-being. And I'm so excited to share this conversation with you. From today's chat, you'll learn how your self-image shapes your actions and thoughts, and why you may want to rethink it, how to make peace with, accept, and be aware of the personal shadow, and practical tools for actually gaining peace and healing in your life. Okay, now here he is, Tom Roschert. Hi, Creative QD listening. I'm sitting here with the amazing Tom Roschert. You've written this incredible book. Chasing Peace. I read it, loved it, have so much to break down. But we were just talking about ambition. And I mean, I know you're a Midwesterner. I mean, you lived all over the world, but your roots, a lot of them are in Chicago. It's so funny because you knew the story of me, you know, saying when I was in college, I want to work on the Ellen show someday. And you said this thing to me, like, I don't know how you like had the guts to like have that ambition. Because when I was reading your book and it was like he ended up in the White House writing speeches for the president and vice president, I was thinking the same thing about you.
- Speaker #1
Let me tell you, my road there was really slow and bumpy. But the story that came to my mind after I heard you say, I'm going to be an intern on the Ellen Show, declaring it, and you had to be, what, 20?
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
I remember when I was 33 or 34 and I was... living in North Carolina. I was working for the Speaker of the House down in the legislature there. I was a press secretary. And I got a contact from someone I knew in Washington who had helped me previously from Vice President Gore's office. And they said, we're looking to hire a speechwriter. And I ended up not getting that job. It took me three times to get hired. But they told me, we're thinking of you for a speechwriter position. And I was bursting with pride and excitement and ambition and professional greed and all those emotions. But I wouldn't tell anyone. And then I told one person and I said, don't tell anyone. And then I said, I was contacted by the vice president's office. But the reason I was saying, shh, don't tell anyone is because honestly, I was afraid of being mocked for my ambition. Like, you? You going to the White House? No, no, no, sorry. And so that was enough to intimidate me from saying what I wanted out loud. Took me a long time.
- Speaker #0
I think it was easier back then when I was younger because like my brain wasn't fully developed. And one of the greatest head starts you can have in life is unconditional love. And I really credit my parents a lot for really making me believe I was capable of anything. I don't know. There's certain things that I've been more precious over, like you were over that dream of. you know, working in the White House and writing speeches. And I will say every time I've said it with like a pure heart with authentic enthusiasm, the thing has happened. But when I've been, which is a theme of your book, when I've been like cloistering it and hiding it and kind of like, just trying to like, conceal my my heart or like, protect myself from some sort of disappointment. It's been much harder to attain. But anytime I've actually approached something with genuine enthusiasm and passion. and brought other people in on the vision, the universe, God, co-create with me to make it come true, which is pretty cool.
- Speaker #1
I think that's an absolute truth. And it's still, you need to get past the fear to allow yourself to do what you're talking about. So I wanted to ask you about, you talk about this show is at the intersection of self-development and mental health and spirituality and creativity. And you say it's about redefining your relationship with fear. Well, that's like the whole human enterprise right there. So how do you... redefine your relationship with fear?
- Speaker #0
Well, the thing that I'm always trying to do is make sure it's not the one that's making choices for me because I can really fall into being led by fear and it can very easily shift into the driver's seat. You know, this is something I wanted to ask you from your book too, because we're going to get into everything. Have you done any IFS, internal family systems?
- Speaker #1
I'm not familiar with them.
- Speaker #0
So in IFS, there's some similar stuff with the shadow work, but... they talk about the capital S self, like the higher self, basically. I think sometimes, a lot of times for me, there has been a shifting of like the fear into the front seat of my life versus that like capital S self, higher self. And so my attempt, which I have to work on every day, is making sure that the real me is sitting in the front position and not the scared me.
- Speaker #1
Right. When I prepare to come on and talk to you, It made me go back and say, what if Lauren asked you to boil it down to a sentence? What is the sentence? And so I really think the book is about, the full title is Chasing Peace, a story of breakdowns, breakthroughs, and the spiritual power of neuroscience. But in the end, I think it's about finding joy by reducing fear. I hit about 50, and then I had a burst of really negative symptoms. And for eight years... I was exhausted. I was depressed. I had brain fog that made me anxious to the point of panic. And it seemed to be triggered by things that had never bothered me before. And so I was desperate to figure it out, but I'm not a doctor. I had no medical training. I was just a patient trying to get well. So I tried everything I could find for eight years and none of it worked. One of the most lucky turns in my life, I found a treatment that was based on a combination of insights in... neuroscience, spirituality, and psychology. And within a couple weeks, I started to feel better. Now, six years later, I'm a lot more than better. I'm happier, more peaceful than I've ever been, and I'm more successful too. But I was incredibly lucky. So many people, rising numbers of people, are suffering from chronic pain and illness that they can't figure out, their doctors can't cure, they're getting sidelined from their lives, and yet neuroscience is saying, that many of these conditions start in the neural circuits of the brain brought on by fear and a sense of danger. And if you treat the body to heal a condition that starts in the brain, you might be treating it forever. On the other hand, in many cases, if you're able to change the thoughts and feelings that shape your brain, you can start to heal the body. And so that was my story. And so for years, you'll totally understand this, but for years, I was writing down everything. I did in case it worked. Because if I ever got well, I owed it to other people to say what I did that got me well. But the core thing, if I boil it all down, is it was a change in the relationship with fear. My brain was falsely wired to see harmless things, neutral things, as dangerous things. And it sent out dangerous signals, which triggered fear, which caused all kinds of mayhem and havoc in the body. But that's the core of the book.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, it was really a multi-step process to get there, as you mentioned. Like you literally were on a spiritual quest your whole life. I mean, I kind of, there's a few quotes I wrote down in the book because I really related to them. I'm a spiritual person who has transcended competition, so I win. And I loved, you know, because we're going back a little bit, but I loved how you talked about how your quest for spirituality was actually a quest to best everyone. especially the high achievers, because it's nothing that they could compete with. Will you tell me more about this journey of your life with spirituality and how you finally came to realize that that was also a quest for ambition?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, beautiful questions. Well, I think we all start out trying to distinguish ourselves. We want to find out what we need to do to get love or at least a feeling of belonging. And so we try certain things and this works and that doesn't work. And our brain is super smart and we're just storing information, but... Eventually, I think this is how we all start out. We eventually craft an identity. This is a self-image. I am this. I am not that. And you protect that. And of course, it's not true. And there's going to be mounting evidence that really challenges your idea of yourself. But I started picking out identities like, oh, I'm a good chess player. Oh, I'm a good writer. Oh, I'm smart at school, or I memorize my prayers well. It's not that I was those things, but that I got hurt if people didn't see me that way, and I got flattered when they did. So I was just working this identity without really knowing that it was an identity. And then I fell into a very genuine passion for spiritual pursuit. And there's two parts of it, right? There's the genuine part of it that I'm reading or I'm meditating or I'm praying and I haven't eaten and I'm not hungry and I haven't slept and I'm not tired and I'm just going. And this is genuine and authentic. deep, natural, authentic passion. And then there's this other side that says, hey, I can get a lot by just turning this into an identity and saying, I'm a spiritual person. And that's how I sort of competed. That's how I tried to create a self-image that made me feel special, superior, separate. That was the battle. And I thought at some point in the book, I said, I thought I was getting past that material success trap that other people got lost in. But I wasn't. I was in exactly the same pursuit. I just gave it a different name.
- Speaker #0
I love this so much because I related to it. Because something I've been trying to work out, actually, like your book was pretty confronting for me. And something I've been trying to work out is like, is it possible to be ambitious while still engaging with this work that you talk about with lessening the pull of the self image in the shadow?
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Oh, I think so. Because I deal with this in like the last half. page of the book, because I wanted to circle back to this. One thing that every time I read this in the book, I laugh, but Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest and the writer of so many spiritual classics, including Falling Upward, he says in his book Falling Upward, any attempt to engineer your own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego-driven. So I had handed this book to a friend because I loved it. And I said, see what you think of it, because I thought, okay, you're going to resonate with this. And she didn't say anything. And I saw a chance to grab the book after I knew she had read it. And I was paging through it. And I saw that she had marked that part. Any attempt to engineer your own enlightenment will be ego-driven. And she marked it next to it. She wrote, Tom.
- Speaker #0
I love that part of the book.
- Speaker #1
It's just an ego gig for you. But as I closed the book, I said, it's true. That ego drives a lot of my spiritual pursuit, but ego is not the only force in play. That grace fills the gaps and sets the traps that break me down and wake me up. We're in a dance with grace, and the ego wants it for its own satisfaction, but grace is also playing in the mix, creating problems that the ego can't solve in order to let us give up the ego. and put our faith in grace. So my ego is a very prominent fixture in my spiritual pursuit, for sure. But thank God it's not the only force driving the effort.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, that's a comforting perspective, because it is always a not only but also, it's never an either or. And I think, you know, like, that's just like another example of binary thinking, like I can just so easily trip into, well, if it's not this, then it has to be that. And it's just not true. But before we get further, Can we just define what is self-image?
- Speaker #1
These are very ethereal, conceptual, hypothetical things. And if we're not clear about what we're talking about, we all nod at each other, but we're not really sure what they're saying. So a self-image is the idea I have of myself. It's a combination self-image and story. And it's something that I create that makes me feel secure, safe, superior. That's the point of it. There's so much to be afraid of. You're afraid of physical harm. You're afraid of death. You're afraid of illness. You're afraid of getting kicked out of the clan, being excluded from your family, all these fears. So we create an entity that is deserving of love. And this becomes the thing that protects us from fear. So ironically, we create it to protect ourselves from fear, and we can never dissolve it. which is the next spiritual stage, unless we are willing to face the fear that we created the self image to avoid. So as I'm using it, self image and my story, my glorious story of myself is what protects me. It's where I take refuge from the scary things in life. And what I do and the complexity of it is I tie my happiness to this story and self image of who I am, which means Someone can challenge it and hurt me. And if someone honors and affirms it, then I respond with the false grace of an addict who just got a fix. But I have given over to someone else my happiness by letting it be subject to their opinion. I tell a story and I try to get everyone to tell it back to me. And if they don't tell it back to me, then I strain really hard to defend it and promote it. That's why ultimately peace and a self-image. can't coexist because a self-image makes you always fighting to defend and promote your self-image and to deny all the shadow, all the things you have to push out in order to create a self-image that you think is inviting.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. And so is the difference between like self-image and genuine personality that like self-image is what you're putting your worth in?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's exactly right. Let's say you have many qualities, many skills. and you're a beautiful singer and you're an exquisite executive producer of podcasts and you're able to get people to open up and you have all these abilities and qualities and skills. But that doesn't mean that you need people to see you that way or you will be unhappy. It's really taking a particularly narrow view of yourself that embellishes some things, adds some things in, pushes some things out and says... You will hurt me if you challenge my story. That's the difference. There's a psychological attachment to it and you get hurt if people don't accept it.
- Speaker #0
If someone's listening right now and they're like, wow, I really resonate with this. Like one of them for me genuinely is when I was reading your book was brought to tears a number of times when you talked about how much your worth was tied up in people admiring you and giving you accolades for the things that you did. And I think so many creatives. Even though like our creativity is just an innate part of who we are. It's our authentic selves. We get tied up in our worth is in the output and the recognition versus just like the fact that we did it. And so if someone's listening and they're like, wow, that sounds like me, what's a way they can start to detach from that self-image or not let it own them?
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So this is really exciting stuff. I find it absolutely fascinating. And so in the book. I talk about a breakdown and we don't always break through, but the point of the book is we want to try to flip a breakdown into breakthrough. And so to be able to do that, I identified six states of breakdown because we need to see what's going on before we can identify a breakdown as a good opportunity, right? It's a spiritual opportunity. The states of breakdown that I name are anxiety, depression, addiction, illness, crisis, and grace. And grace, it sounds odd. Why is this a breakdown? Well, when you pay attention to what's breaking down, it's the self-image that's breaking down and it's grace that's breaking through. But what each of these means is it's anxiety, depression, addiction is a different position of this self-image and the shadow battling each other.
- Speaker #0
Oh, and quickly, let's say what the shadow is.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, the shadow is all the things that I insist that I'm not, all the things that I'm ashamed of, all of the things that would diminish my reputation in society. I tell this story in my book about even at a young age, we understand what the shadow is and we know what to disown it. So my son Benjamin is two years old. He's toilet training. He's wearing diapers. He's toiling training. It's not going that well. And he walks into the room and says, mama, somebody pooped in Benjamin's diaper. He knows that's not cool. That won't get him love. So he disowns it as absurd as it is. So put it the same way. For example, when I get anxious, it means my self-image is being threatened. So if I'm coming on your show and I start preparing and then over-preparing and then rereading my book, and I'm not making this up. I'm getting piles of notes. Okay. That's anxiety. And the anxiety is my self-image is threatened. Am I going to go on Lauren's show and I'm going to fumble and blunder and forget what I'm trying to say and not make my best points and all that. So that is anxiety. It means the self-image is being threatened. Now, what about depression is when the self-image is actually defeated. And I talk about when I went to Japan and there was at a time in my life when I thought. I can go anywhere. I can do anything. I can learn any language. I can make any place my home. And within nine months, I was exhausted, sickly, suffering from asthma and depression. And that self-image of mine that I had prized and cherished was absolutely defeated. And I had to take my self-image home to a place where it wasn't going to get contradicted every day. So this is the process by which the breakdown happens. But if you see that what's breaking down is your self-image. And you see that your body is breaking down because you're exhausting yourself trying to defend your self-image. And the self-image model of happiness is breaking down. The idea that we all grow up with that, if you decide what you want to be in the world and you go be that, you will be happy and you will be peaceful. All those things are breaking down. But the reason that's a breakthrough is ultimately you can't get peace by trying to become your self-image. You cannot depend on the world being the way you want it to be, the world treating you the way you want the world to treat you. Chasing peace is really trying to fulfill the self-image. And achieving peace is slowly dissolving the self-image. So the work in the beginning, which can be super fun, and it's mostly in chapter three, is a lot of questions that go into. Okay, let's go into what your particular self-image is. And when you see what your self-image is and you start to detect it by your own emotional responses, you begin to see the contours of the self-image. But one of the things that I discovered I found most interesting is, and I see it myself all the time, but if you give someone a compliment and they laugh out loud, you've identified perfectly their self-image and you've flattered it. It's so joyful when the world sees you exactly as you want to be seen that you can laugh out loud or you can cry. You're moved so much. And that's the self-image in play. So when people win an Oscar and they say, I'm very humbled.
- Speaker #0
Oh, yeah.
- Speaker #1
I absolutely believe that they're humbled because in that moment, they've reached such a peak that there is nothing that they want that they don't have. In that moment, it's a very precious moment. And that's their self-image has been realized.
- Speaker #0
I think we should interview them the next day.
- Speaker #1
What would you ask them?
- Speaker #0
Was it everything you actually dreamed of? And are you actually happy right now? Because you talk about this in the book. My music back in 2020 was featured in People magazine. And it was like the greatest thing I could ever imagine. I was like, I remember thinking this. I literally had this thought. At least if I died tomorrow, I was in People magazine. Right. And then that lasted about two days. So maybe we should wait like three days to interview these people. Yeah. And then on Monday, I was the most miserable I had ever been. Well, there were a couple of things that happened. Somebody called and like basically shamed me for the way I answered a question in the article. And so it totally like knocked me off of that joy. But also, I think the twofold thing was my life didn't change the way I thought it would. I thought that something like this would happen and then I'd be saved.
- Speaker #1
That's so good. That is so honest and true. I think it's universal. And I've had a number of little moves in my career that I thought, well, this will change everything. And it didn't really change much at all. And the change did make me happy.
- Speaker #0
Tom, will you talk about the difference? Because we've talked around it a bit, but the difference between happiness and peace and why peace is what... we should seek?
- Speaker #1
Well, we should seek whatever we're moved to seek. I think we're going to end up seeking peace after we've made a run at happiness and found it fickle.
- Speaker #0
Yes.
- Speaker #1
I want to honor everybody who talks about happiness and means the same thing that I mean when I say peace. So I don't want to diminish happiness and say it's some lesser goal. But the way I'm distinguishing the two in the book is that happiness is a material pursuit. And peace is a spiritual state and happiness is trying to get what you want and peace is wanting what you get and happiness is is becoming who you want to become and peace is really becoming who you are. And so happiness, if it's genuine happiness, it has peace in it. Because if it doesn't have peace in it, then it's just a good mood. These are the distinctions. But in the book, I talk about the first and second half of life. And again, the first half, as I'm defining it, is trying to achieve your self-image. And there was a period there where the self-image... was giving me what I wanted. I was getting what I wanted from it until I was probably 40 or so. It seemed to be working pretty well. The career was going high. The health was strong. I didn't see any reason to seek anything beyond it. But then the second half of life comes when the first half of life fails, when you have a breakdown, when the self-image can't hold together. And then you... don't know what to do. Typically, that's the striking thing about the breakdown. You are trying to achieve your self-image. Either you've achieved it and it doesn't give you what you want, or you can't achieve it and your body starts breaking down from the efforts to achieve it, or you're exhausting yourself, or your self-image becomes an abusive boss telling you what you have to go do. And that breaks down and you don't know what to do. So you redouble your efforts to be your self-image and that might fail. And then you create not just a false image of yourself, but then a false image of someone else. Oh, it's this person's fault. If this person weren't there, then I would be able to achieve my self-image, right? So there's all kinds of other negative stories that you can tell yourself. But if you reach the point where it really fails, it's broken down, you cannot resolve it, you're not even going to try to anymore, then there's a chance that you move into, I'm not going to try to be that thing anymore. I'm going to let it go. So while I was seeking happiness by trying to build and become the self-image, now I'm going to seek peace by letting the self-image go. And it can be a gradual thing, but it can be a very liberating thing. Like you saw in the chapter of addiction, I talked about my brother who was gay and he died of AIDS. And we had some very, very moving conversations. But he told me... When he learned he was gay and wrestled with it and fought it and then accepted it, he said, it's terrible when you find out you are what you hate. What he did was he grew up gay at a time and a place where the culture was extremely hostile. And he had to hide who he was. And it took an enormous toll on him. And it played out in addiction. But when he did come out toward the end of his very short life, it was an act of profound courage. But it was moving into the second half where I'm going to try to be this thing. And then, no, I'm going to let that go. And you might hold on to some elements. You, in fact, do hold on to some elements of your self-image when you begin to let it dissolve. You're still going to hold on to some. And you're going to keep having breakdowns until the self-image is empty. empty, but that's the shift from the first to second half from, I got to have this self-image to I got to let go of this self-image.
- Speaker #0
I want to talk about all of that, but first, I want to go into the stories you shared about your brother and then your dad at the end of his life. That part, along with the parts about your friend, John, destroyed me. They were so, so, so beautiful. Tell me why you chose to share those stories on these topics. How does the story of your brother and specifically your brother and your dad at the end of your brother's life correlate with these topics? Because I thought the story of my father, my brother, it opens the chapter on grace. What grace means is somehow your self-image is suspended and grace drives you and you end up acting without any self-interest in ways that are way beyond you for love and generosity. And you think like, where did that come from? It often only happens when we're stunned by loss. or stung by death. And we open up and we get very soft. And my father had a difficult relationship with my brother, partly because my father was very traditional, German-Irish Catholic background in the Midwest. And my brother was gay and also extremely witty and clever and well-read. And my father felt a little outmatched by him. But in the end, the story is about on Father's Day, my dad goes into Matt's room and Matt by then is in a coma. And my father says, Matt, I've read that when people are in a coma, they can often hear what's being said. I think a lot of our listeners will understand. My dad was raised in the 1930s in a Catholic family in the Midwest. For him to talk about, I read a book on people in a coma is amazing. There was nothing like that ever on his bookshelves in his life. And he was reading this and he said to the son that he really couldn't understand. He said, and I've understood that also when people are in a coma, they're staying because there's unfinished business. And Matt, I want to tell you that there is no unfinished business. I love you. And my dad, he had so outperformed his upbringing. His father had no tenderness in him at all. At one point, my brother asked my father, can you think of some happy memories of you with your dad? And my father said, yeah, when he wasn't hitting me. So my father was able to bring this exquisite tenderness. And then he went out with my mother to a Father's Day breakfast. And they came back. And Matt's partner greeted them and said, come quick. And they rushed into the room. And Matt was dying. The color was going from his face. And my mother rushed to him and took his face in her hands and said, oh, Matthew, my baby, I love you so much. Goodbye. And my father. maybe for the first time in his life, unafraid of his feelings, took a seat at the bedside to be present for the passing. And that was an exquisite act of love and grace by my father, who very, very rarely ever showed anything approaching that kind of tenderness at all. And the reason I put it in the book is because I thought it was an act of grace. It's the only explanation for suddenly. He rose above himself, and I think by the power of grace.
- Speaker #1
I mean, so beautiful.
- Speaker #0
Thank you for asking me that. You don't hesitate to ask.
- Speaker #1
Well, it just touched me. I wanted to talk about it because it touched me deeply, and I think there's a lot to break down on the ideas you're proposing. It's not just like self-image. It's also how we see other people, which you talk about through the shadow. But the thing I loved that I think a lot of people are lacking a lot, at least in the rhetoric I see online, is an ability to see all of who someone is and to love them for what they are able to give, to see their flaws or the things that have hurt you without judgment while still acknowledging the pain it caused you, but to see the goodness someone has. I notice a lot of people in my generation and the generations under us being like, and my parents did this and they did that. And I'm like, it is really good to acknowledge pain. We don't want to push down pain and pretend like it didn't exist because that's not good either. But can you look at all the things that they did give you and the generational gifts that you have and the ways they did better than their parents? Can we at least acknowledge the whole truth? And I felt through reading the book, whether you were talking about your mother, your father, your grandmother, you acknowledge the whole truth of who someone was and the whole beauty of who they were.
- Speaker #0
Thank you for saying that. I'd like to claim some of it. I'd like to accept some of it. I'm conscious of those times. And I wrote in the book about when my father died, I had such a mixture of emotions because I adored him. He sacrificed for us in many ways. There was nothing he wouldn't do for my travel and education. And yet he said more harsh things to me. in my life than everyone else combined, right? And yet, I felt guilty in ways for looking down on him for not being deeper. And I'm saying deeper in quotation marks, right? But I will tell you one thing that just wracked me with sobs. And I put this in an end note. But in the midst of one of my moments where I was very frustrated with my father, and I say in the book, at one point, I say, I turned on him and said, Dad. We all get irritated. But when you get irritated, someone has to pay. But I came back after that and he said, everything you said was correct. And so it's really so humbling when you're looking down on someone and you see something you never expected them to see. But to the point that really shook me with sobs, I was randomly looking through YouTube and I looked at a Jewel song that she... performs with Dolly Parton.
- Speaker #1
I love this song. Exactly. Yeah. Father's Daughter, right? Is that what it's called? Yes.
- Speaker #0
Here are the lyrics that flipped me out. And I'll just remember a couple of them. But she said, I am the product of his sacrifice. When I think of what my father did, and I'm like hanging out, going to retreats and reading books and sitting across like a spoiled brat and thinking, you know, this working guy who did all this. So I could have the luxury of a spiritual pursuit. What she then said, what Jewel then said, I am the accumulation of the dreams of generations. And their stories run in me like, holy water, I am my father's daughter. I had to cancel everything for the rest of the day.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
I couldn't take it.
- Speaker #1
It's so beautiful. Right? It's so true. And I think, you know, I love that you pointed out that part in our conversation now and in the book where you're like, I used to look down because I didn't think he was deep enough. I had a similar thing where, you know, because I've been very committed to my own healing. But I finally realized like, wow, that's a privilege you've had, Lauren. Who else was supposed to do it? You know, like my grandpa who was coming over on the boat from Italy when he was 15 by himself trying to figure out how to make it in this world and never seeing his mom again. Like my grandma who survived this terrible abuse from her mother, my parents who like, they didn't have as many resources as I've had because of the hard work they did for me. And they didn't grow up in this generation where we're talking about these things. We're talking about generational healing, like who was supposed to do it. Everybody did their part.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. It's humbling to think back and honor the sacrifice and see them in the situation in which they were given.
- Speaker #1
So beautiful. You talk in the book, and I know a lot of your other work is about how we can bring people together more. Obviously, our country is in a state of extreme polarization, tribalism. It's us versus them. And I wonder if you would speak a little bit to how we can use the ideas that you propose in the book to help us get out of that and see the humanity in each other.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, thank you. So chapter 12 is largely about this. And I think I opened chapter 12 by saying all of the inventing and discovering and experimenting and exploring in the history of human beings has never uncovered one thing that is more important or more a mark of human progress than how we treat each other. And if the species is going to survive, which means if the species is going to adapt to its environment, including the environment it has created, enough to survive. It needs to treat each other better because we have enormous problems to solve. The point we make, and you've referred to the other work, I work with Tim Shriver and our friend and colleague Tammy Pfeiffer, and now a growing number of people on the Dignity Index. And it's an eight-point scale that measures how do we treat each other when we disagree? And it's based on the premise that our divisions are not caused by the rise of social media, the loss of trust, the decline of institutions, the intensity of our disagreements. Our divisions, in fact, aren't caused by disagreements at all. They're caused by treating each other with contempt when we disagree. And we've got a lot of scholarship with us that says when you treat someone with contempt over time, you're going to get a war or a divorce or a revolution because a desire for revenge is an instant response. to a dignity violation. This is Donna Hicks who wrote the book Dignity. So absolutely, it is part of our evolutionary mission to learn how to treat people with dignity, even if we feel hurt. Now, it's acknowledging the point that when we are in emotional pain, We are driven to find someone to blame. Next time, let's both watch. Next time we're in emotional pain, see how quickly the mind tries to find someone to blame. And when it finds that person to blame, see that it wants to somehow, I think I can feel better if I can make you feel worse. That just happens naturally. But the real cause of my pain is not you or anything you did. It's a hateful thought in my head. How do I get that hateful thought out of my head? I talk about this and I cite Macbeth, and the doctor comes to see Lady Macbeth, who's suffering guilt over the murder of King Duncan, and Macbeth says to the doctor, how does thy patient? And the doctor says, not so sick, my lord, as she is beset with thick coming fancies that keep her from her rest. And Macbeth says, chore her of that. Canst thou not minister to a mind disease? Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. Cleanse the stuff. bosom of that perilous stuff, which weighs upon the heart. And the doctor says, therein the patient must minister to himself. In other words, she is suffering from horrible thoughts in her mind. And as we all do, when we're hating someone, the pain is coming from the hateful thought in our head. So how do we learn how to get that hateful thought out of our head? Because if I try to relieve myself of the pain of the hatred by dumping on you, it's not going to relieve my hatred. my hatred is going to increase because I'm going to have to hate you more to justify the bad deed I just did against you. And meanwhile, when I hate you, you're going to fire it back on me. So I'm just going to become more and more miserable. So the book Chasing Peace is really about inner peace and the work of the Dignity Index is really about social peace. Really have to combine the two. So the work in the book and the work that I describe in the book. the spiritual practices and the neuroplastic practices that I have been doing, they're really dedicated to becoming the kind of person who can respond in a hot situation with some respect and deference to the other side, no matter what it is they're saying. Because ultimately, people say, well, I ought to be able to say that they're awful if they're awful. And I would say, well, even if what you say is true, if you say it with contempt for the other side, it will make things worse. It will increase our divisions.
- Speaker #1
That's a problem. Like if it worked, fine, but it literally doesn't work. I love what you said. The only way to heal is to see myself in some of what I'm hating in you and to see you in some of what I admire in me. And I think it's so important. And I think it's important for us not to confuse our fury and our terror and our heartbreak over what's happening in the world. and point it at each other versus the institutions that are making these choices, like to take that deep level of heartbreak that some of us are feeling and use it to actually make a change.
- Speaker #0
I agree with you completely. I mean, we need to act. This is not an argument for indolence and giving up and saying, you know, I'm peaceful, nonviolent, non-resistant. That's not it. But it's to focus the action on what are the facts, actions, decisions. that we can take? How can we identify the actual source of the injustice or the violence or whatever it is we want to mend?
- Speaker #1
Right. Trying to change the policy instead of like saying to someone, you're bad. You know, like that gets us. When has anybody ever changed because they've been shamed? Never. Not a real one. Not a real lasting change. It's so important. What else do you really want to talk about? Like, is there anything you really want to share with the audience about? your work that you really think the world needs to hear right now? Anything on your heart?
- Speaker #0
I do want to say there are now a rising numbers of mainstream medical professionals who have understood the role that neuroplasticity, the role of fear and stress and a sense of danger can do to the body to create chronic pain. chronic back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, fibromyalgia. And if anyone has a chance to look at the Colorado Back Pain Study, this is a small example of the healing powers that come from the insights of neuroscience. It was done at the University of Colorado Boulder. The study was published in JAMA Psychiatry. But 66% of the people in the study all of whom had had chronic back pain for up to eight to 10 years, 66% said they were almost or totally relieved of their back pain. And it came about because there was no physical therapy, there was no opiates, there was no surgery. There was an exercise in which people were trained to focus on the sensations coming from their back, which they used to call pain. And they were trained to see it as a neutral sensation. It's called pain reprogramming therapy. When they saw it as a neutral sensation, the sense of danger dropped, which meant the sense of fear dropped, which meant the pain dropped. And so it was a direct connection between emotions, neural circuits that start danger and fear, which manifests in the back as pain. If that fear is reduced, the pain is also reduced. There was a Washington Post article on this study where... One, Dr. Apkarian, who has a pain clinic at Northwestern University, has shown that he is able to predict back pain more readily from looking at brain scans than back scans. Dr. Howard Schubiner, who I mentioned.
- Speaker #1
MSU. I looked him up as I was reading. So you all listening, if you are struggling with any pain, which many or most people are, I feel like right now. You must read Chasing Peace. And I was blown away, Tom, by all the things you mentioned about him. My mom has a bone on bone ankle and two bad knees. I feel like this guy could help her. She's scared of surgery and everything. So I'm like, at least maybe she could deal with the mental component of it. So if somebody is in a place where they're in a lot of pain or they're dealing with an autoimmune disease, whatever it might be, where would you advise them to start? Besides reading your book, like where's a good place to start their journey?
- Speaker #0
I think. to look at Dr. Schubner's work in unlearnyourpain.com. That will connect you to a network of medical professionals who are becoming experts at identifying and treating neuroplastic pain. Annie Hopper, and she is the one that I went to. So for eight years, I said nothing worked. And then someone said, hey, can you join our group? They're for people suffering from this kind of illness, but I have to warn you, they said. We don't do air purifiers and we don't do supplements and we're not looking into chelating agents and we don't care about taking saunas. We're talking about retraining your brain. And so if you're interested in this, you can read this book by Annie Hopper, Wire for Healing. And I read it in a day. I ordered the DVDs immediately. I went to the in-person. And within months, my whole life had changed around. I was reacting to my home mold or... dust or the environment or the leaves or the pollen combination of chemical sensitivities and and the stain on the floor and the paint on the wall and I was just reacting so badly I moved out of my house and I was living in an apartment because I was just getting dizzy in my home environment and everybody else in my family was fine and then I was out there thinking I would get well and come back and I wasn't getting well it was nine months living away from my family I thought my life was slipping away And then these people said, hey, you should check out Annie Hopper, Dynamic Neural Retraining System. Her website is retrainingthebrain.com. And I read the book, as I said, did the DVDs, went to find her in person. And I came home and a month later, I had thrown out 81 bottles of supplements. I had thrown out air purifiers. And I moved home in the very 100-year-old home that people said, well, you can't live there because the humidity. no, I went back and I was fine. And it took some time to retrain my brain not to react to the things I'd been reacting to. But so Annie Hopper is another star in this field that I would recommend people check out.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And honestly, you have to read the book to believe it because like, I definitely want to check out these modalities because I also was like diagnosed with too much mercury in my blood. And like, I was on all the pills I was I was buying the doc. doctor's special brews. I really related to that. This book really is like a mind, body, and spirit book to help you get to a place of peace. Is this pursuit of peace, of truth, is it ever over? Or as long as we're here, will we always be just chipping away?
- Speaker #0
That's a fantastic question. One of my editors said, hey, you never use the word enlightenment in your book. Why not? And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I didn't even notice. I'm resigned to an ever, never ending struggle, but with the struggle continuously reducing. Yeah. The most amazing thing for me, I guess I would say. This, that when I started writing the book, I thought that stillness of thought was the essence of peace. And now I think that stillness of thought is the mark of peace, but the essence of peace is to be unafraid of any feeling. If we are unafraid of our feelings, if we reduce the fear of our feelings, suddenly our mind gets more still because our... Chatting mind or obsessive thinking is a defense against feeling. And so if we are facing the feeling, then there's no need for the chat because we're facing what the chat wants to keep us from having to face. So I guess that is the path ahead is so promising that it doesn't trouble me if it goes on and on. I'm ready.
- Speaker #1
I love that. If we're willing to feel everything, we can do anything.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, absolutely in sync.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Tom, you're so special. Thank you for sharing your heart and for your warmth and kindness. It emanates through the screen. And I just love your book and I love who you are.
- Speaker #0
Well, thank you. Listen, this is really special for me because this is the first podcast I'm doing on the book. This is the first statement of any kind I'm making on the book.
- Speaker #1
Exclusive.
- Speaker #0
You are forever will be very special to me. Thank you for making it fun. and easy and not scary. And I just look forward to talking to you again and again, I hope.
- Speaker #1
Me too. Let's be friends.
- Speaker #0
Let's do it. Thank you so much.
- Speaker #1
Thank you, Tom. Thank you for listening. And thanks to my guest, Tom Roschert. For more info on Tom, follow him at Tom Roschert and find his book, Chasing Peace, a story of breakdowns, breakthroughs, and the spiritual power of neuroscience, wherever good books are found. Unleash Your Inner Creative is hosted and executive produced by me, Lauren LaGrasso. Produced by Rachel Fulton with theme music by Liz Voll. Again, thank you, Creative Cutie, for listening. If you like what you heard today, remember to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, this next one is important. Share the show with a friend because podcasts are really spread person to person, and there is no better review than the review of someone you love and trust. Also post about it on social media. Tag me at Lauren LaGrasso, Rachel at Rachel M. Fulton, and unleash your inner creative, and we will repost to share our gratitude. Also tag Tom at Tom Roschert so he can share as well. My wish for you this week is you find the courage to face your fears, embrace your true self, and begin your own journey toward inner peace. The path might be challenging, but with genuine enthusiasm and an open heart and an open mind, honestly, you can co-create your dreams with the universe. I love you, and I believe in you. Talk with you next week.
