May 20, 2022
In this Step Closer bonus episode I break down for you what it takes to heal from complex trauma. I introduce you to the All Access Pass to the 5 Circuits of Healing Power, a program I developed as the basis and context for my own recovery from complex trauma and childhood emotional neglect. I created this bonus content to inspire you and invite you to step closer to me as a guide and fellow human in recovery, and the community of incredible humans a fellow survivors who have assembled in the Relational Healing Lab.
This episode is for you if you are new to healing and want to learn more about complex trauma recovery, how I developed the 5 Circuits of Healing Power, and how they might create the ideal context for your CPTSD recovery. Registration for the 2023 cohort opens soon–details to come.
There are 21 incredible humans in the 2022 All Access Pass. We’re currently approaching the halfway point of the program year as we wrap up the In Your Depth healing container in Circuit 3: Coming Out of Hiding. Next, we will move into a five-day live intensive which covers harnessing the Self-Energetic capacity of Courage. I feel passionately about these circuits, these containers, and these humans, and I want to share it all with you. They have changed my life, and I’m confident this program can change yours as well.
Is this program for me? I get this question a lot. The 5 Circuits of Healing Power is for you if you’ve been facing some pretty significant, pervasive, and unshifting struggles with your mental health and relationships. It’s for you if you cannot seem to find any help that actually…well, helps. It is also for you if you’re ready to invest in a research-based, comprehensive trauma healing experience, one that feels intimate and connected.
At its core, recovery from CPTSD requires you to live in your personal power. I will teach you how to step out of circumstantial power and flourish in a life fueled by personal power. It’s so foundational, in fact, it’s one of the very first things I cover in Circuit 1. When you can tap into your personal power consistently, even when triggered or in less-than-ideal situations and relationships, the whole world opens up to you. The 2023 All Access Pass could be your first step towards this profound transformation.
Enjoy this bonus content, then and let’s start a conversation about your healing journey and the role the 2023 All Access Pass can play.
Tanner
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Episode transcript:
Tanner Wallace 0:03
Hello, and welcome to the very first Step Closer episode, I intentionally chose the language "step closer" as a personal invitation, where I see you in your own personal power. And I'm inviting you to make a desire based decision to step closer to me learn more about how to work with me learn more about the healing containers and experiences in the relational healing lab. Because you are curious, because you are intrigued. And because you think there might be something more for you, on the other side of a paid experience in the relational healing lab. These are unique in that they are somewhat like shop with me infomercials in a way. And I'm going to be totally confident and unapologetic about that. Because I've learned in my own journey. As an entrepreneur, as a coach, that the best way to sell is to make it an extension of the way you communicate with your audience seamlessly, organically and effortlessly. And what I want to share with you in this Step Closer, is an edited excerpt from me talking about the 5 Circuits of Healing Power in The Gathering, the collective initiation into the 5 Circuits of Healing Power, the Facebook group, the free Facebook group that's happening now, we'll open back up July 1, I shared with them how and why I created the circuits, and what they truly mean to me as a guide. It's a very intimate portrayal of the five circuits and why I created them and how I feel about them. In the trauma recovery universe. I wanted to share this with you as a starting point. To begin a conversation with you about what would it look like if you decided that 2023 is your year of healing, to walk with me through the 5 Circuits of Healing Power, walk with a set of survivors in a collective for 12 months to gather up this mountain of recovery? So let's start with the circuits. And what will be coming next is a release of the 2023 All Access Pass investment guide, the payment plan details, the terms and conditions of joining these containers? How do you set yourself up to know if this is the right decision for you, and give yourself and those you love time to make this kind of commitment to meet for you, for me for us. So with that, I will launch this excerpt of me talking about the five circuits of healing power in the gathering, and invite you in to a conversation about how you might step closer to me. And you're healing and 2023 through the all access pass to the five circuits of healing power. I'll see you on the other side.
Tanner Wallace 3:09
I am really eager to talk to you about these 5 Circuits of Healing Power, something that I created out of a desire to make something exist that did not exist when I first learned about complex trauma, and wanted to heal. When I learned about complex trauma. I read Pete Walker's book that was so validating because for the first time in my entire life, I was faced with someone who was speaking a truth speaking a lived experience writing about it that resonated so deeply with my own experience. And what was so profound about my reading of Pete Walker's book is is it there's the kind of almost a line in my life pre reading Pete Walker's book surviving to thriving to post reading Pete Walker's book before Pete Walker's book and I me reading about complex trauma from his perspective, I would have said, I did not have a great adolescence. I did not have a great childhood. You know, I my mom has some mental health issues my dad is was very checked out. My dad's death was very sudden it was very upsetting. And I have struggled with my mental health, and I'm not good in relationships. And I largely would have framed it in with a medical model and what a lot of mainstream relationship parenting frameworks would have provided me what learning about complex trauma did for me was that it gave me a very concrete way of thinking about the consequences of not having a great childhood and not having a great adolescence and why I struggled with my mental health. That it wasn't like Oh, I have a flawed in some ways I'm broken in some ways, you know that it's all me and I'm damaged. It's no like, I was raised in a traumatizing environment. And there are developmental consequences to that, including how my brain developed. From there, I read the Body Keeps the Score, and then I had even more detailed knowledge. And so I was like, Okay, this is it. I'm, I have complex trauma, I'm ready to heal. How do I do it?
Tanner Wallace 5:36
Nothing. So, I was like, I'll pay any amount, I will do whatever it takes to tell me what I need to do to heal. Nothing fucking nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Something here, something there and Instagram post here, a trauma recovery group there. And, you know, this is this is all dropped in, right. So like my experience of this, all of it lands squarely in my existing life with my existing life at the time, was a professor of human and development in a school of education, having studied learning, growth and development for like two decades. So I knew from a professional standpoint, here's what it takes for any human to learn a complicated process, to grow into something, you know, to develop positively to learn a new skill, I was so deeply immersed in literature and writing about this is how you promote transformation, mostly in the classroom. But also I'd studied coaches, and I'd studied, you know, youth services. So I was I was deep into the motivation literature, the development literature, and how we do this. So when I turned to be like, okay, recovered from complex trauma, I'm ready. And I found that no one, no one had created a context, a container, a lived experience, where that level of transformation was possible. Blew my mind. Because I was like, Well, how are we supposed to do this, then? Because even if I sign up for a course, even if I read a book, even if I get a therapist, I know in my heart of hearts, that you can't engage in this level of transformation. I mean, we're talking about re parenting, redoing developmental milestones reprogramming our brain, recreating a relational ecosystem. reparative relationships. I mean, we Pete Walker was talking about big fucking shit in that book, The Body Keeps the Score, I just start and stop that book, like 18 times, because it's just the tone of it. I was like, you're talking about things in this voice. And this tone, like, this is my lived experience. And like, I don't know, I know, you're an expert, and I'm sure he might be a good person. But the way you're talking about this is scaring the fuck out of me right now. Because this is my life.
Tanner Wallace 8:12
I am part of your research study. This is my life, and how am I going to do this? So like, I was getting information about what it was and the depth of the consequences, but no one was showing me the container that I knew needed to exist to do the level of transformational work that I could see written on the pages of Pete Walker's book of the Body Keeps the Score, I saw what they were saying. I believed it. And I knew what it would take to fix that, to get through that. And so I was like, okay, survivor mentality, white knuckle it pull yourself up. I'm going to do this. So I slowly started piecing together things that I saw, okay, so it's about re parenting. Alright, what can I find out about inner child healing? Okay, so it's about this. Okay. So it's about rage. It's about, you know, you know, about the pause it's about self care is about self love. It's about self concept. It's about shame release. It's about truth telling. It's about, you know, things that the interaction of facts, all these things, I started pulling them together, and just trying the best I could to create my own curriculum, my own context for doing this work. And in doing so, I started to see that there was a sequence of how things needed to happen, because I would do something. And like a good educator, I'd be like, well, I should have done that thing first. That would have been a lot helpful if I'd done that first. Or oh, I'm seeing a connection between this like if I had had this skill before I did this, that would have been more helpful. I'm seeing that my lived reality that the place I'm trying to do this is learning is not conducive to it? How do I context craft this. And so I started piecing together things. And at first, to be completely honest, I thought, This is what I'm just doing to be a guide. This is what I'm doing to heal myself to be able to show up and offer other people healing in a more discreet way. I never in a million years thought that I would have created 5 Circuits of Healing Power, I was just like, This is what I need to do to heal, so I can help other people. And at first, the help other people was very limited to people that were experiencing relationship. Crisis, basically, this is how I'll help people in relationship crisis, who are married with kids like I was, who are facing complex trauma, to make wise decisions about their parenting and their partnering. So when I did Reveal 2022, and some people in The Gathering were in the original Reveal, sorry, not 2020 2021, Reveal 2021. That original program was very zoomed into interaction effects. It's what I know best, I studied them. It's where I started my journey, how do I map out the interaction effects that I'm seeing in my relationships, learn from them, so that I can show up and start doing better in my relationships? What I learned and reveal, which also paralleled my personal healing journey, is that protective parts and survival codes are no fucking joke. That to do that interaction tracking, to start showing up in our life, to start influencing our relationships, rebuilding our relationships, there's about six months of work that needs to happen before you're ready, as a survivor, to start looking at your trauma ecosystem, and figuring out how to rebuild that ecosystem in a way centered and health and well being.
Tanner Wallace 12:13
So I was like, huh, that needs to come much later in his scope and sequence of experiences. And but I loved guiding. And that was incredible. I want to do that again. So at first the idea was okay, so it's reveal 2022. And it's gonna be like a whole year of reveal, because we're going to do the whole thing. And then I realized this fall that, no, there's all these different contexts that you need to create, to emphasize certain aspects of healing, that are really important to parts of you. And that every part of you, the protective parts, the wounded parts, the true self, that you're trying to tap into, deserve different context, to create different immersive, imagination fueled experiences, worlds within worlds, for you to slip into, to do this really profound, transformative work. So when I let my imagination run wild, and I started just to create from this creative spot, what would this look like? How could we make this almost exciting for survivors? Because the work is so hard, it's so challenging, but how can we keep ourselves motivated, excited, and feeling like we're moving through something? It's not this big, overwhelming thing that we just can't see out of? But it's like, no, let's just do this scope and sequence, we'll move through every month through something. And at the end, sometimes we'll circle back through if you have to go back through and do and the we'll call them circuits at I think Nelliane St. Clair, a conscious language coach who tapped into my creativity and helped me come up with his name circuits. Because a circuit is a really intentionally chosen word that is about activities, quests, challenges, movement, doing being, it's not a passive receipt of knowledge, like a course. And it's not just like a group, where you interact about, you know, kind of casual things are a topic and then you don't see each other till the next group. A circuit is about training. It's about mastery. It's about skill development. It's about I did it. I made it through the challenge. And I came out the other side, stronger, more resilient, more efficacious, more skilled. And now with the muscles I've developed, the capacities I've developed in this circuit, I'm ready for the next circuit. I thought it was this beautiful language that moves us. I mean, I love the warrior language, I feel that like in my I do my own recovery work, I chant I have mantras about being a warrior of a recovery warrior, CPTSD warrior. And I recognize that some of that language taps in a little too much for my comfort into the kind of toxic masculine, aggressive must energy. That isn't what recovery is about, you know, recoveries about this beautiful rebalancing, and restoration of our internal worlds to have this beautifully balanced, feminine and masculine energy, empowered, feminine energy and empowered masculine energy, very balanced, we can show up and soft leadership, and we can receive and nurture as well. So the warrior language, always I want to use it, but I'll always like step away from it sometimes because it has a little bit too much of that edge to it to sit totally comfortably for me publicly. But the circuit language felt so aligned with, we're walking up this mountain together, it's hard, it's challenging. It's not easy, the ascent is difficult, and at times, it is really challenging. So circuits are a way of noting our progress in the ascent to the top. Getting to the other side, while not taking on that kind of sorry, I have here my mouth or your language. So there's circuits. And this is really what I wanted to share in this module. But that language is very intentional. That in part, what you're doing in a recovery journey, is creating experiences that take you to your edge, and help you push beyond that edge to the next level up. If we're only staying in some very comfortable space, some like because we can be comfortable, because it's familiar, even if we're experiencing emotional distress.
Tanner Wallace 17:14
So sometimes parts of us will be like, well, this doesn't feel good, but it's comfortable. And I'll choose comfort over a new kind of discomfort, which requires more trust, more uncertainty, more faith, more kind of stretching myself mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, sexually, all the ways, intentionally, in the Relational Healing Lab, we create through this circuits, these really safe, strong experiences where we can stretch to our edge, kind of get comfortable, more comfortable with being uncomfortable at our edge. And then when the timing is right, we push through to the next level up. And then we experienced the next level up the next level up. And the next level up. There's this beautiful place where we can find that exact place of positive pressure, where it's not too much where we're feeling complete system overload. But it's enough to keep us showing up with accountability and honesty, about the depth of the transformation that's needed. So in the relational healing lab, and with the circuits, it's a little bit different than what you might have experienced in other trauma recovery spaces. It really is meant to be a physical, emotional workout, challenge, skill building, you should feel exhausted at times. Oh, like just stretched at times, expanded at times, you know, just wow. Like this is not the same. This is not business as usual. This is asking a lot of me I'm keep having to recalibrate to this. The standard is high. And I desire it. I'm not being pushed into this. I'm not being pulled into this. It's a continual, open hearted desire based step forward to be like, yes, I want this. Yes, I want this. Yes, I want this. And we're in community with each other. Doing this work together, all really focused on moving through the circuits.
Tanner Wallace 19:53
And when everyone is focused on the same task, the same forward movement In a beautiful, energetic force gets created through the shared focus groups are so powerful when you're all working towards the same thing. So that when you have a day where you're like, I need to sit down, this is too much. someone's like, I feel good. I'm good. I'm healing wounds. I get it. I'm understanding what Tanner's saying, I just mastered this, I got you. We got you. We're doing this. And then when that person's like, oh, my gosh, this is too hard. I need to sit down. What are we doing? I'm overwhelmed. I can't do this. I'm broken. So you sit down and other persons like, actually, I'm feeling good. Again. I gotcha. And then sometimes we all sit down. And we just say, You know what, it's a collective break, breathe. We're all sitting down. Let's look at the view. We haven't looked at the view in a while. We, you know, when you're doing that hike, or that challenge, and sometimes your heart's beating so fast, you can't talk. And you're like, I gotta stay focused. Because if I don't stay focused and keep moving forward, I'm not going to, I'm going to if I sit down, get back up. So there's moments where we're all just like, okay, yes, yes. Yeah, you're beside me. Okay, good. But we're focused, we're focused. And then someone could be like, Can we sit down for a little bit? And everyone's like, Yeah, let's sit down for a little bit. It's been, it's been a haul the past hour or two, everyone sit down. And then someone's like, oh, my gosh, have you seen the view from here, we haven't looked at the view. And then all of a sudden, we're taking selfies and sending them to each other and sending each other memes, and laughing and joking. And then sometimes this beautiful thing happens, where one of our fellow survivors, like, I love you all, and have a little side quest to do my own world. There's, my family needs me right now. Or I need me right now. And I've got to explore this thing. And we're like, we love you, tell us what it's like, come back safe. And then they go off into this world that we will never see. Because it's their own world, internal or external. They do a side quest. And then they show back up in a container. And they're like, Hi, I'm back.
Tanner Wallace 22:05
Let me tell you about what I learned. And then they'll tell us this beautiful tale about where they've been. And what they've learned, and we get to learn from it is this beautiful thing, we may never have that experience, never, ever have to do the things that they had to do. But when they tell us about it, our heart gets full, our mind and brain expand, we get wiser, we see humanity in a different way. And then sure enough, maybe in six months, a year from now, someone will come into our world. And they'll be like, I am so struggling with this. And you'll say, I know a person to connect to with this beautiful human I met in a relational healing lab, they're going to understand what you're going through, can I connect you to this human, and those two humans will talk about the side quest and what it meant for them, and how to do it. And we just keep building the ranks in our community, to know how to ascent this mountain to get to the other side, and hold each other in this space. And in this space, we're all focused on the same thing. It really truly is, for me, for you, for us, survivor, to survivor, shoulder to shoulder because no expert, no clinician, no author, no coach, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody is going to care more about recovery about the other side than us on the mountain, walking together, wanting it so desperately for ourselves, for those we love for every thing that it means for us to arrive at the top, plant that flag and be like, I did it. I was the chosen one. I have no idea why I have no idea how this happened. But when someone looked at me and said, Hey, you have an opportunity. Do you want to break a cycle? And I said, Yeah, how do you do it? They said, Hey, come here. It's called the relational healing lab. They'll show you how to do it. I looked at them and I said, sure. I'll walk with you. And I just kept walking. And before I knew it, I was a fourth of the way up a mountain. Before I knew it. I was halfway up before I knew as three fourths of the way up and before I knew it, I was planning a flag. And at some point in some future date, it some gathering on the other side. Someone's going to say, hey, who among us is a cycle breaker? And I'm gonna look that person in the eye. I'm gonna raise my hands. And I'm gonna look around the room and I'm going to see a whole set have people that raise their hand. And I'm going to know, at the deepest, deepest level of knowing how hard though, because it is so hard. And no one, no one is going to understand that. But no one, people can write about it, people can talk about it, but no one is going to understand that. Like, you just understood that when I started crying, because you knew what it meant, and you knew where those tears came from, and how deep the hurt runs, for them to come so quickly when I talk about it.
Tanner Wallace 25:47
So do that level of holding each other in safe, strong containers. There has to be a plan, because it's some intense work. So our plan is the circuits. And they're good plans, and they get revised, and they'll get rebuilt as we learn as we grow as we build this theory of what is it actually take. So this is my best guess. And even as we do the 2022, all access pass, we're revising circuit three, right? So I just introduced a new thing into it, because I was like, alright, circuit three coming out of hiding, we need a little more work around the courage, everyone, I'm sensing the courage is a little bit, not where it needs to be to come out of hiding. So we're going to amp that up a little bit for everybody. Tap into that self energetic capacity of courage, but we're good, we're good. And then in 2023, when we move through those circuits, again, we're going to learn from this new set of survivors and learn to share the knowledge with each other, like, hey, we learned this new thing about circuit to anyone curious about it, we're going to share it with you. This is about creating a collective set of experiences of knowledge of how do we build this? How do we create this for ourselves in healing containers? And how do we share this knowledge with people around the world? That's the context for the circuits. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. That was such a meaningful experience for me to be able to share what was all my heart and mind about the 5 Circuits of Healing Power. Like I said in the intro, if you're starting to feel your desire build around, could this be for me? Is this my year to declare that I am worth healing, I am worth this level of commitment. I desire to stop feeling like I'm missing out on the prime years of my life, that doors are starting to close. I desire joy in my recovery, I desire a set of fellow companions on this journey. If this is starting to land with you, then keep showing up here. Follow me on Instagram at Dr. Tanner Wallace. So that you will be the first to learn of when I drop the investment guide, which will give all the details of the payment plans for those of you that start a payment plan in June. I'm preparing something very special to reward that level of commitment to your healing and commitment to the relational healing lab and the five circuits of healing power. So I'm designing that now brainstorming creating all these scenarios in my head of what it could be. And I'll also be sharing details of that very, very soon. I'm so glad you stayed to the end of this Step Closer episode. I can't tell you how fulfilling it is to be a trauma recovery coach and guide. It has changed my life. I am better because of all you all and it really is the most meaningful thing I could ever imagine dedicating my life to I love you. I'll see you until next time, Much Love from me to you