Building A Healthy Self-Concept in an Invalidating World with Jeff Brown

• What is the role of finding our sacred purpose in validating ourselves? And how do we find it? 
• Understand the way in which our survivalist society perpetuates a culture of shame and self-hatred.
• How showing ourselves that we matter brings us closer to self-love and healing. 
• Why the journey to reshape our inner world is a beautiful and challenging warrior’s path. 
• The small question of…where does humanity go from here? Why we must begin authentically embodying ourselves and authentically relating to others. 

About Jeff: A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of seven popular books. He is the producer and central subject in the award-winning spiritual documentary Karmageddon. Jeff is also the founder of Soulshaping Institute and Enrealment Press. In a world saturated with spiritual teachers and self-help gurus, Jeff brings a refreshingly honest and human approach to what he calls grounded spirituality.

Jeff’s Courses: https://jeffbrown.co/courses/

Jeff’s Substack—The Enrealment Newsletter: https://jeffbrown42.substack.com/

Jeff's book, Hearticulations: find it here

Jeff's book, Soulshaping: find it here

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*Music by Sam Murphy*
IG: @sammmmmmurphy

Transcript

Building a Healthy Self-Concept in an Invalidating World

Jessica Hornstein: Hi, everyone. I'm Jessica Hornstein. Welcome to the No, Not Crazy Podcast where we explore the invalidating messages we internalize, their effects on our lives, and the ways we can free ourselves from them. We've all had those experiences that make us question ourselves and even, sometimes, feel a little crazy.

Let's stop accepting the idea that there is something inherently wrong with us and begin to appreciate that, actually, there is something fundamentally right. So, join me, and together, we can all feel a little less crazy.

Today, I'm joined by someone who has touched my life deeply, and that is author, soulshaper, truth teller, Jeff Brown. I'm so excited about this conversation because Jeff has a remarkable personal history and through his work, he has helped countless people with his incredible ability to capture the human experience with beautiful resonant laser-like language to help us better understand ourselves and have a vision of what can be.

So, Jeff, hi. Welcome. 

Jeff Brown: Hi Jessica. 

Jessica Hornstein: I'm really happy to have you here. 

Jeff Brown: Great. Good to be with you. Let's get into it. 

Jessica Hornstein: Okay. I'm just gonna share your bio and then we can do that. A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of seven popular books, Soulshaping, Ascending With Both Feet on the Ground, Love It Forward, An Uncommon Bond, Spiritual Graffiti, Grounded Spirituality, and Hearticulations. He is also the producer and central subject in the award-winning spiritual documentary Karmageddon. Jeff has authored a series of inspirations for ABC's Good Morning America, has contributed to media such as The Washington Post, Elephant Journal, Good Men Project, Unity Magazine, and mariashriver.com, just to name a few.

In 2010, he wrote a blog called "Apologies to the Divine Feminine from a Warrior in Transition," which quickly went viral and continues to be widely shared today. In a world saturated with spiritual teachers and self-help gurus, Jeff brings a refreshingly honest and human approach to what he calls grounded spirituality.

His dictionary of new terms and short impactful writings have touched and benefited millions of seekers and growers worldwide. Jeff is also the founder of Soulshaping Institute and Enrealment Press. You've been busy. 

Jeff Brown: I have been busy. 

Jessica Hornstein: So aside from all of that work, I know that you had a lot of very challenging and invalidating experiences in your childhood. I was wondering if you could talk about that a bit and share with us what it was like to be in that home and what it was like inside of you being in that home.

Jeff Brown: Hmm. Yeah, I mean, I think that I grew up in Toronto, with a, well, let's just say a complicated mother, and a complicated father, and very complicated economic circumstances. It was not a quiet or peaceful home. I think it's safe to say. It was a very vital and very volatile and very aggressive home.

And I think in the early years, what served me is, for some reason, I didn't really have words for it, but I had this sort of intuitive understanding that, that I, I shouldn't hold on to what was not mine emotionally or energetically. So, I was a very active tantrumer for the first, I don't know, probably five to 10 years or something of my life.

I was a releaser and, I would have this experience as a very, very little child, on the grass in the backyard of our house in North Toronto and feeling into my body and stretching and opening my body and releasing whatever it was that I was feeling. So, for whatever reason, I developed the art of release. And I think that that served me, because if I had held onto all of the negative messaging and internalized it and never had any way to release any of it, I, I don't even know if I'd even be here today, for one reason or another. But then, as I got into my adolescent years, it became more difficult to release. And I think the weight and intensity of the combative environment got to me. And I started to believe some of the shaming and negative messaging that had come my way for years and became less confident and less able to sort of function in the world, relationally and in the school system and, and began to kind of fall apart as a student.

I had been a very bright student. And then I wasn't, you know, I was reluctant to go to school in high school and junior high school. I just, the, the aggressiveness of the home environment permeated everywhere and I, I just couldn't bring it, anywhere outside or inside of the house. And so, I think my inner world changed.

It became more fragmented rather than integrated. And I began to sort of name parts of my selves, like the warrior part of me was Captain America. The intellectual part of me was Encyclopedia Brown. You know, I had, I had enough of an awareness to recognize that I wasn't emanating from my core self. Um, because I'd had an experience of an integrated core for many years in the beginning, and then I didn't. But I could name the parts of me that they were adaptations and disguises.

I would later describe them that way. That served me. And then when I, you know, finally got out of that environment and moved out into the world, you know, I went into a survivalist energy to try to build a life and build something academically from nothing really. And then soon enough it became clear I had to step back from the world and engage in therapeutic process because the unresolved material, the intrinsically invalidated self-experience was interfering with my capacity to flourish in the world itself.

So, I went in all kinds of directions with this integration, fragmentation, a fight for reintegration. I was a self-validation artist. Like I, I would, you know, in my undergrad years I would write in chalk on the wall, all of my goal sets cuz I knew I had to build something from nothing and without really any structural support.

And that just became the way that I functioned in the world half-time. And then the other half of the time I was living in whatever the relational shit show that I was involved in, that reflected all the unresolved parts of me. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm. Do you have a sense, I'm curious, like, to, just to backtrack a bit, do you have a sense of why there was that shift from you said around when you were, became a teenager, where you began to actually internalize it more? 

Jeff Brown: Mm-hmm. 

Jessica Hornstein: Which seems a little counterintuitive almost to what I'd expect, right? Where a young child you would think, might internalize it more, and then as you become a teenager, you, you push it away.

So, I'm curious if, if there's anything that strikes you about that, like why that happened then?

Jeff Brown: I think that partly it was because I reached an age where it was unacceptable, socially, less acceptable to be in my feelings as a, as a male, as a boy, big boys don't cry. That kind of messaging, started to take over.

And I also think it was just, it became such an overwhelming environment. It got more and more difficult rather than less difficult over time, we were more and more isolated and, you know, some of the more positive aspects of the environment, like my very close connection to my grandparents became less accessible to me.

So, I didn't have as much in the way of internalized positivity for some period of time. You know, when families get crazy combative, they often end up in their own little world like that and hiding away from the world, hiding the secret of their lives from the world and, and I just think that no matter how diligent and determined you are as a little one to remain true to yourself, after many, many years of daily aggression and negative messaging, it just starts to accumulate.

You, you only have so much power energetically or emotionally at that age and abusers of power are, I mean, they're everywhere in our world, but they're, you know, they, they get more and more imaginative and gamey, with their techniques when they recognize that the, the techniques they're employing aren't that effective anymore.

My father became quite aggressive, quite physically aggressive, and so it was happening in every way, emotionally, energetically, physically, financially. We moved many times. I think I lived in, I don't know, 14 or 15 places before I was 22 or something like that.

And it just never felt very secure. And I think in the beginning, it may be on some level felt a little more secure so I could access and feel into those emotions. And by the time I reached junior high school in Canada, it was just all I could do to just get through the day and survive in one piece, I think.

Jessica Hornstein: So, you were experiencing some of those invalidating messages, both from within your family, but also a little bit from society about how men should, or boys should behave. 

Jeff Brown: I think that was a part of it, but I also think, I remember feeling quite gaslit. 

I mean, my mother seemed to have no clarified understanding or memory of events, whether she was lying or just so distorted that she couldn't see things for what they were.

So, she would then, you know, recite these events to various people, in a way that wasn't congruent with what had happened. And so, she, she was, you know, it was, she had a very histrionic and narcissistic tendency to use other people against me. Mm-hmm. So, you know, she would say, you know, if you do that again, I'm gonna tell your grandfather.

Cuz my grandfather and I had all very loving and beautiful connection. Or we would interact with, you know, I had one particular cousin, who had been very loving towards me, but then eventually began to act towards me as though I had the plague. Because I was, of course, responsible for all the craziness that was going on with these two seeming adults.

And so, I think that was part of it. Also, um, that I just didn't feel supported, and my grandparents who were beautifully loving and probably are the key to all of my, whatever success that I have in this life on many levels, I think. But, you know, my grandfather, you know, he loved her.

He called her Dolly. So, he would never until much later in his life, before he died, say anything negative about her. And it turns out he knew everything about her. But he wouldn't express it. So even on that level, I began to feel as though everybody was sort of ganging up on me. 

Jessica Hornstein: No one had your back.

Jeff Brown: Yeah. I mean, although ironically, and this is where it gets a little twisted and interesting, my mother had my back. And my, my mother's basic philosophy was very, very simple philosophy. It was, no one's allowed to fuck with my kids except me. And she was my champion with respect getting teachers fired, camp counselors removed, who were aggressive towards me.

You know, one time she went in her pajamas with Noxzema on her face and went straight across Deals Avenue in Toronto to this little bungalow where these motorcycle guys were living to yell at them and scream at them because their, their German Shepherd had bit me. She then called the Humane Society and had the German Shepherd removed and killed.

Um, so, you know, it was, it was a very, very complicated experience for a little guy of feeling loved and hated. Both at the same time. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. What do you think was behind that in her experience? 

Jeff Brown: Yeah. I think on the deeper level, she loved me and she really wanted to be a good mother, but because of her many early life triggers and marrying a man who was economically challenged with respect to his ability to manifest in the workplace. And she had grown up very poor and lived in a house with 40 or 50 people and shared one bathroom and four of them in a room and all the rest of that, um, she was always in a triggered state. And it became very clear that taking it out on my father didn't do anything. It didn't change a thing. So, I became her classic scapegoat. Um, and, but then at three in the morning would come into my room and cry and tell me how much she loved me and how sorry she was for how she behaved. So, she was split.

I mean, I think that's the way to think of it. Um, partly needing to move that energy and not knowing how to, being trapped economically at that time, unable to really work. I mean, not as many women worked back then. It was much harder to engage the marketplace. There were all kinds of pressures up against her.

And then, now and then this very lovely, wonderful side would appear. So, I think my work in this life with respect to the building of the self-concept and the work that you're doing, self-validation, was to try to reconcile this internal experience of being the king and of being the devil. 

You know, my father would write these, these responses when we'd get the report card, like I was gonna rule the world. It was ridiculous. He projected all of his unachievable dreams onto me. And my grandfather elevated me, my grandmother elevated me, and half of my mother elevated me. 

And then the rest of the time I was to blame for every single hardship they ever experienced. So, my work in this world has been to learn how to live somewhere in the middle. To have a reasonably good self-concept, but not think I'm all that, that's my work. Yeah. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. Okay. So, you're in your twenties and you're deeply engaged in this work at this point? 

Jeff Brown: As I got into my twenties, I understood that I had to rebuild my self-concept, the one that I had known as a child. So, I had an advantage cuz I had a period when I felt very confident and integrated and I knew that. I remembered that and I had, it was constantly thinking about, "Okay, how do I get back to that guy?"

Jessica Hornstein: That's so interesting that you still could remember it even at times when you couldn't really feel it or embody it, but you remembered. 

Jeff Brown: I remembered it and I felt it because I remember being the smart kid. I remember being the confident kid. I remember being, you know, kind of having a, like a golden kind of feeling coming off of me.

And then it was gone. but it lasted for years. I didn't have like a, I didn't split off early. I think, I think that some people have to split—dissociate in body psychology. They talk about being schizoid, not schizophrenic. 

Jessica Hornstein: Right, right. 

Jeff Brown: I didn't split early. I split later. And I think that's, I had a long time in a more integrated feeling groove, you know, scared, nervous, frightened, emotional, coping with a crazy family, but, but still pretty intact. I think. So, I remember that. So, I had something to strive for. I wasn't just making a leap of faith. I was, you know, reconnecting to a, a lived experience.

Jessica Hornstein: Right. You weren't completely starting from scratch, which many people

Jeff Brown: Most 

Jessica Hornstein: Feel like they are?

Jeff Brown: Yeah. I think most people in my experience, who I've worked with and who I know who struggle, which is most of humanity, with self-concept issues, I think those issues often begin very early and so they're clamoring or trying to fight their way for an experience of self that's unfamiliar to them.

And that's why what you're doing and what you're talking about is so important because, you know, the steps that somebody can take, I mean, they're, they're obviously uniquely different for everybody, but there are some that are generalizable and need to be talked about. Because once you cross a certain point with your self-concept where you're just riddled with self-hatred, it is very, very difficult to find your way to a place of self-regard. It's, it's a long, long, long, beautiful, magnificent, powerful pioneering journey, but it's, it's a very hard path. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. Self-hatred and also just not really having that self-concept to start from. Right? Not having that ground under your feet. 

Jeff Brown: Absolutely. 

Jessica Hornstein: At all, and sometimes just not even knowing where to start. 

Jeff Brown: If I think about like, what it takes to reach a place where you, you recognize your intrinsic value, you excavate, your path, your purpose, your, your magnificence from a place where you have been invalidated, both individually, personally, in a family level and culturally, I mean, you know, and I understand now systemically why many of these elitist or economic systems benefit from our fragmentation and our lack of centeredness. We're much more manipulatable politically, and economically, and religiously, and spiritually if we're not centered. So, you're really up against it. And at the same time, I don't know how anybody can ever manifest anything that truly emanates from their encoded path or purpose, and that makes this world a better place, without either having a self-concept or without working their way towards a healthy self-concept.

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Do you think it's possible to have a sense of purpose without a sense of self-concept or a sense of self-concept without a sense of purpose? Is it a chicken egg thing? Or… 

Jeff Brown: Yeah, it's a very good question. So, like what's the relationship between the self-concept and say what I might call sacred purpose. So, I mean, I think that if you find elements I call sacred purpose, your callings, your gifts, and your offerings, and you can find a way to do them and embody them and live them. That that inherently validates you. It tells you that you're on the right path. It tells you you're moving in the right direction. But at the same time, I think that if you have a really deflated self-concept, it's just hard to believe that there could be anything special inside of you. So sometimes your sacred purpose is, and I think this is true for most of us on this planet at this stage, is just to heal all this unresolved woundedness and negative messaging that we carry individually, ancestrally, and collectively. And to me, that is the most empowering thing most of us can do right now. And I think the more that we do that, the more we send a message to say, the deflated inner child, that they actually matter because we're showing them that they matter, then I think you just begin to start to gain some kind of momentum where your focus of your purpose-related work isn't only on the healing path, but is then at some point on what offerings you're bringing to the world. Healing is sacred purpose. And, and, and, you know, people often say, Jeff, how long will it take for me to do this work before I can find my purpose? I go, yeah, this, this may be your purpose, right. For many years. Cuz you are a pioneer in a family that nobody did shit. Yes. So, get to it. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. And I love that you, you make that point because I think even, even that belief that, you know, you're not special or you're not doing something important unless you know you've done X, Y, and Z. Right. Unless you're, you're famous or you're making a certain amount of money, you know, the, all these societal messages that we, we always have to be doing more and be something other than what we're being when really, as you're saying, you know, even just healing, even changing the family legacy that is, is so powerful and meaningful and can be a sacred purpose in, in your, in your lifetime. 

Jeff Brown: It's, it's so huge. I mean, if you come from, for example, a family of, of self-hatred, which most people in my view do, or many people do, and you're the first one that crosses the path from that consciousness to one where you have a healthy sense of self-regard. That is remarkable pioneering work. And we don't want people walking around feeling like failures because they don't live Oprah Winfrey's life. We don't even know anything about Oprah Winfrey's real life and or what really is unresolved or unactualized within Oprah Winfrey, we make a lot of assumptions about famous people. We're diminished by living vicariously, culturally through famous people. It's a horror, that we're so disenfranchised within the self that we're paying attention to them and living vicariously through our connection to people who are in the public eye.

Cuz my belief and my experience has been, I know a lot of famous people, and I can tell you with certainty that most of them, not all of them, some of them have great talents, but most of them are famous because they're overcompensating in all the wrong ways for an unhealthy self-concept and still walk around carrying an enormity of insecurity about themselves, often far worse than it was before, because now the whole world is watching them.

I'm far more impressed with the work that day-to-day people do in the interior realms to try to shift one pattern, to try to acknowledge one issue, to try to, to heal one wound memory. 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. 

Jeff Brown: To me, this is the real building of the self-concept and the real, very noble creation of a sovereign species, not, not one that's been beaten down so the patriarchy can control and rule us and manipulate us, but one where we're working our way towards a sense of our brilliant uniqueness and our finding sovereignty and self-possession and, and solidity in the center of us, self-regard inside of us.

And I think if we could all do that, we'd be living in a remarkably different world. We'd be treating ourselves and each other and our planet completely differently than we do while we're walking around in these fragmented, unresolved, traumatized uh, internal structures. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yeah. So, in your book, Soulshaping, I mean, what you're describing is soul shaping—developing that self-concept. Yeah, I love what you say right up in the beginning in your preface that "Soulshapers are artists, but they're also warriors. It is no easy feat to shape the inner world. You need the heart of a lion to overcome the odds you need to fight for your right the light." It speaks so beautifully to that healing process that most everybody is working on.

Jeff Brown: I think this is a warrior path. I mean, you know, struggling economically, building a life, becoming a doctor, whatever, is also a warrior path. Like survivalistic structures are also warrior paths more tangibly. But this internal work to reshape the inner world, to see out, out of your eyes, and to see the world and yourself in a different light as a result of all of these millions and millions of internal steps you take. This is the challenge. If you don't have a good self-concept, you don't really have the energy to do it.

And at the same time, you have to find the energy to do it in order to reach the place where you have a healthy self-concept. So that's why validating others is so bloody important. We, anybody who, who has lived with an invalidated inner world will tell you about moments when a schoolteacher validated them or somebody said hello to them, a stranger, or said something nice about them. And that carries you. 

Jessica Hornstein: It sticks. Yeah. 

Jeff Brown: Until you can do it for yourself. And, and so we need to just, all of us who are feeling good about ourselves, relatively good, need to make an effort to validate people. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Jeff Brown: Even people, we don't, I had this experience today. I was driving the car and all of a sudden this, there's a boy on the side of the road with a ball playing like soccer with himself. The ball crosses the street and in one second the kid jumps across, and I just stopped in time. Otherwise, I was gonna hit him. And so, he came up to the window and I said, I said, "you matter more than the ball." 

Jessica Hornstein: Aww. 

Jeff Brown: "So next time this happens, just let the ball go, but don't risk your life for the fucking ball."

Jessica Hornstein: Right, Right. Aww.

Jeff Brown: And I could see in his face, he looked a little bit like an invalidated kid. So now some dude with a white beard and driving a cool jeep said, "Hey, you matter more than the ball.” Now that seems obvious to me, but it may not be obvious to him. Right. Because he just risked his life to chase that ball.

Jessica Hornstein: So, you planted a seed maybe.

Jeff Brown: Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And well, and I do think that there really is a ripple effect that can happen from being able to validate yourself, then from that place, that capacity that you have to validate others, and also to not need to tear others down, right, because so much of that need comes from Yeah. You know, the, the inability to, you know, that you feel bad about yourself or that you're not clear on your needs or who you are, and that leads to a lot of problematic behaviors in relationships in, in microcosms and in the macro. It plays out.

Jeff Brown: Absolutely. Yeah. Like what was my mother doing or my father doing in those many moments of directing their invalidating messages towards me? They were, you know, mischanneling their aggression for sure. But I think they were also trying to feel empowered or impactful, or like they had efficacy in all kinds of fucked up ways.

But, you know, this acting out thing, I mean, we see this so often with people like with Tr*mp, who are clearly egoically very disempowered. They don't have a healthy self-concept at all. If they did, they wouldn't need to keep beating people down. Right? They wouldn't need to keep mocking people. I mean, that 

Jessica Hornstein: You don't punch down, right.

Jeff Brown: Right. And the purpose of. Right. The purpose of that is to, it's a strangely, ineffective attempt to build the egoic structure. That's not the way to build the egoic structure, but that's unfortunately, what people resort to, because in, in fairness, not to give Donald too much credit, but I don't think culturally we've really learned how to build a healthy self-concept, how to empower the self, how to find our center again, especially if we've never really have found it. How to feel our feet. I mean, I think that's what, you know, Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos were doing when they co-founded Bioenergetics. So much about feeling your feet, feeling your energy, clearing your debris, feeling self-possessed, feeling empowered, feeling alive, as part of the gaining of a healthy, appropriate, properly boundaried, and balanced self-concept, which of course just changes the whole world.

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. Well, right, because as you say, certain people's actions may not be effective in building self-concept, right, from that weak egoic place. 

Jeff Brown: Mm-hmm. 

Jessica Hornstein: But it is effective in doing a lot of damage um, to other people and to the world. 

Jeff Brown: It perpetuates the whole problem. Cycle of perpetuation. That's what that is. And you know, they, they don't know that. They clearly don't know that. I think it's very hard for people to admit that they have a deflated self-concept, particularly men because functioning and surviving and succeeding in the world was so much about something called confidence, even if it was fake it till you make it. I think we need to learn how to welcome the message from people that they feel self-hatred, that they feel shame, that they feel disdain, that they, they really can't stand themselves. and, and learn how to hold the space for that in a way that reminds them at least simply the fact that you’re holding space for them tells them that they matter to some extent, and I think that's very important. 

Jessica Hornstein: Do you think they care? 

Jeff Brown: Who cares? 

Jessica Hornstein: Like, well, do you think you said that those people, um, you know, they don't know, they're not aware. They, they may not realize they have all that self-hatred. My impression is that a lot of them sleep just fine at night. They are not wracked with feelings of self-hatred or dissatisfaction with their lives even. So, how do you think we reach, do you think it's possible even to reach people like that if in their estimation, they're doing just fine.

Jeff Brown: So, if we're talking primarily, let's say about the narcissist. Let's say they're the malignant narcissist. Do I think that most of them can be reached? No, I don't think that most of them can be reached. do I think that they're troubled about their behavior? No, I don't think they're troubled about their behavior, but one thing I do feel certain of, cause people often say this, they go, “How do people live with themselves?” Or like, you know, it just bothers them so much when they're a victim of, say, abuses of power relationally or in society or in, in the workplace. And these people seem to sleep well at night and make all kinds of money and, and apparently have wonderfully effective lives. I believe that if you're just living inside of what I would call a survivalist consciousness, where you're just trying to do whatever you gotta do based on whatever your skill set is, your tools and abilities and awareness is just to get through the day and succeed in that way that you, you, you may be very, very effective and very successful. But you are denied the embodied experience of emotional health, a sense of integration, a properly oriented sense of meaning and value. So, they are successful on one level. But they have absolutely no idea on an internal level what an extraordinary experience this life can be. And I think that people who walk a more authentic path, like who am I really? Not just defining success based on some external notion of achievement, but are more purpose-driven, who asked the question, “Who am I in this life? Why am I here?” Define themselves in terms of what a success for them is, finding sacred purpose, finding creativity, finding love, living from their hearts, you know, in a more, a stable and balanced way than obviously the narc does.

I think they just have an experience of life that is deeper and truer and more intrinsically gratifying than the disembodied narcissist does, who appears to be completely gratified. But I assure you, in the ways that matter, that I believe matter, they're not gratified at all. 

Jessica Hornstein: Absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent on that. It's an, it's an interesting question about, you know, if people, if they don't know what they're missing, then do they feel any kind of void in there? But, um, that's a complicated question. 

Jeff Brown: Well, I mean, I mean, do, do they feel a void? I mean, there is a void.

Do they know there's a void? No. I mean, they may— 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. It's two different issues. 

Jeff Brown: Yeah. I mean, they may once in a while have this moment where they experience a person who seems to be more truly gratified, and they feel a little bit of discomfort or jealousy around it. But for the most part, they'll just move back into their structure and their system that, you know, reflects back to them that the way they're functioning is completely acceptable.

Jessica Hornstein: Right. Well, and also those, that, those moments probably are when they try to tear other people down. 

Jeff Brown: Absolutely. 

Jessica Hornstein: That feeling that you have something that they don't have. You know, that can happen with parents, right? That their child has, has something that they don't have, and they feel that competition or something with them, and they need to just try to knock that right down. You know, they can't abide by that. 

Jeff Brown: The jealous parent syndrome is everywhere. I grew up with one or no, maybe two.

I think you make a decision at some point if you're lucky enough to reach this stage where you're going to move through life, fixated on, you know, artificial paths of empowerment. 

Or you're going to find a way to develop various pathways internally that are meaning-based, and healing-based, and heart-based, and purpose based. And that that's where you find your sense of empowerment in this life. 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. Right. 

Jeff Brown: And I think these are two completely different ways of functioning in this world that lead to completely different characters. Really.

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. And you obviously did find that in your work you found that path and that purpose. How do you think your experiences, as a child or as a teenager, your early experiences, and that awareness led you to do what you do now, do the work you do, and be able to help people in the way you do? 

Jeff Brown: There's a lot of parts to that, but I think that one of them is that I had a very strongly developed relationship with myself internally. You wouldn't have known it when I was young. I was just sort of a brash, kind of confident, cute kid who was just kind of cocky as a sort of an overcompensatory thing or something but there was a really deep inner world going on and, you know, which became, I developed a witness observer watching me saying, "Why aren't you who you used to be around the age of 12 or 13?"

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Jeff Brown: So, I think that that way of staying inside of that internal process, almost always throughout my life, except in very overwhelmed stages, allowed me to develop a richer place to write from, maybe. But I also think that I had the blessing in my teen years of having sort of visions of possibility, what James Hillman called the innate image, what I might call soul scriptures or sacred purpose.

Like, I would see this criminal lawyer who was very famous in Canada named Eddie Greenspan on TV when I was a teenager, and I felt like I knew him and I was gonna work with him one day, and I did. So, it was like I had access to some directionality. I felt like I was going to, uh, become a criminal lawyer, I was gonna leave criminal law and study psycho-humanistic psychotherapy, which I did, and then at some point when I was ready, I would start writing. So, I had both, with respect to looking back, a memory of intactness to strive towards and, with respect to going forward, I had visions of possibility for who I could become.

I had this idea, maybe it was my soul, something in the soul that said, you're gonna have to struggle crazily in order to get five minutes of that glory later. But this is why you're here. That allowed me to endure crazy mother, crazy father, difficult, impossible circumstances. Um, you know, toxic families, broader structures, everything.

Because I had a clear vision that there was something waiting for me. within me as me, at the end of it. Many people, and I work with many people and do session work, don't have that. They're not clear. So, they have to, and I wrote about a lot of that in Soulshaping, adventure and explore possible things, they have to depth charge, have experiences that turn that world upside down to give them information about who they are and why they're here.

Whatever it is that I had, and whatever it is that they have in terms of that understanding early on, what I'm certain of, what I refuse to let go of at least is the belief that everybody carries some kind of profound sacred purpose within them. It doesn't have to be a specific job or a specific anything, but some archetypal movement or direction, you know, for me from um, warrior to something more benevolent and surrendered, whatever.

And it can show up in a lot of ways in your life, moving not from the heart. Moving from the heart. If we could just figure out a way to get every single human to recognize, excavate, manifest these brilliant possibilities that live within them, that are unique to them, and that are essential for the world outside of them—because we need those offerings desperately, especially right now—that to me is the world of, of sacred possibility. And that to me is the only world that we can live in that will not lead to us destroying each other and destroying the planet. I think so much of this craziness we see is because of alienation from purpose and path. On an individual level, and therefore all these offerings that are within us to be brought to the collective, to take this societal experience to a whole different level, never get recognized, unpacked, and brought. And as a result, we're all wandering around, still completely fucked up, not knowing who we are.

And we live in a society where the two most important things you should ever learn—how to deal with your feelings and how to relate to each other, absolutely, nobody ever taught us

Jessica Hornstein: Completely. Yes. 

Jeff Brown: And, and little wonder, we're all walking around going, “What do I feel?” And not knowing how to communicate authentically to each other and being reactive and all those things, because, and I understand the patriarchy and I, and I'm, I'm okay to vilify the patriarchy, the patriarchy benefits from our disorientation and our self-alienation. So, you know, we have to unpack that, and we have to unravel that. And I think a lot of the gender fluidity stuff that's happening is a movement away from patriarchal structures, um, towards a, a deeper and more interestingly inclusive understanding of what the self is that will serve us going forward.

But we better hurry up. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yeah. Yes, we better. And I think the inclusivity and you know, a, a sense of connection to everybody, to the world around us. I mean, without that, um, we are really lost and we, but we need that connection to ourselves first. 

Jeff Brown: Which is the internal work to become at one with all your parts, to embrace and accept all your parts, including the self-loving parts. It's little wonder people can't accept all these things outside of themselves. They haven't accepted themselves in so many ways. They judge themselves. They hate parts of themselves. They hate parts of their bodies. You know, I remember being a teenager, not being able to look at myself in the mirror thinking I was a horribly unattractive looking person, finding one little thing about my kneecap. 

I mean, this was internalized shame. That's what that was. But when you start to invite all your parts to the table, so like Dick Schwartz's Internal Family Systems is part of that. Body-centered psych is part of that because you're bringing everything to the surface and looking at it and connecting with it is essential to being able to then look out at the world and accept everything.

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. 

Jeff Brown: And everybody, and welcome everybody to your table. When you welcome every part of yourself to your table. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yeah. So, if you were going to suggest to people, who may be at the beginning of this process, trying to get a handle on their self-concept or, maybe are a little bit more down the road in the midst of it, but, but not there yet. What are a few things you would recommend that they do?

Jeff Brown: Mm-hmm. Great.

I think one is, first of all, to think of things in terms of being self-originating versus defining who you are and how you perceive reality based on what the world tells you. It's really, really important that we really cultivate the fine art of self-originating responsiveness to the world.

I never really believed anything anybody told me about anything. And that wasn't easy. It means I had to put a lot in

Jessica Hornstein: It's unusual. 

Jeff Brown: To figuring it out for myself. I just thought they were all schvantzes and full of shit for the most part, and, and maybe that was the upside of the cockiness of my life.

But, and so I started to say, Okay, I'll decide based on my lived experience, how I feel and think about everything. So that's part it. I think one of the other important things is to do whatever little step you can do to affirm yourself relationally and in the things you do in the world. You know, I knew getting into law school was a step up for my self-concept. Working with Eddie, doing a big murder trial, writing 168 page jury address in four days, and I that to, that helped me to realize that I was smarter than I thought I was. But it also made me feel like I existed in relation to the world. So that's an important part. Doing not affirmations as a new agey or a Louise Hay concept but doing affirming things for you.

Jessica Hornstein: Right. Even if it's small steps. 

Jeff Brown: Anything that allows you to move a little bit closer to self-love is a huge step. Don't ever compare those steps to anybody else's story. It's absolutely completely irrelevant.

The third thing is selective attachment. Develop capacity over time to associate with people that affirm your worth. Get away from the light dimmers, the border crossers, the space invaders, the fuckers. Own it. And don't, don't be artificially forgiving. Boundaries. Boundaries. Boundaries. Don't leave home without them and don't enter home without them. Really important. 

Jessica Hornstein: I think that's really challenging for a lot of people because they may not even recognize, right? Because when you grow up and your sense of what love looks like or feels like is shaped a certain way in a, in a toxic or unhealthy way, you don't know that, this is something that you, you need to protect yourself from. This is a light dimmer. It's really challenging. 

Jeff Brown: I remember when my first real therapist in my late twenties, she used the word boundaries and I, I went, I went home. It was a Friday, and I went home to my little apartment that weekend and I just lay there and just felt into that word. I was like, "What the fuck is a boundary?" 

Jessica Hornstein: It was just a new, whole new concept. 

Jeff Brown: I didn't grow up in a boundaried home. My mother stormed in and out. My father stormed in and out. It was what? I don't even know why we even had doors. So absolutely. You experiment a little in life and you'll learn the difference between feeling some peace with path with certain people and feeling uncomfortable with some people.

If you allow yourself to connect to the body, and your intuitive knowing will tell you at various stages where you belong and where you don't belong. And you may go back and reclaim some of those connections when you're sturdier and better boundaried and all the rest of that. 

The other piece is this healing piece with respect to the building of the self-concept. I do believe not only because you're clearing, if you, especially if you get into body-centered psych work, start clearing the anger that you couldn't express back then. The moment you express the rage, you send a message to the deep within that you matter the moment that you and you create space inside for new possibilities, because you're not all bunked up with old toxic stuff.

In addition to that, through the, the healing process, you just intrinsically build the self-concept. It's like every time you take yourself into therapy and do some real work, you, you're asserting that you matter. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Jeff Brown: You know, you, you matter. And people who won't go into do any therapeutic work often have all kinds of stories for why they won't do it.

And maybe they have too much stuff in it, they don't wanna open the box, and I get that. But if you can just find your way into some environment where you're talking about what you've been through, I think you're immediately sending an important message to yourself that you matter. A message that maybe nobody's ever sent to you before.

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. Yes. And that you can experience all the feelings. 

Jeff Brown: Yeah. That you have a right. 

Jessica Hornstein: That anger. Yes. Because I think while sure, we don't wanna go through our lives being angry all the time, there's, there is a time and a place and sometimes that really is the first step that you need to take to just acknowledge that you've even, you know, been invalidated.

Right. You know, that realization, that recognition of like, wait, that wasn't okay. You know, that that may be the first step to get angry about it, and then where do you go from there. 

Jeff Brown: I think it's like, it's important for people who, who grew up in environments that were, where there's just no consciousness around these things, around authentic relating or feelings or anything.

It is gonna feel really weird for a long time if you engage therapeutic process because this is a whole different language than the survivalist language that most families grew up with. Um, so I just wanna read a quote from Hearticulations on this topic. 

Jessica Hornstein: Please. 

Jeff Brown: Um, from page 93, "you can't be in your vulnerability if you can't express your anger, both because it clears the debris so you can open your heart again. And because we cannot touch into the deepest parts of our vulnerability without it, until our inner child knows that we have the capacity to protect his tenderness with ferocity, he won't fully reveal it. She'll only open so much until she knows that we can hold her safe. This is one of the reasons why those who grew up unprotected as children will often keep their hearts closed.

They weren't given a healthy template for self-protection. Sometimes, not just sometimes, but oftentimes we have to forge that template ourselves in the fires of our own empowerment. The more sturdily we can touch into and express our rightful anger, anger's only one emotion. I get that. But the more comfortable we'll feel embodying and expressing our vulnerability, the more powerful our roar, the more open our core."

The more powerful our roar, the more powerful our capacity to appropriately express fuck you. The more we send a message, not just to the world, but to our deeper selves in that we're worth something. 

Jessica Hornstein: Beautiful. It's beautiful. It is. thank you for sharing that. 

Jeff Brown: You're welcome.

Jessica Hornstein: So, because, No, Not Crazy is about helping people recognize invalidation when it happens to them and, and to others, and helping people understand how to validate themselves and others, I'm curious, um, if you have, because we, you know, we hear all these invalidating phrases. I'm curious what your least favorite invalidating phrase is or if you have, you know, certain ones you hear that, either you hear a lot or just really you think are really so damaging. 

Jeff Brown: There's just so many of those, especially in the new cage, in religious worlds. But I think, telling people that they're being too sensitive is, and I get that sometimes in a survivalist circumstance, we do need to try to put some of that sensitivity away to get through things, but I think that, you know, for me, sensitivity is brilliance. That doesn't mean that we don't have to learn how to healthily boundary and make it sturdier and stronger and, and balance it out with all that sort of sense of self-possession. But I think this tendency people have, when people try to share how uncomfortable they were in certain relational circumstances, to diminish it by telling them that they're being too sensitive, which is really their way of saying that they're too armored actually to be able to hold the space for this. I think that's, that's one of my pet peeves. And, and I think corrective listening in general is I, I find, see this goes back to not learning how to communicate with each other. I think it's fine to say to someone who wants to tell you what's going on for them, that you can't hold the space for them at that time, but you, maybe you will at another time. But I think, you know, immediately jumping to corrective listening, immediately denying the veracity of their experience really is a form of gaslighting. It's fine to not be available for somebody's experience and sharing, but it's not okay to try to turn off that tap by reframing their experiencing or sharing. You know, I mean, we could make a list of 150 new, new cage cliches that people utilize. Suffering builds character is one of them. I mean, it, it just goes on and on forever. 

Jessica Hornstein: You co-created that. You brought this in. 

Jeff Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a karmic delight that you're suffering? Yeah. I mean, this is just so fucking ridiculous. It's beyond imagining and so inhumane and so perpetuating of suffering. 

So, I think if we could do anything we do away with all these new cagers and their bullshit aphorisms, which are really mostly a reflection of their own inability to acknowledge, confront, and work through their own shadows. Really the great joke of it. 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. It's really a way, it just really pushes everything away.

Jeff Brown: Yeah. That's, if they can push your, your painful story away, they can push theirs away. This is a cultural phenomenon that, that I think during the pandemic, I think it went in two directions. I think a certain percentage of people stopped doing that and, and were stuck in a room and unable to distract themselves like they had for years.

And they realized they, they're trauma survivors and they started to go deeper into the doing of the work and that's what'll save us. And then another half of us just started to dissociate even more than we were before, spiritually bypass and, artificially affirm and all the rest of those new cagey things.

New cage book sales were, you know, are off the charts now because of the dissociation response to what's happened. And I think we're like, you know. 

Jessica Hornstein: It could go either way. 

Jeff Brown: Yeah, I think it's, it's tight. Yeah, it's tight. 

Jessica Hornstein: Fucked or not fucked, right? 

Jeff Brown: Yeah. Yeah. It's gonna, it's gonna be, it's gonna be close.

Jessica Hornstein: Coin flip.

Jeff Brown: Really close. Yeah. It's gonna be a fucking photo finish. 

Jessica Hornstein: Well, on that note, maybe just to help tilt the scales a little bit in one direction, maybe we could talk about what are some, like we just talked about invalidating languaging—what is it that you wanna hear from people? What do you think are validating, beautiful words, and what can we say to ourselves and to others to be validating?

Jeff Brown: Well, I think just to, to understand and to express to people that the human story is welcome here. Not that we're gonna Byron Katie it and turn it around all the time. There's a place for that sometimes, to look at things through a different perspective to get unstuck. But I think just on a very basic level, to communicate to people in all kinds of ways that their story is welcome. And because I ultimately believe not only that our story is welcome, but that your story is your glory. Because my belief is, at the heart of my story, my lineage, my grandparents, my difficult childhood is everything that I'm doing now in, in the world that I find gratifying and that is helpful to some people.

It all emanates not from my dissociation, from the self, not from my transcending the human fray, not from my bashing and destroying the ego, blaming the mind, hating my body. It all happened because I was willing, for whatever reason, to drop, take the elevator back down into the body. Reconnect with, try to heal in the heart of, and to really reclaim my human story as the basis from which I honor the self and the basis from which I bring my good offerings to the world. So, it all begins with the honoring of the human story and beginning just to notice within ourselves the ways in which we turn away from our own stories and the stories of others. So just something like your story is welcome here. 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. All of it.

Jeff Brown: I can't hear right now. Let's connect on Sunday. But all of it.

Jessica Hornstein: And not just the parts that we feel okay about because we've been conditioned to think that this is okay, but that isn't okay. All of the messiness and everything is welcome.

Jeff Brown: Well, and, and, and to your point that you're not crazy for having had a difficult human experience, whether it's throughout your whole life or at various times along the way and, and this gaslighting. I mean, I've just going through this crazy experience, crazy, not that I'm crazy, but crazy in terms of what I've experienced, and most people have been able to hold the space for it and support it and talk through it and help me along. And, but then there's others, including some close friends who were gaslighters, who just absolutely decided, not that I was crazy so much, but that maybe I'm taking it too seriously. 

Jessica Hornstein: You’re exaggerating. Right, right.

Jeff Brown: It's very subtle sometimes. Yeah. The way this happens and what you learn from that experience, and you have to grant yourself permission to learn this in many cases, is that they are not people you should be talking to. and that they may not, in fact be the kind of friends that you want if your goal is to become a more truly human version of yourself.

Jessica Hornstein: Yeah. Well, before we go, can you just share where can people go to find out more about you and your work and what you're, you're putting out there right now? You're always busy.

Jeff Brown: My main website is Jeff brown.co. Um, I teach courses off soulshapinginstitute.com. My publishing house where we sign books, at least books that I've written, enrealmentpress.com. And I'm just starting a substack, uh, which I really like writing longer pieces again, called The Enrealment Newsletter.

And I have a podcast called The Enrealment Hour. I've interviewed some really powerful people, people who've fought really hard for their rights of the light. That's kind of like my criterion, I think, for this podcast. And I interviewed Andrew Harvey and Philip Shepard and Toko-pa Turner and Rob Brezsny, they're all just such brilliant people.

Jessica Hornstein: Fantastic, yeah. 

Jeff Brown: But very humane people, you know, never, never being, motivated by the unhealthy aspects of the ego. And I'm working on a new book of quotes, that'll come out probably in the, in the spring.

Jessica Hornstein: All very exciting. Well, it's always a joy to speak to you and, um, I know we could keep talking, but we are at the end of this episode.

Thank you so much. For, for all you do in the world and, um, for this, this rich conversation. 

Jeff Brown: You're welcome. 

Jessica Hornstein: I'm sure, I'm sure it has, it has brought light and value to so many people as your words always do and have always for me as well. 

Jeff Brown: Great. Great. Thank you. Keep up the good work. 

Jessica Hornstein: Thank you, Jeff. 

Thank you for listening and being part of the conversation. Please find a way to validate yourself today. Maybe find a way to validate someone else too. And if you enjoyed the show, please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can also join me at No, Not Crazy on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Let's build this community of validation together.