Deciphering the Nervous System with Jules Taylor-Shore on the STAIR Method and Coercion-Free Healing

Academy of Therapy Wisdom: I had trainings on presence and I had trainings on skill. And I didn't have a ton of trainings that really wove them together, not just as a concept, but as an embodied practice. Neurobiologically speaking, we are not thinking beings that sometimes feel. We are feeling beings that sometimes think. Your brain is making a subconscious assessment four to five times a second. Can you handle this? How could I make a simplified, integrative, very usable, very supportive structure so that clinicians who want to follow a theory of mind, a theory of change, to organize their work can do that from a brain centered space. I could never do what you can do in the room. You can do what you can do in the room. And I never want you to deprive your Of your own gifts and intuitions and imagination and creativity. Hello, everyone. Today I'm really glad to be sitting with Julianne Taylor Shore, or call her Jules. Jules is an integrative experiential psychotherapist, neuroscience nerd. Can we say nerd? Yes, please do. It's the only appropriate description. Thank you. She's an author, teacher, and mom. And someone who's helped so many clinici clinicians and regular folks translate new understandings and neurobiology into practices that can support real brain changes. Jules Bridges neuroscience, attachment, and relational therapy in a way that makes complex ideas immediately practical for clinicians. We've spent many hours together going over slides in the studio. Yeah. Yeah. And and catch us, she blends Sandray, Coherence Therapy, IFS, Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, and Couples Therapy into an integrative approach that's genuinely her own. She's the author of Setting Boundaries That Stick and she's the creator of the STARE method, a brain based integrated method for experiential therapy, and a very core faculty member of Therapy Wisdom. But what always interests me about Jules is not just the clarity of her teachings. It's her heart and that her work emerged from the real dilemmas therapists face every day. Jules has spent many years helping therapists understand that therapy is not just simply what we say or even what we understand. It's about what's happening between two human nervous systems in the room. So today I want to start with Jules' journey and how she became someone who developed this incredible stare method and became this well respected therapist teacher. ⁓ And if I have this right. As far as starting point. Yeah, yeah. You first came to therapy as a client who didn't believe feelings mattered, is that right? That is correct. I was I came to therapy out of desperation and out of not knowing what else to do to solve an impossible dilemma. And I argued with my therapist regularly for the first ⁓ gosh, at least six months, it could have been longer. About how stupid it was that he kept asking me to feel feelings because feelings were really ridiculous and completely unimportant. And look at me now, Brian. Look how far I've come. Poor CD. I probably gave him a very hard time. And I was I wasn't client, probably. ⁓ no, you know what? I was so on fire at that point. Like I one, I would say looking back on it now, I would say not being in relationship with feelings made feelings completely run my life in a in a wholly reactive way, is what I would say when I look back at that time. And what I would have said at the moment was, I understand myself completely. And that's not why I'm here. I am here for you to tell me what to do to change this situation. So so I thought I knew myself really well. I didn't know myself really well. I was completely run by feelings. I had no idea that's actually something that's true and that we can have I had no idea at that moment in my life. That neurobiologically speaking, we are not thinking beings that sometimes feel. We are feeling beings that sometimes think. That's biologically true, but I had no idea of that. And I was trying to make logic run my life very unsuccessfully, by the way. And and I was full of all sorts of hubris around how well I thought I know myself. Now I have really good relationship with my feelings. I think that they are gifts of meaning, really. And I know that I'm in a constant journey of discovering myself again. So of course I don't know myself, but that's okay because that's the that's what we do. As we learn more every day. So I've I've come a long way since that beginning. I just had this flash because I remember a demo you showed. And Jules has seriously if the best demos in the world. ⁓ like no, seriously. And we've worked with seventy teachers, like a lot of them have really good demos. But you've really y you're something like other presenters should really l study. But there was a demo of a guy who had no feelings and now I see inside your brain in a completely different way. I I think he was in the IT world. Uh-huh. I'm trying to remember what I know I know who you're talking about, I think. He was totally in the IT world and he was like, feelings are dumb, no interest. And I don't have them, by the way. I don't experience them anyway, so I don't know what you're talking about. So I have I have new appreciation. What might have been gone on your brain, like, yeah, I can relate and here's how d to jump into it. Totally. Totally. Cause I think at that time I was trying to Live my life from a space where figure it out rationality could be faster than feeling or more sound in decision making than feeling. And now I know they work together and they work together in a particular order. And that the order matters. So how did you journey from no feelings to feelings to when you can be a therapist and ⁓ my gosh. Well, okay, so ⁓ that's a great question. So I came to therapy in a situation where I was in a relationship that was pretty abusive. And I spent a couple of years in therapy doing a very normal leaving of that relationship. And when I say that what I mean is ⁓ feeling like I can't. Going and then coming back. Going and then feeling like you're falling apart, and there's no way you can leave this really. Like many exits and returns. just a really normal experience in for somebody who is on the receiving end of physical abuse. And eventually, ⁓ two years into this process. I have successfully extricated. I'm in the process of legally getting a divorce. I've gotten really brave and I had no money. I had no money. And I reached out to a lawyer who helped me bless him, thank you, ⁓ at a very, very low fee. And because my my ex spouse was not wanting to let me leave the relationship. So I had to go through a legal battle. So I'm I'm at the space of like knowing that my life was better. through this journey ⁓ knowing I didn't really understand why or how that happened. Yeah. Like w how was therapy affected? Like I knew I didn't understand what was happening. And I knew I had a lot of curiosity about what it would be like to be in that chair. So I remember going, I remember coming into therapy one day and w we were just doing the thing. We're doing talking. We're talking. We're talking. And I remember looking up at Patrick and saying, Hey, how do you get your job? I think I might want it. And he told me about going to grad school and he told me about then you get a license. And I thought, yeah, I guess that sounds like a good thing. And so without really thinking about it, I applied to a few different grad schools. I got into a couple of them. I chose the one that was local because I already had a job. ⁓ I I could go at night. ⁓ so it was a working program. So I could have a full time job and still attend grad school. So at that point I was turning wrenches for a living. So I was an auto mechanic at that time. And people might have changed you completely. Can you say that again? I I I was an auto mechanic by day. But Jules really likes knowing how things work. I love knowing how things work. ⁓ and I love you know what I loved about being an auto mechanic? was understanding that all of these sweet humans who come into my shop absolutely have the capacity to understand what we are doing with our cars. And that I knew that they did not know they had the capacity to understand, but I knew they had the capacity to understand and just needed a little patience and helping them understand here's what we're doing, here's why we're doing it. Here's what would happen if we didn't do it. Here are different ways we could solve this problem. Here are the different costs of those ways. ⁓ here's the likely outcome if we do this. And I want you to understand everything about how this is working so that you feel really comfy with your choice, and then you can tell us what you want us to do. So I always loved that part of like the like the engagement with the customer person, like, and look, you can learn this. This is this is totally possible. So I've always had an interest in how things work and I've always had an interest in helping people, I think, discover how capable they are. You'd be an excellent Montessori teacher. Right. My kid went to Montessori school when when they were really little. And I think that would have been a fun job. Totally. That was a that would be a great job choice too. another life. Perhaps I am one. Like the therapy world. Right. ⁓ so so anyway, yes. So I was going I was turning wrenches during the day, I went to grad school at night, and I and I didn't really understand what that process was gonna be like. Like many of my choices that I was making like at that point in my life, didn't have a ton of forethought other than that feels kind of interesting to me. I didn't know like how long grad school was, what internship looked like, what it meant to get a license like Brian, I had no idea. I just was like, ⁓ I got in. I guess I'm going to grad school now. So we're talking Jules 1.0 version. Totally. so that is true. I went, I went on that journey. And then I got into neurobiology just because I thought it was weird that I didn't have any neurobiology classes in my program. So I start going to grad school, but ⁓ five, ⁓ six, something like that. I can't remember exactly. But but back then, and I don't know if it's different now, but back then my graduate program didn't have any classes about the brain. Not not one. Like there was a research class, but that's not a brain class. And I just thought it was so weird. I would never work on a brake system if I didn't know how a brake system worked. And we'll and we'll circle back, but I think I think one of your most powerful teachings is what part of the brain you're talking to. And you studied all these half a dozen modalities, probably more. yeah. So we could circle around. We haven't we don't have the total list yet. But it's one of Jules's real gift that all the modalities are good. It's just the timing. And it's and it's like, ⁓ which skill is working with which system in the brain? And are we Are we letting that is sort of the order and ⁓ flow of information processing guide how we are weaving together our skill sets? Because I love all the different modalities. I'm trained in a bunch of them. Yep. I like weaving them together because they are so good at different things. And all of them if we weave them together, I I think it helps people with healing. And talking to the brain in a way that works, right? And and how to weave them together without going in overwhelm. I think that's one of your gifts. Yes. But back to Jules one point ⁓ Yes. Yeah, what was your ask inspiration? Like, what did you want to achieve? And like hoping the professional allow you to do. ⁓ my gosh, Brian, I don't think I thought about it. I think I thought, you know, it seems like a lovely thing. ⁓ able to help someone be in a deeper relationship with themselves. And that something would probably grow out of that. But I don't think I had a thought, like a bigger thought about like career trajectory or where am I going or what am I doing? Like the first time I was teaching, somebody asked me to teach and I said yes. And then I wrote a thing. Like this is ⁓ I found out I loved being in that space where a student is discovering ⁓ my gosh, I can do this. Yeah. ⁓ my gosh, I can understand this. I didn't think it was possible for me to understand this, but I can. Like that discovery of capacity has always been so interesting to me. So I love teaching because of that. And again, I wish I could tell you all I was a better planner. I'm not. I was just like, ⁓ sure, I'll do a thing. And actually therapy wisdoms found me in that way too. Cause Tori. Well, we found each other. Right. So I had known Tori Olds, who is a clinician and teacher here in Austin. And she had been telling me about Brian's work and ⁓ he's starting this new cool thing. And maybe you'd be interested in talking to him. And you end up seeing me co-teach with somebody and hosted that. And then and then you asked me, Hey, would you like to do your own course? I had never thought about doing my own course before you asked me to do it like that. Not like that. Like I've been leading groups and thinking about the brain and teaching in small group for years before that. But to design like a whole program, I I have so much gratitude for therapy with some and your team. And and not I threw some stuff at the wall and you all helped me mold and see like how do you arc a course and Yeah. And not to understate you, because you co taught a course with one of our previous clients and you designed the whole course. I did. And I think on our side as marketing, I think we came out with a really cool title and we had, I don't know, five hundred or thousand people. Mm-hmm. And you were the designer. Yeah. You put that together and that was like super impressive. ⁓ thanks, Han. So it was also you shined. ⁓ thanks. We just saw a sparkling star out there. So we're like, let's do more. Yeah. And I think ⁓ when I when I think about like, ⁓ how did I get from like where I am to here? I think it's like a ton of practice and a ton of hard work and a ton of interest and a ton of study and all that's true. And luck and being asked and saying yes. And and it's like a combo of those spaces. And I and I think for Listeners, like you don't know where threads lead. Like we interviewed John Howard with Diane Poheller back in two thousand sixteen. And then I was doing a marketing mastermind in San Antonio. I mean in Austin. And then John turned me on to his in laws, Tori Olds' parents. And I was staying down there and I was staying down actually staying in Tory and Charlotte's little girl's room that hasn't changed yet. Two thousand well, probably nineteen ninety six. Right. And then like you never know like where things lead. Like you you just gotta follow the dots in life sometimes and just rise and open. Well and take a leap and see what happens next. Yeah. So early clinician Jules. ⁓ what was working for you and did you see what what confused you or what did you think was was there something missing? Gosh, well it was definitely confusing to me that we weren't learning about the brain. So I took it on myself to do that. So I started out by ⁓ doing a ⁓ auditing. I audited a course through a connection that I had at Vanderbilt Medical School and took medical school neuroscience. ⁓ and so was and got and hooked, like hooked to meeting. Like, ooh, this is so cool. We can understand more about how all this system works. And I bet that's gonna be helpful, and I can't see how yet. But right. very exciting. And then ⁓ that relatively quickly led me down a path of reading ⁓ quite a lot of neurobiology. Some of it in psychological world, like so big fan of Dan Siegel. I went to LA, I studied with him, ⁓ big fan of Bonnie Bonnie Badnock, who is in the interpersonal neurobiology field, and she wrote a book called The Brainwise Therapist. And I I've been studying with her for the last, ⁓ gosh, ten ten years at least, ⁓ maybe longer. And was she probably your biggest mentor? ⁓ yes. If if my work ever looks like Bonnie Badnock and you all know who that is, you are right. My work has a lot of her mentorship in it. And and I think Bonnie has used deep understanding of relational processes in the brain to help us understand what presence really means when it comes to therapeutic. presence and why that matters. I I think she's such a gift to our field. So I I studied with her, but I've also studied people who are not ⁓ so in the psychology land. So Polski or ⁓ Damasio so really interested in in thinking about how How all of this system works. So that was that was part of it, is I thought that piece was missing for me in my education, and it might not be for everybody, but it was for me. And so I filled in the gaps elsewhere. And then the other thought I was having ⁓ while I was training was that some things felt really aligned, like being curious together about in-the-moment processes felt really aligned for me. And I also was being taught to do things in certain orders or to use skills that I thought didn't work with the brain very well as well as as far as I understood it. I think it's important when we're talking about neurobiology to understand that, ⁓ gosh, this is such new science. And no matter how much you're reading and studying, we're understanding this much. It's, you know, I'm for those listening, I've got my fingers very close together. We we understand this much about what's going on. So I I have a lot of curiosity about how do we utilize neurobiological discoveries to help us understand what to do clinically. And that felt like a need gap to me. Because I didn't hear anybody talking about it. And so I had to teach myself and trial and error. And the other piece I think that really, really worked for me when I was ⁓ new in the field was how much I practiced. ⁓ and I feel really lucky about that too. Cause I so I'm working with ⁓ my my practicum experience like in s inside grad school at the same time that I'm living with a musician. So my husband is a musician, but that's not the musician I'm talking about this time. We had a roommate at the time who was a world-class guitarist and he practiced every day. And I was like, Brian, his name is Brian too. Brian, what are you doing? You already play amazingly. He was like, No, this is how you keep playing amazing. You practice. And how did you practice? I started out by with permission, of course. audio taping some of my sessions and transcribing them and then looking at very particular moments and wondering ⁓ which moments are going really well and which moments are not going that well and what would I have rather done. So for the really well moments I'm practicing doing that again and thinking through like what how did I know to do the thing? How how am I what's my tells like poker style. What are my tells on the inside that told me to do the thing? Can I can I remember to do that again? And then on the growth side, really slowing down and wondering what would I have done in a moment like that and why. And so I'm basically teaching myself to do therapy, like while I'm in my supervision, my internship. I was practicing my husband was on the road as a musician. We didn't have a kid yet. I was doing a ton of work in the chair, but I was also practicing after hours every day. And you could accurately self-assess yourself, it sounds like well, probably not, but I learned how over time. Yeah. And get better. And and especially in later years. So now I do tape demo work to share with students. ⁓ so watching demo tape, I can feel it when at this point I can go. Nope, that wasn't it. Yes, that was it. With h more accuracy than I think I used to. I think that's a skill I've learned over time. Cause I and that's something Tori Old's turned us onto in Academy of Therapy Wisdom is the idea of deliberate practice. There's a whole school like you could I could practice violin by myself in the basement for ten years. I won't get better without if my ear's not trained or I get feedback. Right. Right. So you were right on as far and that this is one field that it's hard to get feedback or to assess. It's really hard for us to get feedback, right? It is. And I think sharing tape with colleagues when it when you have the accurate permission to do so. You have to really stick with your licensing laws, make sure if you're ever doing this, you're doing it with the correct permissions. But to bring into supervision, to bring into consultation to Really look at a moment. So like I could bring a transcript into my supervisor and say, Look at this moment. Here's what I think is going on. What would you have done in this moment? Why would you have done that in this moment? So I think I was using supervision space and consultation space maybe a l a little differently than I had been trained to. Just because it was working better for me. I could feel the difference. And my clients were giving me the feedback, right? Because they're reporting, ⁓ my God, I'm doing so much better. And did that reshape your practice? Hmm. Yeah, I think so. And I think there was a time, it actually I had planned it out and it happened to coincide with COVID. That was not on purpose, but I ended up taking a sabbatical and stopping practice altogether, ⁓ for about eighteen months and really rethinking, wait, how am I doing this? How am I making clinical decisions in the room? How am I teaching What am I teaching? What do I want to be teaching? So taking that pause and thinking about that in a in a little bit of a critical way, but I don't mean that like self-criticism. I mean that like assessment really helped me clarify what is it I'm really trying to do? How am I defining therapy? How am I defining my treatment planning? So I had planned to take a break and kind of do a reset and COVID happened to happen at the same time. So I ended up doing my reset mostly at night because I was teaching my kid elementary school during the day. Like so many of us. My child is now a a five year old, six year old at home. Woohoo. Fun times. It was it was wild times. My sabbatical did not end up going how I had planned, but such is life. Well it's interesting. Your path wees like the thinking, like sharp thinking, like in a really good way, along with working with the feeling body. ⁓ totally. Well, and I think it really helped that I became a somatic experiencing practitioner so early in my career. So I knew I wanted to be a trauma specialist. And so I got EMDR training and somatic experiencing training at the same time immediately after leaving grad school. So I was still in my internship and I and I Do credit somatic experiencing in particular with helping me be a more embodied clinician. Because at that point I still had quite a lot of cutoff from my body. I kind of I could move into the intellectual space really easily and not be as embodied. And now I feel like I can inhabit both simultaneously a lot easier. You teach now how the therapist's own nervous system. Is part of the treatment. ⁓ definitely. When did you f when do you first realize that? ⁓ I think through Bonnie's work probably, like how how we are doing matters and how your nervous system is fluidly functioning in the room is part of the container we're creating. And so how you are in relationship with your nervous system has the potential to influence what kind of nervous system you're bringing. the room at any given moment. And so I think we have a lot of ⁓ responsibility there. I think Bonnie's work and then the work of Cedar Barstow, who lots of clinicians Yeah, lots of clinicians don't know her work so well, but if you don't know it and you are clini ⁓ gosh, go out and read right use of power. I Cedar. Yeah. ⁓ I think her way of thinking about the responsibility of the Power role and Bonnie's way of talking about ⁓ what presence is, and me doing lots and lots of embodied Santray workshops with her that are all about how do you come into relationship with yourself while you do this work. I think those combined to help me understand. that there is a lot of responsibility I'm taking on to take care of myself well because together our nervous systems are the container. And and mine is the more grounded in the room 90% of the time, right? But it needs to be. And so how I am in relationship, you can't strong arm your nervous system into being the I'm doing air quotes, y'all, right kind of container. Cool. I really do believe Bonnie's words on this. There's no space for coercion and healing. I mean, it seems like you shift from just not learning new techniques, but realizing that like here you are as a nervous system is part of the healing journey. Is that fair? Yeah, I think so. It's like, okay, here's the skill and then the here's how I am while I utilize this particular skill. So when I say skill, I just mean intervention, yeah. So, like it could be a simple intervention, like asking someone to reflect on what they just said. Yeah. ⁓ I heard you say, fill in the blank, here's what the client just said. I wonder what's happening inside your body as you listen to your own words. Maybe I'm using that skill. Okay. Now I could use that skill from a place where subconsciously I want you to have a certain kind of answer. Where I want the skill to do a certain thing in the room. I could have this skill from a space of, let it go. Who cares what happens? I could have this skill be embodied with absolute intention and with a ton of surrender. Cause I'm going to meet you next where you are. And I think that's an I think that's an art. And I think that's built on your relationship with yourself. And I think that's built on your relationship with the with whatever it is you're working on and with your client. And I think those are two different relationships. So I I I don't know. I talk a ton about Brian, I talk a ton about relationship. And I think it's I here's here's a need gap I felt in the field personally in my own training is I had trainings on presence and I had trainings on skill. And I didn't have a ton of trainings that really wove ⁓ together, not just as a concept, but as an embodied practice. That was the next question. Like, how do you balance possibly having a roadmap where you want to go with a client and also listening? 'Cause again, when I I seen you do demos, you really pick up nuances. Mm-hmm. Like you blinked when I said that, what's going on? Like Yeah. So how do how do you it like exactly what you're saying? ⁓ how do you integrate those two? Yeah. Well, again, I think it's it's an art learned over time for sure, but I think here's here's what I think. I think that our fast intuitive subcortical brains already have all the maps we need to get from here to where we're going. And they are helped deeply. by having a consensus on what that destination might be. And so the first thing I get really clear on when I'm working is wait, where are we going? And I can feel it. I do an for me, it's an embodied thing. Like I can feel it when we hit it because a tuning fork happens in the middle of my body. It's like a little like somebody hit a harmony note, like, but it happens right up my center. And at the same time, a physical shift happens in them. And then usually if I say whatever it is I think, ⁓ are we going here? ⁓ There's a ton of resonance in the room and we go, yeah, that's where we're going. And then once I do that, I let go and have I have no idea what map we're about to find. So I think it's like, I think what it feels like in the room is like ⁓ expansion and contraction rhythms to me. Where I'm like, ooh, I'm really, I'm really narrow and I'm doing a thing. Now I'm letting go and seeing what happens next. And now I'm doing a thing and now I'm letting go and seeing what's happens next. Or to lean into Dan Siegel's way of thinking about it, he would say, ⁓ you move from open plane of possibility to a slightly more narrow plateau of what's possible to an action. And then there's that moment of peak ⁓ activation where you actually do the thing and then you drop back into open plane of possibility. Yeah. What your way you were describing, I thought of like a breath. There's the in breath and then there's letting go, see what happens. Breathe in again. Yes. Yes. It feels like that. It feels like, ⁓ I have an offering for you. And how did that go? ⁓ I have another offering for you. ⁓ how'd that go? So it feels like dancing a little bit. Should we talk about stare method? ⁓ sure. Yeah. What do you what do you feel like is helpful for people? Well, why did you even create Another thing. Like what was inspiration? Like we need another thing, y'all. Because I know you spent ten thousand hours seriously holed up in a cave putting it together and not always easy. I have I have. I am deeply committed to integrative therapy work. And it's been a long time since we've had a ⁓ any kind of ⁓ method out there for that. I studied ⁓ a little bit of Pensoft's work, who created problem-centered therapy, which is an integrative methodology. he he wrote back in the eighties and nineties. He was out of Chicago. So I'm kind I'm familiar with integrative work early in my career because I was exposed to him within like a year of leaving school. And I got really clear very fast when I was exposed to his work that that was a road I really wanted to go on was to be an integrative therapist. ⁓ and let me say a little bit about like ⁓ categories as I see them and of course nobody fits perfectly into a category and I would never imply that we do. So let's have ⁓ I I offer categories to people knowing there's no such thing. ⁓ okay and I see like in general in the field people practicing in three general ways. One is like I have picked a single theory, a single model, and I do that. I am a CBT therapist. I am an IFS therapist. I am an EMTR therapist. And that is what I do. Right. What's cool about that is that all of these different models have a theory of mind and a theory of change that is guiding clinical decisions in the room. So you're not only basing your clinical decisions on whatever it feels like or whether or not your client likes it. You're actually guided. By a theoretical orientation that says, hey, this is how the brain changes, this is what mental health is, so here's what we're gonna do. And that's really cool. I love that. Then you've got folks who are eclectic who have trained in a bunch of different modalities, and they probably mix them together, often by gut feel, often by whether or not a client likes it. Often by a lot of times, I don't know if you all have ever had this. ⁓ my gosh, I have had this. I want you to know if you've had this, you're not alone. Often guided what by whatever I studied recently. So this weekend I went to this training. So now all my work looks different on Monday because I'm trying to use the new training I just learned. Right? So whatever I spent time with most recently may guide my work. Or maybe without even knowing it, my own subconscious history. Guides my choices in the room. Because we are living out of our history. Your brain wears history colored glasses 24 7. You can never take them off. That's just part of how the wiring works for the neocortex. So, so that's a way of doing it. And then there's your integrative therapist. Now, what's different about integrative therapy is that there is a theory of mind and a theory of change, but rather than being a single modality. It's actually pulling skills from any modality you have ever trained in, including ones I never have. Right. And it's it's going, ⁓ here's a theory of mind, here's the theory of change. This is gonna guide our clinical decisions in the room. And that structure, I organize my toolbox from all of these different modalities onto that supportive structure so that I know what I'm There's there's some like larger guiding principle behind my choices. So when I'm exposed to pins off really early in my career, I thought, ⁓ yeah, I want to be an integrative therapist. And he didn't include any neuroscience. And I'm a neuroscience geek. So at first, I was trying to to lean into Dan Siegel's ⁓ nine levels of integration to start understanding how maybe I could create. some sort of structure that ⁓ could be a guiding principle from those nine types of integrate of brain integration. ⁓ and it was cumbersome to talk about. It was cumbersome to use in the room. I felt like it was too there were too many different options. And especially when I was talking about it, I was a supervisor for a long time. And so when I was talking about with interns They were having trouble like conceptually they understood it, but how is it usable in the room? So I I created the STERME method based on a easier way. It's still very rooted in interpersonal neurobiology. It's still very rooted in my understanding of neurobiology that is beyond interpersonal neurobiology. ⁓ because there are things I study that they don't. And I ⁓ really was looking at How do you help a brain be more flexible in its integration pattern? So like moving from more integration to less integration. And how ⁓ do you help a brain hang out in more integration more of the time when systemically that makes sense? So in the reality of your life, contextually that makes sense. so I was I was really working with how do how do we do this? And I thought, well, what's the only thing we need to think about in the room? And that's the what is the stimulus that helps the brain decide where to be on that spectrum. So the entire entire stair method is honed in around that one idea, and then all of the other ideas grow out of that one space. It's like, ⁓ your brain is making a subconscious assessment. Four to five times a second, can you handle this? And if it does, it goes, ⁓ we're okay, and it moves towards more integration. And if it goes, no, we can't handle this, it goes, ⁓ emergency, and moves to less integration. And so if we can focus on what your brain is assessing as okay and not okay subconsciously, you can make brain change over long periods of time. And so the whole thing is based on, ⁓ how can I make a simplified, integrative, very usable, very supportive structure so that clinicians who want to follow a theory of mind and theory of change to organize their work? Can do that from a brain centered space. That was a very long winded answer, Brian. How are we doing? Has your understanding of trauma changed as you develop the stare method? Hmm. Well, that's an interesting question. I think I think I've gotten clearer on communicating what I understand about trauma healing. When we say trauma healing, what do we mean? We I think we mean two things. I think we mean Some space of community grieving about the reality. So it could be a a community of two, right? You and your your client. And it could be a community of a thousand, as we call in ancestors and spirits. It could be a longing to create a community outside of the therapeutic space, which is awesome. And creating ritual spaces, great. I think one way I have of understanding trauma healing is that the container for the grief that will come as we face the reality of what you've survived needs to be big. And the creation of that container is through relationship and community and ritual. I really. get that piece and have communicated that more clearly. And the other piece of trauma healing is that while we cannot change what happened to you, I cannot change what happened to me, right? I can change what I think I've learned, what what emotional knowings I'm living out of. Because of those moments. So when these moments happen, we do create kind of locked emotional knowings that are very hard to unlock and it also is possible to unlock. And so I think I'm getting more and more clear with folks about the fact that trauma healing is a lot about unlocking and unlearning and taking in new inside of a container that can hold. the truth about what happened. And and related Jules to the safety part. Mm-hmm. From your own experience and your students. What what do you think makes a therapist trustworthy to the nervous system of another being? Mm, that they don't worry about whether or not they're trustworthy. They worry about whether or not they're trusting their client. ⁓ And they worry about whether or not they trust their own system. And when they don't, they could do so out of wisdom. I I'm all about self-trust built out of humility. I don't think self-trust is built out of I get things right. Right. I think self-trust is built out of grounded humility in what I'm Love and what I'm not. So I think a lot I think a trustworthy therapist has a lot of honesty with themselves and a lot of curiosity with themselves and a deep relationship with themselves while they're working. ⁓ And a ton of trust for their client. Trust for their own healing and trust that Yeah, trust that their system has wisdom and healing. Trust that when there is some sort of What feel can feel like a block to healing or resistance to healing, there's something coherent about that. And to bring a lot of curiosity to that rather than to call it a problem. I think ⁓ tons of trust in the wisdom of protective systems, even though we may not align with their tactics and strategies all the time. Good, don't. But also they're right about some stuff. So I think it's When I say trust my client system, I don't mean trust them to run therapy. They're not therapists, they don't know how to do that. But I do trust that their system already has some sort of map for how to do this well, for what the order of healing needs to look like for me. And I think that's really unique. And so me going in with a map of what that should look like would probably thwart our work. So I'm more interested in. What practices can I engage in? What processes can we set up in the room where it's more likely we'll find your wisdom rather than me telling us what healing should look like? The other thing I think this is a piece of feedback that I didn't know would happen from people who've already trained in STARE. I did not realize this would happen, but it is the feedback I get back most consistently out of people who've done it for a long time. is ⁓ twofold. One is I didn't know hard therapeutic moments could feel that easy, fluid, creative, right? And the other piece is I didn't know I could be this much myself while I work. So I I and I love that. This is great feedback for me because I'm just sitting here going, yes, because your humanness matters. You're all of your creativity. I could never do what you can do in the room. You can do what you can do in the room. And I never want you to deprive your clients of your own gifts and intuitions and imagination and creativity. So I feel really excited. That even though I maybe didn't know I had that intention, I know I want your capacity and gift to show up in the room. And I'm glad to hear people giving me feedback that that's part of what's happening as they're in their training. It's like, ⁓ my gosh, I get to be more myself. Yeah, and a reflex not pushing. Right. Nobody likes that. Yeah. I I really do want a coercive, free therapy space between me and me. Between me and my client, between my client and themselves. And our system is so shaped to push. Yeah. We gotta undo that, right? Well, we're supposed to be evaluating like, are we on track with the number of sessions we're supposed to have? And did we move far enough in this session? And did the right did did when you did that intervention, did the exact thing you were told in the textbook happen? Because if not, somebody messed something up. Yeah. Wait a second. We're open, dynamic, complex systems. Surely that's not the only thing it could mean. Like, yes, of course it can mean I messed up. Or of course it means I could make it better. But it also could mean none of that. It could mean something really important happened. Right. And it's really important for us to hang with that and discover. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. What still keeps you curious about this work? ⁓ everything. People. Here's the thing. I have never actually been on the same healing journey twice. I'm I'm accompanying people in their unique healing journeys. So I get surprised and curious every single day, all the time. So you just stay open and delighted. It's so easy. Like curiosity, I guess, is the natural state that I live in when I'm in the room. Yeah. Yeah. Not that I don't have lots of offerings, but all the offerings are there in the curiosity guides, like what's how much can come into the room, right? And then what you bring into the room, I can see, ⁓ is brain change happening? Is brain change not happening? What does that mean I need? ⁓ my tool sets right there because I've organized it on my staircase. I say staircase because in the stair method we have a visual of How to organize your toolbox that's based on the picture of a staircase. Well, thank you for sharing your journey. ⁓ yeah, you're welcome. It's like this art. Thank you for thank Patrick for like you went to therapy and you negated feelings and now it's your profession and you have all these gifts to share. Right. Brilliant, man. Thank you for not leaving me in a really, really hard space. Well, it's a beautiful arc how you've gone. Yeah. Anything else you want to share or ⁓ my gosh. I don't know. Just thanks for your time, y'all. And whatever parts of you and and all the heart that you brought to your listening journey today. Yeah. So I just appreciate ya. Thanks, Jules. ⁓ you're welcome, man.