Emily: What's up everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Saroca Speaks. We've got a good one for you today. I am your host, Haruko of course I am by my beautiful co-host and here to introduce our next guest. ⁓

Claire Adamou: Thank you. It's Claire and we are joined today by the incredible Nathan Simmons. is a trauma-informed leadership trainer and clinical hypnotherapist who helps professionals dissolve self-sabotage, perfectionism and imposter syndrome through inner work and transforming how you lead your parents and you live. Not only that He is also a published author and in 2025 released an Oracle deck. So Nathan, welcome to Saroca Speaks.

Nathan Simmonds: Thank you for having me. It's really great to be invited. It's great to see you again, Claire, and it's great to meet Emily as well and dig into some of this necessary content, think, really necessary content.

Claire Adamou: That's as good.

Emily: happy to have you here.

Claire Adamou: Absolutely. We are. We have some great stuff to dig into on this episode, but I really want to start this session by asking you, what is an Oracle card? Can you tell?

Nathan Simmonds: An Oracle card? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's most people probably in the leadership space understand what a coaching deck where you get a deck of cards with coaching questions on and you kind of have them handy on your desk. You've got a situation or you're working with someone and you can just pull questions out. An Oracle deck is a slightly more spiritual version of that. But with my leadership experience and coaching experience and also my spiritual practices and my shamanic journey work that I've done. brought those two things together. So combining the Native American spirit medicine wheel format, but then combining it with coaching questions. So you have 64 vibrant, beautiful AI generated images, but each card comes with four journal prompts. And it's based on the, like I say, the medicine wheel, East to the South, the West and the North. And question is relevant to

Claire Adamou: We have 10 seconds.

Nathan Simmonds: a kind of ideal direction. So the East is what am I letting go of? The South is what lesson do I need to learn? The West is what action do I need to take? And the North is what is the gift as I follow this process? But each card has a different question. So you've got 256 coaching questions in there. And then when you use them with the framework, it actually creates 1.7 million different coaching pathways that you can move through. Now, You know, for leadership, like for a leader or someone in position, if you've got you've got a situation, you've got a problem. The biggest challenge that we have as human beings is we have confirmation bias. We're always looking to say, told you so. Well, I'm right and you're wrong. And we just we don't as the saying goes, we don't rise to the expectation. We fall back to the level of training. So if our training is wonky at best or nonexistent in many cases, because I think there's a ridiculous percentage of leaders don't actually get any leadership training. You're going to be asking the same questions over and over again. And Einstein said, definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting something different. So you get a deck of cards like this. You pull a card. It allows you to step out of the process, look at the questions, and reflect, and then start to create some alternative actions to help move you forward. and I say but in a big way, that's kind of, to a certain degree, a lot of Oracle decks are kind of like this. I don't think to that level of depth. But this one then gets backed up with over 60 hours worth of meditation content. So each card comes with its own hypnotic meditation. So you can completely rewire your subconscious through the deck as well. So it's got some nifty tools and kind of conscious shifting points access to really help leaders and people, individuals get out their own way and take positive action.

Emily: So do you have an app or like, is it a URL? Like how do you accompany the, like where are the med, where do the meditations live that accompany the Oracle cards?

Nathan Simmonds: Yep, so the Oracle Deck is physical at the moment. We're working on some apps at the moment, kind of back of house. I have a learning platform. So I use something that's called System. It's a little bit like Kajabi, sort of platform where you can just pull a card and then you can just click into the members platform. When you buy the Oracle Deck, you get the access to that space with the Oracle Deck for lifetime. And you can just click on the meditation you do, plug in and disappear and disappear off around the universe right now.

Emily: I love that. That's so cool. hear of a lot of, you know, been exposed to a lot of Oracle decks. My personal favorite is Sacred Rebel deck by Atlanta And she's an woman, but I've never heard this component of, you know, a meditation to accompany the cards. So I think that's really cool, Nathan, that you built that.

Nathan Simmonds: takes people to another depth, like there's people I think it's great that we have these bits of wisdom and a bit of a meditation. But it's like, if the wiring in the background is like, you in the battle of the in the battle of the mind, the subconscious is always going to win. And if your programming is kind of wired the wrong way, or dissonant or problematic, and you don't even realize you're doing it, you're just going to be repeating the same thing over and over again, it's like, I've got this great idea. But it doesn't matter because I'm still going to fall back to what's familiar. So you've really got to go in and kind of rewire these belief structures at the deepest possible level to enable people to show up as the best possible version of themselves.

Emily: Tell us your origin story. How on earth did you decide that you wanted to get into hypnotherapy, know, trauma-informed leadership training, coaching? What was the impetus in your life that led you there?

Nathan Simmonds: 20 years of denial about that. normal childhood, normal kind of life. My parents were both police officers at one point or other. had all these kind of dynamics going on. And then about eight years old, I abdominal pain. Turned out it was appendicitis. So it's a really routine situation, routine operation. So off I went to hospital, whipped out the appendix, perforated. So it was kind of ⁓ quite But then the pain didn't go away. And it just kept coming back and going back to hospital and they couldn't work out what it was. And they thought it was one thing and they thought it was another. And then by complete fluke, three, four months into this process, I went to the GPs and the GP took one look at me and just went, you've got Crohn's disease. You need to go to hospital and get two pints of blood put in you. And at that point, it was only really girls that got Crohn's because it was an adolescent kind of thing, a hormonal thing. So was a complete fluke that this guy happened to be the right place at the right time. So I spent a year in hospital, ⁓ reconstruction, one my kidneys deflated out of pipe in my jugular vein at one point feeding me. And this is all before the age of 10. So I through this experience. But my mother at the time is kind of the potted version. So it's more powerful than Google. Google didn't exist in 1989, 1990. So my mom was doing all the research and She found out that the root cause of Crohn's is actually Candida. It's a yeast infection. And we treated it at a microbiome level, completely reset my microbiome. within two years, I cured Crohn's. I don't have Crohn's. I don't take medication. I've never had a flare up since. So all time they're telling you it's incurable, there's stuff on. So this was the beginning, right? But then I spent years, I was bullied horrendously at school. awful experiences at school with bullying, including from teachers, psychologically and physically from teachers at the age of 15. just thought this was normal. And I became very angry and aggressive and then turned to drugs at about 15. So I spent then the next probably about eight, nine years using recreational drugs and building up a tolerance level to it. I did some wonderful things at the time. I did some amazing things. I went traveling. still using recreational drugs. And then when I returned back to England at about 23, I went on an eight month bender, which in me taking about 16 ecstasy tablets and sniffing over five grams of cocaine in one sitting. Thankfully, built up a tolerance to this at this point, because was going into quite a lot of emotional physical shock problems. But in between this, I've already started learning psychotherapy techniques and understanding some frameworks and understanding how the brain works and ⁓ how kind of manipulate and get what they want and how to say the right things to the wrong girl at the right time in order to get what I wanted and kind of as a teenager kind of using these to understand human behavior. But then when I went through that experience, it was because I've been learning some of these things, I realized how messed up some of those relationships when I just went, no, I'm done. I'm out. I'm either going to be dead or in prison. And that's not what I'm here for. I'm out. And completely went just the switch and stopped everything. So continued on this journey, corporate leadership, middle management, struggling kind of, but learning, like seeing how people were kind of messing up their relationships at home, messing up the relationships at work, why leaders were failing. But I was still really angry, really angry, frustrated. There's people that are getting paid six figure salaries and they were just treating people like just horrendously. it's just like all these characteristics and personas coming out and it's just games at the cost of other people. Now people getting where they want to be at the result of treading on other people and ⁓ other people back to make themselves look better. was just like, this is just... I was in the wrong place, wrong values, wrong ethics, but still learning all of these things. And then as I shifted out, I started to do leadership development through this journey, teaching in different companies, doing a sideline, bit of a side hustle as a trainer at this point. As I stepped out of that, first year of COVID, went to work for a training company just before it all happened. Everything was going great. And then literally at the end of January, beginning of February, I think it was. Just been working for them for four months at this point and all their clients postponed indefinitely within 48 hours and everything started to flatline quite rapidly. But then I started looking at the habits and behaviors, narcissistic traits in individuals where the stress was getting too much for them and has been inflicted on other people. And I went, you know what? I'm good. I'm out. I'm done with this. This isn't what I'm designed for. I've learned my lessons. I'm OK. Let's move on. And as soon as I did that, I then bumped into my first hypnotherapy trainer, Tom Fortesmaier. told in the situation, the challenges I've got at the time with finances and mortgages and what was going on going self employed in the first year of COVID. Like no one, no one would make that I know that thought probably consciously that that's a good idea. First year of pandemic, let's go self employed and work out how to really mess shit up. Right. And that's what happened. But then I bumped into him explained all these processes, the drama triangle, how leaders are making a mess, the problems I'm seeing these behaviors, and he just looked at me and went That's exactly what we do at Free Mind. If you come and train with me, I'll show you exactly how to get to the root cause of this using hypnotherapy to understand why we do what we do. Went into the training and I just saw all of my history. Within eight days of training, I saw the whole of my history, how I've been doing all the training and learning all the things to prove that I was smarter than a therapist so that I couldn't find a therapist that was actually smart enough to help me and keeping everyone at arm's length. And I just thought, you clever bastard. And then looking at where the crones came from the autoimmune disorders and dysregulations, looking at the habits and behaviors of leaders of parents and understanding everything that we're doing, everything that was happening today is a is as a result of what we did and didn't get as children. And all we're doing and I talk about this a lot. All we're doing is reacting. We're reacting the past in the current which stops us from creating the future. And the moment we see that it's a start and we can own it and hold it and go hold on a minute. There's a part of me that still didn't get what it needs. And the only person that can give that to me is actually me with a little bit of support and a little bit of kind of holding. And then there's a moment I really let go of that I can actually show up as who I actually need to be not who I think everyone thinks I should be. Messed up but it's just that's the truth and that's the journey that's got me here. So I'll just share this with as many people as possible and help people kind of get a hold of themselves and kind of grow up a little bit.

Claire Adamou: It's such powerful story of ⁓ journey ⁓ to be so vulnerable and open go, this was my life, right? Emily and always say the good, the bad, the ugly, you know, it everything in between. And you've made some huge life-changing decisions since, well, whole life, right? Big decisions. whether it's the drugs and the alcohol and everything like that, whether it's going self-employed during COVID, of these things that you have done are steps that so people are afraid to make. then not only have you made such big steps, you've done this internal work as well. Like that so many people I feel... are afraid of do either they don't know it's the fear of the unknown, right? I don't really know or there's nothing wrong with me. My childhood was fine. Everything was fine. We're all fine. You know, even as a leader, no, it's not, it's not me. It's them. They're not doing what they should be doing. And there's so much between being a leader of a team and being a parent. And I know that you talked about this on LinkedIn about how being a parent

Nathan Simmonds: always.

Claire Adamou: being a leader is likened to being ⁓ parent of children and the impact of your behaviours. Can you speak to that a little bit? Just a little bit more, please.

Nathan Simmonds: And it's how times you go to work and then someone says, ⁓ this is my work husband or this is my work wife. You you hear these terminology like, you know, it's, and you're shaking your head and sometimes like, yeah, but some people are like a little bit like that. And people call team leader mumsy or it's like having an extra dad. We hear this kind of language that, but we do hear it though. And also the one, which we've got to be mindful of is when people say, well, yeah, we run this business like a family. It's like, well, if your family ethics are a bit messed up, then how you're running your business isn't going to be much better. But what happens is, is the way that I look at things is everything in life is a metaphor, like everything. Like if I look at an octopus, what does the octopus remind me of or teach me? If I look at a tree, what does the tree remind me of? If look at table, what's what's the, what's the kind of the, the analogy behind the metaphor of it. So then when we look at our relationship, of what we did and didn't get as children with our parents, with our siblings, with relatives, etc. with authority figures. We kind of encode that as what is familiar and then we will go looking for that familiarity. So we have a checklist in our head of what we think the world's going to be like. How will men treat us? How will women show up in our world? This is my checklist and as long as I'm ticking all those boxes everything is okay. Whether or not that list is actually helpful or not does not matter, right? And then we rock up to work and we see these authority figures and we have a man or a woman leading our team and they're trying to educate us to be better human beings in kind of the corporate space, which is what we do as parents, right? But the challenge is, is if we've had certain dynamics as children and we haven't had the best parenting experiences, we may find that we start repeating that or we're expecting that from other people. or if we've had challenges where we've been parented and we're now the leader of a team and we've either had experiences of being poorly led or abused as a member of staff or as a child, we're going to like to start repeating that to the children in our team. So the people in my team, when I was in leadership positions, I would treat them like my children, not like a child. Because no parent in their right mind wants their child to be equal to or less than them. 100%. So when you kind of look at leadership through this lens, do I want the people in my team to be equal to or less than me? No, I want them all to supersede me. I want them to be better than me. I want them to go and go two pay bands higher. I want them to do the things that I messed up because I was too idiotic or thick headed or whatever in order to see my own failings. It's like these are the mistakes I made. I want you to learn from them so you can go and do something better than that, like in a positive way. So when we look around, but then kind of you start to look at. the parenting dynamics of individuals. Because when you look at the other thing that used to get me is if you could tell someone's team leader or manager by their behaviors, when you start to know kind of the company kind of culture, etc, you would see individuals you'd be like, that's definitely one of Bob's team, or that's definitely one of Jesse's team. And it's just like a family, you know, it's just it's the same things that gets passed on. So then what we need to understand is ⁓ especially as leaders, and as parents, is your children are here to trigger the absolute shit out of you. That's pretty much what your kids' jobs are. There's all the parental joy, parental pride, and guilt, and shame that goes with that. Fantastic, right? But also, your kids are designed to trigger the living shit out of you in order for you to go, hold on a minute. Emily, have you got children, did you say?

Emily: have a 12 and 13 year old.

Nathan Simmonds: great yeah we're kind of we're in the same sort of canoe on that one i've got a 13 year old right but there's sometimes when you looked at them as they were growing up and they and you were like ⁓ they look like mum ⁓ they look like dad and they're almost like changing shape as they're grown up and then they start to behave and they're like mother's daughter well you know and we do those things and they're picking up these certain traits and then you get angry at them and you'll be like how dare you behave like that and you'll be like shit actually that's me and all you're doing is reflecting that stuff back on me

Claire Adamou: That's the truth.

Nathan Simmonds: So actually, that gives me something I need to deal with. But when we're looking at leadership, most of the time, the leaders aren't looking at themselves. They're too busy pointing their finger at the people in the team saying, you messed up. You made me look bad. You let the team down. Your performance is this. It's like, actually, what's your responsibility as a leader? What's your responsibility of a parent of this person? Your responsibility is to step in and remove the barriers and show them the possibility and be the inspiration. so that actually they can supersede, do not be kept where they are or downtrodden or abused or shut down. Granted free will, can't, know, there is free will that comes into it. And at the same time, like have you hand on heart as a leader, as a parent, done everything you could for that individual, for them to absolutely fly.

Claire Adamou: Thank you. really interesting. was listening and I forget the lady's name, but there's CEO of start ex CEO of Starbucks was a woman and she was also, I think the president of Walgreens or and the vice president Sam's or something like that. Very senior. And she taught, she, I listened to the podcast the other day and she was talking about As a leader, her job is to move the obstacles out of her team's way in order for her team to solve the problems, build the technology, move the businesses forward. She's not coming in as a leader to solve it in handhold and you know, she's got her job is to move everything out, empower them so they can figure it out themselves. What she need to do in order to make that And it was so powerful. And I thought, I can see you or you we can see the difference when leaders trained, when leaders are in it for leading to success and they're not in it necessarily for themselves, right? ⁓ And the credit. And I had a client recently that said, I will take when something happens with my team that doesn't go as well as it should have, or we missed a deadline. that buck stops with me. don't then point to my team member and say, they're the ones that messed up. They let the team down. This is me. I am the leader. I front us a unit. And I thought, yes, this is why you're in coaching. This is why, you know, you're in a leadership position. But it's I've also had leaders that are very much not like that. And we've seen lots of examples in every single industry that are not like that.

Nathan Simmonds: Yeah. And partly, I'm sorry, we're say I think I saw recently a statistic with HSBC shutting down their leadership program, which has been running for something like 120 years, something crazy, right. But the statistic was something like only 12 % of leaders have actually had any formal leadership training. And then you wonder why there's so many issues in leadership.

Emily: It reminds me. Yeah. My favorite leadership quote is by Frances Frei who's Harvard Business School professor. And she says, leadership at its core is about making people better with presence and making that impact lasts in my absence.

Nathan Simmonds: the managing your shadow, like it's the managing the shadow before you walk into the room, what people saying how they feeling before you arrive. And then also what they execute and how they showing up how if you inspire them as you're walking out of the room as well. And how does that that energy continue to roll on for when you're not there?

Emily: Yeah. Another distinction that you sort of described that we often use is this distinction between above or below the line. And the line really is, above the line is, I'm willing to take accountability, I'm willing to take responsibility, I'm willing to implement corrective action, I'm willing to endure a little bit of discomfort, I'm in service of others and the greater good. below the line is often blaming and shaming, not willing to take corrective action. avoiding any form of discomfort. And know that the most optimal leaders are the ones that stay committed to showing up above the line. And that level of self-awareness too, where it's like, you know what, I'm feeling a little heated right now. I'm feeling a little bit below the line. Can we please table this conversation till tomorrow, right? As opposed to trying to power through or not being responsible for our own emotional autonomy and how that impacts the environment around us. I have a question. ⁓

Nathan Simmonds: Yeah. Yeah. Now you're going.

Emily: ⁓ So Claire did a session with you is my understanding and I would love to hear a little bit about Claire's experience probably from both perspectives. You as a recipient Claire, we can start there and then maybe as a facilitator if you guys are willing to share a little bit of what you noticed Nathan in that. Tell us a little bit about that experience.

Claire Adamou: Absolutely. So Nathan and I got connected because I have my own life coach who also, I don't know if you're actively working with Hayden right now, but somewhat. Yeah. So we're in the same circle. So I've got to know Nathan over the last six months maybe, more so very much recently. And when I found out that Nathan does the... Hypnotherapy and the free, it's free minds and you can talk and speak on that a little bit more in a second. But I was completely fascinated having had a session before ever in this realm. I really wanted to dig in and understand the power of hypnotherapy the benefits. And I've really worked so hard as you, Emily know, and so, and some of our listeners know, I've so hard over the last couple of years on Stage fright which may surprise a lot of listeners that I had fright. And so ⁓ when went with Nathan and we were chatting through, you what do you want to get out of it? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know what to expect. I've never done this before. And so we kind of got into everything and you can talk about this, Nathan, and how you kind of prepared me. And I'm sitting there I'm thinking this is never going to work. I... I think you counted to, you said you're gonna count to 10 or something and by number three or four, I thought, ⁓ this is gonna be so embarrassing when I'm telling Nathan this isn't gonna work. By time you got like nine or 10, I couldn't, and this was over Zoom. I literally couldn't move body off the bed and he's like, nod your head and in my head, I'm thinking I'm nodding and it barely, I barely moved. It literally was like a tiny, a tiny movement. And I was convinced this was never going to work. I completely blown away. And you talk through I'm very happy for you to share as much as you want about, you know, the techniques and But we really went into more of this inner child and the trauma of the inner child inside me and how that relates to my stage presence, my fear of public speaking and I haven't told you this Nathan, but we went to Barcelona two weeks ago and I was on stage and I not once had a slight inkling of stage fright. I didn't sweat, I didn't stutter really, I wasn't nervous, I wasn't shaking and it was only as I was walking to another meeting I went myself, my God, that's the first time that I did not. even externally or internally freak out getting on stage. And it's got better. Emily's seen me get better over the last few years. So it's, you know, but it was still there. And this was the first time. And I honestly put it down to the session with you because I've done so much work. I feel like that was the final sort of nailing the coffin for me to move on from, from, yeah, that fear that I had. So thank you, first of all, for that.

Nathan Simmonds: Yeah, and 100 % I need to you to do a testimony on that because that's just like music to my ears Maybe you want to start crying because when I hear this stuff because I know the emotionality that sits behind this stuff And I kind of want to first thing I want to say is when people are talking about trauma people use this word trauma. They're like, my god I can't be dealing with my trauma. I can't be judging dredging this stuff up and I can't be dealing with outside people think trauma is surviving the 80 car pile up on the m25 or the freeway or whatever it's like or whatever it is, but

Claire Adamou: Yeah. So, let's

Nathan Simmonds: There is no big or small trauma. There is your trauma and it's relative to you. So trauma could be surviving the 80 car pile up or it could be a natural disaster or it could be a near death experience or abuse or whatever it might be. Or it might be the last words your first girlfriend or boyfriend said to you when you were 12 years old in front of your mates. Because trauma as Gabor Mate says isn't what happens to you. It's what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you. And it changes you psychologically and physiologically in order to change a direction so you can survive. And it could be an innocuous comment a teacher makes. And it might not even be real. It's just a perception of an event, what you think someone else might think of you. And you encode that in your system at an early age. And that becomes your blueprint for the world and how you're going to show up. So then it was interesting. that's kind of people really need to understand that. And also the other thing that people need to understand about trauma is people make the trauma comparative, not relative. And what I mean by this is, and this is quite hard. mean, this guy talks about this, right? So my bullying to me was a 10 out of 10, but I was convinced that everyone else, you know, got bullied. So I never dealt with it, but to me, my bullying was a 10 out of 10. Now, when I first started kind of looking at speaking and doing these things, I met this guy and this is pretty kind of out there. He was sex trafficked by his older brother when he was nine years old. So if I make my trauma comparative and there is no relationship to that, is like that there is a 10 out of 10. But if I compare my thing to his, mine's like a point two. Is it still just as damaging to me for that little version of me that was 11 years old, 12 years old, absolutely terrified of walking home every night from school and all the stuff that he went through. That's a 10 out 10 for him there and he's still holding that. So what we do is in order to keep ourselves safe, also say, it's not as bad as those starving kids in Africa. Or it's not as bad as those Indian kids that have dealt with the flooding over there. It's not as bad as this. it's just like, and we never deal with our stuff because they're too busy pointing at everybody else's drama. By the way, this is why so many people watch shitty soap operas. Because you know what's going on in the days of their lives and EastEnders or whatever people are watching in America or in England, they're watching that. Why? Because actually it distracts them from what's going on in their own lives. It holds their attention. keeps them outside of themselves. So then when we kind of step away from that site, we are all carrying something. We are all carrying something there is a part of us at some point that did not get what they needed at some point in the life and whether it your parents, teacher, grandparents, sibling doesn't matter something happened. And we're all carrying as I think Terrence McKenna said, but he was talking about something else rather than actually trauma. was talking about DMT. But that's another conversation for another day. Right. So in this right. But we're all carrying this trauma. And I think even Garbo Maté said that no child had a happy childhood. And I know that's a pretty damning indictment. But at some point, something shit would have happened. And to that little version of us, that was the end of the universe. And as Emily was saying, this kind of idea of what's above the line and what's below the line, for me, that's like the subconscious and the conscious. The problem is, is what's below the line is anywhere between 80 and 98%. And that's your subconscious running the show. So on a good day, 20 % of you showing up.

Emily: you

Nathan Simmonds: On a bad day, it's only 2%. So you've got all this stuff here that your brain has done a really good job that your ego has done a really good job of hiding from you and put into one side and locking away and putting in a box and not letting you get anywhere near it. Because it thinks if you go back to that memory, it thinks you will die. 100%. Doesn't matter what the situation, know, 48 years I can say, yeah, but it wasn't that bad. 48 year old me knows it's not that bad. Eight year old me. That was the end of the universe, whatever it was. When my mum shouted at me for drawing on the wallpaper, when I made a hole in the wall, just remember that with my Millennium Falcon, when I turned around too quickly and stuck it through the wallpaper by accident, it was like, ⁓ my God, that's the end of the universe, right? the young version of me, that was everything. And this is the same with your situation, Claire. It's like, there are moments in history that are being reacted that haven't kind of left the system, that we haven't released from our nervous system, from our fascia, from our consciousness. And that blueprint is running everything today. So every time that you would get on stage previously, it wasn't adult Claire getting on stage. It was 12 year old Claire that got made to stand up in the school assembly and whatever it was, many things that happened to all of us. And we go, that's just normal. We normalize it. And at the same time, it's not natural. They're two different things. We've so much in society, in leadership, in families, in health, in education. That's normal. it's not normal. I'm sorry, it's normal, but it's not natural. We've normalized these behaviors. So when we get into that subconscious realm, when we start having a conversation, it's like, how do we actually have a conversation? How do we get eight year old Claire, 12 year old Claire, 16 year old Claire, 21 year old Claire, whatever Claire it is or Emily or whoever it is, Bob, Dave, John, all of the people out there, that little version of you that's still stuck in that moment. So there's me rocking up as, you know,

Claire Adamou: So, yeah.

Nathan Simmonds: a five year old dressed up as a 48 year old and wondering why my relationships aren't working, wonder why I'm causing problems at work, wondering why my team's not getting the results I wanted to, wondering why we're more problems than we're actually solving with our businesses, which a lot of businesses unfortunately are doing, is because we're still showing up as the five year old dressed up as a 48 year old and wondering why we're getting these problems. So the process is, part, speaking the parts of your mind that are running the programs that are thinking that stage fright is safer than actually showing up as the fullest version of yourself. That thinks smoking is a better option than actually dealing with 13-year-old version of you that didn't feel accepted, that is drinking too much because you didn't get a relationship meeting. It's because actually you don't want to be at home with your kids because actually if you did that, you might have to acknowledge that your parents didn't show up enough for you when you needed them. All of these things. So we speak to that part that runs the habits and behaviors.

Claire Adamou: Thank

Nathan Simmonds: And then we release the pressure, we soften the edges. So actually, it stops protecting little you. And the reason it's still protecting little you is because it doesn't know you've grown up. But this is one of the beautiful things about your ego. It doesn't know I'm 48 or parts of me. It still thinks I'm five years old and getting shout out by my mom. So when we kind of actually giving it the protective framework to say, we're not getting rid of you, we're just going to give you a different job description, we're just going to rewrite what's going on here, we're not firing you just need to give you something else to focus on. by the way, I'm not five years old. I've got this now. I've got you. I'm going to look after you because you don't need to look after me anymore. And then it lets you get near the five-year-old you and then you can start having a conversation with five-year-old you. Because the only person that can give you what you needed is actually you. I've dealt with some really horrendous situations, you wouldn't want to imagine and that I would not able to share here. And it would not matter if the people that perpetrated or did those things came up to that person and said, sorry, or to said, I'm really sorry. Wouldn't matter. Wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. Why? Because the younger version of you, of them is still stuck in that moment waiting for something that no one else would know they needed.

Emily: Yeah. ⁓

Nathan Simmonds: So then you go back and you have that conversation with them and you give them what they need and they get just to, it's over, it's done. And then release that part of the, which is still holding on and still hiding. And then that part comes to life. And actually like you're saying, Claire, that part of you comes to life. gives you, it puts the gift of that thing that it took away that it wasn't safe to be. It puts that back in the right place. And then you show up even more of yourself. It's just like, just rich.

Emily: reminds me of philosophy or the ⁓ that completion really is an inside job. You don't need to have that clearing conversation or address that specific incidence with a specific person. Of course we can do those things, but to your point, Nathan, that true completion really is an inside job.

Claire Adamou: If we

Emily: want to know a little bit about like the preparation process. Claire, you said you were lying down. Like, can you tell me ⁓ little bit about how do you prepare one to get into hypnosis?

Nathan Simmonds: 100%. Yeah, me the first part really is psychologically certain there's certain red flags which aren't okay for hypnosis. Kind of current of psychosis aren't very beneficial. DID, Disassociative Disorder, split personalities can be quite sketchy as well. Schizophrenia, as well, epilepsy. when looking at certain things like epilepsy, seizures, certain episodes of Tourette's, et cetera, they're protective mechanisms. So actually when we start going in and dealing with things, actually you can switch those things on a quite high level and it can cause more problems and actually you can solve. there's gentler intro inroads to it. And again, with the kind of split personality and disassociative identity disorder, truth is you're made of something like 30 trillion, 40 trillion single cells, right? and you've been bunched together and you are the persona of Claire of Emily and you've got these bits of personality. So there is Claire the bank robber and Emily the Baker and happy Claire and angry Emily and all of these things, the way, these different, and they all come together to make who we are. And when you do that in hypnosis and you start having conversations with different parts of you, younger versions of you, the protective parts of you, for some people, especially if they've got split personality, actually to see how many different parts of their personality they're actually are can be really disorientating. not complete no-no, but I would say for many people it's just too much. So the first thing is making sure someone is in the right place to be able to do what you need to do in complete diligence and safety for the individual. Then the next stages of that is making sure that actually people are comfortable. And then you start using specific language patterns. So I'm not actually talking to you anymore. I'm now talking to your subconscious mind, but it feels like I'm talking to you. So when turn around and then suddenly say, the truth is, Emily, you don't even have to think about how relaxed you're becoming. all of a sudden you'll take a little breath and you'll just notice a little bit more, no matter how subtle, no matter how obvious how much more relaxed you start to feel as you take your next breath. And your subconscious mind and you're like, hold on a minute, everything's just slow. And your subconscious mind starts to hook into it. It's just like, oh, it doesn't even notice I'm doing it. And then I'll give you an instruction. And then 10 minutes later, that instruction that I actually gave you, which you didn't even realize was an instruction, then becomes part of the process. So the brain is kind of just gently tripping over itself and just gently getting out of the way and softening at the edges. And like Claire was saying, she's like, oh, this, you know, this is going to be really upset with this. I'm not doing it right. That's your perfection is coming out. not doing this right. I'm not relaxed enough. Come on, relax harder. Relax. Come on, people. And it's just like, this is just the ego playing games with you. And now when your ego does that, all you have to do is just say thank you and you take a breath. And when you come back to the breath, you can just relax a little bit more.

Emily: Okay.

Nathan Simmonds: And it just generally circumvents all the little things that your ego wants to do to try and protect you. Just that reassurance. And then all of sudden you're like, three two and And you're like, I can't move. I can actually move. If you to and you have complete agency and authorities to step out of the process, but there's also a part of you guys, you know what? I'm really comfortable here. This feels great. And then off you go. And then you start having these weird and wonderful experiences and your brain just starts to rewire at the deepest level of brain frequency that we can get to.

Emily: So then Claire, in the process for you, Nate, you got to that point, you're under a state of hypnosis, and Nathan's, I guess, like prompting you with questions or inquiries. Are you conscious of what are responding to? And did you remember that process in the aftermath?

Claire Adamou: Yeah, and actually when like, okay, we're going to come back now, you know, ⁓ I forget the words that you use, Nathan, but, and then you said something to me like, how do you feel? And I think I just burst into tears and was just like, the release of ⁓ of this baggage that I have carried for 30 years, I've carried this weight around with me and this identity of me that I I didn't really know exactly where it came from, right? And I put it down to certain things, but really deep down, no, I was, and I think you said something to me about, you know, what age are we speaking? And I think I managed to like 13, and then I'm like, no, actually, I think I'm like five. And it because what I thought in my head was a switch in the relationship with my mother. at that age, you know, being a teenager and she started to no longer, we struggled to communicate because her and I are just very different in so many ways. But it actually was deeper than that. And I'm like, ⁓ my God, it's this even smaller version of me where my mum joked that I was adopted. And it was a joke, but I was mortified at five years old you know, now this kid is going to go tell his mum, well, Claire's adopted and then it's going to go around the school. And not that there's any shame. being adopted. think it's an incredible gift to adopt a child, right? think it's remarkable. However, for me as a five-year-old me, I was mortified and embarrassed and that's where all this fear came from. It's, yeah, and I really, you said, ⁓ you that ability to but I really was just like, I felt like I couldn't, but I knew that I could if I really was, I really needed to get out of that. I knew subconsciously that I could, but I was so deep in it and I thought, this is something that needs to be done. Like I need to talk to this inner child. It's like, I need to tell the five-year-old Claire that you are good. Like none of this is your fault. Everything that you have gone through is okay. and you're great now and life is great and of the things that we sort of tell ourselves consciously. I able to go back and really tell these different versions, the five year old, the 13 year old, the 15 year old. At 12, year old, my mum told me I failed an exam and wasn't getting into a school. It was a grammar school ⁓ in England. tests to get in grammar schools, particularly where I live. And she told me I'd failed even though I passed. so that was a, you know, like trauma that I, and baggage that I carry around. And just, it literally was like, ⁓ chick, chick, chick, all these walls and barriers. And, and like you say, they're trauma to me. They're not in the grand scheme of world. When we compare our trauma to others, it's not. Have I been through worse things?

Emily: With that, when you just talked about the adoption process, I noticed, right? There goes that human condition, like that's trying to have this comparative experience. And, you know, it's not a bad to be adopted, but that's irrelevant. You know, it's your experience. Nathan, repeat the Gabor Maté quote around trauma. Will you say that again for the audience? That was so powerful.

Claire Adamou: ⁓ yes.

Nathan Simmonds: Trauma isn't what happens to you, it's what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you. Now, for... Yeah, there's some absolute gems in his work. Now for me, I can't remember if it was him that said it, it might have been in some of his work. There is only one trauma. And it doesn't matter how we dress it up, and we can call it sexual, physical, verbal, whatever kind of we want to make around it, but there is only one trauma.

Emily: Brilliant. I'm a big fan. You've mentioned him twice now. He is absolutely brilliant.

Nathan Simmonds: And that one trauma is actually abandonment. The amount of people that I've dealt with and worked with in some, again, really extreme situations. And out the back of it, all they wanted was their dad to turn up and save them. And he didn't turn up. a grandparent died, and they weren't allowed to go to the funeral to say goodbye. And there's a six-year-old part of them is still waiting for their grandparents to walk through the door. They don't understand. They're like, where did my grandparents go? So it's just the abandonment. So in that moment, you're talking about kind of that the reminder of going up for adoption, you were adopted. In that moment, there's a massive severance inside of you because like, hold on a minute, I don't have any connection to mother and father because you're not my mother and father. In that split second, that's eternity. To five year old you, that's everything. You're like, hold on a minute, what do you mean you're not my parents? Complete rewire in that moment. And we hold on to that. That's why there's so many challenges with adopting and fostering, et cetera, with the children that are involved in this, whether they are able to verbalize that or not they still have the imprint of that in their system. Now when your mother's saying things about ⁓ you're a failure this is like for you mom and dad that's the divine feminine divine masculine they're freaking gods right especially up you know between the ages of zero and seven especially between the ages of zero and seven when our brain frequency is running in theta and we're building all our morals and principles and ethics and all of these things right and then someone says something like, you your bum looks big in that when you're five years old. It's like, that's catastrophic. you're eating and I can start making piggy noises while they're sitting there eating food or whatever, family gatherings wherever, or someone says something that has an imprint. And then what happens that imprint and the way that I explain it is like we get given 40 maps of the world by people that don't know how to navigate. And then we beat ourselves up for getting lost. But then that's what becomes our internal narrative is like, well, obviously, you're not good enough. Oh, you can't get your shit together. Oh, look at you falling off the wagon again. Oh, you said you're going to do that. You couldn't commit to it. And it's not even your freaking voice. It's just someone else's voice or what you thought someone else said it, but you heard it so much. Then you think it's yours, but it's not. It's just like someone else's shit offloaded on me. And then you drop into a hypnotherapy and like, thanks, you know what? And then you just put the bags down.

Claire Adamou: Mm.

Nathan Simmonds: But we carry that stuff for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And then we wonder why we have heart attacks, autoimmune disorders, cancers, aneurysms, higher blood pressure, blah, blah, blah, because it all starts up, you know, in the kind of in the in the thinking rather than actually in the physical, because someone said something when you were five years old, and it's just like, what the actual

Claire Adamou: Yeah. And I have an autoimmune disorder as well. I got that when I was about 19, 20, that happened to me. I'm not just blaming the situation of my mother, but I think that was like the start of it. And then there was a couple of very significant triggers that then now I've lived with that for over 20 years. But yeah, from that.

Nathan Simmonds: Everything Yeah. So for me, the important kind of philosophy is when we look at everything as a metaphor, every output as kind of a philosophy or dynamic to it, when we look at autoimmune disorder, when we look at Bessel van der Kolk's work, The Body Keeps the Score, Gabor Mate's book, when the body says no, these these kind of outputs, the overarching principle is I do not feel safe in my own skin. Something happens, puts the system on high alert. It's almost like a PTSD reaction. We still think we're in the moment and the immune system goes, right, we need to defend you against something. But we don't know what to defend. it was you that caused the problem because that's how the kind of the subconscious works. You have to take the blame when something happens to you. It has to be your fault because if it's not your fault, it will be their fault. And if it's their fault, you won't feel safe and certain with these people. And as children, you need to feel safe, certain and loved, safe with these people, certain you'll get your needs met and love for who you are. Something happens. All of that goes out the window. So it has to be you. You have to be the problem because if it's not, it has to be them and you won't feel safe with mom and dad. So you make this narrative up as well. I'm not safe to be me. I can't look. I don't feel safe in my own skin because it's not okay to be creative, to be happy, to be too sad, to be emotional, whatever. And all of that stuff then gets literally depressed in the system. And the immune system goes, well, we don't know what else to attack. You don't feel safe. Okay, we'll attack you. And we start eating you from the inside out. And whether that turns up as asthma, Crohn's, colitis, endometriosis. of these things is literally the system attacking you from the inside out. And then from there, when we start to understand that's the overarching philosophy, I do not feel safe in my own skin, everything starts with a thought, ⁓ can then kind of reverse entrance like, so at which point, because it wouldn't have been in your 20s you began that thinking that would have been the trigger moment. me with Crohn's, it didn't start when I was eight, nine years old.

Claire Adamou: Mm-hmm.

Nathan Simmonds: I've been eating a kilo of sugar nearly every other week while Gran turned up with, know, with a bag of sweets. So we are I associated sugar with love. If I'm a good boy, and I behave, I get sugar, I get sweets, you eat enough sugar, you're in your microbiome in your gut, your yeast is going to go through the roof, your microbiome is completely shot, of course, you're to get something like Crohn's. It's an absolute given. But it takes a couple of years to build up to that point, you know, by eating that doesn't love you back.

Claire Adamou: Have a good evening.

Nathan Simmonds: And eventually you get a nasty output and that's how it shows up. But then you look at the habits and behaviors, whether psychology, let's resolve that. Then you can change your eating habits. Then you can change how you show up and can do all that stuff at an identity level, is where we need to be with people.

Claire Adamou: that. What you thank you for sharing that what you just said resonates so much with me and when you were saying about the abandonment piece and the impact that that has my So now talked about like my relationship with my mother and how we worked with the hypnotherapy on that. My autoimmune disease started when I was engaged and we had a Ross and Rachel, we were on a break and my fiance got my school phone pregnant and up entire world. within a a matter of months, I had psoriasis. And within a year of having psoriasis, I had arthritis. And it was that abandonment pace. You know, you blew up my world. I thought I was safe with you. I thought, you know, you had my heart, you had my future. And that now all of that is gone. And it is yeah, never I kind of knew it was a trigger. But when you talk about it in terms of the abandonment, it really resonates and makes sense with me. Very interesting. Thank you for the space to have that reflection. ⁓ my goodness. Huge reflection to me.

Nathan Simmonds: But so for me, you're going to drop in a little bit more on that. So when we look at the philosophy and metaphor, when we look at what our skin is and how our skin shows up, it's like that's the thing that holds us together. That's bag that holds us all. So when we start, actually, am I holding it together? And actually, when you're looking at your skin kind of breaking down in a way, it's like you're struggling to hold it together. What do your bones represent? Well, this is the thing that actually keeps me up. This is my internal scaffolding. My structure, my world is falling apart. starts to affect the bone structure, like the internal integrity starts to break down. Again, when we start to look at these things, it's like, how do we process that stuff faster so that my body doesn't have to tell the story of what the hell is going on in my heart?

Emily: and that's the wake up point for many people. I know for me, I suffered with extreme eczema that would start as a small patch and then extreme amounts of stress would ensue and I would be covered from the wrist to the elbow on both arms, back of the legs. ⁓ too had to do a reset with my gut biome and did that actually through. celery juice and the sodium crystals in the celery juice break down the pathogens. And we're probably getting into some alternative therapies that might not be, you know, for every listener out there, but I am a testament to it. And while it takes a number of months to repair your skin, you absolutely can do it. But the skin is just a symptom of what's really going on. And for me, it was a byproduct of being in a relationship that I shouldn't have been with two very small children and really ignoring a lot of my own self-worth and self-love. that's the way it was coming out. It was my body screaming at me to choose me. And it took a little while, but we got there eventually. And I'm happy to say that I can now eat gluten and dairy and I have no forms of eczema. And yeah, the body really is a miraculous thing. This has been quite an enlightening conversation. Really appreciate you sharing your wisdom with us,

Nathan Simmonds: Super welcome. I loved it. I said before I geek out about this stuff in so many different levels from autoimmune disorder to developmental trauma, how it shows up at work, how it shows up as leaders in human behavior. And everyone's got something they need to work on. Everyone's carrying something. it's many people say, ⁓ that's too scary. ⁓ there's too much. I mean, I don't have time to cry. don't have time. Well, if you, it's that whole thing. If you don't take time to actually deal with this stuff, especially in the leadership space and the parenting space. If you don't deal with your childhood stuff, your shadows will raise your children. If you don't heal your wounds, you will end up bleeding on people that didn't cut you. then you'll know. So you do the inner work so actually you can show up as even more of you. And most of the time, it's not even as scary as most people think it is. And it's definitely more incredible. 100%.

Emily: The imagination is more powerful. that's what I always say. The imagination is going to make it seem way more worse than actually what truly confronting those things are, especially in a safe and facilitated container with professionals. That's really the opportunity that we all have. It's not as scary as we think it's going to be.

Nathan Simmonds: Exactly that. And no, and especially with men, there's not a lot of men kind of doing this kind of work and supporting I've worked with a lot of women. And I've also worked with a lot of men now that starting to tap into this. And it's just like, actually, I didn't get what I needed from my mom. My mom was a nightmare. I didn't get one. My dad was never there or whatever it was. It's just like, call it normal as grown adults. And like I say, to the younger version of you, they're still screaming out for that attention. The moment you give them that everything just gets easier. Life gets easier.

Emily: All right, tell our audience a little bit of like where they can find you, how to keep in touch, you know, your opportunity to plug whatever you want in this moment.

Nathan Simmonds: Amazing. Thank you. Really appreciate that. So you can find me at nathan simmons coaching.com. I believe it is a just double checking that the website is massively due an overhaul. But we've got some projects coming up when I'm working with more corporate leaders on more longer term programs, we're actually doing the leadership development place, but looking at the reasons why we're doing certain things on why we're behaving a certain ways. speaking more businesses that doing this. So if there are leaders out there, individuals that want to get in and do the deeper laundry, as we like to call it. kids as it sometimes is also called as well as like going and giving ourselves those things. Those, the syndrome, the perfectionism, the procrastination, whether it's men or women, we've all got a little bit of that. How we're showing up in the boardroom or not showing up. These are the people that I want to speak to more. People with autoimmune dysregulation that really want to shift their identity and stop pretending that this is who they are and this is their, this is who they are. These are the people I want to speak to. And then also for your slightly more spiritual people. Spirit Medicine Oracle Deck. you go to the website, spiritmedicineoracledeck.com, you can find the Oracle deck, you can find out more about that as a coaching tool. I'd love to speak to more people about that as well.

Claire Adamou: Amazing. Nathan, honestly, thank you so much. It really has been amazing to dive into this. Thank you to Emily and to our listeners for letting me be so open and honest about my experience and my journey. And Emily, any parting words?

Nathan Simmonds: Thank you.

Emily: Just thanks so much, Nathan, for offering yourself so freely. I mean, I'm still reeling on five grams of cocaine in one sitting. I'll be mulling that one over for a while. It's amazing that you're still here, appreciate your vulnerability to both of you. Thank you for sharing the journey and the process, and there's so much wisdom here to be gained and probably much more that's still untapped. But on that note, thank you both for being here and thank you to our listeners, and we appreciate you all being here on this episode of Saroca Speaks. We will see you next time.