How Therapeutic Nurturing Can Help Us Heal from Patriarchy & Misogyny

What if the presence you practice in mindfulness is the same wiring that makes secure attachment possible? That question drives our conversation with clinician, author, and teacher Christine Forner, who introduces Securefulness—a relational state where an attuned nervous system helps another human co‑regulate. Christine explains why care isn’t sentimental; it’s a biologically essential force that organizes safety, regulation, and health. When true care arrives, dissociated pain often surfaces, which can feel like getting worse. She reframes this as healing beginning and uses a powerful “care isn’t the bucket” story, plus a re-feeding analogy, to show how to pace nourishment without overwhelming the system.

We get practical about what Securefulness looks like in the room: noticing micro‑signals like a shoulder hitch or a shift in breath, naming danger qualities, and adding immediate protections—hoodies, pillows, sunglasses, softened gaze—to reduce social threat and restore choice. Christine shares how therapeutic nurturing has helped clients reduce suicidal ideation within weeks by leveraging presence, titration, and interoception. She also digs into primal isolation threat, how shame language takes root in early deprivation, and we talk about why the inner critic is better replaced by an “inner celebrant” that collaborates with the body’s needs.

Zooming out, we challenge the idea that violence is human nature. Christine defines misogyny as disdain for Homo sapien nurturing and argues that many systems are fight‑state adaptations, not destiny. We explore evolutionary roots of co‑regulation, theory of mind as soothing, and why humans likely evolved in stable, alloparenting communities where care was central. There are signs of change: expanding parental leave, trauma‑informed practice, and evidence that stable resources like universal basic income lower addiction and crime while improving health and learning. If we organize society around care—as infrastructure, not charity—healing gets hard but possible, and repeatable.

If this conversation sparks something in you, share it with a friend, subscribe for future episodes, and leave a review wherever you listen. Your reflections help shape what we explore next—what stood out most to you?

Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 2:28 Defining Securefulness
• 5:10 Co‑Regulation As Therapeutic Core
• 8:22 Mindfulness, Evolution, And Attachment
• 11:30 Care As Catalyst Not Cause
• 16:29 Refeeding And Renurturing Syndrome
• 21:17 Reading The Body And Pacing Safety
• 26:38 Primal Isolation Threat And Shame
• 30:10 Misogyny, Nurturing, And Patriarchy
• 36:00 The Fight Response Behind Violence
• 41:36 Are Humans Wired For Care
• 47:06 Signs Of Change And What Helps
• 52:23 Hope, Practice, And How To Connect
• 58:00 Closing, Disclaimers, And Credits

Transcript

Lisa Danylchuk: 0:04

Welcome back to the How We Can Heal podcast. Today, our guest is Christine Fourner. Christine Fourner is a clinician, author, and teacher who spent the last four decades supporting people healing from coercive control, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and chronic neglect. She came on the show way back in season one to talk about trauma, dissociation, and mindfulness. That's episode nine. It was one of our most popular episodes. So if you haven't heard, go back and take a listen. Her work brings a deep understanding of traumatic dissociation, developmental trauma, and the neurobiology of mindfulness. And she's known around the world for her powerful insight into how patriarchy and misogyny shape trauma and the ways we heal from it. She co-developed the foundational concepts of securefulness and primal isolation anguish and originated therapeutic nurturing and renurturing syndrome, reframing nurturing not as a sentiment, but as a biologically essential force that organizes safety, regulation, and human health. Today, she explains each of these concepts and applies them not only to trauma recovery, but to larger societal challenges. She shares why care isn't sentimental and how it is essential to our survival, growth, and healing as a species. Christine holds degrees in both women's studies and social work and is trained in many healing modalities, including EMDR, haven't, and sensory motor psychotherapy. She's the former president of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, the author of Dissociation, Mindfulness and Creative Meditations, and her upcoming book, The Craving, redefines how we understand harm, healing, and what it means to be human. When she's not teaching or writing, Christine trains and competes in triathlon and she's competed Iron Women events around the world. Please join me in welcoming Christine Horner back to the show. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm so very happy to be here. You are a gift to the universe, and we've had you on the show before to talk about mindfulness and dissociation. And we're going to talk about some other things today, some other very important things. So tell us, what is securefulness?

Christine Forner: 2:28

So, securefulness, it really actually starts from an aha moment I had while I was doing my master's thesis, like way back in 2009, when I was doing research on dissociation and mindfulness. At the time, I didn't realize it was like a really like two weird things to be studying. And in hindsight, it's actually quite funny because the title of my master's thesis is Creative and Contemplative Meditation Techniques with People Who Have Dissociative Identity Disorder. It's a very strange thesis. But I was reading information that the brain structures that are responsible for the state of mindfulness or the state of meditation, it's actually called lots of things. It's called flow, it's called all sorts of things. But that altered state of consciousness are the same brain structures that are responsible or are active when you are securely attached. When I heard that, it really became an aha moment of this actually has been labeled mindfulness, but it's actually profound secure attachment. But secure attachment, most people make the association of attachment theory and the way that people attach. So you have your insecure attachment, your insecure attachment styles. Um I went bigger than that. I started asking the questions of what actually is mindfulness and why is it so connected to being securely attached? And you and I were talking about trying to put a word and label this state that isn't just closing your eyes and having a singular experience of mindfulness, but having a relational mindfulness. And so I was labeling off all the it was like this, and then it's like that. And you were writing down words and you came up with the word secure. So secureful is the word that sticks. And I think it actually best describes the relational state we were intended to be, or the way that we evolved, and that you and I started actually trying to figure out how do we explain this to people in a clinical way.

Lisa Danylchuk: 4:50

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 4:50

Carefulness is basically when the therapist is in a mindful, present, attuned state within themselves, which makes it much easier to help another human being co-regulate. So securefulness really is the state of human co-regulation. And so I think if we were to summarize in one small sentence and over, over oversimplify what's going on with our clients, they're they come in extraordinarily dysregulated. And the task at hand is teaching them how to become regulated. And I think that it most of the work at the beginning is done by the therapist being in a state of regulation and helping that human being learn to regulate these dysregulated experiences. And to me, that's securefulness.

Lisa Danylchuk: 5:42

Yeah, it's profoundly relational, right? And it makes me think too of clients with dissociative identity disorder, how they might have a lot of capacity, be very high functioning, and present as very regulated and have a lot of that, you know, other stuff, we'll just call it in parts and in fragmented memories. And so presenting with that securefulness and that attunement and that acceptance of everything that they've been through can help open up an opportunity for some form of integration or healing or whatever we want to call that, whatever they're seeking.

Christine Forner: 6:16

Where I'm at right now really started with discovering dissociation and mindfulness, which has led me to circle around to human evolution. Because I really want to know how did we evolve mindfulness? Because mindfulness is so rival and so polar to dissociation. And that's what we talked about in the first episode that we talked about a couple years ago. So we live in an incredibly stressful world. We live in a world that is actually grossly violent. The cruelty and the inhumanity is big, big, big. And there's this massive global biased assumption that this is our normal, that this is how humans behave, which makes me go, well, if this is our normal, how could mindfulness ever have possibly evolved?

Lisa Danylchuk: 7:09

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 7:10

And it's made me go back and listen to some of the foundational stuff with Buddha. Right? So we have to put the context of what Buddha was experiencing. Buddha was living in an incredibly misogynistic time. So we'll talk about misogyny, I think, later, because it's like a New Jerk reaction. It's a word that makes people go. And there's a reason I think it makes people go.

Lisa Danylchuk: 7:36

Love that face for folks listening.

Christine Forner: 7:38

It's a very specific face. It's a very discombobulated face. But it's it's like a gut punch of a word, and there's a reason I think why it's such a big word. But he was living in a time where he went off by himself and he did this thing by himself, closing his eyes and paying attention to himself. But when you really look at the science of what mindfulness does and how it works, it's intensely relational. Everything about it is regulatory, which then makes me wonder how did we evolve such profound capacity to be able to have physiological awareness, give our bodies the right word, the right meaning in the right context? Why are we a creature whose base setting is of comfort, safety, and security? It doesn't mesh with what's going on, and it didn't mesh with what Buddha was talking about, but it did make me think, in my experience, mindfulness or that altered state of meditative awareness and presence is more likely probably the language of the Homo sapien mother.

Lisa Danylchuk: 8:53

Okay.

Christine Forner: 8:54

And so a lot of times when I show up in a mindful state with my clients, that in itself starts a cascade of responses inside another person. So people who have never experienced or experienced safety, other human beings who are present and attuned and aware and empathic, if this is an ancient way that we used to be, if this is something that we evolved as much as the chameleon evolved camouflage, it's a powerful thing that bodies can decipher, even if the mind cannot. So a lot of times, if I'm in a mindful state or I'm in a secureful state, things are going to start happening because all the things that are dissociated are things that are seeking, needing, desiring, craving care. And it's innate.

Lisa Danylchuk: 9:54

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 9:55

So just being in a room with another human being where my body and my mind is fully capable of assisting you with things that you do not know how to regulate, you do not know how to soothe, you do not know how to comprehend. I know there's silly the cat.

Lisa Danylchuk: 10:09

There's a kitty for those of you on video, you get to see.

Christine Forner: 10:12

There's a kitty. Watch on YouTube. Sometimes just being in the presence, it's like dissociation goes, hey, I don't need to be here anymore. There's someone here who can help. And many of the things that are dysregulated start to pop up. So even being with someone who has DID, the presence of being with someone who's secureful is intervention enough.

Lisa Danylchuk: 10:35

Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. Because there's someone, especially if there's the specific lack of nurturing from a mother, mother figure caregiver that had that empathic, nurturing, present, attentive, non-judgmental angle, presence, right? If that hasn't been there, it's like a drink of water when you haven't had a drink of water.

Christine Forner: 10:58

Yeah.

Lisa Danylchuk: 10:58

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 10:59

We also got to be careful.

Lisa Danylchuk: 11:00

Sorry, Kat, you were gonna say something. I was gonna ask you about renurturing. But before we talk about renurturing, okay. Can you tell you're talking about care? Can you tell us the story about how care is not the bucket? What does that mean? Tell us that story.

Christine Forner: 11:17

I wrote actually a paper called Cares Are Not the Bucket. And this leads to the renurturing syndrome that I've been working on. So my son, I see my kids, I don't know, they were all really quite young. I think my daughter was about one and one and a half. So Zach would have been three, three and a half, John would have been five or six, and they all had the stomach flu. And it's a weekend, I was by myself, and John was able to use the puke bucket, the throw-up bucket. And Jill was able to, I was able to catch, but Zach, when he got sick, I gave him the bucket and he he first threw up in the bucket. And then he started like he'd have to throw up again, and I'd bring him the bucket and he'd push the bucket away. Cause he made the association that it was the bucket making him throw up, not a virus in his tummy. So he would like throw it away and throw up on the floor and throw it away. And I kept going, the bucket is not the thing that's getting you sick. Yeah. It's something else entirely.

Lisa Danylchuk: 12:24

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 12:25

And really honestly, that the notion of carers are not the bucket, I think is one of the greatest ailments of our world and has been this way for about 10,000 years.

Lisa Danylchuk: 12:41

And I just want to make the connection between what we were just talking about, because if someone has been through really awful, horrible things, unspeakable horrors, and they're coping with that internally through some sort of dissociative process or mechanism, and care shows up, and care in and of itself is medicinal, let's say, is what they is what their system, their body, their humanness needs. They might start to feel all of the really horrific things that have been held in the background because there was no support or care or safe place to take them. And now all of a sudden there is this somewhat safe-ish place to maybe take them. And so memories or parts or fragmented uh somatic experiences might start showing up. And then someone might feel like, wow, I'm going to therapy and I feel worse. And this is part of the reason, right? And it can be, right? There's so many infinite possibilities in psychotherapy, but this is it happens enough that it's like this fits and makes a lot of sense. And so recognizing the care isn't causing that, the harm to cause that. Yes. Care re-evokes it for healing, ideally, if we can recognize that that's what's happening.

Christine Forner: 14:04

Yes. I think it's really important to understand that healing looks and there's a there's a it's demonstrative, right? When we're little babies, when something goes wrong, we are instinctually and innately designed to express our discomfort, to dis express our needs. It's the very first language we have, way before thoughts come in, way before words come in, this need to express our discomfort. And when people start to become less dissociated, the need to express the pain and suffering that got you into that dissociative place in the first place has to come out. And the primal first language that we have is feelings, which is a little different than emotions, but these are feelings that that are anesthetized, feelings that are um sort of put away into a junk drawer, so to speak. They're things that get put away because if we were to feel them and experience them in that moment, there is a very high chance that those feelings and experiences would end our lives. So dissociation, when we first start to do it, is very life-preserving. But coming out of it is really hard because dissociation comes on the heels of inflammation, right? When we are in a state of distress, when human beings go into an emergency cascade response, the whole entire, it's not just the central nervous system, it's also the fascia. Every part of the body lights up like a live wire, like a Christmas tree. And then the younger we are, the more this does this, the more painful it is. Myelination is something that happens over time. It doesn't like infants aren't really born with that plastic coating around our nerves. It's pretty raw and it's pretty painful. I know it's painful for a fact. And the chemistry that's involved in emergency cascade responses are intense and it hurts for us to go into an emergency response. And dissociation is the grand puba of emergency responses. And so coming out of it, it hurts. I think a really good analogy that I think like most people really can comprehend what refeeding syndrome is.

Lisa Danylchuk: 16:26

Yeah. Can you explain that for someone who hasn't heard of it?

Christine Forner: 16:29

Okay, so we really sort of discovered refeeding syndrome after World War II, when people went in and found a lot of people who were starving and they gave them a bunch of food. And the starving people started eating the food as much as they wanted to eat the food, and the bodies basically couldn't tolerate it, and many people actually died. And it didn't make any sense to people. These people are starving. Why is food killing them? And in understanding how it works, when a human body has been starved for a significant period of time, it changes everything. It changes how the endocrine system works, how the lymphatic system works, how the gut works, how the cells are bringing in nutrition. So it's when we're really, really starving, we can take a little bit of food and make it seem much bigger than it is. So when we actually go to eat properly, it's almost like food poisons us because there's it's the just the way that the body has adapted to starvation. And I think nurturing is the same thing. When we don't have enough nurturing, we adapt to it and we can bring in little bits and pieces. But when we actually get full-blown nurturing, it is incredibly overwhelming, it's incredibly frightening, it's discombobulating. The mind might not be ready to digest what happened. The body is trying to write itself and it's all you know, dealing with in many, many cases, decades of survival.

Lisa Danylchuk: 17:58

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 17:59

So the people aren't in more pain. They're not in more suffering, they're more aware of their pain and they're more aware of their suffering. Because awareness is actually one of the things that stabilizes us as a species.

Lisa Danylchuk: 18:14

And this is why people will say things, and clients have said things to me like, Oh, I was afraid you were gonna be really compassionate about that. Like, oh, there's that face again, that nice face. Yeah, I saw like cover my face.

Christine Forner: 18:28

Right? I now actually introduce what I do is therapeutic nurturing, not just securefulness. And I explain at the beginning, you have needs. You have needs that never that either maybe never have been met or been met sporadically, or needs that have been manipulated, needs that have been excavated and mined and like created. And me bringing this to you is very much like trying, we're gonna we're gonna try and refeed you, and it's gonna take some time for your body and your mind to be able to bring it in, process and digest what we're doing. And just I think it's so it explaining this to people, I think it gets really confusing because we're so educated and indoctrinated in many ways, that the mind is the grand poopah, that if the mind understands that if you have your memories back, all is tickety-boo. And I the way that I see that is that like when we get hungry, if you've been fed well, you know what those hunger cues are, and your mind is going to start to go, mmm, I think I want a salad right now, or I think I want a piece of protein, or I think that I want some water. Because the mind has learned how to interpret, label, give language and meaning to the cues that are coming from the body. And the body is sending, hey, we're a little low on iron down here, we're a little low on protein down here, and so the mind is gonna go, I'm craving protein. The thought is not the sandwich, the thought is the mechanism that makes you go get the sandwich. The sandwich is actually the food and nurturing. This isn't about thinking about what happened to you. This isn't about remembering, it's actually trying to help the person figure out what is the body communicating and how do we give that nurturing that the body is craving. That's the sandwich. Presence is a great big buffet meal of nurturing. Awareness is part of the buffet of nurturing. Rocking, even in the EMDR, is you know, the salad part of the buffet. The stopping and the pausing and the breathing and going into our bodies, that's all part of the sandwich. And it's not something that is taught in schools, and it's there's a great big art to it. And that's why I think securefulness is so important on the role of the therapist. Because when I'm in session, I am very grounded, I am very regulated, I'm capable of paying attention to somebody, and I'm watching their subtle movements, but also like breath and what their eyes are doing, as well as tapping into my intuition, which comes from a different place than my thinking.

Lisa Danylchuk: 21:39

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 21:40

And when I'm in this state of securefulness, I am able to pick up an awful lot of things. And then I will I'll gather a hypothesis of what I suspect is happening to that human being, and then I start to test that hypothesis. I've just noticed that like your shoulders shifted a little bit. Are you starting to notice a little bit of discomfort inside? Right. And then we start to move forward. Like, what type of discomfort is it? Does it feel like like um a mild, there might be a problem happening, or does it feel like a great big danger signal? Like, is your body actually giving a danger signal? Okay, what type of danger? Does it feel like impending doom? Does it feel like an attack? Does it feel like annihilation? Does it feel like an existential, like something that has to do with existence and existential? Does it feel like you're drowning? Does it feel like you're you're trapped? All of those things give me a boatload of data of what the body is talking about.

Lisa Danylchuk: 22:44

I have so many thoughts. Like when you talk about seeing shoulder shift, for example, I just think about how what we were talking about with refeeding and renurturing is so important, that slow pace to it, because even something like that can bring up a wall. Like, oh, don't like it's not safe for me to be seen. It's not safe my shoulders moving to be seen. And so what are you talking about? I don't like this. Bye. Right? Or or or something more subtle or something even more.

Christine Forner: 23:16

But even that is fantastic, right? So if they say, right, if they notice that I'm watching them, and a lot, it disturbs an awful lot of the people that I see, especially people who have had experiences with psychopathy or with being preyed upon as infants, children, or any time during your life, because the only people who are really paying attention this way tend to be perpetrators, right? So there's a recognition that my close examination might feel threatening, right?

Lisa Danylchuk: 23:46

It's not loving close examination of a mother adoring their child, but or a caregiver and adoring their child, it's someone looking to harm.

Christine Forner: 23:56

Right. And that gives me an excellent opportunity to go, oh, did that bother you by me noticing? And 99% of the time, people will say, Yeah, it did. And I'm like, wonderful. Let's take care of this right here, right now. Do you have a pillow? Do you have a blanket? Do you have a hoodie? Let's protect your body, let's put on sunglasses, let's protect your body, and so that you can have a moment where you can have, you know, and we'll do these little experiments. So they put on a hoodie or they put a pillow and we'll stop and pause and say, Does this make you feel better, same, or worse? If it makes them feel better, then we have just addressed a problem in a nurturing kind of way. We are coming in and protecting rather than forcing.

Lisa Danylchuk: 24:46

Yep.

Christine Forner: 24:47

And so it just intensely in the moment and organic. I have no idea what's going to happen next in a session. I have no idea what we're going to talk about. I don't read my notes because it has to be in the moment. I trust the human body implicitly. Because, in my experience, the human body is objective, the mind is incredibly subjective. Don't really trust people's thoughts until they're embodied. Because thoughts are really good at distracting us, moving us away. And if we've been raised in less secureful homes, often the words that are in our minds that get attached to these feelings is the language of people who are neglecting us or harming us. That's just how the human body works, right? When we're little, we through osmosis learn language that goes with banana and toast and chair and standing and walking. And when you are being neglected, the language that you're going to hear is there's something wrong with you one way or another. And every time that experience of neglect pops up or that warning signal that we're about to be abandoned, the language is going to be, I'm wrong, I'm bad, I'm no good. Right. The only place those words could have ever come from is the environment, not internally.

Lisa Danylchuk: 26:14

And it's so interesting to me because I feel like there are plenty of folks who are like, Oh, I didn't have a bad childhood, but I have this really intense inner critic. And when you fold in neglect and you fold in even just the way our culture is set up, like congratulations on your new baby. Here's eight days maternity leave. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not that much. You know, even if it's like here's a year, and then say bye to your parents for the rest of your childhood. Like it just isn't our culture in the US and in so many places in the world isn't set up for families to stay together. And sometimes there are active political decisions that are made that separate families with no sense of humanity or awareness of how harmful that can be in the short term and in the long term. So just highlighting that piece of folks go, oh, everyone has an inner critic. Yes, and like shouldn't. Yeah. I went on a podcast and Carrie Jacobs asked me, like, what would you call, how would you rebrand the inner critic? And I said, inner celebrant, like, what if we had an inner celebrant that was like, you know, you really did your best right there? Hey, good job. Hey, at the end of the day, you accomplished a few things. Like, we don't have that. And there's the other angle of our brains are built for problem solving and we're gonna be trying to solve problems all the time. But that's different than identity, which is it's talking about. Is it well like getting food, getting water? Sure. Building, you know, homes structures.

Christine Forner: 27:49

Sure, right? I think I think another way we could actually look at that is that our minds are built for comfort or for collaboration.

Lisa Danylchuk: 27:58

It's under 100% usually do those things alone.

Christine Forner: 28:02

We can't, right? So here's a little sidebar, but it sort of brings us back to the same thing.

Lisa Danylchuk: 28:07

So another sidebar from there once we get there.

Christine Forner: 28:10

Okay, all the sidebars. So I've been working on my next book, and I started going down a research hole of a research investigation of where did theory of mind come from? So, theory of mind is one of those things that is considered uniquely human, that I have the capacity to comprehend that you, a person who is entirely different, have a mind that's doing its mind things, and that my theory that you have a mind in what your mind is thinking is like part of the grand, wonderful human being mind that makes us more superior than other things. But that's actually not true. Theory of mind, the evolutionary roots of theory of mind come from primates. So primates are the species, so you have hominids, humans, hominids, then you have the great apes, and then you have the primates. So primates are probably like 10, 10 to 15 million years ago. So that's a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago. And theory of mind originated in when there was a predator attack, some of the babies would go into tonic immobility. And the way that the mothers got the babies out of tonic immobility was to look at them in the eyes and soothe them. So theory of mind started, became a bit more advanced. Probably touch happened with the great apes to add into theory of mind. But human beings took this uh soothing, nurturing uh ability and like amplified it by a million. Theory of mind is entirely regulatory, its whole purpose is to calm and soothe other people. It's not about this cunning intellectualism. It is about making sure that I know that you are okay and you know that I am okay. We take a look at the connection. It's connection. You take a look at all the things that make us unique. They all have co-regulation in common. Language, right? We're talking, and language is designed so that I can understand you and you can understand me. Part of regulation. Everything that we do is about a bizarre level of comfort, safety, and security. Because human beings, as far as I can tell, we're the only ones that sort of did something to step out of the natural world of going in and out of cascade emergency responses. So all animals can go in and out of them naturally. They go into stress responses and they come out of it and they're okay. We're not, and we can't. All right. So the mind and the way that our minds is really about is I think problem solving is one way of saying it, but I think another way of saving it is comfort finding, safety finding, and secure finding. And we don't learn this in psychology or social work. There's not like we don't we don't talk about the fact that we're because of the way that our world is, because it's so malnurtured that many people go as odd as we would if we were experiencing malnutrition.

Lisa Danylchuk: 31:40

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 31:41

Yeah. Okay, that was my sidebar.

Lisa Danylchuk: 31:44

My sidebar connects to your sidebar. My sidebar is just about I was thinking about maladaptive daydreaming as you were talking and loneliness and people looking for connection in all kinds of different places, and that even eventually manifesting as something really serious, or uh things that start to impact not just mental health but physical health. And so thinking about maladaptive daydreaming, where you know people create entire elaborate worlds internally and go live in them. And usually there's some element of safety or connection or recognition being seen, being praised, like, oh, in my maladaptive daydream, I'm a rock star and I travel the world and I get applause, right? And they so it's so interesting whether it's a fantasy or a daydream or what we would call a maladaptive day daydream, where we're really like living in a different world internally for long periods of time. There's usually a need there. There's usually a very understandable social need to be seen, soothed, secure, celebrated, right? All of these things that just human beings need as children, as babies, as children, as adults throughout life, right? And so I know you and I both look at pretty much anything that shows up in the office as like, how is this working for you? What need is this trying to fulfill? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the function here? And it's so everything you're saying just fits with so many other things.

Christine Forner: 33:17

It really does. What has been driving me over the last like five years? It really started during COVID and being in my house. And I'm like, why? Why is it that we are incapable of meeting our needs? Why is it that we cannot comprehend that we have this very powerful drive to be safe and to be secure, except none of us are. Even if you are a very wealthy human being, you're still going around acting like a human being who is starving, greedy, emergent, not empathetic. Right? A lot of people think that morality and empathy is something that that is taught through either higher education or religious institutions. We're born with it. It's a neat part of us, and the only way it won't work the way it should is when we're scared. If we're not scared, it works the way it should work. So when we become frightened, when we go into an emergency cascade response, and I don't think even people realize that infants and children go into these responses super quick fast. Right. So we're talking about neglect. But I think a better way to describe it is um isolation threat. That the Homo sapien, we experience the threat when we a life threat when we're isolated, particularly as infants and particularly as small children. And in my experience, you know, this is the 40th year that I've been involved in this profession in one way or another. I have been listening to people's secret, tortured, shame-filled lives for 40 years now. And the one thing that everybody has in common is an experience of primal isolation threat in childhood and infancy, or early, like even if you have a secure attachment at home, you still have to leave that home in kindergarten and go out into a world that is full of people who are experiencing this fear or this response that comes from this primal isolation threat. And to me, primal isolation threat is the beginning of shame language.

Lisa Danylchuk: 35:50

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 35:51

It's a feeling that we have that doesn't get labeled, that nobody really talks about, that isn't really seen. Like you're talking about maternity leave that's eight days long. The female or the not the female, the Homo sapien body at birth does not comprehend things that aren't safe and secure. And in a world that is very phobic of nurturing, in a world that is very violent towards nurturing, that's that renurturing syndrome, I do believe. We all experience it in one way or another. And it's it's kind of tricky when you're working with someone to try and help them see something that they themselves had to label when they were children.

Lisa Danylchuk: 36:35

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 36:41

Pick me up. Well, it's the average, right? Mummy up, baby down, I'm bad, I'm wrong. In my experience, most shame language is two or three words. And I do believe that's because children and and toddlers are trying to label something that they don't have words for, right? I am bad is very it could also be, I feel really bad right now because I'm not being picked up. I feel really bad right now because mom and dad are so busy they don't see me. I feel really bad right now because I just got yelled at because, you know, I spilled some milk or I'm having a temper tantrum. Infants and children can't talk that way. And if it doesn't get changed, it sticks.

Lisa Danylchuk: 37:23

Yeah. You brought up the larger scale renurturing syndrome. So I think this is a good time to ask how do you define patriarchy?

Christine Forner: 37:34

Let me do misogyny first, because I think misogyny comes before patriarchy. Okay. I define misogyny not as the hatred of women. I think that that's the way it's seen right now, but the hatred that women experience is also the same hatred that children and infants experience. And that that is everybody who's born. But I really define misogyny as a intense disdain for Homo sapien nurturing. And I don't mean when I talk about nurturing, I'm not talking about cooking and cleaning. Cooking and cleaning can be nurturing, it also can be not nurturing. I'm not talking about servitude. I'm not talking about things that are happening in sort of inside a home. I'm talking about the narrow biological branches of a structural, evolved way that a Homo sapien manages itself. And it is regulatory in nature, going in and making sure that our bodies have what they need for homeostasis. To me, that's nurturing. And there is a huge disdain for it. And it is like so odd. Is it like even if you take something as weird as like feeding people and making sure that people have clothes? And there are people who go off and go, it's not my business to feed other people. And I'm like, Well, yeah, it actually is. Like it's all of our business. And the amount of money that we spend from people not getting nurtured is mind-bogglingly huge. And the amount of money that it would cost to make sure that everybody is fed well, educated well, that everybody is supported, it's a it's an economic gold mine. But the powers that be don't understand that and don't see that. So I really define misogyny as the disdain of Homo sapien nurturing that then leads to patriarchy. And to me, patriarchy isn't a system ruled by men, it is a system ruled by particular type of people. And those people tend to be quite psychopathic or psychopathic adjacent. Another word for it is antisocial.

Lisa Danylchuk: 39:48

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 39:49

Another word for it is human beings whose bodies go into a fight cascade response. And do you ever notice we talk about fight, flight, and freeze, but we never actually talk about fight. We talk about flea. So PTSD is sort of the flea spar parts of things. When we talk about dissociation, but we don't classify human violence as a mental illness and or a trauma response for that matter. It's massively a trauma response. It's a huge end. It is um it does tend to be influenced by gender. Men tend to be, and it has to do sort of, I think, resources and stuff. Like when we're infants and children, we don't have any bodily resources. The only thing we got is to dissociate. So primal isolation anguish or primal isolation threat, because it I think it's so profoundly physiologically painful and psychologically painful. Dissociation is the only thing that is available to anesthetize and separate the body and the mind from the pain. But as time grows, there are certain people who have their resources fight where other people might resource fawn, where other people might resource flee. Everyone else, all the other emergency cascade responses get seen as weird except for fight. And fight is the weirdest one because it is the most inhumane, it is the most antisocial, it is the cruelest. And something happened like 12,000 years ago. For the longest time, I wondered if it was the invention of sort of alcohol or viruses, but I actually think it was something it was called the younger dryest event. It was a major catastrophic event. So they don't know if it was like the volcanoes all went off at the same time or if there was an asteroid, lots of asteroids that hit, but there was a sudden, um, a very quick, very sudden sort of mini ice age event and a flooding event that flooded a lot of areas that had a lot of people in it. So the Mesopotamia area, all sort of where the Sahara Desert is, but also it was in North America as well. So a lot of the cultures that became like super violent, the ones that used human sacrifices, the ones that started wars, the one that started all those things, all of those seem to be heavily influenced by this younger dryas event. So if we were born and raised for comfort, if we evolved for comfort, and fire is a reasonable explanation of how we actually ended up like this, being in a place where we are so designed for comfort and security, and everything that makes us us is about comfort and security. When it's absent, we become scared. And as a species, we don't know how to get out of it on our own. So humans start to go into cascade responses. And I think it was something the the younger dryas event, I think, happened over several hundred years, where there all of a sudden there became a lot of starvation, there became a lot of like inability to soothe our offspring. And then you've got people being born in an enormous amount of distress. And um, we do know that there is uh male infants have a vulnerability that female infants don't, but doesn't not on the same level. And that vulnerability impacts the brain structures that are responsible for self-regulation. So you have babies who have basically brain damage where they can't self-regulate, they still need to be regulated, they can't get regulated because empathy is something that requires that is how we regulate. Attunement is something how we regulate, interoception. So the ability to know what's going on inside of our bodies is how we regulate. And when we are in a fight response or we're born without these brain structures, you cannot calm down. And the only way to exist is to sort of keep yourself deep, deep, deep in the land of fight. Because that's when endogenous opioids are going to be secreted, that's when the cutoff from brain and mind is gonna happen, that's when you don't really feel anything, even though the body is responding. And one of the ways to maintain a place like that is to be cruel.

Lisa Danylchuk: 44:07

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 44:08

Cruel is like self-harm on steroids. And to me, is how psychopathy started, and then these people sort of took over the world. So I see that as patriarchy.

Lisa Danylchuk: 44:21

So you're really seeing uh something that happened a very long time ago leading to trauma responses that lead to a shift in the species. So, in your view, humans are innately wired for comfort, connection, and care. Yes. And when things go haywire and there's that cascade of defense responses or protection or trauma responses, we can, we know this as trauma therapists, we can get stuck in those. Yeah. Also, you're saying a longer-term evolution of the fight response going awry, or of a lack of ability to self-soothe or heal in response to whatever trauma occurred, and that leads to people harming each other. So, in your mind, that's not human nature, yes, Homo sapien nature to harm each other. Yeah.

Christine Forner: 45:21

My greatest evidence to that if it was, if this was our normal, we wouldn't be bothered.

Lisa Danylchuk: 45:30

We wouldn't be bothered by it at all. Also, the movie Love actually wouldn't exist. Wouldn't be so popular.

Christine Forner: 45:40

Lots of things wouldn't be so popular, horror movies wouldn't exist, wars wouldn't exist, um, greed wouldn't exist. And you know, a lot of people blame agriculture for the beginning of misogyny and patriarchy, and it's like, oh, all of a sudden I have land that is mine, and I'm like, people don't understand how weird not sharing is for our species. But in a world that is, we're all taught to be superphobic of nurturing, especially to the degree that we're supposed to be. Right. So we're supposed to be we're an alloparenting species, meaning that there's supposed to be like five or six people taking care of one human infant. So we spent probably 290,000 years, if not more. Like a lot of people think about how we were like 100,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago, that we were like food insecure and only living 30 years, and everything was rough and it was brutal. And it's like, well, if that was the case, language would not have evolved, theory of mind would not have evolved, empathy would not have evolved. All of these things could only have evolved with safety and security because that's how they work. So 100,000 years ago, we were probably in groups of 150 people. Not everybody was having babies. Those who really wanted to have babies were having babies, and those who were like wanted to be close to babies but not have babies were helping. And then there were other people who were just doing their other things, helping. Everybody made the Homo sapien human infant the center of our existence. And the mother, because she is so required for so long to give all of her resources to her offspring, like we're talking three to five years. That's a really long time. That's a lifespan for some animals. That Homo sapien mother also requires the Homo sapien father. So there are some evidence like why we have menopause and that kind of stuff, and that women were taking care of the children, but that's not how it is. If that was the case, then there wouldn't be any studies that showed that when fathers are involved, the baby is healthier, the mother is healthier, and the father is healthier. There's a boatload of science that shows that when a dad is very intimately involved in the rearing of his offspring, things like his oxytocin changes, things like his brain structures change. It just boatload healthier for everybody. So dads were involved in all of this. And we did have lots of food, and we did have lots of safe shelter. We've been building houses for at least 500,000 years. That's probably longer than we've been here. There's some evidence because they found like a house a long time ago. It was like Lincoln logs. And if this was our normal, we wouldn't have the deleterious effects that we have when human beings dissociate, when human beings are in emergency cascade responses. We wouldn't have brain structures that are there that work when we're safe and secure, that don't work when we're not safe and secure. Where did like like it's just to me, it's so obvious that we're all living in just this self-fueling perpetual trauma cycle, and that we need to get out of it. And for us to be okay, we need to get out of it.

Lisa Danylchuk: 49:11

And so, how do you see us getting out of it, even if it's best case scenario or there's no parts showing up that you're not seeing happening in the world today? I think it's actually already happening.

Christine Forner: 49:26

I think we're actually coming out of it, and I do think that this is this could be the patriarchal death twitch. So if we change the language from patriarchy to psychopathy, a group of human beings who are violently opposed to safety, like to human nurturing, that when they experience it, it makes them lose their mind and become violent. We're starting to already see this. We're already starting to see that the systems that we trusted so very long have likely been lying to us the whole time. That um that there's not a lot of logic in capitalism. When you talk about socialism, people freak out because it has been falsely used for many, many years. It's like gaslighting us or grooming us, like we've been groomed by political parties saying, I'm gonna take care of you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna help you, but really the whole intention is to lie, cheat, and steal. We're starting to see that this happens, and we're starting to go, wait a minute, there's something really wrong with this. But you're also starting to see things like maternity leave, but also parental leave is changing in a lot of other countries. You're starting to see on social media people going, this isn't okay anymore. You're starting to see things like the 4B movement, which came out of Korea, which basically is women saying, We're no longer gonna, we're not gonna engage in dating and having children if violence is around, right? You're starting to see, and that sort of swept through North America and it's sort of it's even going down into South America and Europe, women are starting to say, mm-mm, we're not participating in this violence anymore. We demand to be treated with safety and security. We're starting to have conversations. I think the trauma field is one of the most brilliant things in the world. We're starting to comprehend what fear actually does to us and how deleterious and detrimental it is to us. So it's already starting to change. Best case scenario, governments started coming in and go, okay, actually, we're gonna take our money. You know what would be really good? It would be really good if all the world leaders went together and went, hmm, let's just erase debt. It doesn't exist anymore. Because like, and everybody would be like and freaking out, but it doesn't exist anyway. So, like, you know, if you all got together and just said, poof, it doesn't exist, nobody has debt. Imagine what that would do to the whole world, just sort of instantly being able to take a breath. I think we have to study more of what psychopathy actually is. We actually should put all of our money towards understanding that. Because a vast majority of people, if they had a safe place to live, if they had enough food, if they could just, you know, work enough that that was tolerable and manageable, because people want to work, people want to do things, people have interests. Most people wouldn't have, like, I think addictions would go away. We know this actually for a fact. There's been lots of studies on universal-based income, and almost immediately every time a community starts to get universal-based income, addictions go down, criminality goes down, education starts to rise, arts and cultures start to rise, people start to eat better, they become more physically healthy, just like almost instantly things change for the better. If we were to do, if we're just to understand that there's only a small group of people who dislike social care. And we need to study them and we need to start giving everybody else safety and security. That's my dream.

Lisa Danylchuk: 53:22

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 53:23

And then we have to do some trauma work because everybody's been traumatized by the last 10,000 years of being stuck as a species in a trauma response.

Lisa Danylchuk: 53:33

Yeah. I love hearing from you because there's so much that I think you're questioning and wondering about and digging into anthropology and trying to find theories and explanations that I think most people are just accepting as this is how it is, and saying, Well, I'm seeing violence, that must mean humans are violent. Well, I'm experiencing this harm, that's that must mean it's not safe, or it's not normal for me or for humans to be safe. And and I love that you dig things up and look at things differently. And also you're seeing things that are in line with, as you said, it's already happening that people are saying, hey, violence isn't okay. I'm not going to accept that. Hey, this type of behavior and exploitation isn't okay, and we're not going to accept that. And so I'm with you and really hoping that we're in a turn of events where there's more care coming to the forefront, where care is valued, where nurturing is valued, where you know a postpartum parent doesn't have to decide between feeding their child and being with their child economically speaking, and they don't have to leave their child in order to meet their basic needs. Uh, I think there's so much that could shift in a positive way if we start looking through some of the lenses you've presented here today. So I'm wondering what gives you hope in that turn of events, in that uh, oh, it gives you hope for humanity today.

Christine Forner: 55:17

Honestly, like I I see hope everywhere. Right? Like, even like a simple flipping through TikTok. I actually really do like TikTok. I love TikTok. One of the things that I like about TikTok is you'll see someone who is like, you know, a person in their house putting pieces together, going, wait a minute, this is so strange. It gives me hope that, you know, one of the things, there's people who are examining the economics, people who are examining racism, people who are examining colonialism. And in my experience, it all comes from being malnurtured. Like for us being a relationally starved species, all of the violence comes as a secondary response to us not having our basic primary needs. What gives me hope is that I can talk about this stuff and that I'm not looked getting looked at anymore, like people are actually asking me to speak publicly, that I've been asked to write a book about this, that in my practice, I've started to exclusively do therapeutic nurturing. It is heavily influenced by mindfulness and sensory motor psychotherapy and even hypnosis and the therapeutic relationship and all those things. But I'm seeing things in my office where my clients very quickly, if they show up and they're they're meeting me for the first time or at the beginning of our sessions, and they've had lots of suicidal ideation, with with doing therapeutic nurturing, within a matter of weeks, it stops. I'm super hopeful that I'm gonna have a billion dollars and be able to run a nurturing lab. Oh my god, that one gets me very excited. Yes. Because this stuff, I think, if we started testing it, if we started actually trying to like, like I I beg someone to prove me wrong. Prove me wrong that safety and security isn't our base setting. Prove me wrong that nurturing is not designed for us in the way that I am describing nurturing. I have a really hard time believing that it is that it would be disproved just because there's mountains of science that are supporting what I'm saying, and it's just I just happen to be a person who's pulling all of this together that that I've always been able to see the big picture, and that gives me hope. Yeah, lots of hope. Yeah, my daughter gives me hope. Yes. She has a sense of self that I did not have at her age.

Lisa Danylchuk: 58:00

Yeah.

Christine Forner: 58:00

My sons give me hope. They have a a tenderness to them that is magnificent.

Lisa Danylchuk: 58:09

Yeah. Yeah. So you're gonna be doing more speaking about this. I know you run consultation groups. How can people get in touch with you?

Christine Forner: 58:19

If you go to Christineforner.com, I have a I have actually have a course coming up next week. I have a course coming up in December and one in January, and I'll probably run another course in February, March, and April. They're a mixture of dissociation 101, dissociation of mindfulness, therapeutic nurturing, and born to be nurtured. So these are full-day classes. I try to have a variety of prices so that you know there it there's some that are on the lower end of things, things that are a little bit a little bit higher, because you know, I need my bread too. I need my sandwiches. Send me a note, send me a letter. I do have those consultation groups that run every second Friday of the month, and I have a deal. Like I buy four for three. So instead of paying, I think I said that right. Also, just email too. You can reach me on my website, Christineforner.com.

Lisa Danylchuk: 59:16

Okay. I love it. Any parting words of wisdom?

Christine Forner: 59:22

There is a version of humans that fits us. That's good for us. That's that's relatively it's not terribly complicated. It's gonna be hard for us to get back to our roots because healing this stuff is brutal. There's no if, ands, or doubts about it. It is very brutal. But nurturing is the scaffolding that makes healing possible. Nurturing is the thing that is going to heal us. That's that just makes me wake up every day.

Lisa Danylchuk: 59:56

I love it. And it makes me think about how many steps.

Christine Forner: 1:00:15

I'm not gonna shame you. I'm gonna help you calm down. It's nurturing. I'm also in substack known as the fierce nurturer.

Lisa Danylchuk: 1:00:26

Nice. I love it. Christine, thank you for coming back on the show. I feel like we could pick any topic we talked about today and dive down any of those long and deep rabbit holes into the earth and into history. So I'm excited that you're writing about this and looking forward to being able to share that. Come back on the show when your book's ready and we'll talk about it.

Christine Forner: 1:00:48

I sure will. Big hug up snuggles for everybody. Consensual huggle snuggles. Always. Okay.

Lisa Danylchuk: 1:00:56

Thanks, Christine. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. Now, I'd really love to hear from you. What resonated with you in this episode and what's on your mind and in your heart as we bring this conversation to a close? Email me at info at how we can heal.com or share your answers and what's been healing for you in the comments on Instagram, or you'll find me at How We Can Heal. Don't forget to go to howwecanheal.com to sign up for email updates as well. You'll also find additional trainings, tons of free resources, and the full transcript of each and every show. If you love the show, please leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, Audible, or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and keep sharing the shows you love the most with all your friends. Visit how we can heal.com forward slash podcast to share your thoughts and ideas for the show. I always, always love hearing from you. Before we wrap up for today, I want to be super clear that this podcast isn't offering prescriptions. It's not advice, nor is it any kind of mental health treatment or diagnosis. Your decisions are in your hands, and I encourage you to consult with any healthcare professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing. In addition, everyone's opinion here is their own, and opinions can change. Guests share their thoughts, not that of the host or sponsors. I'd like to thank our guests today and everyone who helped support this podcast directly and indirectly. Alex, thanks for taking care of the babe and taking the fur babies out while I record. Last and never least, I'd like to give a special shout out to my big brother Matt, who passed away in 2002. He wrote this music, and it makes my heart so very happy to share it with you here.