A Conversation with Jamie Catto - Bitches & Bastards- The Transcript
Anna Stromquist: Good morning, Kristina. Good morning, Anna.
Kristina Wiltsee: And good morning.
Anna Stromquist: Good morning to our special guest. I wanted to give a quick bio about you while you're here for anyone who isn't familiar with your work, especially your documentary that we love . Originally, you were a musician and you started the group faceless and you went on to form one giant leap in 1988. You heard a cassette of rom Doss. And then in 1994, when you met him in person, your life was changed forever. And you decided to your, your life shifted and you focus more on unity.
Anna Stromquist: You traveled the world, you made some beautiful documentaries. You, you made a Ted talk talking about one of these tours where you traveled the world and you had musicians contribute to music. You founded this project called the 15 minutes of friendship, which is amazing. Anyone listening, who has children can go to 15 minutes of friendship that calm, we'll put the link in the show notes and the ideas that people are unified when they understand and know each other.
Anna Stromquist: So the idea is that if your child connects to someone in another country for just 15 minutes, they're going to be more moved and touched. When they see things on the war happening in another country, for example, it doesn't become so distant. Then you made a docu series in 2004. What about me? You did the film, the documentary becoming nobody, which is all about rom Doss in 2019, which we have a whole episode basically about.
Anna Stromquist: You were the keynote speaker for the human potential series in 2020, and currently you are delivering coaching and workshops about basically Adam and Eve healing, the primary wound of the planet. And one of your recent series is the bitches and bastards where you're working on healing, the wounds between the male and the female dynamic.
Anna Stromquist: So that's really what, well, you go ahead. That's what we're really
Jamie Catto: interested in 15 minutes and friendship is live at the moment it's going between different schools and connections, everything. So people can't quite go and see too much getting the children to have a cup with each other, but the other things,
Anna Stromquist: okay.
Anna Stromquist: I went to the website and it said, join us. . So I thought it was up.
Jamie Catto: Okay.
Anna Stromquist: All right. Great. ,
Kristina Wiltsee: so Jamie, one of the first questions we wanted to ask you is that, , I was going back and watching some of your past, lectures, discourses, interviews, things like that.
Kristina Wiltsee: And this season, what we're talking about is the root chakra. So, you know, we're kind of covering tantra. We're kind of covering a lot of different things, but, but more so what I see it as is that is the interplay between the divine feminine aspect within us or the feminine energy aspect with us and the divine masculine.
Kristina Wiltsee: And I've heard you, I've heard you talk about the Taoists and union young. Would you kind of expand on that from that perspective, since we've. Yeah.
Jamie Catto: Uh, I'm not sure my angle on it, or it will be that useful to you, but the way where I guess one starting point is, you know, the ancient Taoists, as you know, they have the yin yang symbol that we all know very, very well, and they split the dualistic, uh, environment that we live in into the duality of yin and yang yang, being what they would say masculine would only to use the genders so much to get ourselves into trouble in this day and age, the part of each of us, boys and girls that penetrates the world that does things that uses our will.
Jamie Catto: The ends of the thing gets to the finish line. Has. Um, and yeah, the part of us that does things, the outward penetrative doing the force, but one thing we're not really taught so much in schools, um, is the other whole half of us, which is the feminine yin, which is the receptive, the part of us that is moved by life.
Jamie Catto: That a great idea pops into your head. The part of us that's receptive. That's curious, that's listening that sits in space. The part that gets into the flow state, um, And is moved. So, you know, there've been a lot of books written by great sportsman on how to get into the flow state or, and really it's when you let life, do you, when you're dancing, you're yin because you're letting yourself be moved by the beat rather than deliberately doing dance steps like this, or like that real dancing or enjoyable.
Jamie Catto: A lot of people are like, God, I couldn't live without my dancing, like static dance or like five rhythms once a week. And it's like, yeah, because it's the only time in your life where you can let go of your control trips and your busy-ness and your to-do list in your kind of agenda. Um, and actually let go and be moved, um, and, uh, So when you dance your yin, when you laugh, your yin, we use the active word.
Jamie Catto: I laugh as if you do it on purpose, but really when you laugh, you're just minding your own business. Something funny happens and the laugh erupts through you, which you find funny, and it's more accurate. I think to say, I am laughed or I am smiled because it's something that you're being moved by, you know?
Jamie Catto: And where does this get practical? So. When we are doing creative things, the yen is the most is where the real genius of projects is to be found. Because as I said, a great idea pops into your head. We don't create an idea. Uh, it just arrives. We don't know where from. It's one of the great mysteries. When I write a song with a guitar go, I will play G I will play C you.
Jamie Catto: Don't kind of like think up and build a song with building blocks. You hear a melody when you're listening for something new here, something you're yin, it came to you. So the great treasure of a great song happens in a yin state. And then you use your yang to then write down the chords and go to the recording studio and do things.
Jamie Catto: But the actual essence, the actual treasure part comes from us when we're young, when we're receptive. And it's not just in creative things in parenting where you were all brought up in. Well, maybe you guys, but when I was younger, we were brought up with very young parents, segway. You molded the child, you know, and it was.
Jamie Catto: Get your shoes on, get a hack up, being an accountant. We'll make this child how we think it should be. Whereas we've all learned since then that the intelligent, compassionate, and efficient way to parent a child as a year thing. So listening to the child, you're sensitive to the child, that's a yin quality.
Jamie Catto: And when you pick up whatever you pick up, you be the space around the child for it to expand it to whatever beautiful tomato plant it wants to be. That's a Yim quality being the space around something, holding the space and with sex. Another one of the great treasures, you know, if you're young and your sex, if you're just like, I'll do this, I'll do that.
Jamie Catto: And it's all prescribed and exact, and you know what you're doing and you're doing this and all this, you know, some bits might work. Uh, but if you're sensitive, if you're in your yin and you're totally with who you're with and you're listening every curve, every smell, every moment, every shape, every you're totally in the moment, curious and sensitive and listening to the exact energy that's coming off.
Jamie Catto: This person or people, whoever you're with. Then you have the most beautiful love making available. So really the great treasure of life is in the year end listing. So it's not to say the yang isn't super important. You've got to do stuff in this short life, but for me, I try and make my yang, my doing my deliberate use of my will, the servant of my good.
Jamie Catto: So first comes to the end when it goes, this is a good idea. And it knows in the deep stillness and the listing of the curiosity. Yes, that's true end. And then it instructs the yang. I go and get the hammer and nails and the wood and build one of those. Uh, so the yang is the servant began doing is the servant of the listening, uh, speaking as a young thing to do.
Jamie Catto: So the yin listening opens the channel when somebody's hurt or they need your advice. Or they've asked you a question in an interview, the yin hears it, the yang says it. And that's why people mistake male leadership with destination to. They're not the same thing. Destination choosing is actually a very yin thing.
Jamie Catto: Well, we need to go over there. It's a feminine thing. So it's like the feminine goes, oh, we need to go over there. And then instructs the yang, pack up the car and lead us all over that. Um, but the Yan leadership is at the service to the feminine knowing in each of us, boys and girls
Anna Stromquist: kind of like the duality of, we are not the doers of action, but we have to act like we're the doers of action kind of thing.
Anna Stromquist: It's all being done. And yet we still have to act like we are doing
Jamie Catto: okay. Yeah. That's a nice human way to look at it. We're being moved to do it. And it's also very connected to the, to the holy grail, if you're feeling Christian or our theory. And, um, the idea of the holy grail, the quest for the holy grail, um, is that we are poured into.
Jamie Catto: So it's like, how open can you be to be moved, to be truck, truly a channel or a passenger of the divine spark. You have to let go of your to-do list. You have to let go of your agenda. Right? I should be like this and your fixed view of things and open and be poured into. So that's the opposite end or right at the top.
Jamie Catto: So we'll get to the crowd, Shaq crabs shore later in your, uh, when after central is nights off to find the holy grail, it was possible. The fool who was the most human of all, who discovered the grail and had to ask one question before he was allowed to take the grail. And that question was whom does the grail serve?
Jamie Catto: So it's like, you have to know like, who you doing this for? Is this to a grand dyes, your bank account, is it to have great status when you're doing a project? A lot of people think a project was only successful. If lots of people came, I got lots of money and I got tons of positive feedback on Facebook and Instagram.
Jamie Catto: And, you know, that's what value is, how much money did I make and how many people love me up? And if it doesn't do those things, that project isn't deemed to be a success, but that's very yang and it's the wrong agenda. If you fix on those two things, you'll never have a successful or an enjoyable creative life.
Jamie Catto: But if you expand your notion of what value means to be a bit more yen to say, okay, let's not just about the money and how many people gave me self-esteem, which I have to. Okay. Things, but also it's like how much intimacy was. In the project between me and the people, I did it. And the audience, uh, how much service was there?
Jamie Catto: How good was it for everyone, you know, who made it and where it went, how much learning was that? How much did it spread? The influence of good things in the world? You know, when you start looking at the value of something is beyond just me, me, me, ego, what did I get for myself? And you go into a more community spirited thing, a more love-based thing.
Jamie Catto: Then whether it made money or it didn't make money, or whether it, lots of people wrote you, great, five star reviews, or didn't you still go to bed with a smile on your face and consider it time. Well spent.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah, we need a new yard stick or an additional yard stick, or
Kristina Wiltsee: maybe it's just a chalice, right. That has no volume measurement.
Kristina Wiltsee: Right. It's just not helpful. Do you feel today?
Jamie Catto: And then one more thing just about the game, which I absolutely love. There's this wonderful book called the Screwtape letters. This is author called CS Lewis who wrote the Narnia books. Um, and he was a crazy Christian mystic and had a really, you know, obviously all the Narnia books are very thinly veiled, Christ, allegories, um, but the Screwtape.
Jamie Catto: Was another one of his books for a slightly older audience, which has letters from an old devil to a younger devil on his nephew on how to best tempt the human he's been allocated. And, um, one of them says, my dear wormwood, I noticed your humans doing an awful lot of praying at the moment. Don't worry about this.
Jamie Catto: As long as he keeps talking to God and asking God for things and asking for God's forgiveness and all the energy keeps going from his mouth to God in that direction, we've got nothing to worry about, but if he shuts up for a minute and stops and lets the energy come down and the other direction from God down, filling him up, which as we all know is true prayer, then we've got a problem call me.
Jamie Catto: And that really, really nails it for me of just like true prayer or true allowing the flow state to take us or true brain creative or true making love is all about being moved, allowing it to pour down and fill you, it poured out and move you more than one. Have an ego land mental sort of agenda of, we should do this, this, this, this.
Jamie Catto: Being a passenger in that. Yeah. Being an active passenger, I guess. Yeah.
Kristina Wiltsee: I love that. Thank you for that. That's that's such an amazing, that's such an amazing, uh, image that really
Anna Stromquist: it's so accurate.
Jamie Catto: Yeah, but you know, our ego is so in charge of our lives, which is the yang part because the ego's mission is to avoid all risk or perceived risk.
Jamie Catto: So, because it never wants to risk looking stupid. It never wants to risk getting it wrong and never wants to look they're shamed. And everyone's to, um, in any way, not know the finish line and wants an Excel sheet where it all adds up and there's something at the bottom that will make sense and everything is pre-planned and it's idea of safety because that part of us generally moves most people's lives, which is the opposite of yen.
Jamie Catto: The idea of yen to the ego is terrifying because it's mysterious. You don't know what you're going to get. Um, you don't know how it's going to turn out. You might look a bit stupid. They might involve failure, which is another word for discovery. It might involve a whole bunch of things, which the ego doesn't think it wants, um, in its controlling way.
Jamie Catto: So if the more you are. Into protecting the idea of, oh, it's so terribly important. What people think of men, all men it's never looked stupid, man. It's never failed. Everything has to be perfect. And the more you're in that clench thing, the less genius art will come through you because you're narrowing the river to a trickle.
Jamie Catto: You're like editing it before it's even come through. That's where writer's block comes from. People with writer's block, um, Arrigo, maniacs, and vain. Now that's not fact, but writers think that it's their ego's job to make it good
Kristina Wiltsee: right before it even gets a chance to become it's being molded.
Anna Stromquist: Just
Jamie Catto: do it.
Jamie Catto: We got to remember as an artist, as a creative, that even if you went to Picasso's studio, you would see some absolutely incredible masterpieces. You see some stuff that was pretty great. And you see some stuff leaning up against the wall over there. That was not so great. Um, and you just see the great stuff because the artists only Shanghai hangs the great stuff on the wall, but to be a, a great artist, you've got to let it all come through and you only need to look at a Hendrix album or a Beatles album or whatever, you know, onside to halfway through this.
Jamie Catto: I'm pretty sure the album tracks, you know, if you want to have, imagine all the people you've also got to have octopus's garden, um, and the Beatles were work sort of humble enough to put all those tracks on the album. You know, they, they, they didn't only care. Keep the masterpieces. They kept the silly ones, as well as the incredible ones, um, where we get this idea that everybody can only see me when I'm amazing and no one will ever see me when I'm anything.
Jamie Catto: And I've got to put another filter on my Instagram to make sure no blemishes or, you know, that uptightness, that addiction to some perceived notion of perfection is killing art. It's terrible for arts. It's terrible for me. Yeah.
Kristina Wiltsee: And it's also like, I, I work in a professional setting and, and for me, like being in front of a client is one of those perfect examples of like, you're never allowed to ever show the blemishes, right?
Kristina Wiltsee: If anything, and yet the most successful people I've ever met in my company and elsewhere are the ones that let the blemishes show because it gains trust. You have no trust without showing mistakes without
Jamie Catto: to a mannequin. And it's funny, if you look at the artists or the people that you've fallen in love with it, wasn't their appropriate side, their vanilla side that you fell in love and it was their edge.
Jamie Catto: It was their uniqueness. It was their quirkiness. It was the so, you know, it's so ironic that everyone's trying to sand away, smooth off the place, which is actually the place people are going to fall in love with your uniqueness. And when did you ever hear anybody say. Oh, have you met Brian? Oh, he's so fucking appropriately.
Anna Stromquist: No, I fucking hate perfect people. No, that's true. Like some of my best friends, the people that I admire the most are the people who come to me and they're like, you know, I just, you know, I just did X, Y, or Z, this horrible thing. And I'm like, awesome. Like, I think it's a beautiful, you know, thank you for sharing that human experience with me.
Anna Stromquist: And I love it. Yeah,
Jamie Catto: exactly. Humanities were and rounded us is all about that. You know, like he was always trying to be holier than now. Holy, holy, holy. I'm not meditating well enough or I'm not, you know, I'm not pure enough. And one of his disembodied spirit, friends and manuals said, you know, look, you're born here.
Jamie Catto: How about taking the curriculum, which means embracing your humanity. A lot of the shadow workshops I do are all about measuring those. And then you can't edit away the neediness people. Who've got the spiritual path wrong. Think that their neediness, they agreed the human rage, the all those lost, all those parts of the mean they're less holy and they're not enlightened enough, but that's not true.
Jamie Catto: You're going to have all those parts as a human, every human does. The spiritual ones are the ones that accept that and can love their own rage without making it destructive for other people, they can love their loss. They can love all these places in themselves, not try and reject them and deny their humanity.
Jamie Catto: They can accept their humanity. They, they don't maybe let those parts get the steering wheel that often they don't let those parts.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah, they're not
Jamie Catto: depressed because when you, the more you push down the beach ball under the surface of the water, the more violently it flies back up. That's why they say to where the anger of the quiet man. Um, so yeah, it's the people that embrace their humanity. Like Alan Watts. If there's a line in the movie becoming nobody where Adam, what says to around us, cause you know, your problem is you're too attached to emptiness.
Jamie Catto: And this is like another way of saying, you're trying to know your humanity, this, you know, this is such an important thing for people who think they're on a spiritual path. Um, and I've got another whole thing to say about spiritual paths. I think they're a con, uh, but if you think you're on a spiritual path and it's, and it's important, make it a path towards your shadows, not on a journey to light away from darkness, we're on a journey towards light and darkness to loving the fact that I'm a weird, freaky human, and it includes rage.
Jamie Catto: And it includes loss that includes neediness and includes greed and includes lots of things that the old religious people would say are not holy, but actually in embracing those parts of yourself, not letting them govern your life, but allowing them to be there, not being in a self abandoning judgment about it is fundamental to being truly spiritual, but beware of paths, because we all know the real spirituality is about being so totally here.
Jamie Catto: Present in this moment, there is nothing else. Everything else in the past, the future is really an abstraction. So to be truly here now, where are you going on your path away from right here and now where
Anna Stromquist: pushing the parts you don't like of yourself away, right?
Kristina Wiltsee: Like, and then chasing after whatever that perfection
Anna Stromquist: that's, that's why we named the podcast is spiritual fix.
Anna Stromquist: Cause it's a joke. Cause there's nothing to fix. It's just, you know, we, Kristina and I, we started our spiritual path doing Vipassana and very, you know, rigid, very, very young type of sitting on a mat. I'm going to do this, this and this. And we came to realize like, this is so ridiculous. We need to also just love and embrace all of us.
Anna Stromquist: Like there's nothing to fix it's
Jamie Catto: system.
Anna Stromquist: Exactly. Exactly. Well, that kind of, kind of perfectly glides into my first question for you. Since we kind of wanted to talk about relationships. I know you're doing the bitches and best-fit series, so how do you think society has fed us the illusion that our partner and our relationship needs to be perfect.
Anna Stromquist: And how is that in some ways destroying intimacy. Wow.
Jamie Catto: Okay. Um, I'm not sure I fully agree with your premise, but let's say that what you just said is true. Okay.
Anna Stromquist: Well, you know, you hear a lot about people want everything to be perfect and if the guy's not perfect or the girl's not perfect, they want to throw it away.
Anna Stromquist: And, and, and there's like a throwaway culture, if that makes sense.
Jamie Catto: Okay. So to throw something away, implies that you had it in the first place. So let's just bust that myth. I don't have you, you don't have me no matter what we promise each other, Esther Perel puts it beautifully and I'm sure you've checked out her stuff.
Jamie Catto: She says, you know, we used to get divorced, uh, because we were. Now we get divorced because we could be having. And there's a whole different mentality around the idea that we're so inquisitive. You know, we are consumer Mimi beings. We're not, you know, people used to live their life. And the great, um, pride of having lived a good life was that you left something better for the children that has totally gone out the window.
Jamie Catto: Now, the last two generations totally did a U-turn on that. And instead of living the great pride of leaving something better for the children, they were just like terrified of death, terrified of anything that wasn't ego. Let me, me, me, I'll use it all up. I'll have as much for myself as possible. Screw the next people.
Jamie Catto: And they've just the last two generations have screwed the planet in so many ways, killed more species, made more upheaval, all, but all through just selfish worship of quick money and self aggrandizement and self self self. It didn't always use to be like that. And because we are in such a state of exquisite acquisitive state of getting for ourselves, Whereas a relationship or a creative project, as far as I'm concerned is an area to be devotional.
Jamie Catto: It's a place to give. It's a place to stretch those generosity, muscles, those forgiving muscles, those humility muscles, and you will get a lot by doing that, but you're not there to get. And it's the same with a creative project that it's not there to get you self esteem or get you money. A creative project is like something for you to pour your love into or having a child it's there to pour your love into, and you will get lots of love back, but you're not there to get the love.
Jamie Catto: And in relationships it has now become more of a shopping list of needs. This is my list of needs, and I need to get these needs met by whoever I'm with. Do they tick these boxes? They're not there to take your fucking boxes, love, sorry. People are not there to, to meet your shopping list and if they don't meet it, then let's go to another one and see if it does, you know, as if it comes with a guarantee.
Jamie Catto: And I think that's, what's killing the intimacy is, is the framing of the relationship I'm here to get from you. A, B, C, D E. You are here to deliver to me, my feeling of safety. You are here to deliver to me the feeling of being sexy. You are here to deliver to me a, B, C, D E F G. And if you don't deliver those things, I'm going to go to another shop and buy them somewhere else.
Jamie Catto: That is a perverted bound to fail version of
Anna Stromquist: how to go thing you were saying
Jamie Catto: before. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's a way our culture has gone. It's like a lot of it has to do with death. As well, it's like, you know, people used to die in the hub, so it was just a part of life. Grandma got it. Grandma lived in the home, you kissed her good night.
Jamie Catto: And then she was a bit ill. You have to be a bit quiet around the house. Then you already have the soar at bedtime accounts were closed in a room. Then she died. Then the body was taken out and it all happened. Death was part of life. Now everyone's shipped off to live in a sanitized kind of place, surrounded by strangers, far away from home.
Jamie Catto: And we've disconnected ourselves from the process of death. We don't allow old people, old people on the team. Uh, you know, in our media, every new wrinkle on Instagram has to be got rid of anything that signifies aging or death or all things has to be sanitized away. There's a cult of youth. Um, and that's the weird thing is that the youth don't know anything.
Jamie Catto: It's the old people that are worth listening to, we got the whole thing upside down. Um, so while we are in terror, um, we're trying to acquire and get as much as possible before we, you know, before we die ourselves.
Kristina Wiltsee: Yeah. It was one of the things that we have an episode upcoming talk about the great mother wound.
Kristina Wiltsee: And it's kind of that same idea of the idea of pushing the mother. The mother is changed, you know, like in the Hindu thing, the mother has changed. She's the she's chaos, she's all that stuff. And we're trying to push it outside of our houses in every way possible, by not growing the food by not having the failure of the crops by not having the.
Jamie Catto: Exactly. You know, how my vegetables are thrown away, because they're not perfectly shaped. When you go into your vegetable shop, all the vegetables are perfectly shaped. There are millions of them that got grown that a bit wonky, where the character is twisted or whatever, and they aren't put on display there.
Jamie Catto: This mountains of those vegetables are thrown away. Cause they don't look like the perfect story book, cartoon version of a carrot. So it's, you know, some of them get made into sources and into other things, baby foods, but really an immense amount of food produce is thrown away because it isn't the perfect geometric shape of what a potato should look like.
Jamie Catto: It's ridiculous. The world stops.
Anna Stromquist: Right. And, and the people who pick them were through so much labor in the hot scorching sun, only for that potato not to be the right shape. And then it's just.
Jamie Catto: And anyway, you combine the misshapen ones a bit cheaper and a it's worth doing it, or even better grow your own.
Anna Stromquist: You have a whole program workshop called bitches and bastards? Can you talk a little bit about that? What is a bitch? What is a bastard?
Jamie Catto: It's just a lighthearted way again, to embrace the dark side of relationship and play with it.
Jamie Catto: I don't really think everyone's a bitch or a bastard, but we like to parade around and laugh about all our dysfunctional manipulative ways of getting our needs met as a way to lighten up around it and be more human with each other. Just taught two of them this weekend. And I teach it with my, one of my absolute best friends who also lives with me at the moment called Ruby Mae.
Jamie Catto: Who's an amazing shower on your show. She's extraordinary. Um, she also runs a company called know your flow, which is for women to get in harmony with their cycle. So they know at which points in the month, they're going to feel active and. And I'm creative and which parts they're going to need to be more like hibernating and self nourishing.
Jamie Catto: And she has some beautiful charts and, you know, she's just,
Anna Stromquist: she's called, is there a homicidal part on
Jamie Catto: the chart? I wouldn't like to be the guy to say that, um, I can only speak from personal experience. Um, so, uh, yeah, uh, bitches of busters, you know, we start the workshop or sitting in a circle and the first thing we do, everyone to introduce themselves at the beginning, everybody goes around the circle, says their name.
Jamie Catto: And what would your most recent ex warn us about you?
Anna Stromquist: And
Jamie Catto: it's a really great icebreaker and a really fun, hilarious. Some people talk about it, very tenderly and some people talk about it. In a hilarious ways, but you really get to know people. Another game we play is also from one of my intimacy workshops.
Jamie Catto: I do a workshop called what about us? Used to call it? What about intimacy? But no guy has showed up. Then we started calling it. What about us? We got a few more guys. Um, so we play this game with each other. We could do it now.
Anna Stromquist: Okay.
Jamie Catto: So I want to, you know, Lily Tomlin, the wonderful philosopher actress, she says never, never marry anyone until first you've had lunch with that ex wife, um, because we show the brochure.
Jamie Catto: It's why we've licensed dishonesty and the first date as well as the job interview. But let's talk about the first day. It's licensed dishonesty. You don't bring yourself to the first date. You bring your representative, you know, and there's a lot of sort of false advertising and things pushed up and painted on.
Jamie Catto: And the guys that are wearing stuff, everybody's like totally presenting some shop window of themselves, you know, like, oh, why aren't you so bored of drama? Oh yeah, me too. I won't be any trouble. And it's only six months later, they discover what a lunatic you are. Um, inevitably when they find you sort of bitching at some poor hotel receptionist.
Jamie Catto: So I want to live in a world where we normalize much more transparency and just like how much more fun and intimate it is to be honest. So we play this game where everyone sits at a table together with a candle and some lovely music. We pair everybody up. And, um, person a says to person B, I find you very attractive.
Jamie Catto: I really think this could go somewhere, but before we go any further, I have to work. And then you share the last thing you would ever share on a first date about what utter liability you are relationship with a total and then person piece as the person a oh wow. Well, what do you need when you get like that?
Jamie Catto: And you answer it and you chat for a couple of minutes and then you swap sides. And person B says to person a, I find it very attractive. I really think this could go somewhere, but before we go any further, I have to tell you, and then they share the last thing they would ever share on a first date about what a fucking learn to take they are relationship, um, and why you should be warned.
Jamie Catto: And then you ask them, oh, what do you mean when that happens? A new chat and you do it three times each. So you have three different warnings, so you want to go for it. Okay. Well you can do one each. Okay. I find you very attractive. Both of you. I think we could all get them all.
Anna Stromquist: We could have a great, um, what is it when you have
Jamie Catto: multilayer?
Jamie Catto: Um, but I'm not a moment. Um, and, uh, but before we go any further, I have to warn you. I was trying to think of a good dysfunctional, oh yeah. I am so screwed up in my patterning. My early infant patterning around what I was shown love was I was shown so much that it was a neglectful unavailable thing. That if you actually treat me well and really loving and show yourself to actually be good for me, I might not be able to find your time.
Anna Stromquist: So, so what do you need or what, what w what did we say? So what I need you
Jamie Catto: to know that about me, so that if I do start sort of needing a more sabotaging self destructive environment, I am remember that it's not a need, it's just the old patterning, and I can come back to the present part of me that is loving and available for, um, acrobatics.
Anna Stromquist: So, would you need a hug at that time, or just to remind you that you're falling into
Jamie Catto: a little reminder, which sluttiness might help,
Anna Stromquist: so some whips and chains, that kind of stuff.
Jamie Catto: Oh, I dunno. I don't equate sluttiness with Watson challenge. Thank you for that insight, though.
Jamie Catto: Do you ever have that, that you'd like find a lot of people find that they get attracted to people that aren't good for them because they're already patterning was actually
Anna Stromquist: quite because the chase. Yeah. The, the lack of intimacy is, is more of a challenge because it's a great distraction from you working on your own self.
Anna Stromquist: If you're focusing on well, how can I get them to like me or to actually treat me right. Right. Yeah.
Jamie Catto: And it's one of them, one of them when I speak to God, one, one complaint I have, or one sort of question mark is that one thing about humans is we find rare things, more attractive than available things. Uh, and that's a real screw up when it comes to relationship because really we want someone who's good for us.
Jamie Catto: It's telling available, not giving us mixed messages, not being distant and playing games and being someone who's like truly loving and available. But we are hardwired to look at the available as less attractive than the rare thing that is
Anna Stromquist: going away that we want. Demagnetizes kind of, it's like, you want that polarity in a way that, you know, does that, like Esther Perel says you can't desire something that you have, and that's the crux of our is our, in our relationships.
Anna Stromquist: That's really unhealthy though, because
Jamie Catto: constant and available and mature, you know, not someone who's playing games or it looks like they might be out the door or, you know, I've never found that, you know, I I'm, I've genuinely not found that I have. People who are available very relaxing. And I think the best of that stuff actually comes out rather than being the anxious.
Jamie Catto: You're waiting for Greenlight fever, waiting for you to come on
Anna Stromquist: on, right? Yeah. It's like the slow burning wood or the blow torch goes out quickly. And we've
Kristina Wiltsee: been talking about this season about the mother wound, which we talk about as the attachment wound. Right. Which is that idea that like, and th the, the stats is that half the people in America are insecurely attached, meaning that they're going to do anxious or avoidant attachment.
Kristina Wiltsee: They're going to do that same thing, because that early patterning, you know, whether you want to put a name to it, or, you know, just say, Hey, it's not really patterning that.
Anna Stromquist: I bet those statistics are going to go up , since the cry it out, book came out. That's my own theory anyways.
Jamie Catto: So you'll go. Who's going to go next.
Anna Stromquist: Okay, I'll go next. All right. I find you both attracts. And I would love to take this further, but before we do what you really need to know about me is that about three days before my period, I turn homicidal. The sound of your chewing is going to drive me crazy. The pitch of your voice is going to make me want to tear my hair out.
Anna Stromquist: I will hate you for about three days and I will try my best to pretend like I don't. And then when that's over, I'm going to feel really shitty and I'm going to overcompensate for what a bitch I was by doing too much. And, it'll just, it'll just happen every month.
Anna Stromquist: And I just, I'm just going to hate you for about three days, so sorry.
Jamie Catto: Um, thank you. What'd you need, when you got like.
Anna Stromquist: I need, , Netflix and take out and I just need to be like, as isolated as possible. So for damage control purposes, but I need to know you still love me, even though I'm being a total fucking bitch.
Anna Stromquist: If
Jamie Catto: you can't, I've never heard of anything like that before.
Kristina Wiltsee: That's the British humor for you, right? Right.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah. You got three daughters, so, all right.
Kristina Wiltsee: I will go now, I guess I find you both attractive, but before we go any further, I need to let you know that due to early circumstances in my life, I will often feel as if I, my survival is at risk. At any moment. So I will often feel even things that you cannot understand how I could have ever linked with a risky or scary or life-threatening situation.
Kristina Wiltsee: I will see as life-threatening, and as a result, I will become hypervigilant and hypercritical of the situation, trying to get all the information that I can, because I'm terrified that me or someone I love is going to die. Even if it's something like not telling me that, you know, you left cookies in the oven or something, even less than that,
Jamie Catto: um, training.
Jamie Catto: Thank you. And how can we serve you in that? You know, what you need is
Kristina Wiltsee: I need to feel safe and I need to feel like I have information. So that I can handle and deal with all the things and say shade, all the places that have become scared or feel like they're not going to survive.
Jamie Catto: Makes sense.
Anna Stromquist: So you need a lot of information, information,
Kristina Wiltsee: information, and communication is very key for that. Yeah.
Anna Stromquist: For me, do you need hugs or anything else or is information enough food? I think,
Kristina Wiltsee: I think I'm getting to this whole, like, uh, you know, one of the things do you mean for context? One of the things we talked about, in an interview with, with, um, a man named Satya and Raja is like the masculine kind of pole holding the feminine when the feminine gets kind of out there and chaotic and a little, you know, like maybe just needs to be held and said like it's it's okay.
Kristina Wiltsee: It's safe. It's whatever. I think I'm getting to understand that that is a need of mine for just to be a moment where I don't have to be in charge and I don't have to be the decision maker and I can just be like, it's okay. It's safe. It's not all dependent on you right now.
Anna Stromquist: I like that.
Jamie Catto: Okay. Let's see if we will communicate more like this from the beginning.
Jamie Catto: I actually think intimacy thrives. Well,
Anna Stromquist: you know, my very first date with might now has been, he told me all the reasons why his relationships fell apart, like on our first date. And I loved it. I thought this is great because I know what I'm walking into and I'm not, I'm learning as I go. It was like, okay, these are the things.
Anna Stromquist: I loved it. Obviously, obviously it worked out well for him because we got married and
Kristina Wiltsee: I did the same thing to my husband. I said, are you sure because this is all the stuff I think I was less eloquent back then. , but I definitely did that cause I mean, that's also for me at the time
Anna Stromquist: relationships.
Kristina Wiltsee: Yeah. I said something along those lines, but it was, but it was interesting because at the time it was a weapon to push him away and not a seek it intimacy, but, um, and it can be used both ways, but I think if it's, if it's used to be an opening, right. To like just say, Hey, welcome into my world.
Jamie Catto: And also to also show that you have the consciousness that you know, your stuff well enough that you're not totally unconscious about your patterning and your acting.
Jamie Catto: Yeah. And victim to it that you actually, this things you're working on, this things you're aware of and normal service will soon be resumed the management.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah. I think there's nothing sexier than, self-reflection like, if you get an argument with someone and you're just going back and forth and they're trying to explain, they have a whole manifesto, a whole Ted talk about why they're right and you're wrong.
Anna Stromquist: There's nothing that attractive in that. But for someone to be like, wow, you know, I really, I did X, Y, and Z, and it was horrible. And I was even thinking of doing, you know, and they just kind of self-reflect. And even if, even if nothing comes of that, just the fact that they could see it and admit it is, it's just, I think it's a huge turn on.
Anna Stromquist: And it's also just a great expression that they are going to grow because you're not trying to, I can't, I'm not verbalizing it well, but like admitting your problem is so much more attractive than fighting for your fucking. Bullshit
Kristina Wiltsee: awareness of shadow work is one of the sexiest things there is in my mind, it really is like awareness of your shadow awareness of, of, of the work that you have done that you are, where you are now in that and showing all those sides.
Kristina Wiltsee: Right. Cause then, then not only that, but you don't kind of risk your meet, speaking in the risk language. You don't risk the, the dark passenger. Right. Which can be a surprise if someone's all perfect all the time, there's always going to be that dark passenger that may be not great. Not safe. Yeah.
Anna Stromquist: Do you find, , for people who are primarily identifying as feminine or masculine, do you see that there are, um, sematic warning signs or issues or shadows that come up based on the gender that I want to make this available for anyone listening, everyone who is welcomed? I I'm trying to. Okay. Okay. Like I want to say this is the non, the non PC way to say it.
Anna Stromquist: Do you think
Jamie Catto: point of view. Okay. From a,
Anna Stromquist: what, a young, normal, hetero, normal point of view, are there intimacy issues that you notice in these workshops or just in life that men commonly deal with and then what are the ones that women commonly deal with?
Jamie Catto: Yeah, I mean, just to be totally, there's nothing really new.
Jamie Catto: The common ones are not going to sound new to you, you know, in our culture, despite all our beautiful agenda, various. Um, PR progress, you know, they give pink toys to the girls and blue toys to the board. You know what I mean? Like boys are encouraged to be big and strong and soldiers and you know, the kind of compliments people pay the poor boys are that you're pretty, they say to boys, um, if I once had a girlfriend and he looked at me with such.
Jamie Catto: You're pretty and it felt so nice like this, like such a, I don't know, there was something so sweet about that, but usually, you know, little boys are told you're a big strong boy. You're a brave boy. Look at you. And so they're very much encouraged. They're not so encouraged to be sensitive and to show their feelings, of course, in the Waldorf schools and the Steiner staff and in the new, very niche way that we're being more conscious with the kids, of course, little boys are taught to be more sensitive, but, but in the, in the general gender stereotyping, He-Man masters of the universe, um, kind of toys and media and kids' shows and movies that are available.
Jamie Catto: Boys are still very much taught to be strong. And so therefore they have shadows around showing their vulnerability, showing their feelings crying comfortably, um, and girls, you know, still taught that you've got to be pretty, uh, that you've gotta be a certain shape, uh, that you've gotta be blemishless that you gotta be a little princess.
Jamie Catto: And so a lot of your shadows are around competing with other women for how much of a perfect princess you are, or how much of a perfect man you've got, or how much of a blemishless, you know, night cream you're wearing or, or, or, um, things to do with very stereotyped feminine things, which are still fired through the media.
Jamie Catto: You know, you only need to go down to the center of town and you'll see that the billboard. Which are advertising. Everything are still showing this very, very unrealistic airbrushed version of what a woman should be. Um, even in all the female magazines. And, um, it's toxic. It very subliminally makes anyone.
Jamie Catto: Who's not like that feel like they're not enough. And the advertising agencies need you to feel like you're not enough, because if you, while you're feeling not enough, you're gonna spend that money on that cream. You're gonna spend that money on all the different products that you don't need. Um, um, if all the women reclaim their power of their bodies and reclaimed their pride in all the different nuances and shapes and voluptuous curves of being a woman, including the wrinkles of age, as your wisdom grows through your forties, fifties, sixties, if women reclaim that and stop being the servants to all the white men that are trying to take your money, um, Those industries would collapse.
Jamie Catto: Uh, and it's the same, you know, for men and, you know, men are kept by the media in a permanent state of adolescents. So they are dangled with shiny Blinky things in a nice sports car or a nice gadget or a nice dress, or a nice that, which is what sort of, you know, teenagers need. Um, but as long as when, as soon as the man reclaimed his real male power, he doesn't need a sports car to show you that he's powerful.
Jamie Catto: He doesn't need an expensive gadget or groomed this or that in order to show you the surface of his power or certain bank account, his power radiates from being in service, his Ray, his power radiates from being loving, leading through love, uh, and being available and. Our culture doesn't support that. So the obvious shadows, ensue men don't show up to so many intimacy things.
Jamie Catto: They find it much, much of a bigger deal to share their feelings and to share that vulnerability. Uh, they also think that they've got to sort of win and have high status. And so it's harder for them to be good listeners, but not because they don't have the capacity to be good listeners. It's just because they think that they need to keep showing that they know what's going on and that they're in charge or they're in control in order to get respect.
Jamie Catto: I mean, I know I've been your guest today, but look at my white male privilege. I've probably spoken. Five times as much as you guys. I know, but still there's another part of me that I'm white, I'm wealthy. And I think that people should listen to me. And it's just the way that I've been brainwashed, you know?
Jamie Catto: Um, yeah, if you talk
Kristina Wiltsee: about it's so interesting about what you said it, I'm sorry. I didn't actually, I shouldn't have taken that taken away.
Anna Stromquist: Kidding. Keep talking. I was kidding to
Kristina Wiltsee: take advantage of the space now. Um, the so interesting is that I'm just sitting here connecting in my head. Is that, like you said earlier about the church and how, in some ways the church teaches you, teaches you and traditional religion teaches you that the young is the most important you have to do.
Kristina Wiltsee: Like when in prayer you have to always ask you don't receive. Right. And then.
Jamie Catto: But also teaches you to submit to God's will, you know, there's quite a lot of yen in it as well.
Kristina Wiltsee: That's true. That's true. But it's interesting because in some ways what I hear you saying and how it like hits me and how I receive it is that men in there and men and the ultimate, you know, um, hetero, I'm just going to say the masculine energy is it's aspiration is to be in service.
Kristina Wiltsee: And yet every single message is saying don't be in service. And then the fee, the fee, the feminine it's aspiration is to be fully and its acceptance and love of and trust of itself. And yet every single message is saying don't have trust of yourself. So both of them are pushing them. Yeah. They're completely pushing away.
Kristina Wiltsee: Because
Jamie Catto: when people are in a disempowered state, which is what you just described the opposite disempowered version, then we can get their money easier.
Anna Stromquist: It's like energy castration. How can we castrate the men, take away their purpose, fill it up with fast cars and sex. And then how can we castrate women energetically take away herself worth.
Jamie Catto: Yeah, exactly. It's capitalism. It's crew, you know, it's creating a need that isn't there and to get people's money. And if anything is going to kill us on this planet is going to be the worship of quick money. It's not just the worship of money. Cause you could do that sustainably. It's the worship of quick.
Jamie Catto: Uh, that is going to kill it. It just doesn't care about ransacking the environment screwing up everybody's mental health. It doesn't care, it just wants great commodity and that's, it's getting more and more and more polarized into a fewer of your people having the money and more and more on people not having the money yet.
Jamie Catto: They still lie down and take it as we it, and they say that interestingly, one of the reasons why this polarization and this inequality has been allowed to continue is because of the hamburger,
Jamie Catto: is that in any other, in an, in, in normal culture, people who had this tiny amount of money would not be able to feed themselves. Um, and if they couldn't feed themselves, they would rise up and rebel. But because they can feed themselves for 99 cents with this horrible, toxic process, they're not starving to death.
Jamie Catto: And therefore there's no revolution because we found a way to feed them, albeit with poison, um, for under a dollar there's no revolution, but if we were at, if they didn't have processed food, if they didn't have, if, if you actually had to eat real food, which nobody could afford, there would be a revolution because people would be able to afford it.
Jamie Catto: And so what allows people to be in this mass poverty, for example, across America, I mean, look at Texas. And if any of you are either of you anywhere near Texas, but if Texas succeeded from the union, it would be the fourth richest country in the world. If it was his own country and it's got the third highest child poverty rate in the past, It's only after like Mississippi and something else, it's got incredible child poverty, and yet it's the wealthiest place in the country.
Jamie Catto: And that just gives you an example of the polarization of the haves and the have-nots. And if we didn't have the science to make 99% 99 cent happy meals or whatever, there would be a revolution, but while everybody can be given a handbook, they can carry on working in the menial jobs and picking your avocados for you.
Kristina Wiltsee: And when you say quick money, I think that that leads it back in my head to the fear of death, right? Because it's like, there's no idea of legacy, right? It's what do I need right now? What do I need this in this life now? How can I acquire as much as possible for me? Because that sense of seven generations or even one or two generations is gone again, I would say.
Kristina Wiltsee: Because of this great mother wound, this great need to push away death, this great need to like, not trust that anything's happening beyond my experience right now. So I'm going to take advantage of it.
Jamie Catto: Yeah. Well, the mother wound, I mean, when you talk about the mother, I think of community that the mother gathers all our children together.
Jamie Catto: The mother of five is us. Yeah. Not me. Me, me. Yeah. So it's like, how can we, I don't want us all to put on virtual reality, Mehta, Facebook, you know, separate ourselves even more. So there's a funny meme on Facebook recently, which had just someone sitting on a hill next to a forest. There's this amazing new thing called the universe.
Jamie Catto: You can walk around and meet people and interact. And of course it's just like the real world, you know, like we already have a place to walk around and meet each other. It's called the world. You know, why are they creating a whole plastic version, great data and sell your this and that. And the other. So, you know, getting together so important, you know, like togetherness.
Jamie Catto: Yeah.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah. So on our, on our podcast, we like to give people a lot of practical tips from taking this deep philosophy and then turning into something you can digest and swallow. So you talk in some of your blogs, you talk about, uh, we call it the drama triangle, right? The rescuer persecutor victim, basically victim consciousness.
Anna Stromquist: And that dynamic, we play in relationships by taking turns, being the persecutor rescuer. And you talk about it in one of your blogs about we giving away our power. Right? So what. Yeah, you, um, probably giving your power away that you're in a relationship and then you, you, you play victim, you manipulate situations to play the victim and that's the way of giving away your power that's maybe.
Anna Stromquist: Well, I don't know. I think it was, I went back. I went back far. I think it was like a 2013 posts. So it was before your enlightenment, but anyways, so I guess a practical tip is what kind of practical tips would you have for relationships to maintain your power and still grow in intimacy?
Jamie Catto: Okay.
Jamie Catto: Well, one is for, in all ways, the best tip I can start anyone off with is notice. Meditation is what meditation means to me is noticing what you're thinking and noticing what you're feeling simple as that. Because when you notice what you're thinking and you notice what you're feeling, you realize it's a menu, it's not truth yet when we're not noticing what we're feeling and noticing what we're thinking, we act all day as if that stream of thinking or that stream of feeling is true and we need to act on it.
Jamie Catto: Definitely. So the most empowering thing anybody can do for themselves is to notice the stream of thinking and notice the stream of feelings, simple as that. And that's why meditation is great to do sitting on a cushion for 20 minutes or half an hour, sitting, noticing what you're thinking and noticing what you're feeling, great thing to do, but really meditation now should be from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you close your eyes at night is meditation.
Jamie Catto: I want you noticing what you're thinking and noticing what you're feeling all the time and not minding what a fucking lunatic you are, your response to noticing can't be judgmental. It has to be finding yourself totally adorable all the time, even in what you consider to be perceived failure. Um, so the first way to do that, that's quite a big thing for me to ask you to do, but I really think it's achievable.
Jamie Catto: And the first step along that I would say, if you're a beginner in, this is start with noticing yourself, talk, just start with that. Notice how you talk to yourself on the inside or even out loud, when you're walking around the house fucking idiot or whatever you're saying to yourself, notice your self-talk.
Jamie Catto: You would never talk to anybody else like that. Um, and stop talking to yourself like that. You know, every time you find yourself talking to yourself the most, and I teach all my students as a two-prong thing, you can do it with me. Now, anytime you fail, or anytime something happens that you don't like, or anytime it all gets hairy, uh, do this with me.
Jamie Catto: Now, both of you is you, you take the Palm of your hand, you just play something. And he just rubbed very gently that you mean it. And then you make this ancient Tibetan as tech mantra sounds very complicated. So just listen carefully and then make the sound with me while you're rubbing. You got this, you got
Anna Stromquist: you're so cute when you're an asshole to yourself.
Jamie Catto: And if you can do that 20 times a day, that's the deepest, spiritual practice that
Anna Stromquist: you can do. Well, you know, what's funny, we talk about it in the podcast, but your rom us does visit me some. I do see him come and visit and he will make me go like this. He will have me just bring my hand to my heart and tap it and be here.
Anna Stromquist: That's so cool that you're kind of telling the same thing.
Jamie Catto: Oh, bless him. I miss him. I've thought of him yesterday and I just burst into tears. My last interaction with him was so I just had this therapy session. Where we were talking about, in-house there, the inherent feeling of not being lovable, you know, I know I'm great.
Jamie Catto: I know I did great. This. I know I do great that this is little block. If you didn't get it as an infant, that basic transmission, that you're great. And we want you around here. Uh, there's a block. You can get all the fans in the world, all the lovely, thank you. Letters, all the awards, all the, everything. And it doesn't quite go in, you know, like it doesn't matter how much success you have, how much money you make.
Jamie Catto: There's still this inherent kind of, oh, it's there. I can almost feel that love with it. I can't. Anyway, when Rhonda saw that becoming nobody movie, you know, he kind of liked it and we chatted a bit, you know, like he was, it was a lot of me and this, then I could tell that he liked it, but he wasn't blown away by it.
Jamie Catto: But then he saw it a second time. And was really blown away by it. And he saw it with like a thousand other people in the Maui film festival, outdoors, where they were honoring him. And he suddenly fell a thousand people, all getting it and all getting that loving awareness transmission. And then he came on the zoom or the Skype, whatever, or whatever it was with me clinically.
Jamie Catto: I'm not sure I can tell you this without starting to cry again. Anyway, he, uh, he just looked at me and he just put his hands like this and he went in and had Jamie stopped me with thank you. And it was the most sincere, thank you. It's the first time I ever let him in, in a way that I'd done something. I dunno why it just put penetrated straight through all the membranes of resistance and humility and fake humility and neediness and no HSV.
Jamie Catto: He just went straight through a red light. When Luke Skywalker shoots that bullet into the death star, he gets it right in the hole, right into the middle of the desktop and explodes it a little stalls reference there. Um, yeah, that was my last moment with him. Was him saying this, thank you. That penetrated through all my resistance to be able to not receive it.
Jamie Catto: Um, and it really, it was mainly the only time I've ever really 100% received. You did something good here.
Kristina Wiltsee: Yeah. I have to say hearing you say his. Has the same effect. Like I, you're not saying it to me, you're just recalling the story, but like that. Thank you. It totally feel it totally feel it. That's amazing.
Jamie Catto: Um, yeah, it messed me up and I thought of it yesterday. Cause I just done a therapy session about just that I just started weeping. It was so good cry. So good. I really need to do it more. My heart's like cracking. Ah, yes, thank God. It was
Anna Stromquist: a beautiful, beautiful film. Beautiful film. It's my, it's my favorite documentary ever.
Anna Stromquist: It's at gaia.com for anyone who wants to watch it
Jamie Catto: you know, there are a lot of people that want to see it, like particularly it's one of the only films that touch upon death in a mainstream way.
Jamie Catto: So there's quite a few screenings in golf, people that have just like lost people who are losing people with themselves to die. Um, some people I work with are in that kind of area. I do a thing called a lovely gathering twice a week, which is, um, 2:00 PM New York time. 11:00 AM. LA time on Wednesdays, it's free, um, called the lovely gathering.
Jamie Catto: It's just a free zoom thing and it's 11:00 AM a time on Saturday. So there won't be much use to your American friends, but on Wednesdays it's American friendly timing. Also, there's a thing on, um, on the 21st, which is American friendly timing, which is a workshop I don't do very often. It's a one day workshop on the summer, on the window with the solstice called a little bit of death.
Jamie Catto: So it's all about a little bit of that going into some of that stuff. Um, but yeah, the lovely gathering for Americans would be every Wednesday at 2:00 PM, New York, 11 AMA, and it's just free on my zoom. People come and they just be present with each other. Just hang out, just have the human contact, read a poem, sing a song, or just listen.
Jamie Catto: Don't have to put your camera on. People often have the camera off. They just leave it on. As they're 19 minutes of lovely people in the background for the human connection from other people are feeling a bit isolated.
Anna Stromquist: W we'll put links in the show notes to anyone
Jamie Catto: listening. Sweet. What do you mean now, before we say
Anna Stromquist: goodbye quickly, your your bed, this pitches and bastards workshop looks amazing, but it's only live right now.
Anna Stromquist: Isn't that right?
Jamie Catto: Yeah. I guess we could do a, sort of an online, viable downloadable version.
Anna Stromquist: I was just curious if you ever were thinking about making it more, you know, or something like
Kristina Wiltsee: that. Yeah.
Anna Stromquist: More accessible to people that aren't remote.
Jamie Catto: So like a Bible downloadable thing.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah, yeah. Or, or just, yeah, an online, yeah.
Anna Stromquist: An online version of it or, or, yeah.
Kristina Wiltsee: And over that you run over like zoom or I don't want to just use brand names, but yeah, that, yeah.
Jamie Catto: Yeah. Okay. I'm in, if you get the people you booked the time of the.
Anna Stromquist: All right. That was a very gang thing.
Jamie Catto: I'm a yes. I mean, yes. If you can find 20 or so people give me the time I will be there and I will serve.
Kristina Wiltsee: All right. Y'all heard ear, like, you're interested in if you're interested in, ,
Anna Stromquist: we'll have a sign up sheet on our show notes and we'll try to collect 20 of you listening.
Anna Stromquist: Um, I think we get two to 3000 downloads per episode.
Kristina Wiltsee: Yeah. About, about 30, 3200 a week downloads a week.
Jamie Catto: What kinds of things do you guys not agree on
Anna Stromquist: between the two. Uh, we actually agree on everything. We're both fucked up. We're both amazing,
Kristina Wiltsee: but we, we, uh, the whole second season, we cover how we basically go through this massive argument and
Anna Stromquist: a huge fight while making the podcast, when we were in the drama triangle, and it was
Kristina Wiltsee: used to demonstrate the drama triangle.
Kristina Wiltsee: So we basically used our conflict to try and help people get through or help ourselves and
Anna Stromquist: others because I was playing rescuer and she was playing victim. And then she would call me prosecutor and then I would play victim. So that was really our only big. But we played it out on the podcast and people got to learn from it, which was awesome.
Jamie Catto: That's what Ron does. He uses his own melodrama as the DAMA
Anna Stromquist: melodrama over here. And the thing
Kristina Wiltsee: is, is that we do disagree on things, but we're good. We're okay with communicating it now. Whereas when we first started, we were doing a lot of rescuing. Like somebody would be like, yeah, I'm okay with that.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah.
Anna Stromquist: She's like, can we change the time? And I'd be like, it's really like, really bad for me, but I will change it. Cause I have to be the rescuer because if I'm amazing, she'll never leave me. Yeah.
Kristina Wiltsee: Yeah. And Anna, Anna likes to take out stutters and I like to keep them in, but I'm cool with, yeah. Like
Anna Stromquist: I like to edit the episode and make it polished and she likes
Kristina Wiltsee: Jamie. Jamie's got my
Anna Stromquist: back on that one. I'll just do I know, you know, a lot more about production than, than me or here.
Anna Stromquist: That's true. Well, I I'm, self-conscious about my stuttering because I will repeat myself when I talk. So I, I, I like to take those out because I'm trying to be blemish free. I'm perfect. So in the end, it's all just about loving me please, because we were all born with this Sunkara of unlovability. Right.
Jamie Catto: Okay. But the more you start to look so beautiful and powerful in it than other people who stopped to have the permission to not feel shame.
Anna Stromquist: That's true. That's true. That's true. But we might lose listeners. Just kidding.
Kristina Wiltsee: I mean, but that's the whole thing, right? Like it's so funny. Cause like, I think when I first started, I was feeling really, so I was like feeling self conscious.
Kristina Wiltsee: Cause I say ums, like I feel dead space with ums. Like really, sometimes they can be like epic ums that just lasts for so long. Right. And, uh, and, um, and, and, and all of a sudden I started to recognize, I just started to think of it as an own. Right. I was like, boom, be like that. Right. Cause
Anna Stromquist: depending on what your throat chakra throat
Kristina Wiltsee: chakra and I'm totally with it.
Kristina Wiltsee: And then, and then I also, and now at this point I actually try and one up myself with embarrassing stories about myself, because I found that humiliation and shame. When you, for me, when I, when I go out there with my own humiliation and shame, I can be anything. Right. If I'm telling a story about how I had to, like, I had explosive diarrhea while I was sitting down meditating one time and had to like sit there for an hour and I wanted to edit it out, by the way, edit it out.
Kristina Wiltsee: I was like, you better not fucking edit that out. I was like, that is my power man. Like that's me, that's me being as human as I can possibly be and not try and be this perfect thing that doesn't have those moments, you know? Cause they're funny for one, so.
Jamie Catto: Yeah.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I really hope people listening get interested and we'll make a sign up sheet and hopefully that will be an excuse to see you
Jamie Catto: again, even come over that.
Jamie Catto: Are you both in the same state? We're
Anna Stromquist: both in Georgia. You're Atlanta,
Jamie Catto: Georgia. That's where my friend speech lives. Oh,
Anna Stromquist: where does he live?
Jamie Catto: You know, the bad arrested development. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they're in Georgia. Yeah, we did a great song in Athens, Georgia with Michael Stipe from Arianne.
Anna Stromquist: Yeah. I saw you word with Lila downs.
Anna Stromquist: I love her.
Jamie Catto: That was in Mexico. Yeah, not at all. So look, I will see you guys soon. Behavior. Thanks for
Anna Stromquist: coming. Thanks for sharing your, your white male privilege with us because I know your subconscious, your wisdom. No, thank you. Hey, I can't do it like rom DAS, but thank you so much for making that film and thank you for sharing today.
Jamie Catto: Wonderful.
Kristina Wiltsee: All right, bye bye.