ZuluOne: Heal the Wounds You Didn't Know You Carried

07. Why Your Gut Is Lying to You: Trauma, Intuition, and Influence | Abbie Maroño

• ZuluOne • Episode 7

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What if your gut instincts aren't guiding you—but misleading you through unresolved trauma? In this thought-provoking episode on trauma healing, emotional regulation, and behavioral influence, we’re joined by Dr. Abbie Maroño, an internationally recognized behavioral scientist whose work has impacted elite agencies like the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security. Together, we explore how trauma shapes decision-making, the myth of love at first sight, the neuroscience behind emotional shutdown, and why true resilience isn't about being bulletproof—it's about being bouncy. Dr. Maroño brings a rare blend of scientific rigor and lived insight, with a background in forensic psychology, counterterrorism, and consulting for global intelligence agencies. Tune in to uncover how your brain, body, and beliefs are more entangled than you think—and what it truly takes to break generational cycles. If this episode resonates, drop a comment below, subscribe for future deep dives, and explore more transformative conversations at ZuluOne.

Find more from Abbie:
Work in Progress: https://a.co/d/5LjMVXK
Abbie Marono: https://www.abbiemarono.com/
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Zulu One Podcast. Today, we're joined by Dr Abby Marano, a leading expert in human behavior who has trained elite agencies like the FBI and the Secret Service. Together we explore psychology of trauma, how to rewire your brain for healthier habits, and whether love at first sight is real. Get ready to uncover hidden truths about resilience, decision-making and the power of self-awareness. Dr Abby, how are you?

Speaker 2:

I'm good, thank you, how are you?

Speaker 1:

good to see you again good to see you so last time we we met, we were at the social engineering conference in Orlando and, man, I was blown away by how you guys approach this subject of social engineering and how we can really use our biology to hack people in some way. Can you tell me a little bit of how? What was your journey getting to this place?

Speaker 2:

My background was forensic psychology. So I started publishing research papers in forensics when I was 19. And my first papers were on serial killer behaviors, looking at nonverbal communication. I'd started working with profilers from the FBI and I actually originally wanted to be an FBI agent. But then I published my first paper and I realized there's questions of human behavior that we don't know, that we don't know the answer to, and I can be a small part in finding out new knowledge. And when I published that paper and I'm like this paper tells us something, even if it's just something small, that wasn't known before I did that and I just got hooked on that feeling. So I knew absolutely I want to be a scientist, I want to be an academic, I want to be in the sciences and absolutely psychology. But my background was serial killers and forensics. And then I moved into counterterrorism. I did some stuff on cannibalism, so I did a lot of the really dark stuff.

Speaker 2:

But I ended up doing my PhD looking at non-verbals and elicitation, and that's really where all of this came from, where I didn't just want to understand how we can use X to create Y. So if I do one thing, so say I mimic your behavior and then it creates cooperation. That's usually kind of what we get. Okay, if you want this result, this is what you should do. What we don't always get is the why. And that was the thing that was really key to me, because if you don't know why and how something works, how would you know what hurdles you're overcoming or what hurdles you're not overcoming? That, if you did understand, you could do so much better.

Speaker 2:

And I compare it to going to the doctor and saying you know, I have these symptoms, you know they're really causing me distress. And the doctor goes here, take a pill, don't know how the pill works, but your symptoms should go away. You wouldn't really be comfortable with that knowledge. So, when it comes to influence and persuasion, why don't we ask yeah, but how does this work? And that's where I decided I need to know more than just psychology. I need to understand how the brain works, I need to understand how the body works, I need to understand how the mind works. So I took a it's called a biopsychosocial approach, where I take some biology, psychology, sociology and I combine it all together to try and understand this overall picture of how human beings make decisions, so we can influence them, but understand how we are influencing them and that's so fascinating because I'm by by trade, I'm an IT cyber security guy.

Speaker 1:

Right, that's what I do and that's how our paths met or crossed in some way. Right, and on the side I do this weird, you know, unresolved trauma work and it's systems, right, you start thinking of everything as systems. And when you said that, I was like, oh, of course, that's the hardware and the software and the kind of environment all interacting on top of each other, all interacting on top of each other and in some way it creates almost, I want to say a momentum, right, that it's like it creates. It's like the chicken and the egg. It's both. Right, it's like it's a both kind of scenario. It's the chicken meets the egg at some point.

Speaker 2:

Such a great way to put it, and we think of human behavior as linear. Do this and this will happen. But my research papers were using behavior sequence analysis, so I took a sequence approach of okay, well, if I do A, will I get B, or will I get C, or will I get D? Will I get a variation? And then you look at feedback loops.

Speaker 2:

So it's all about how one influences the next chain, but how it kind of influences itself and goes back on itself. And human behavior is so the same, because there's so many things going on at once to think that I can just do X, and every single time I do it I'm going to get Y. And that's the approach that we're taught, especially in non-verbals. You know, if you smile, you're going to have this effect on people. Or if you see, the worst is, if you see this behavior, it means someone is lying every time you see it.

Speaker 2:

Those things drive me crazy because humans are so much more complicated than that. For one thing, if I say do this and if I say if you do this, it's going to have the same effect on everyone. Don't trust a word I say, because human behavior is complicated and humans are complicated. You can say this is likely to have this effect, but what are the other variables? And that's where that understanding how it works and why it works is so important, because you can kind of counteract that effect and instead of just looking for one thing, you can look for variations and you can understand things at a greater depth and then you can be more effective.

Speaker 1:

That's such a good point because it's like you know, it's almost a probabilistic kind of math right, it's like there's a high likely chance that this is going to happen.

Speaker 1:

And I have this concept of an unresolved trauma index in business, in a culture, in a person, and then they're almost unresolved trauma resiliency factor that it's. You know, if somebody has a very difficult childhood but they don't have the mechanism through religion, Kung Fu, psychology, whatever thing that they do, right, Mickey Mouse, whatever the thing is if they don't have the ability to break that generational curse, what we call generational curses or patterns, right, the momentum will go towards creating destruction that could be amplified by a myriad of environmental factors.

Speaker 2:

Yep, and this is why I was so interested when we spoke at the conference, because a lot of the work that I do, including my first book that was published, is all about trauma and trauma recovery. And, using your example, if things were that simple, you would have two children who go through the same experience with the same outcome. And if we use the example of me and my sister, we both grew up in the same environment. My mom was very emotionally and verbally abusive and we both had the same struggles to varying degrees, but we had the same struggles. Now, if things were simple, we would both, in the future, be the same.

Speaker 2:

My sister is very hyper hyper dependent. She's in a relationship and she does not know how to function outside of that relationship. So if things were simple, I'd be the same. I'm the opposite. I'm so hyper independent that you know you try and pick up my shopping bag for me and I'm like do you think that I can't do this myself? Give it to me, I can do it.

Speaker 2:

I remember I got sick and one of our team said to me oh, you should have told me I could have made you soup. And I said why would I do that? I have hands Like I'm sick, but I can go make my own soup, you don't need to look after me, whereas my sister would be the opposite. And it's because there's such a myriad of other factors involved when it comes to human behavior and it's so interesting to pick apart those extraneous variables to try and understand us so that, once you understand, you can influence. Because it's like if you don't know how to drive a car, you can't go on a road trip, and the road trip is influence. So why are we trying to make this journey without understanding the mechanisms of how to actually make a human being make decisions? And that's why I just find it so interesting that why question, when it comes to science, when it comes to any application, security, trauma, anything you've got to dig to that deeper level to be able to use it more effectively that's really interesting.

Speaker 1:

I'm I'm just fascinated by this conversation because you know, there's what I, what I've seen is that there's some hard-coded switches and correct me if I'm wrong, you're the expert, right, I'm not. I'm not the expert in any capacity, but there's some hard-coded switches that when your presentation at the social engineering factor, you know like you were talking about, you know like opening the neck and the, the kind of body language things that's like this is biologically hard coded in who we are right, but there's also like a systemic influence on it and then a social, social effect on what that looks like. And so you can. I think most people think that one of them is the answer rather than being D. All of the above kind of situation, right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, and this is a really common mistake that I see, because, especially when it comes to when people talk about male and feminine and male and female roles they talk about well, the men have this provider role. Female roles they talk about well, the men have this provider role, so they have resources and women, they get choice. And then you see people like Andrew Tay and all these like influencers talking about body count and why you know, men should cheat because it's evolved. What they forget is that evolutionary theory has two parts. You have the hardwired instinct and, when I was talking about influence, the brain and our genes. Our genes, as every human being, are nearly identical. We have 99 percent genetic or 99.9 genetically identical genes to every other human being on this planet. That's just how we're wired, so there are absolutely things that will be the same for everyone because they're biologically predetermined. However, the difference between us and things like chimps is their brains are genetic, so they're born with a brain and it doesn't really change in structure and function. Now, human brains, they change in structure and function based on our experiences, so we're born with a brain. We all have the same basic things. I'm not going to lose my prefrontal cortex, but the way my brain functions and wires and things like my gray matter density, the structures of certain regions, they change and adapt based on my experience. They change and adapt based on my experience. So that's why we're so experience dependent. And then going back to that evolved argument of yeah, but these are our evolved behaviors. There's two parts to that. We have the ultimate causations, which is the biologically predetermined factor, but that's half the picture. Biologically predetermined factor, but that's half the picture. The other half is a proximal factor, meaning our experiences, our personality. So if I donate to charity, the ultimate causation is that biological predetermined factor of I do it because my ancestors who did it? They were more pro-social, so they were liked by the group, they got more resources, so they survived. But that's not why I do it now. I do it because it feels good, because I want to. So that feeling is proximal. And then say you have, let's go back to make choice.

Speaker 2:

Say influencers argue that you know women want a man that is strong, that has these traits. Okay, because that would, in our evolutionary history, increase survival. But the proximal argument is what if they have gone through an abusive relationship? What if they've witnessed these individuals not providing them what they need. What if they have done self-growth and they have a lot of self-respect and they want something more from themselves? They value other traits. Those two factors, the proximal and the ultimate, are constantly connecting with each other. But people forget one half of it and that's why those arguments can seem to make sense, because they argue them and you're like that actually does make a lot of sense from science. That is an above function. But it's because they misunderstand evolutionary theory and they forget the other half of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think you were. You were. You were the one that said it's like everybody has the hands on the elephant. You know and they don't know it's an elephant, right, if there's too close to it. You're just looking at this is a gray wall, right, and it's like this is a gray wall that has texture and hair. It's very weird, you know, kind of, and they're absolutely right, it is a gray wall if you're standing close enough to it. But you take a step back and you take a further step back and you're like oh, it's an elephant, right. And it's like really understanding the whole picture and I know you're a specialist in the brain and how the brain wiring works, right and do you see, and going kind of back to the chicken and the egg question, is that, do you see that how that proximal experience, right, or that proximal influence, can activate certain parts of the brain in one way or another or have influence on the biological wiring of a person? Or is that? Are they? Are they completely different?

Speaker 2:

Yep. So let's go to trauma, for example. So we all have the same basic structures and we know the prefrontal cortex is really important for critical thinking, emotional regulation, things like that. Now say, I go through trauma and I enter a freeze response. So we have the fight, flight and freeze. And the freeze response is an evolved response where the brain says if I run I'm going to get hurt. If I fight I'm going to get hurt. So the only other option is to stay immobile because if there's a predator and I run or fight I might die. If I freeze, it might think I'm dead and leave me alone. So we have this evolved response. We're going to a freeze response. But we can get stuck in that response. So then it can change our brain.

Speaker 2:

So people who have been stuck in the freeze response, often what happens is you see a dysfunction in parts of the regions. So during a freeze response, broker's area which controls speech, it reduces in function. It can completely shut down. Individuals who have gone through, say, sexual assault and they're asked why didn't you shout, why didn't you ask for help? And they say I don't know. And often that's used against them as well. They're lying and actually it's the way the brain tries to survive because it tries to shut down all unnecessary functions and part of that is shutting down part of the vocal cords, part of that, shutting down part of Broca's area which controls speech. So our brain in survival situations like that and this is just one example of thousands it adapts itself when it changes and then say let's go to something more extreme, like emotional shutdown.

Speaker 2:

And emotional shutdown is say your brain is saying to you hey, feel this emotion, you've gone through trauma. And it's saying please deal with this, please deal with this. And say you're feeling shame and it's hard, and you don't. You suppress it. You go no, no, no, I won't feel you. And you try and make the pain go away by saying it's not there. Eventually, what the brain does, it goes okay, you won't feel me, we'll turn it off.

Speaker 2:

Then and you see activation in areas controlling emotional regulation and the emotional aspect of memory and self-processing, which is the insula. So if you ask me who are you, and I'm thinking who am I, my insula is going to light up. But those regions are all connected to that trauma and because I don't want to feel it enough, and I'm pushing and pushing and pushing, the brain starts to shut them down. Now the regions that are responsible for negative emotions are also responsible for positive.

Speaker 2:

So that's when you get emotional shutdown and you see trauma victims who you look at them and you can almost not understand and you don't get why? Why are you cold, why are you numb, why are you empty? You might see someone who's just lost someone and they seem unemotional and it's really hard to comprehend what's going on internally. Is they're in so much pain that to, in order to keep themselves alive, the brain says if pain is too much, let's shut it down. And that's where that emotional numbness comes from. And that is a biological response. And that's why these things are so confusing, because we don't know what's going on inside.

Speaker 2:

Often and let's go back to that sexual assault example it can create a lot of really difficult feelings after that, because you might have some self-blame of why didn't I do these things? Why am I feeling this way? What is wrong with me? And that's what I often hear with trauma victims of I'm dysfunctional, I've malfunctioned, I'm broken. And actually, when you teach them the why and you say, biologically, this is what's going on and you can't think yourself out of this situation, you can't go, you turn back on and then it goes. Okay, it is much, much harder than that to change that biological response. It is much, much harder than that to change that biological response. And when you teach people that why you see a lot of self-blame disappear because they start to realize actually my body was keeping itself alive. It's not that something's wrong with me.

Speaker 1:

What came up when you were saying that is that it seems like it's the same mechanism and correct me if I'm wrong that would create the perpetrator as well.

Speaker 1:

Right, if you shut down that emotional you know, if we're emotionally available and connected and that because of childhood trauma or something that happened when the person was a child and you had to shut that down, you could grow up to turn into that perpetrator that doesn't feel any empathy or connection or doesn't have an emotional response to the violence or to whatever that's happening.

Speaker 1:

And so I'm always very curious of that entanglement between the victim and the perpetrator. Right that you probably know more about this than I do, but in our work we see a lot that if and this is not to victim blame in any way, right, but that victim wound, depending on what it is, can turn into a perpetrator wound if it's not dealt with appropriately and that's and it may not be the same, but it may rhyme, right, that that is like a mother that was emotionally abused may become emotionally unavailable to her child when it during a critical time, and then that arc is all the way from, you know, psychopathy and becoming a serial killer, right to somebody that just simply has a wound and everything in between. So I'm fascinated by the dynamic between the perpetrator and the victim and the perpetrator, and how that cycle perpetuates in a family system or in systems in general.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and there's a lot of learning theory to it as well, because we repeat what we know. So if your understanding of the world is one way, say you grow up in an abusive home and say you witness your mom and dad being abusive to each other or one to the other, that's where love lies for you. Okay, mom and dad are my model of what love is, what parenting looks like. And as kids, like I said, our brain morphology changes based on our experiences. Neurons that fire together, wire together. Kids' brains are going okay, how do I understand this world? Because I'm going to need to interact with it as I get older. I'm going to need to find my way in this world, so I need to know what to expect. I can then model that. So we're looking around at these relationships and say again they're abusive, so you go. Okay, so abuse and love they coincide. So now, as you go into the world and you meet someone that reflects those behaviors, we have to remember that familiarity is comfortable. It doesn't have to be healthy.

Speaker 2:

It resonates, it's comfortable because it's predictable. So the brain goes oh, I know how this works. So someone starts to treat you in a certain way and you go yeah, this makes sense. And you can get yourself into those repeat patterns. Now say you have a different person who witnessed a healthy relationship, or you have a person who witnessed someone intervening in that negative relationship and taught you this is not healthy, it shouldn't look this way. When you then meet someone later that exemplifies those behaviors, your brain goes we know how this works, we know that this isn't the right pattern. So you go no, thank you.

Speaker 2:

And then these cycles really perpetuate. Because when you get into these negative relationships and when you don't have a strong emotional support system, not only do you not know how to regulate your own emotions, which is so key to interacting with the world Emotional regulation is one of the most important factors for a healthy life but you also then start to really embed those negative self-narratives. So people start to break you down and you start to believe them. So then it starts to really increase that cycle. You start to see someone who is abusive. You begin the cycle because it's familiar, and then the abuse breaks you down. So you stay in it. And that's why often, if you get built up and you leave, very common that they get back into it unless you give them a way to rebuild a sense of self and you have to teach them to recognize unhealthy behaviors.

Speaker 2:

But just knowing this is unhealthy isn't enough. It's really, like I said, emotional regulation and having a strong sense of self, because it's so easy to get back into that cycle. And when we talk about those neurons that wire together, we think, okay, remove yourself from that cycle and then we can start a new one. But it doesn't work that way, because if I have these two say, I have a pattern here wired and I want this healthy pattern I can't just switch because they're wrapped up together. I have to unwire one wire, a new one, unwire one wire, a new one, unwire one, and over and over and over again, because they have to continuously refire. That's why creating new patterns isn't just about something new. It's continuously recognizing the old one and purposely undoing it and then redoing a new one, time and time again before you can get into something healthier this is fascinating the you know a lot of stuff that comes in trauma workshops, the the family constellations, that.

Speaker 1:

That that I particularly am fond of is a lot of inner child work. Right, when trauma happens at a certain age, you disconnect from that child, right, and it disconnects with what you were talking about, that portion of your brain. You can see it in the workshops, like the person disconnects from that in order to survive. Right, and that reintegration process of bringing those two together, right, the person with their inner child has such a profound influence on their life moving forward. Because I think this is and I'm kind of out there when it comes to this but I think our core vulnerability as human beings is that unresolved trauma load. Right, it's like you can influence people.

Speaker 1:

Right, know, there's, there's whole agencies in the world that influence people based on elicitation, like they're what's the mice? The mice stuff. Right, is like if you have a high mice score, let's call it a my score. Right, which is money influence, is it coercion and ego? Is that? I can't. I can't remember what the four are, but if you find somebody that's in a position of power and they probably got in that position of power because they're, you know high ego, whatever that looks like you. Can you know through these methodologies, find out where their vulnerability is and work that out and and gain influence over that person figured out? Healing unresolved trauma is a matter of national security. Yeah, on the individual level, to be influenced as an individual, as a social level, to be influenced as a society, because I think systems have trauma in them. It can lead to tearing down Western structures that are maintaining the world order in some capacity right now.

Speaker 2:

A large part of that is because of self-awareness. So, in order to heal your trauma, you have to do a huge amount of self-reflection, a huge amount of continued self-reflection, and through that you increase your self-awareness. Now, if you have wounds that are there, they're expressing themselves and you press them down. You don't deal with them. You are living in a state of denial, to small degrees or large degrees, however, but you are living in a state of denial, so you're not consciously aware of why you're making the choices that you're making. Now, none of us are 100% aware of the choices we're making all the time. Most of the decisions we make are unconscious, but with a higher degree of self-awareness when someone tries to bring something to you. Because you are reflective, you know more often why you are making that choice and say someone who knows their own tendencies.

Speaker 2:

So if I say I'm attracted to unhealthy partners, but I'm very self-aware that I have inner work to do and I'm doing it, when I feel this emotion towards a person that I know is bad for me, I can stop and question myself and before I make that behavior, I stop and I think okay, what is it that's driving me to do this?

Speaker 2:

Because I feel one way but I'm not going to act on my feelings having me to do this because I feel one way but I'm not going to act on my feelings. Now, if I don't do that inner work and I don't have that self-reflection and my emotions are saying you want this thing, I'm not going to question it, I'm going to go for the thing that I want because that's what my emotions are telling me to do. And that's where it becomes really dangerous with influence, because you're going to be made to feel a certain way and you don't stop and recognize that. I know this is my pattern. Let me think before behaving on emotion, because emotions say do it now, do it right now, because that they make us feel like we have to act on them. So, and like I said, a large part of that is all because of self-awareness, which comes from that self-reflection.

Speaker 1:

I love to say when logic is not present, entanglement to unresolved trauma is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And and this is such a such a cool conversation, because you see people that are dating the same person, right, and it's like you know, talking about relationships right, they deal they.

Speaker 1:

They're dating their mother right, right, let's. Or they're dating their father or whatever. That is right. You see, them kind of find these cycles and they date the same person over and over and over again. It's like, yeah, there you have a father wound or a mother wound or kind of whatever that thing is and you're fine. You're trying to heal that, that that dynamic in the other person. When you know your triggers are your breadcrumbs to healing, to figure out where your vulnerabilities are.

Speaker 2:

And, like I said, you'll never know a hundred percent all of your triggers because there's so many things that are unconscious. But just because we won't know all of them doesn't mean we shouldn't know as many as we can, because it's like you can go through a normal situation and someone just starts acting completely erratically and you can be like that's so strange. But for them they might not understand why they're having that reaction either if they haven't done that inner work, and it could be because of a completely unrelated trigger. But when they have done that inner work, when they feel themselves having that reaction, they can stop themselves. And this is why it's so important, not just on the individual, because I have one book called Work in Progress. That is all about our own trauma responses, post-trauma behavior, because we often see other people behaving in ways that we don't understand.

Speaker 2:

And this came because I was an expert or I was hired as an expert witness for the Conor McGregor trial. I was on the side of Nikki DeHand. They were playing her CCTV footage and she was behaving in ways that were very strange and I could see her looking distressed because she did not understand her behavior, she could not remember and she was so just much in shame and confused and she said I don't know why I'm behaving that way. It's so out of character. The jury they had a face that looked like this behavior is weird and I could feel in the room and just reading comments on social media and stuff later on people are like well, she's lying, because no one that was went through what she said she went through would behave this way. But I was sat there in that room wanting to scream because I was just thinking this makes so much sense. Everything that was shown was a freeze response, a fawn response and delayed emotional processing. It made so much sense.

Speaker 2:

But because we don't always seek to educate that why we just see things on surface level and we go, nah, doesn't make sense. Because it doesn't seem likely. And that likely is based on these scripts that we have very basic scripts that seem to make sense about how people should behave and again, it's more complicated than that. So when people don't fit that script, we go. They're the problem we don't often go. I wonder what's going on in their brain that could possibly explain this behavior. I wonder what's going on psychologically and that's why I'm, just like you, so passionate about educating these factors because it's so important, not just for empathy of others, but for self-blame too, on both sides.

Speaker 1:

It's so essential essential, married in a long-term relationship. That person passes away, the spouse has a high probability of dying within the next two years. Right, but it's not only the spouse, it's everybody in that person's circle, right, I've always looked at it almost like a Richter scale. Right, depending on how profound the trauma is in a system, it echoes out to the different people in that social network. Right, and I think the same thing happens with you. Know how you see sardines in the ocean evading a predator? Right, like, there's some type of like.

Speaker 1:

You know if you're from a family of origin? Right, and that family of origin has this let's call it systemic momentum. Right, that has a subconscious connection between all the members and that is triggered by an external event that happens in the future. You may revert to the behavior that mom was doing when dad was abusive. Or you might revert to, you know if grandpa was a violent drunk. You know, or you know an alcoholic or something, that you're reverting to that behavior, that you may find yourself in a new scenario because it resonates and say people play their part.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Without judgment. It's like everybody plays their part and it's so odd to see that behavior. Say you know, what you were saying is like this doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because you're close to the elephant, you're looking at the gray wall rather than seeing the whole elephant itself.

Speaker 2:

With the chains. It's the same when it comes to suicide. You see these suicide chains with actual someone who has committed suicide and then the chain of others that do so too, but then you also see it with just deteriorating mental health. So it's not just that extreme factor. There's so many other things that come from that chain and they continue on and on and on and on. And there's so many ways that we perpetuate this cycle and it can be through the learning theory and it can be biologically, and then it can also be just if you have gone through something, you're going to react in a certain way and then you just teach your children the same thing and you teach them that that is right. And there's so many reasons why this cycle perpetuates. And that's why I always say just seek out education.

Speaker 2:

Even if you don't think that you have any maladaptive patterns, seek out education anyway because those cycles are so familiar.

Speaker 2:

So if you're used to behaving in one way and used to thinking in one way, used to experiencing something, you might not know that it's not healthy because it's so familiar to you and it feels comfortable inside.

Speaker 2:

Because it's so familiar to you and it feels comfortable inside and there's only maybe you see someone else like I remember this. It hit me when I went to university and everyone was talking about their upbringings and their family, and then I would say something about mine. There's like a silence in the room and I'm looking around and you're like something isn't right and they're like that's not normal, and you have that moment of that wasn't normal because it's all you knew. So having good people around you that hold you accountable is so important, but just generally seeking out education on well, how can I grow, how can I be better, can sometimes open your eyes to things that you did not realize. Like if you're struggling with having healthy relationships and you're thinking, but I'm not doing anything wrong. Just seek out information from relationship experts like real relationship scientists, not influencers on Instagram. Stay away from TikTok, please but seek out actual scientists, books and information and you might start to realize why you're not having healthy relationships, but things that you did not know were an issue until then.

Speaker 1:

That's such a good point and you know people are. I think we're at the precipice of a kind of an awakening for understanding how trauma works in systems and I'm so, so glad that you're doing the work that you're doing, because it really understands the hardware of why we have these connections and why we have these patterns and it's very, you know, very, easy to understand and I was. I was just so impressed by your presentation is like how detailed it was of understanding the mechanisms that are used, and you know, I know you've done some work with, you know some special agencies out there. What does that look like? How do you navigate those waters of teaching people how to deal with these triggers or psychopathy, or figuring out how the mechanisms of the brain works?

Speaker 2:

For example, I was just in Seattle training secret service, homeland Security, FBI. Now what I like to teach is I always try and teach a basic understanding of the nervous system, because most behavior comes from the nervous system.

Speaker 2:

So I want to make sure I do a myth-busting session first always a myth-busting session, because if you don't start on the same page, I might teach something and they're going to then add that to the knowledge they have or they're going to look at it as the knowledge they have, as the framework through which they understand what I say. So I try and do a myth busting session, just so we're all kind of on the same page, and then teach the real basics of you don't need to be a neuroscientist I'm not a neuroscientist, I'm a behavioral scientist. You don't need to be a scientist at all to understand these basics. And again, those were my purposes with my books to take complicated things and make them as simple as possible, because my motto for everything I do is making science accessible. And I take that when I train these agencies. You take the real complicated science of threat detection and you pin it down to what are the basics of the nervous system and why is behavior linked to the nervous system? So we can understand where it comes from. Linked to the nervous system, so we can understand where it comes from. So if you see one behavior, if I teach you, you see like 10 different behaviors and they mean these things. You're going to try and connect all those 10 different things individually. If I teach you the framework of where behavior comes from, from the nervous system, and because of that these things occur when you see them, you're not trying to get that really specific knowledge. You can kind of go back to that framework of understanding and it's just such a better approach when it comes to being a practitioner.

Speaker 2:

And I thought that federal agencies would be really unreceptive to this kind of teaching. And it's completely the opposite. And I went to teach. I've taught them elicitation. I've never done trauma recoveries with these agencies. It's always non-verbals influence, that kind of thing. And I was at an event recently and I had a book published and they said I can't wait, we're going to use it to train our agents for elicitation. And I said probably want to hold up. My elicitation. Book isn't out until next year. My book is actually on emotion regulation and trauma. So I thought the response would be okay, we'll just get the other one then. And actually it was the complete opposite. They really wanted that self-growth knowledge because they deal with such difficult things and that information about self-help and emotional regulation and trauma isn't always available to them in an accessible manner. So they're very, very receptive to it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that being able to connect to your intuition is a superpower right, very receptive to it. Yeah, I think that being able to connect to your intuition is a superpower right, and I have this, this theory, that your intuition is hidden underneath all your unresolved trauma and the more you deal with it, the more you can connect with that intuition and call it resonance, call it, you know, whatever mirroring thing that you're doing with other people to to not have those triggers activate you and blind you on that predetermined path that you've already, that you've already set yourself on, and I really do think that that's so cool that you're doing that work, because you know if we can understand and and because this is kind of kind of leading to my next question is like if we can understand social patterns yeah we can start getting kind of doing some root cause analysis of where we can figure out those things and create actual social you know policies to be able to support that, rather than doing it.

Speaker 1:

I'm a big fan of Freakonomics. Have you ever read that book, freakonomics? No, I don't think so. Looking at different phenomenons that happen in the world and how they were correlated, right, they was like how do sumo wrestlers and standardized testing cheat? You know? What do they have in common? And so they go through these exercises of understanding how little things have these systemic entanglements. I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Almost like the butterfly effect.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, almost like the butterfly effect, exactly. And so you know, if we think that we're individuals, like those minnows, right, that are evading, or the fish evading the predator, right, that the temperature of the water and the water has influence on us, right, the acidity of the water and also the predator has an influence on us, and then also the other minnows that we're in or the other sardines that we're in in the system with, if we understand that all those things have to do, let's start looking at the elephant and create social policies or social movements towards dealing with understanding the whole elephant and how to feed it and how to take care of it and how to create more connection rather than destruction, because if that elephant goes down the path of, you know, going rampant, it can destroy villages and have massive effects that create lasting social wounds that we'll have forever, right.

Speaker 2:

Well, I love what you said about intuition as well. Because that unresolved trauma I get a question all the time of well, how do I know what's a gut instinct and what's a trauma response? And they can feel very similar. Because we're always told to trust our gut and we should trust our gut because a process called neuroception is that our nervous system is always scanning the environment and it's sending signals to our brain to say this is safe, this is not. That's why, when you enter a situation that's sometimes not safe or a person is interacting with you and you get that feeling of I don't want to be here and I don't know what it is, but something isn't right, that's a gut feeling. And it's usually those unconscious signals that are saying to you get out. But you don't consciously know why. And those aresaving, those are absolutely life-saving. But we also have those unconscious traumas that it might say get out, get out, get out. But it's not life-saving, it's maladaptive because it's unresolved trauma. So it's really important to do that work so you can learn to trust your gut.

Speaker 2:

And there are little things like a gut instinct is kind of quiet. It kind of slowly builds and sneaks up on you. It doesn't have that you absolutely have to react to me right now. When you have that feeling of react right now, right now, right now, and there isn't an evident threat, this is all about. You know, if there's an evident threat, gut feelings and intuition are kind of irrelevant. It's an obvious threat. We're talking about when something doesn't appear wrong but it feels it, and when it feels like you have to absolutely right this. Second deal with this that's usually a trauma response, because that's when our nervous system is saying it's going AWOL and saying get me out now. That's when you kind of have to question it of. This might be a trauma response rather than that sneaky app of something here is wrong. But again, unless we do that inner work and be self-reflective and try and deal with those core wounds, it can become really difficult to trust our gut.

Speaker 1:

And that's such a good point. It's that the trauma muddies up the signal. Right, it muddies up the signal. And the same thing happens with love at first sight. You know, you see, you know like, oh, I love at first sight, it's like whatever that thing is that you're resonating with in that person's system is the thing that says I need to grab this and become like, I need to heal this, right. And so everything in your being is saying I logic again, logic is not present.

Speaker 1:

Unresolved trauma is and rather than building on trust and building on a relationship and an exchange, it just becomes this. You know, just, you get hit by lightning and it's like, it's the same, it's the same mechanism, right, like what you were, and I'm making an assumption here, but it seems like it comes from the same place. The same mechanism that has a negative feeling also has a positive feeling. So that can muddy those signals to say your intuition is is muddied up and that's why people say I don't trust myself, like I don't trust my, you can't. But obviously it's layered with all this stuff that's telling you to go left when you're supposed to go right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I love that example of love at first sight because I did a whole podcast on that, because, as someone who grew up watching Disney, I wish love at first sight was real and you see people that go. Yeah, but it was love at first sight with me and my partner and it worked out perfectly. So obviously it's true. Now you can't use examples like that as why it's true for everyone. Just coincidentally or luckily, you met and you developed a relationship. That doesn't mean that you are the rule. Now.

Speaker 2:

Love at first sight can't possibly be possible because you don't know that person, you don't know their character, you don't know how they act when they're angry. You don't know that person. You don't know their character. You don't know how they act when they're angry. You don't know what their core values are. You don't know what their morals are. You don't know their religious views if that's important to you, you don't know their routines if that's important to you.

Speaker 2:

You cannot possibly know this person in any way, shape or form by the first meeting. But you can feel like you do and what it is is just attraction at first sight, bonding at first sight. It is not love at first sight, but it can feel like it. And again those cases of people go no, me and my husband were love at first sight. No, you weren't. You were strong attraction at first sight and you developed love from that. And a lot of that, like you said, is we don't trust our gut, so we're acting on those instincts where our brain is saying, oh, we like this. This is familiar, but it's usually very maladaptive.

Speaker 1:

You know, that puts into context is like I think that the people that that happened with had enough social infrastructure to help both of them grow through whatever. That is right, because I think people can process through trauma, through religion, through, you know, meditation, through yoga, whatever their thing is, but that they in some way were had the tools to be able to process through those things. And I would imagine and every great leader that I've ever met in my life has gone through hell and they through either a 12-step program, through coaching, or through finding religion or finding whatever infrastructure that is able to give you an infrastructure to be able to deal with that trauma and heal it. Whatever way that is. But there's an adaptive skill that happens that people are like their resiliency index. You know I don't know if you know, some people talk about grit and I think it ends up being like your developed skill set to be able to deal with exactly what we're talking about during this conversation.

Speaker 2:

I hate the idea of being bulletproof and people talk about being successful. Develop skillset to be able to deal with exactly what we're talking about during this conversation. I hate the idea of being bulletproof and people talk about being successful. You have to be bulletproof to be empowered. You have to be bulletproof and actually truly successful people, genuinely powerful people they're not bulletproof. They have gone through hell and they have been on the ground and they haven't just gone no, no, doesn't matter. Because they have learned the strength to fight, to get back up, and it's that strength, that power to get back up, that allows them to be that successful.

Speaker 2:

So I say scrap bulletproof. The actual magic is in being bouncy. Yes, so it's. It's not not falling down, it's getting back up. You can hit the ground but you come back up twice as hard and that's the resilience factor and it's, like you said, most strong people. They have gone through hell. They've gone through really difficult things because they have learned that they have to find a way to get through this and it's those skills sets that allow them to adapt to life. Now, that doesn't mean you can't be successful if you haven't gone through trauma, but it just means that people who have gone through difficult experiences tend to have more resilience factors if they have pulled themselves out of it and then they can adapt that and approach other difficult experiences with that same level of strength.

Speaker 1:

And I think it's like you know how pain is relative, you know, like the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. I think it's the same thing. It's the mechanism of how you adapt and deal with it, right, it's like some people have to go through hell a bunch of times to get there through their, you know, stubborn head and I'm talking about me, right? This is my particular case, right, that I have to go. I have to hit my head against the wall a million times and be like maybe it's me, not the wall, right, yeah, and through that process, and some people just like, oh, walls are hard, so I don't have to hit my head against it, I'm going to learn from, from the future, right, but it's the same mechanism, right?

Speaker 1:

If you have to do it a million times to be able to figure it out, or you learn the first time the mechanism exists, right, that that operating system upgrade is already in there and ingrained, and it's just such a cool point to look at these things. I'm just fascinated by this conversation. So where do you see the future of this work going? With machine learning, ai, like what do you see the future of this work going with machine learning, ai, like what do you see kind of? How do you see these worlds converging?

Speaker 2:

in some way. I think most areas will converge with AI, and it definitely scares me, but I think, when it comes to doing the inner work, there is no replacement and we can have AI help us in terms of okay, create a guide for me, create a program for me, but the one thing that AI can never do is deal with your trauma. It can never get in, I mean, unless I say can never get inside your brain. But let's see what Elon Musk does with Neuralink.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly so maybe it will.

Speaker 2:

It can't do the inner work for you. Yeah, exactly so maybe it will. It can't do the inner work for you. And it does scare me because, technically, brains are just electrical signals. You know, that's how we think. We just communicate by electrical signals between neurons in a synapse. So technically, it would make sense if we could program the brain and understand it like a computer.

Speaker 2:

And I do think that Elon Musk is onto something incredibly huge. I mean he's, you know, regardless of your opinions of the man, he's a genius and I think that the work that he's doing with robotics and with Neuralink truly incredible, scary. But I think it makes a lot of sense when we think about how the brain works with the electrical signals. But I still stick to my point of when it comes to trauma recovery, I don't think there will ever be a full replacement for just sitting with yourself reflecting, journaling, consciously monitoring your own behaviors and you doing the work. We're always looking for someone else to do it for us. Like I compare when I talk about therapy, we go to therapy and say, okay, well, the therapist is going to heal me.

Speaker 2:

No, no the therapist shows you where to step and you have to make the steps. They're not walking for you. We expect to go and they do the walk. No, they show you. Okay, here's to go. Go here, go here. You still have to do it yourself and I don't think there's ever going to be a replacement so there's um.

Speaker 1:

Are you familiar with jacob collier?

Speaker 1:

I'm not very good with names, I'm just like he's he's from england originally and he's this, just, you know, savant musician, incredible musician, right, it just comes up with, you know incredible arrangementsvant musician, incredible musician, right, it just comes up with. You know incredible arrangements. And he does this thing where he he's. He's at, I think, the O2 center in in London, right, so he's at O2 and he's this. All the whole audience has has never done this before. And he started doing this at his, at his concerts, and he started having the concert match his voice in harmony, right, like almost like a choir, right, and then he brings the choir up and then he brings the choir down and then brings one side up and the other side down and they're harmonizing with each other.

Speaker 1:

And these are not trained singers, right, approach. You know this singularity with AI or the, you know general intelligence or whatever that looks like. We're going to really understand that we're not just one individual units, that we are socially connected in some phenomenological way, right, that the closer we are to that discovery, the more we're going to say, oh, there's a part of the equation, there's a dark matter, for lack of a better, better term that we have, we're just at the surface of scratching right now to really understand how this subconscious communication works, and you see it in football teams that can predict each other's movements and they create a synergy. And where is synergy emergent from? In consciousnesses, you know, in general consciousness right, that you see, I grew up in, I went to a Catholic, an all-boy Catholic school, and there would be fevers that would happen at school, right, a kid got a yo-yo and then everybody's got a yo-yo and then there's yo-yo tournaments and there's these, these like waves of in systems.

Speaker 1:

There's these waves of resonance that happen. And I think that that's a phenomenon that happens in all systems and that the closer we get to understanding AI and this technology, that the closer we're going to become to that discovery of this hidden, dark matter that we can't really understand where it's coming from, that presents itself in all social systems.

Speaker 2:

Yet when we forget, it's not just each other we're connected to. We're connected to really the environment, the universe, and that might sound very out there, and I'm probably the least out there person because I need evidence. I won't change my opinion unless you give me evidence, and I think that that's my duty as a scientist. But you show me evidence, I'll consider it and then I might change my opinion on it. If you show me evidence, I'll consider it and then I might change my opinion on it if you show me enough. So I've always been against mindfulness when I was forensics and then there was so much evidence and I had to really rethink my approach because I realized all this stuff that I thought was, you know, woohoo, all of you know crazy has a lot of scientific grounding and we talk about being connected with nature.

Speaker 2:

When we're out in nature, it affects our hormonal response patterns, the way that we wake up, depending on the time. We talk about early birds and night owls. Well, when you go to sleep when the sun goes down and wake up when the sun rises, it regulates your cortisol levels and your serotonin levels. So it creates the basis of either an unhealthy or healthy living. So all of these, and there's so many small things like that that we don't think you know. We know go for a walk in nature is good for you, but we don't realize that the way we go to sleep and wake up, depending on whether it's early or light, or going for a walk and being out in nature and getting sunlight we don't think about those things biologically changing us, and that's what they're doing. They're changing our hormones and our stress hormones and whether we are happy because of serotonin levels and things like that. So they're having a real important biological change on us. So we are connected to each other, but we are also connected to the world around us.

Speaker 1:

That's a great point. I know you have a heart stomp soon, so I want to make sure that I'm mindful of your time. Dr Abbey, I'd love to have you on again. This has been an incredible conversation. I really enjoyed it. How do people if they want to find out about you, how do they do that? And I know you guys have some conferences coming up, so if you can talk about that a little bit in your books, Yep, so it's been a pleasure and I will definitely be on again for sure.

Speaker 2:

You can find me at Dr Abby Official, so Dr spelled as Dr Abby Official, on Instagram or drabbyofficialcom, and that's Dr as in D-R Abby officialcom or abbymoronocom. Linkedin, dr Abby Morono. All of my books, everything kind of goes on my website. So the main thing abbymoronocom you'll get updates for everything. We do have another edition of the Human Behavior Conference coming up and that will be in Orlando in November and you can find that on humanbehaviorconferencecom or socialengineercom, and it will be a two-day event. We're not releasing any more details other than right now. It will be two days instead of one day and it's going to be amazing.

Speaker 1:

Highly recommend it. I had a blast and got to you know, up close and personal with you guys and learned a lot and did some exercises. So it was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was. It was really highly recommend anybody that's in you know understanding, want to understand further human behavior and how to interact with people. It's it's been, it's been incredible. Thank you so much. This has been, this has been outstanding. Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for tuning in to the Zulu One podcast. If you found value in today's podcast, please don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Your support means everything to us and thank you for being part of this journey.

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