Body-First Healing Podcast

Peter Crone on Finding Freedom, Forgiveness, & Who You Truly Are

• Britt Piper • Episode 49

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What if the anxiety, the people-pleasing, the constant sense that you are not enough were never flaws in you, but stories you learned in order to stay safe? In this episode, Britt sits down with Peter Crone, known as the Freedom Specialist, for a slow and human conversation about fear and where it really comes from. Peter shares how losing both of his parents young shaped a lifetime of survival, and how one insight after a painful breakup showed him that so much of what we call our personality is actually protection. Together they explore why survival strategies like over-accommodating and staying small once made sense, how self-compassion is the first real step out of them, and why forgiveness is less about pardoning someone else and more about coming into profound acceptance. This one is for anyone who has done the healing work, read the books, tried the protocols, and still feels like they are quietly at war with themselves. You are not broken. You are protected. And the version of you underneath the story is still there, waiting to be remembered.


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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Body First Healing Podcast. I'm Britt Piper, Survivor Turn Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Aut. If you feel stuck in old patterns, overwhelmed by your emotions, or disconnected from yourself, you're in the right place. Each week, I'll share practical somatic tools, personal stories, and conversations to support you in building a more regulated and embodied life. Because you can't talk your way through healing, you have to feel your way through. Together, we'll explore what it means to come back to yourself and create a life that feels safe enough to fully live in. I am so glad that you're here. All right, everyone, I am excited today to have the one and only Peter Crohn here. I have been such an admirer of Peter's work for such a long time. I feel like you you bring such a beautiful perspective of just the humanness of healing. I feel like sometimes we get caught up in like, what modality, what therapeutic approach do I need, the science, the literature. And I think just bringing it down to a human soul level is really important sometimes. So I'll be honest, I'm not really on TikTok, but I saw the strength on TikTok, and I wanted to start off with this question for you. Because I I feel like it would help the listeners to understand just who you are. And then of course we can talk about the work that you do. Okay, so the question is if you lost your memory and had to entrust one person to tell who you were, who would you trust? Who knows the truest version of you? And what would they tell you?

Who Is Peter Crone?

SPEAKER_02

That's a good question. You could have at least given me a little bit of a prompt for that. I don't want to deflect the question, but I think for me what I would imagine, of course, I'm speaking on behalf of the popular, is people will refer to their spouse or their mum or their dad, you know. But I sort of, you know, my family disappeared when I was quite young. I didn't have any siblings, so I'm really, you know, coming down to the clowns that I call my friends. Gosh, who knows me the best?

SPEAKER_01

It's a hard question, right? Because some of us can know us best, but not know, you know, the the truest form of us.

SPEAKER_02

No, because I mean, whilst being a public figure and always very happy to share myself as vulnerably as I do when it's behind closed doors, I'm quite a private guy. So that's where I'm stalling on the answer a little bit. I'd probably have to pick a good buddy of mine who I went to college with. Just good just by virtue of longevity of knowing each other. Chris, who he's known me since you know I was 18, 19, a couple of young punks trying to figure out college days. But we're still very close and in touch a lot. So he yeah, he would probably know me the best, I think. Yeah. There's some beautiful people on my team who know me more intimately in terms of my work because that's what we focus on, obviously. And by extension, because my work really is an expression of me, do know me as a human, you know, with my idiosyncrasies or qualities and characteristics. But I'd probably final answer would probably be my friend Chris.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And what do you think Chris would tell you about yourself?

SPEAKER_02

I'm a complete dick. Nobody likes me. That's what it, that's what it, but that's where he'd probably start. He's like, You're a complete failure. We have a good sense of humor. Gosh, I don't know. We're both pretty sensitive guys growing up in England. I don't want to say protected childhoods because my parents died. There's nothing too protected about that. But we weren't exposed to drugs or fights or what a lot of kids go through or boys go through in college. So, yeah, I I I don't want to say this this is you you realize how awkward this is, right? I'm out of the gate having been talking about myself as well.

SPEAKER_01

Right away. Right away.

SPEAKER_02

I'd like to think that he would, in a roundabout way, say that I'm one of the most loving, generous, caring human beings anyone could meet.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I love that. Chris, if you're listening, let us know. Let us know if you're agreeing. Thank you for sharing that. And yeah, I find it interesting that it is a vulnerable question, but it's just out in the ethos for TikTok and anyone to kind of talk about and such like this short, short form content. But one of the things I really love about my community, I have a healing program. It's like a kind of like a group therapy program. And we've had over a thousand graduates of that program over the years. And what I hear from people is that they come into the space not because of my credentials, but because I share who I am and I share the messy side of life. And so I know that the people in our community will definitely appreciate just yeah, hearing that that side of you.

SPEAKER_02

So oftentimes, as somebody becomes a little bit more of a household name, which seems to be my trajectory, you know, there can be these misinterpretations or misnomers. I think I'm pretty transparent as a guy wherever I go, live events, whoever I'm speaking in front of, royalty to Joe Glow. I'm just me, unapologetically, because I feel confident that deep down I'm a good human and I just want to help. There's no ulterior motives, I don't have an agenda where I just genuinely care. So I don't think I'd like to believe that if anyone listening right now is familiar with my work, they wouldn't see a disparity between what I just said and how they interpret me by themselves. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And I think oftentimes when you do start to make a name for yourself or you grow a community, it's almost like people start to revere or put you on a pedestal without recognizing that we're no better than them, that they have the same innate capacity for self-healing, for resilience, for forgiveness, and that they're the experts in their own lives, that they have the answers. You know, we're not these gurus. So no, yes.

SPEAKER_02

I get it. I think it's one of the things I find is perhaps one of my most disarming qualities, is that I get to work with the who's who of rock and roll and celluloid and pro athletes who just have millions of fans, and I'll treat them just like every other human. And I think they actually love that because I don't bow down to anyone, and nor do I feel that I'm superior to anyone. And I think that's refreshing, especially for people who tend to be surrounded by either yes men in their own corporations or adoring fans who are perhaps more identified with their persona than them as a human. And I because I get into the weeds of somebody's life, so it gets messy pretty quickly with me, which it's that's the great equalizer for everybody.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it's disarming because they probably have that sense of I don't have to perform here. I can I like I get to be myself. Yeah, that's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02

If he's not performing, I'll cut through that shit in a second.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah. Well, um, would you be open to sharing about a kind of Cliff Notes version of just your area of expertise and how you got into this work?

Peter's Path from Grief to Healing

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I think it got into me just by virtue of my own trials and tribulations, the adversity I went through. As I said, mom died when I was seven, dad went to work when I was 17, never came back. He was in a shipping disaster, you know, as a bit of a rough entry point to planet Earth for me. And so I was forged into what I consider to be the default setting of a human being, which is survival, right? Everyone's just trying to make it in whatever way. And there's myriad ways that gets expressed, whether it's for a woman to be pretty, sexy, you know, all the things, and for a guy to be strong, fast, and successful as those stereotypes. So, you know, I was doing my best to kind of just make it and figure life out, and then I went through a pretty hefty breakup, for me at least, at that point in my life, and I was just gifted this profound insight about the human disposition and why people do what they do. Why do people lie? Why do people have facades? Why do people get sick? That whole cascade of living from a place of fear that is dis-ease, the absence of ease that eventually manifests in physiology, and then it cascades into affecting relationships and their capacity to earn or perform. And I just sort of got to see the whole matrix of the human subconscious, and it was nothing I could have predicted, but it was nonetheless a uh a blessing to me and a euphoric thing to be gifted so that I could help others. So that's kind of how it started was heartache was the the greatest catalyst for me.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Did you see any of that in yourself? The the a lot of the work that I do is working in that disease physiology space that you're talking about. So, you know, people coming in with chronic illness, disease, fibromyalgia, um, you know, just kind of the the gamut of somatic symptoms that manifest in the body and a lot of dysregulation. Did you experience any of that, or was it more so that you were witnessing it or observing it from the outside?

SPEAKER_02

No, I think I was a healthy guy. I was a trainer to the stars for my former career. So I was very fitness conscious, blessed with, I guess, decent genes. I I don't take medication. I wasn't on medication. I haven't really been sick through my life. I get the occasional cold, although that's been years. So even at that point, I was 29, 28. I'd like to think most 28-year-olds, although these days, the way people treat each other and themselves, they're doing well to stay healthy. But I was healthy. So I it was more an emotional dis-ease that I was in a state of unconscious fear, in the case of the relationship, of her leaving me, which was really the residual form of fear of loss because of my parents dying, right? So what I noticed is the only symptoms I had were trying to be the perfect boyfriend as the antidote to her leaving. So that that was my sickness was overaccommodating, being too nice, you know, being a guy who would put himself second, you know, which to some degree I still do, but now consciously, like I love to, especially in a romantic situation, you know, really show up as a man and hold space and do all the right things. But in that case, it was more being driven by fears. But physiologically, I didn't, you know, have any issues. I struggled with sleep after she left, but that was, you know, that was just the normal route of someone who's heartbroken and grieving.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think I had a similar trajectory to you in the sense that I didn't ever have physical symptoms. Mine was more behavioral, how I showed up in relationships, deep fear of abandonment, and then a lot of self-criticism and shame. How did you get to a place where you, and maybe you're still working, I mean, we're always a work in progress, right? But how did you get to that place where you dismantled some of those patterns where it sounds like armor that came from childhood, that fear of loss?

SPEAKER_02

The how to was less of a protocol or a formula, it was more just an insight and a download I was gifted with, which was to be able to see the mechanisms of my own survival patterns, meaning I got to witness, oh, as I said at the beginning, true of your TikTok question, that I'm just a loving, caring, sweet guy. That's I know who I am underneath, but I was that guy plus with that relationship, right? I was trying to be extra loving, extra caring, extra sweet, which was unnecessary and actually became you know the precursor to the downfall because it was disingenuous, it was inauthentic, not in a manipulative way, just it was my own form of strategy unconsciously. So when I saw that after the fact, I was like, oh, that was I had compassion for myself. I was like, I was just scared that she would leave. Who's not understand that, especially in a relationship where you really care about somebody? I think that's both human and warrants, you know, compassion. So I, when I saw it and I understood the mechanisms of the genesis of that behavior, you know, no one would begrudge me the fact that, oh, his mom died, his dad died, what a loser that he was scared of losing the next person who was of any importance. Like, no, it was sweet, it was ineffective because for a woman or a man on the receiving end of someone trying too hard, she loved and adored me for me. I didn't need to be me plus, you know what I'm saying? It just led to a relationship that wasn't actually truly a relationship together, so much as it was me with my own fears, which is you know what I help couples with now is most people aren't in a relationship with the other person, they're in a relationship with their own conditioning. So once I saw that, yeah, that's when the the curtains pulled back and everything was revealed. So I'm not denying that things haven't been refined over the years, but that was really the foray for me into this world of freedom, which is my main product, where it's like, oh, there's just truly nothing to fear, it's all made up.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Can you go into that? Because I've heard you say that many times. I understand that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

There's nothing to fear, it's all made up. And the disillusion of illusion that we have around all of that. Yeah.

Fear Is All Made Up: Unpacking the Primal Programming

SPEAKER_02

So I think there's multiple layers. I think the one that requires the most sort of hand holding is just our primal conditioning, which is as a mammal, our imperative is to survive, right? So we just like chasing a fly around the kitchen or a a mouse in the corner of your bedroom, what whatever you're trying to do that seems to be a threat to another animal, they're going to do everything they can to make it to survive, right? It's just inbuilt. So I think for everyone, the first thing to recognize is it's okay. That's part of your very primal wiring, is to live. Then on top of that, we can see, okay, what are the particular programs or pieces of code people are running based on whatever was triggered in their childhood that is redundant, meaning like everyone can relate to the feeling of not being enough, right? That's just in my line of work, I have these 10 primal prisons that I feel everybody is born with, right? That's the factory to all settings of the human ego. So not being enough is one that everyone can relate to. Now, of course, hopefully over time and maturity, people grow out of that. They're like, oh, okay, like I'm I've got nothing to prove anymore. It can become resignation where people just give up. That's not necessarily powerful. But for younger people, it's a real, it's a real struggle. Social media these days, comparison, FOMO, where everybody's got filters and whatever it is on their life that is a portrayal of this illusory existence that no one can really sustain or keep up with. And so it can inform that part of us that feels a little less than or inadequate, right? So fear is really those pieces of code where it may sound like fancy English, but it's a negation of ourselves where we're against ourselves in some way, typically in the language of I'm not something.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So once I saw that, the whole thing collapsed like uh House of Cards, because all of the fears are associated with something to do with survival, reinforced by typically something we're not. There is a darker shadow side, which is my more advanced work, where, as one example, the opposite but more insidious form of I'm not good enough is I am bad. Right. Do you see if in the same arena of self-judgment, one is subtle. If I'm not something ideal, like if I'm not enough, typically the survival strategy is become enough, work hard, be a perfectionist, be a people pleaser. That's the logical compensation. Sadly, when it's the shadow side, I am bad, it tends to be self-fulfilled. So it's drug addiction, self-destruction, homelessness, whatever it is. So yeah, once I saw that, the fear dissipated because I realized those particular narratives are self-generated. We have evidence for them. If mom, dad told us we were a mistake, or gave our older sibling more attention because they were better at school or a better athlete. Of course, as a child, you can't discern the difference and go, oh wow, my brother gets all the attention and he's quicker and faster, or my sister is prettier, or is getting the A's and I'm getting the B's. And that can start to inspire the conversation of being less than, but it's still not a truth, right? So that's really what I bring is dismantling these illusions by truly investigating their validity and realizing, oh, it's not an actual truth. It feels that way. Sometimes I feel like I'm not lovable, or whatever people might say, and they get evidence because their friends are married and they're not, or the last person left them with some disparaging remarks. And it's like, oh, I'm just a loser. It's really investigating the language that we use to define ourselves. That's where all the fear lives. So that's the unpacking of fear is really investigate the things that we believe about ourselves and life that are in the arena of a perceived threat.

SPEAKER_01

And that would mean that we'd have to face our fear. And so many of us, I mean, we live in such a world now where everything is so comfortable and so convenient. And so to face or to listen to or confront some of those stories that we tell about ourselves can be painful. It's reminding me of just that armoring up, you know, and even kind of the performing that we were talking about, these identities that we take on. And so I often say that healing is really just rediscovering who you were supposed to be before trauma told you who you had to be.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that can be terrifying when people have created that you're talking about prison here. I feel like we kind of live in these cages of our own making, like without subconsciously realizing that we've done it. And so we have relationships, we have a lifestyle, we have jobs and careers and titles that we've taken on that align with these identities.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And then when we start to heal and we rediscover, wait, that's actually not, that's not who I am. Like that's not who I am in this soul level.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That's confronting. It's really confronting because that might mean that you have to leave that cage and leave some of those things behind. And that's what I see a lot of in my group work is that people are like, I'm now doing the work and I'm realizing I've outgrown this life, or this life is not aligned for me, or this marriage isn't aligned for me, or you know, this this career. What's your what's your perspective on that? Yeah.

Healing Is Rediscovering Who You Were

SPEAKER_02

I think that's a an absolute experience people do have. I think what I find in my mastermind and my work is that actually it becomes an experience of true liberation. It's confronting to begin with only because they're sore spots, right? It's like it's hard. If somebody lives in the world where they think that they're not enough, then when they investigate it, like which is what I do when I coach, is I can already usually tell what people are stuck in. And so my job is as gently as I can surgically help people get back to what their story is. So there's sort of a conflict, right? If someone feels they're not enough, whatever our fears and limitations are, we'd we design ourselves in a way to hide them, right? Because it's embarrassing, like shame, guilt, the imperfections that humans have, which we all do, tend to be the things that we are least likely to want to share. So the confronting part I find is only the initial revelation of somebody's fear. But certainly in my work, it's pretty expeditious after that to be able to see them tell them that it's not a truth. That's when it's like, oh, there's the relief. Like, oh my god, I've for 40, 50, 30 years thought I was a loser or a failure. And to look at the story, yes, is hurtful and confronting. But when you realize it's not a truth, it's a story, it's a narrative. Then the actual experience is freedom, which is why my podcast is called Finding Freedom, why I bring freedom as my main product, is that is the revelation of the soul that we are versus being misidentified with the story that we're not, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, it's it's I get it. It's it's human nature to want to guard our deepest fears, but that's like a hidden emotional cancer, you know? It's like where there's this literally, yeah, which it can turn into where it's a festering, right? So think of your own house. I like to use physiological analogies, like or physical, even in our place. If you have a corner of the house you don't want to look at because it's got dirty old laundry that you're just not willing to confront. And if it sits there and it's not addressed, then it actually becomes exacerbated, right? So that's where I feel like. I understand people don't want to look at their fears, but the longer they don't, the worse they become. And they start to downstream have impacts in all arenas. Like physically, people get sick. Romantically, things become confronting or even broken. Materially, things start to become, you know, scarce and fear around worth, whether it's yourself or your bank account. You know, so for me, it's the only game in town. Is you your fears are your gifts.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. And I

"Fears Is A Gift"

SPEAKER_01

think, yeah, I love that. Your fears are your gifts. I feel like when we avoid it, we often think that we're healing, but just because we haven't faced it doesn't mean we're not going to have to eventually face the music. I think that what we do in the somatic world is we help people to better be with the experience of the body, which is the emotional component sensation. And so whether it's fear, whether it's the feeling of not belonging, a lot of this I feel like is touching into the emotional work that we do. But when you shut off emotions, you suppress them, dissociate them, pretend that they're not there, it's in the biology, it's like the body kind of translates that as there's a part of me that's not alive right now. And it starts to shut down on its on itself. But I one of the things I want to come back to here is you were talking about how when we're able to face the fear or face kind of the confrontation of, oh wow, I've been living this life for so long, it's not aligned anymore. That there's freedom that comes from that and got a liberation. And that reminded me of like in inner child work where you do the unburdening process, which is where you take those younger children that are always present within you in your mind and your body that show up all the time, and you unburden them of those protective mechanisms that they're still stuck in, that wiring that you were saying. But it also reminded me of you said earlier that you met yourself with a lot of compassion in that breakup.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And so the burdening process is a very compassionate process. All that to say, one of the things that I'm finding is that I feel like we've never been so fixated and focused on healing. Biohacking and optimizing our healing and modalities and nervous system regulation, and here's this device and this thing and this. I mean, it's just it's too much. But I feel like it really just bleeds into kind of this belief that so many of us carry that we're flawed and that we need to be fixed. And so what I have found is that someone can do all the healing work they want. But if the relationship that they have to themselves is one of self-hatred, one of self-criticism, self-loathing, kind of that I need to be better, then they're always going to be doing those protocols. So have you noticed that theme in some of the work that you do? Is it's more about the relationship to self rather than the things that we're actually doing.

SPEAKER_02

Beyond noticing it, that is my work. So it's not even something I notice, it's what I do. To me, whatever people are struggling with behaviorally or physically, whether it's a sickness or an addiction, that's way downstream. It's not what I deal with. I'm helping reveal these subconscious constraints at the deepest level. I don't know anyone who does what I do. So yeah, I've seen miracles where someone had stage four endometriosis as a 29-year-old, and yet months after we did our mastermind, she's got no signs. So we didn't do any healing. We're changing the narrative. You know, you become a different human, and as a result, when you embody a different frequency, the things that previously were available to the version of you that was sitting in inadequacy, insecurity, or scarcity, they don't exist anymore. So that's why it's so profound. So it's not even, yeah, it's not something I notice, it's precisely what I do is reconfigure somebody's inner narrative. Then everything that's downstream from that, which is your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors, and your results, they become instantaneously different.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. What would that new narrative sound like? Like what are people aiming for?

SPEAKER_02

To begin with, it's the absence of what they're already attached to, right? So the solution process is what I do. I don't solve problems, I solve problems. So the whole world that you're talking to, or you help people with healing or biohacking, you know, okay, you can get some results, but it's, as I tell people, it's just becoming the best version of a limited self, right? So you're basically just tweaking, you know, your surroundings, this body being part of it. So do all the red light therapy and contrast therapies and peptides you want, right? But you still hate your dad or you hate yourself or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But beneath the lies, so first of all, we have to discover what is the narratives people are stuck in. If someone's walking around thinking, again, they're not enough, then yes, their behavioral adaptation might be to compensate through training some eight days a week in their mind as much as they can doing all of the conferences for healing, but they're being driven by the narrative that is itself the issue and the disease, right? That's the causative factor. So when you remove that, you know, what the language might be is like it's revelatory. It's oh my God, there's literally nothing wrong with me, which then, as I said earlier, is why I bring people freedom. So it's I'm totally free to be me. There's nothing I have to prove, there's no one I have to appease. It's an entirely different experience of being human. We don't become so exogenously oriented where we're worried about what our colleagues, families, and even spouses think about us. We don't become dismissive or arrogant, but we're at peace. So those are the kind of words that people feel. They say, Oh my God, I feel so light, I feel energized, I feel free. I'm my mind is so quiet. Like these are the experiences people have.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And it sounds like becoming more focused on like aligning internally rather than focusing on external results, or I'll be happy when, or I'll find freedom when.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Is that what phenomenon? It's it's who I am. We're we're everything we're looking for.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So that's what we got to discover. We tend to then, let's say, attract and create circumstances that we may previously have wanted but couldn't access because we were occupying a different vibration. But now that we're living in the freedom and the essence of who we are, then things tend to materialize quite beautifully and in flow versus with an inordinate amount of willpower and force.

SPEAKER_01

And friction, yeah. Yeah. I love that. Okay, I feel like it's a big question, but maybe for you it's an easy one.

What Is the Soul?

SPEAKER_01

You speak about the soul quite a bit. What is the soul? What's your definition or perspective on that?

SPEAKER_02

To keep it simple, I would say it's the essence of who we are.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And how do we come to know our what our soul is or our essence of who we are?

SPEAKER_02

Again, as I said, it's a process of dissolution, it's revelatory, right? When Michelangelo was asked how did he create this impeccable sculpture of David out of a big lump of marble, he said, I didn't. I just chipped away everything that wasn't David. So same for what my work is, like why I'm able to do what I do is because inherently I might not know someone's story or what their uncle said to them when they were five, or why when their parents divorced, they started to think that being skinny and having anorexia was a good choice. But I do know who they are beneath the story. So yeah, my work is really to reveal the lies that are masking the soul that we are. And so what it feels like when you're in tune with and living from the qualities of your soul is those qualities of, as I said earlier, freedom, inherent love, a sense of peace, a sense of true inherent worth. There's there's nothing to fight for anymore, it's just there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

Embracing Forgiveness & Self-Compassion

SPEAKER_01

So a lot of my community are women, and a theme that I see often is that need to please, to kind of placate, fawn, not set boundaries. And I know a lot of that goes back to just suppression of healthy aggression and anger, which is necessary, right? And so when we get down to it and do the core wounds work, that's often it. That maybe at some point in childhood there was a boundary breach. They grew up in an environment where anger wasn't allowed to be expressed in a healthy way, where, you know, boundaries couldn't be expressed. It wasn't modeled in a healthy way, maybe it was over the top, destructive, harmful. And so there's resentment. And what I've found just in my own personal journey and in the work that I do with others is that processing anger can be therapeutic, can be healthy, but also at kind of the the finish line of that is forgiveness. And that's that hard point for people to get to. But I know that you've spoken on forgiveness before, and I've found incredibly heat incredible healing through that process. Could you speak to forgiveness a little bit for those who are listening? And because I have a different interpretation of forgiveness. I don't think forgiveness is for the person on the receiving end. I think it's it's for you. But yeah, would you be open to sharing about that?

SPEAKER_02

Sure. And I think there's a lot you shared that might warrant kind of touching on as well with regards to anger, or as you said, like for women, there's such a this overarching belief that they have to be secondary or sacrifice themselves in some way, which is just it's for me devastating to see that. I do everything I can to repair the centuries of abuse towards the feminine, not just women, but planet Earth, Gaia. So I think forgiveness, it's an interesting dynamic. Yes, it seems like we're forgiving someone, but then as you said, it feels like it's more us. And to me, when you really understand the nature of life, there's no separation anyway, right? So forgiveness becomes a quality versus a personalized expression, right? Whether it's to them or to us. It's really neither. It's like love, right? Love we tend to associate with someone. Oh, I'm in love with them. But then if you look at the sentence, I'm in love with them, and we abbreviate it, I'm in love, I'm in the essence of love, meaning as we express, so we experience, right? So if I'm feeling love for someone, I'm feeling love, period. End of sentence, right? So forgiveness, I would say a much easier way to understand it is profound acceptance, right? Which is harmony with reality. However, you want to dress it up. So you could say, Oh, my parents did the best they could with whatever they were given, is some of the ways that I hear people dismissing what they would otherwise consider to be altercations that they're judging. So that's the irony of forgiveness, is there's a little bit of audacity about it, right? It's like I know how someone should have acted, they didn't, but I'm the Almighty One who will pardon them. Yeah, okay. Well, you know, I didn't get the memo that you're in charge of the universe and how everyone should act. But but nonetheless, it is of course a beautiful quality to be able to extend to others, not that it's ours to do so, but really to look at what is the energy that we're experiencing in that process, which is profound acceptance, right? It's being at peace with what's happened, what is, and even potentially what that might lead to, right? So it's another way of sort of unpacking forgiveness is I'm present. I'm not holding on to anything that's happened, and I'm not anticipating with any kind of anxiety what might happen. I'm at peace with what is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So that might help people to find forgiveness because people hold grudges towards not just others but themselves. Shame and guilt, I find to be one of the biggest obstacles to people's vitality when I work with people, is that they're living in a world of horrific self-judgment. I could have done that, I should have done that. And when people are shooting all over themselves, they're not allowing for the fact that they're a work in progress, right? We're all masterpieces, as I tell people, but also works in progress. So you did what you did within the limit of that awareness that was available to you at the time. And so to continue berating yourself now is simply an extension of those same shortcomings, right? Meaning, yeah, you're making yourself wrong for what you did when you're in college. I shouldn't have done this, shouldn't have slept with that guy, no, that whatever it is. And now the fact that you're judging yourself for what you did, you're still in the energy of judgment. You have actually haven't gone anywhere, right? So the evolution is for profound self-love and acceptance. And when you come from that place, you know, happy people heal people, you know, hurt people, hurt people. We've heard all these expressions. Yeah. So forgiveness is that all-encompassing energy that really is a bedfellow with love and acceptance.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's less of something that you're giving away to someone else, and it's more of a gift that you're giving to yourself.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, but that's my point.

SPEAKER_01

And then move out to the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_02

It's both, right? It's like because there is no separation, even the illusion of I'm doing it to someone else. Well, someone else is you, right? So when you get out of the illusion of sort of separation, then love, forgiveness, peace, it's all encompassing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

You can't walk around in a state of love and forgiveness and quote unquote not allow other people to be the beneficiary of that. Otherwise, it's just a pizzad, right? You're just pretending to be loving. Well, then both you and others are still being at the effect of the the pretense, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. So I I love that. Well, there was a moment too where you said you can find peace, acceptance, and then even sometimes that can turn into something else. And um, I like to think of them as modern-day superheroes, but I I did a bunch of research on the Nobel Peace Prize winners over the past century, and almost all of them had experienced an atrocious, horrible trauma, you know, at some point in their lives. And so I feel like as you've spoken to our pain or our suffering can be our greatest gift if we choose it to be. And I think sometimes people think that they don't have a choice, and that's what that's ultimately what you're saying is that you do have a choice into how you live your life and how you allow the things that you've been impacted by to shape the direction of where you're going.

SPEAKER_02

That's a tough one because it's subtle, right? So getting into the deeper mechanics of human conditioning. People can only choose within the limits of their awareness. So you do have a choice figuratively, but you may not have a choice literally.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Until you do, right? So that's again where there's a lot more compassion comes in, because right now, how many people still smoke cigarettes on the planet? I guarantee you, every single one of them knows that smoking isn't good for them, and yet they're still doing it, right? So now there's this conflict which could create a lot of self-judgment, shame, and guilt. So in that case, they actually don't have choice. If everybody had choice, if you really think about it, everybody would be in incredible shape, super sexy, they'd have the best body, they would be successful, they would be productive, but they're not, right? So that's where there's a little bit of a nuance in saying that people have a choice. You don't until your conditioning allows there to be more awareness for greater scope of choice.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Do you see? So it's subtle, but it's it's I find it to be very empowering, or at least helpful for people, because otherwise it can add some more guilt where people are like, God, I know I should be going to the gym, or I know I should be doing more. What they don't know is what is the underlying conditioning that prevents them from doing what they consciously say they want to, right? So that's where that delta between deep subconscious patterning and conscious desire creates a lot of angst. And that's where I want to sort of help people to find, you know, some gentleness for themselves. That, you know, the more you become aware of your patterns, yes, then of course the more choice you have. So choice is an expansive experience.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

First Steps to Finding Freedom

SPEAKER_01

So for someone who's listening now and who's like, I should be doing these things, right? I I know this about myself, but I'm not doing it. What would be just a simple first step that you would recommend? And maybe it's more of a perspective shift than anything, but what would a first step be?

SPEAKER_02

So the first step would be profound love and acceptance that it's okay that you're human doing what you're doing virtue of your wiring and having desires to do something other than that and feeling guilt about it, right? That's that pattern right there to understand that equation. There's probably not one listener right now who can't really relate to that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_02

So the first thing to say is, oh, golly, I'm human, right? So there's compassion and acceptance. Then if you really wanted to get into the minutiae and the weeds about it, it's like, okay, we have to investigate both components, right? Unconscious wiring, which is really that which drives us without any thought, versus conscious dreams, aspirations, and desires, right? Where we're being driven by wiring, but we really want to, like we want to be in shape, conscious desire, but actually unconscious conditioning is you're not enough, no one loves you, you're a loser, which drives the opening the freezer at nine o'clock at night and opening a pint of Hagen Mass or whatever it is, right? So we want to be able to then investigate through compassion and softness, okay, why? What is it that I must believe about myself in my identity? Because the identity is definitive, meaning you can, for a short term, maybe override habits. So you can do that little bit, like with a bit of willpower, you meet someone at a dating app, you're super excited, and maybe for the next two weeks, you actually can override your conditioning because you've got this inspiration. But you can never violate long term your identity. So we want to look at who must I be in the way that I view myself, and that's not easy to unpack, that pulls me to habits that are a little bit more self-harming than outcomes that I say I'm really committed to, right? So that's where you need a good friend, you need to have a good journaling practice, you need a good therapist, a counselor, you need to know Peter Crohn, or jump in his mastermind, whatever it is where you're like, you start to realize, oh shit, I have for 30, 50 years believed that I'm not safe because I grew up in a household where mom and dad fought a lot, or my dad got drunk in order to raise his voice, or I was hit, or I was actually abused. That programming then of being not safe manifests as a someone in middle management or an entrepreneur who's in a constant state of mild anxiety. It's not to do with their expertise and their business that they're passionate about. It's still the residual of a child who's looking out for anticipated threat, right? So that behavior at the deepest level is what needs to be unpacked, held in the most loving way, and then correlated to everyday life now, present time. Is it true that now as a 37-year-old or 43-year-old that I'm not safe now? No, that's not true.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Where's the evidence?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, exactly. But I can have passion for the conditioning that I lived in for 15 years as a kid in a house where there was just a lot of volatility, and that became part of my sort of natural programming or normalized programming. So that's the process is one, you start with love and compassion, it's okay, you're human. And if you really want to get beyond those habits, they're a little more self-destructive or disempowering. You've got to be able to understand who must I be that does that. Like a woman who stays in a relationship where, as you said, she perclates to the partner, she is subservient to the partner, she's a people pleaser. Then it's easy for that woman sometimes even to blame the partner. He's not very kind, he's emotionally unavailable, he doesn't consider my needs. No, that's all a reflection as a mirror to the fact that you don't have your own self-worth. A woman who knows her value wouldn't be in that circumstance, do you see? Yeah. Well, she might attract it initially, but only as a form of reinforcement of that's not who I am and that doesn't fit, right? So if it's a hard statement for people to hear, but I tell people you know what you want in your life by what you have. And that's confronting because people are like, I don't want to have cancer, I don't want to have celiac, I don't want to have divorce. I get it. It's not a conscious wanting, but it is a wanting that's a reflection of your underlying conditioning.

SPEAKER_01

Sure. Yeah. Oh, I love that. The compassion piece again that you speak to. I love that that's the first step because so many people, we have that core wounds process in my program where we start with what's the behavior that I want to change? And like you said, you can change habits for only a short amount of time before that subconscious comes in. So, what's the behavior? What's the thought of the story under it? What's the emotion? What's the subconscious belief and the That belief comes from some kind of core wound. But if you're getting into that process from the perspective of I need to eliminate this behavior, I need to fix myself, rather than compassion for this behavior served me a purpose. It helped me to survive, it helped me to feel like I belonged. Yeah, you're gonna be able to get through that process much, much easier. So I love that that's the the first step.

SPEAKER_02

Um it's always there's always some utility to these mechanisms we develop, right? Like the number of girls, for example, not just girls, boys, who learnt to be very quiet.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because they didn't want upset anyone, right? That now manifests as somebody who seems like a really nice person, but you don't know them that well, and they tend to again sort of become secondary in everything from profession to romance to even friendships, which is really them still playing out the survival mechanism of a child, which behooves them when they were young. Because I should, I don't want to upset dad. Like I'm just gonna stay in my room, sometimes even literally in a closet, right? Some people will hide as a kid, and so that garners a behavioral adaptation, which, whilst appropriate as a coping strategy for a child, no longer serves the capacity of an adult who wants to live a fulfilled life.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. Bessel Vanderkloke in his book, The Body Keeps to Score, he says that trauma doesn't come back always as a memory, but it comes back as a reaction. And that's kind of that reaction that we're talking about in the somatic world. We look at that as a procedural pattern, which is a form of body memory or muscle memory. When you're brushing your teeth, you're not consciously thinking about it. And so the ways that we show up so subconsciously are yeah, it shows up from in in it in every aspect of our life. Well, I know that we're reaching time here, and I could definitely talk to you all day, but I end every episode with uh just uh a question, and it's a bit more personal. So we started personal, we'll end personal. Uh and then I'd love to hear more, and I'm sure the listeners would love to hear about how they can connect with you, work with you, all the things. Okay, so the question is what would you tell your younger self if you could sit with him today?

SPEAKER_02

I love you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. There you go. I love that. That's beautiful. Beautiful, simple, but not but yeah, I mean, such a profound statement. Well, how can people connect with you? And yeah, are you open to sharing? Just I know you've mentioned the mastermind a few times, the coaching that you do. How can people learn from

How to Connect With Peter Crone

SPEAKER_01

you?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, no, thank you. I mean, it's pretty easy to find me, just my name, Peter Crohn, C-R-O-N-E on all platforms, whether it's that at Peter Crohn on Instagram, my website, petercrone.com, LinkedIn, Facebook. I think we have TikTok. I don't know, but I definitely didn't see that trend because I don't watch it. But thanks for introducing me to that. And then, yeah, if people want to engage with the work, the lowest hanging fruit is my Freedom Membership. It's super affordable. It's just 29 bucks a month. And we're actually now opening, I think, I don't depends when this comes out, July or August, a new upgraded version, which is going to be really exciting. And then if somebody wants to really do the work and understand the mechanics of what it is to be human, to get out of the world of limitation, fear, and suffering, then my mastermind, my three-month online, you can be anywhere in the world. We meet every two weeks. It's my most comprehensive program and life-changing. I think it's one of those things eventually everyone will want to go through. For those who are ready to break free, that's the place to go.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you. And I'm sure the things that you have created, I always say, what I've created are things I wish that I would have had in my deepest kind of seasons of suffering. So thanks for sharing your story and just, yeah, your wisdom with us. It has been an honor. Everyone, thank you so much for listening into the podcast. We will see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning into the Body First Healing podcast. If this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful if you subscribed, left a review, or shared it with someone that you love. I'll see you back here next week. And until then, be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with what you have, and that is more than enough. Just a quick note this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice. Always consult a qualified provider for personal support.