Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In all relationships in our lives, right? We are going to rupture them. We are going to make mistakes. The most important thing we can do to make people trust us and to continue having a healthy relationship is repair those ruptures by hearing feedback and committing to making a change.
That's why we've grown from 750 people in year one to now four and a half thousand. You know, year four.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: I'm Diana Earley, and I've spent most of my life learning firsthand what privilege actually costs.
The legacy control, the family expectations. The guilt of feeling trapped in a life everyone thinks you should be grateful for. If you've ever wondered why having everything still feels like something's missing, you're in the right place.
Welcome to Pressures of Privilege.
I met today's guest years ago, back when she was at icad, the International Conference on Addiction and Associated Disorders.
She ran their blog and online content, and she did such a beautiful job of it. I think her job description expanded. So I get to watch all of this with a little pride. Araminta Johnson has spent her career on one question that stings a little.
What good is healing knowledge if it never leaves the room?
She runs Masters Events, the company behind Transform Trauma Oxford, Europe's largest trauma conference. She's CEO of Mint Partnership, where she helps people like Bernie Russell Van Der Kolk, and Gabor Mate carry their work to the people who need it. And she's executive director of the Trauma Research Foundation.
She didn't start in a boardroom. She started in her own Recovery from trauma and addiction. That journey is what pulled her into this work in the first place. She believes the mental health world has a problem. It talks to itself. All this knowledge locked in a room full of experts while the rest of us stay hungry for it.
Her whole mission is to open the door.
So that's where we're going to start. Minta, welcome.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: Hi, Diana. Lovely to be here.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm so honored. And I know that you were just in Boston for the annual trauma conference.
In my own backyard.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: I was. And it was actually the first year that we had taken over the Trauma Research Foundation's annual conference. I became executive director last October, I think it was, or finally went through last October. And they'd always done that event with Pessy, and this year we decided to do it alone. And I think it was. There were so many.
I mean, it is a really amazing conference in terms of content. And, like, I've. I've literally come away from it now hungry for some form of Activism. I was so fired up by a lot of the content, especially by people like V. Ensler, Apprentice Hemphill and Kai Cheng Tom and other people talking and Stacey Haynes kind of talking about going out on the front lines and working where trauma is, you know, at its most rife and being able to do something on the ground, which I think is something that I. Although everything I do has so much purpose, I realized that after that conference, I realized that I want to do more on the front lines, I think. So that's just what I took away from that. But it went really well.
And next year we're actually moving it from Boston to New York.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Very cool. So that's. Is that official?
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's official. We made that. And it was a big thing to get Bessel because Bessel's obviously been running this conference in Boston for 37 years. You know, it's a really old, established conference. I think having me as executive director and my whole team behind us, as well as Wendy d', Andrea, who's our chief science officer, the combination of us is kind of in the leadership team there has made Bessel really take a kind of big sigh of relief, I think. I really feel like he trusts us. He's ready to kind of hand over the kind of baton a bit. And I think Wendy's a. A professor at the New School.
And the New School is a university in New York, which really, when it started, it started on the back of kind of almost like activism and kind of doing things that were almost controversial in the field of academia. And I think that is pretty much what Trauma Research foundation stands for as well. It's like we want to fund research that wouldn't otherwise get funded. Bessel's whole career has been about fighting for people to either fund or believe that there is a need for researching things that aren't, you know, just your. Aren't easy to fund necessarily, but are going to have. Are going to move the needle and have a big impact on. On trauma healing.
So it just felt. The New School felt like a really good place to have a good home for. For the Trauma Research foundation conference. So, yeah, it is official and it's. Let's see what. See how it goes next year.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Well, New York, New York, it's. It's so great. They named it twice. But also, if you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Well, exactly. That is that thing. And I know, look, it was so easy in Boston this year. We were in Sheraton Hotel and everything was in one place. And it was all, you know, it was definitely. We made it better than it has been in terms of. We had, instead of just having one room where people were didactically spoken to, we had an embodiment room. We had multiple tracks happening at the same time. We had a really great community hub in the center of these different spaces. So people felt like they were able to convene and connect, which is so important to everything. Every event that we put on, but it was still in a windowless hotel where, you know, there were some days I would literally have to force myself to go outside and get some daylight. And that's the absolute antithesis of every.
Every of our ethos in masters events are putting on events. So even though it's easy and it is so much easier when you do an event in one location, moving it to New York, when we're going to have multiple locations, people will have to move outside, they'll have to get daylight, you know, to get to different venues.
That's been. That's what we discovered by putting our event on Transform Trauma on in Oxford was the importance of those things. So like movement, not just in the embodiment track, but also just between sessions gives attendees time to process and reflect on what has happened, you know, in an event or in a session that they've just been in. And they also. You meet people in the trip between, you know, one location to another, you bump into another conference attendee and you might form a relationship there. You kind of. It's those little moments that in and around, around the content that are so often overlooked. I think we know, we know when you bring in the best researchers or clinicians or facilitators of.
To these conferences they are going to, the content's always going to be great. But what really elevates the experience are those moments around the outside of the content. And that is why. So that's another reason to move to New York, because there is so much more opportunity to add to. To that experience rather than being in that windowless hotel room.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Well, I have to agree that that community aspect of those conferences is huge. I remember with icad, that was the parts that I liked were the conversations in the hallways or, you know, let's walk down to Whole Foods and have a coffee, you know, near the. That hotel in London, I forgot which one it was. The Royal Garden Hotel. Yeah, that's right.
And you rebuilt Oxford around community and care, not just content. So why did you feel that was necessary?
[00:07:54] Speaker A: I think we're living in such a fragmented and polarized world at the moment.
And you know, connection is the number from. Well, if I go back to like to my own healing journey, like when I first got into kind of the rooms of recovery, I think more than anything what that gave me was the, the idea, the sensation that I'd found a tribe of people, people, a place where I belonged. And I think when you're stuck in any kind of trauma healing or on a trauma, kind of in trauma survival mode or in addiction recovery, you do feel, you can feel so isolated. And the first step towards healing is finding a group of people who you can feel connected to a place where you can feel like you belong. I think so often many of us feel like we don't belong anywhere until we get into those rooms. And that's for, for people with addiction issues. But the same I have realized that can be said for anyone with trauma kind of recovering from trauma and also people who are working in, just working in general like we are, especially therapists who are working in, in very kind of isolating careers often when they, if, especially if they're working on their own and, and they're working with really heavy, difficult subject matters and clients that require a lot from them emotionally especially and mentally. And I think being in community, kind of finding the tribe of people that you know are on the same path as you, have the same mission, have the same kind of mentality as you, is a really, it can't be overstated how important that is. I think.
And as I said, especially in a world that is currently so fragmented and polarized, being around people who, you know, think the same as you, I don't know, it just gives. Gives me anyway a sense of ease. And I know that from, from just how I feel when I'm around my community of people. I know how much better I feel and how much safer I feel. And I think that's what I wanted to recreate for people in Oxford and in all the events that we, we put on.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: Yeah, because you, you've written in your blog on your website that you know, that you regulate through connection and not, not so much productivity, although high achievers like, like you, you need to produce. But you know, how, how do you sell people like your clients? Stillness.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: It's interesting because I actually not sure I might have said that. I mean I regulate through connection sometimes. I'm also, I'm also very neurodiverse. So I've been diagnosed with autism and adhd and I think connection is important, but it's the. What kind of connection? Not for me as well, I struggled. Even though I put on these big events, I actually really struggle being around a lot of people all at once. I find for example, if I'm in a city like London and I'm meeting with a lot of people, clients or whoever, even just business meetings and I've got a lot of them back to back and I'm in person, my energy goes. I give out so much energy to be there in those moments that I actually feel really depleted and really I end up feeling really disconnected and really lonely. And I will feel more connected to myself when I am here in Wales and I'm able to be in green spaces and be out in nature and. And I think for me it's been a really a real process over the last five years or so of really understanding myself and giving myself what I need. So I know that I can definitely get energy and fill my cup by being around certain people and having those. For me it's especially one to one or small group connections like I find that very fulfilling.
I find it very draining being in a. In a large conference like for example Oxford or being in London. I need to. I can do it and I enjoy it and it definitely gives me energy. But I also know that afterwards I have to take that moment of self care and that it means making sure I'm back in Wales or in the countryside for a minimum of five days consecutively, ideally alone where I can just reconnect with myself because that's the thing. The only way I can be of use and be productive is if I'm able to be fully connected to myself and that I need to be here to be able to do that.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Well, it's good that you figured that out about yourself that you need that nature and whale sounds lovely.
Have you heard of the do lectures there? It's a group of marketing guys who do they do conferences like on the farm and people can come and camp in tents.
So maybe someday you'll have a conference that's out in nature. Like everybody 100%.
[00:13:06] Speaker A: I've always don't tell my team this but they know that my I would love the future and I'll make our speak this so it can happen now is that I'd love to create some sort of form of festival where whereby you have music and kind of talk by philosophers and artists and I don't know, politicians and you kind of bring everyone together in a field more multiple field psychologists as well and we all talk about the, you know, the problems that the world is facing but then we also dance and we be in. Convene in nature and we be. Have all of that at the same time. So that would be.
Yeah, the future maybe.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: It's funny that you mentioned dance. Somebody said, I don't know who it was, but they said the young people today aren't dancing anymore.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: That's so sad. That's. If that is true. That is so sad. I mean. And that is going to cause so many problems. I think one of the first things, the freest I ever felt, I think, was when I was in early recovery and because I was fully sober for five years. I'm not anymore fully sober, but I was fully sober for five years of my early recovery. And I. One of the biggest fears I had was not being able to dance sober. And I remember I went to. I think I went to like a retreat, a meditation retreat or something, and we did some ecstatic dance with blindfolds on. They put the music card and we had. And they just. And I didn't. Couldn't see anything, so couldn't feel any kind of judgment or embarrassment or awkwardness. And I just started moving. Like, the music makes me want to move. So I was able to start moving and just danced. And I was.
That honestly unlocked something. It just shifted something inside of me that was so freeing. And I think now when I d like, for me, freedom is dancing for sure. So I think, yes, it's very sad if that's the case.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: I have some really good friends in recovery who do the five rhythms dancing. Have you heard of that?
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: They're almost addicted to that. Like, they. It sells out, like, the minute it goes online. It sells out in New York City within, like a second. It's.
I've been there where they're on their phones and they're like, okay, we got to book it now. Boom.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: I mean, dancing is always a part of every single event I put on. So even the Boston conference, we had multiple moments of dancing. Like, multiple. There'll be sessions where you go and dance. There'll be. We had ecstatic dance this year with Scott Lyons. We had like a Joya. Did a dance party during the. As a session. But then they also closed the conference with a dance party.
We had Jeff Jones brought his band for the gala dinner and we danced. Then said, as I said always, that was in Boston and there's even more dancing coming to Oxford. So, yeah, always dancing.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Well, I know that some of. A friend of mine went to your Oxford event last year, and you had some events in A church, which to me sounded beautiful.
Yeah, it was in a church and there was. Was there music in the church too?
[00:16:01] Speaker A: Yeah, so we had a.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: The.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: When we were in the church.
I don't know who would have gone to that one. But anyway, so we had. I think that was only for this faculty. We put the gospel choir in the church and they basically did an incredible.
They have an incredible tale with music and singing of the Civil War movement in. In the States. And they kind of sing. Well, they. Basically the idea is. Or the. The story is that they managed to survive through such, like, such adverse conditions through music and song. And I think if you think back to. Well, if you think about any kind of people or kind of group of people who have been through difficult moments in history, the way they connect and the way they get through it often is through music and singing.
And so. Yeah, that was just. It was lovely.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Sounds great. I want to come.
I'm going to book it today.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. It should.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: It is just getting on another airplane. I just don't want to travel.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: That is. I mean, I've just been in the States for the last three and a half weeks and I've been. I was in New York for Esta Perez event and then we. Which we were running and then I went over to San Diego because we run an event called Integrative Medicine for Mental Health in San Diego in October and I went to do a site visit there. Then I was in San Francisco. Then I came back from San Francisco to. To Boston for Vessels event and it's like. It just feels like it takes its toll. It really does. Like traveling around.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm glad you're taking care of yourself now.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: I only just landed back, so I'm not sure I fully managed to take care of myself yet. But I. Once I've had five days, all I need is five days in Wales and then I'll feel fine again.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: I was looking at your website in the Mint partnership website, which is your branding, branding and marketing. And I just love the words that you have on there with where you say what you do your work without losing, what makes you credible, accessible, not diluted, and breaking through without breaking trust, which for me that is so hard because, you know, I'm trying to market my own business. It's. It's. There's some things that people ask me to do that. That just don't feel right. You know, I, you know, I know coaches who will put up the names of their clients without permission. They'll do. They'll do anything to, to make money and to market themselves. But I, I just think it, it
[00:18:22] Speaker A: breaks trust with coaching world specifically. I think, as well as, you know, I hear.
Yeah, you know, you see it across or like, you know, do you want to make, I don't know, however many million dollars in however many short or short amount of time? And I'm just like, as a business. Someone who's a business coach, for example, I just think, really, what. Why do they make such outrageous claims? Like, I mean, either. I can't imagine that people are believing them, but it just kind of. That destroys trust for me 100%.
[00:18:51] Speaker B: And I love how you start on what, what do you want to, what do you want to get done rather than who you are, you know, you're, you're, you're focusing on their mission, and I love that. Yeah. So. So when does reach actually cost credibility?
[00:19:04] Speaker A: Well, as soon as someone becomes semi renowned, I think there is, there's always gonna be multiple people with many different opinions. So I'm not sure whether it's reach that cost cost credibility. I think it's more if the person who has a large reach has a very, you know, straight North Star. And they know that everything that they're doing ladders back up to that mission, to that vision. As long as they know that and they continue to do that, I don't think credibility, they can't lose credibility because it's credibility to themselves. It's for themselves what they're doing. I mean, for. Let's just take Gabor, for example.
I know that he is, he has one mission and it is. Doesn't move, it doesn't waver. I also know that he has multiple critics because he is so. I mean, Bessel is the same, but Bessel can be controversial. Both of these people, their intentions are fully good, honest and clear, you know, And I think. But then they're going to have people. As soon as you become that famous, you're going to have people who are going to want to tear them down full for whatever reason. It's very great to be in recovery, to be honest and have all the recovery mantras, because, you know, you know, if your side of the street is clean, you know, you know what you're doing is the right thing. I don't, you know, it doesn't matter what anyone else says. Just keep going, keep doing the right thing every day, wake up and do the next right thing. And I don't think, but I don't think it's about reach.
That can be incredible. Incredible.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: So it's more maybe when people don't act ethically. You mean is the problem.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Or if they like. I mean I think people can get pull a bit like what you just said.
People can get power or fame can make people can. Can make people forget where they are, why they originally started to do something what. But if you get. If you're very clear about what your mission is, if you're very clear about if what you're even if it's a brand, if you're very clear, this is what I want to do in the world and this is why I want to do it. And then everything that you do make you make sure it ladders back. You ask yourself continuously the question about every opportunity that comes your way. Is this going to serve my purpose? Is this going to serve my mission? Does this serve my why? And as long as you can always answer yes to that question then you'll be fine. It's when you start to say no but it's going to make me, you know, X number of dollars or pounds or whatever over here. So. Oh no, that doesn't actually quite doesn't serve the mission. It doesn't. It isn't aligned to what I originally set out to do. That's when you'll start losing yourself and that's also when you'll start losing credibility and real devoted, loyal whoever, whatever it is, clients, followers, whatever it is that you are trying to gain.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: So when you start losing yourself, the, the public can sense it 100%.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: I, yeah. You have to stay aligned to your original wealth. Don't get me wrong, you can evolve but you then have to, then you have to sit down and re. Go through your, your mission, your values, your vision, your purpose and say has this changed from where I was five years ago? Has what I've learned over the last five years altered where I want to go? And if so that's fine. Then you need to be very clear about that and make sure that then
[00:22:18] Speaker B: you realign yourself in the designing your life world which I'm, I'm certified in designing your life. You know the, the Stanford University course by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans they call it recalibrating your compass. So that, so yeah, you need to recalibrate it every so often because things change.
[00:22:38] Speaker A: They do. And that's okay obviously that we can't.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: We can.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: We're supposed to evolve and we're hopefully we're continuously learning but if we are, if, if this is what we say we are and this is where we're going that that's when you know there's a misalignment and people won't. That's when the credibility and the trust. And it might not even be that you're doing anything bad or wrong. It's just that you started here and you said you were here and you've gone this direction. So then you need to recalibrate so that people know and communicate that recalibration.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: So I'm wondering like, how can we bring the discussions? Because I just remember the stuff I was learning in ICAD and which I is probably, you know, I would also learn at Oxford or at the conference you were just at in Boston. How do we bring this out to the general public so that they can also benefit from this information that we're learning?
[00:23:26] Speaker A: Well, what. I don't know the answer to that forever. How, how we can do it for everyone. I know that how we, how I do it is create these stages and create these events which are talking to the intermediary. So we talk to, we don't generally talk to the end user. So the person who, who you know necessarily the, the client or the patient or the, the person in critical mental health need. We talk to the psych therapists, the counselors, the social workers, the psychiatrists, you know, and hope that, you know, for every one of those people who is in our, in our conference spaces, they may have 10 to 50 clients that they can then spread this, learn from us and then, and then take that knowledge out and, and, and make it more accessible and take it further from marketing and kind of brand perspective and business consultancy perspective. What I really notice in this space is that true healers, people who really care about helping people or researchers who really care about the research and the data and what they're learning, they are either not interested or not able to get their methodologies or their insight or their work out there because it's just not where they're, it's just not where their skill set is. It's not what they are brilliant at doing. They are brilliant at doing what they do.
So how we help them with, in, in, in though in from a mint partnership perspective is we get them really clear on, on their, their whys, on their, on their why they do what they do, on their positioning who they're doing it for and you know, on their mission and as I said, and then we kind of, kind of talk to them about the roadmap is you could do everything or anything but you have to ask yourself is it is the thing that you're going to be doing, going to be, achieve, like achieving the original goal. Is it speak, is it aligned to like we just mentioned? So it's helping people in that space do that, create that and then give them a roadmap of, of here. Now we've, once you've created your kind of positioning and looked at your brand for one of a better word or whatever it is that you want to get out there, then it's like how, how, where should you show up? Because what, because where is most relevant for you to show up according to your kind of goal and your positioning and your everything else that we've just worked on strategy really.
And then yeah with the events, it's just being in front of taking for me, it's curating the faculty members. So the people who I am having conversations with on a daily basis about all the incredible work they're doing, a lot of people are working on the front lines, a lot of people are doing this kind of cutting edge research.
And I'm fortunate enough to be able to be in conversations with a lot of these brilliant thought leaders and then to kind of curate programs whereby some of the best and brightest minds stand on stage and, and I'm able to get that their messages out to. You know, in Oxford we have over 6,000 attendees. So that feels pretty, pretty amazing because as I said, each of those attendees will have 10 to 50 clients who they'll be, you know, able to help better or be more informed to help because of the, the events that we run.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you've got podcasters, you know, big ones, not, not me, but people like rich roll people like maybe you know, other people who talk about recovery online who could also do any of them come to your conference.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: This is the, one of the things, there's so much content out there and it's so important. And then this is one of them. I think my biggest struggles at the moment, like not possible podcasts. So much podcasts is more the online on Instagram and on other social media platforms. I'm seeing and I'm seeing also the uprising of therapists, real really credible therapists kind of taking back the, not the power but sort of taking back those channels because there are so many non credible people who are using those channels to, I don't know, they, they've heard something over here and it's maybe resonated a bit so they'll, they'll say it. And there's so much, I mean it's pop psychology ultimately that is getting so and so much traction and it's, I worry about how do you, how can you decipher, how can you distinguish between who is credible and who is really like someone who you should listen to and who, someone you should, you shouldn't. But it's also like in a moment, like a podcast is different because you have 30 minutes or an hour and you can really kind of dig into someone's expertise and then in that time, you know, the listener can probably identify if someone's credible or not just by how they've spoken for the last however many minutes. But when you've only got 60 seconds or you know, a few minutes on, on Instagram, how can you, how can you judge whether someone is credible or not in that time? I find it and it's scary because people are going to be regurgitating information and just, it's like Chinese whispers, isn't it? If just something is off or something isn't quite right, then they, you know, who knows what kind of harm could be, could be done.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: So it's really onto people to do the, you know, if they see a reel. I mean those things are, are very popular. I mean even my reels tend to have 10 times the viewership than the long form content.
But people, it's on to people to do like, if they like a reel to go in and do the research to see what's behind that.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: We live in an instant gratification world. Like who, who, I mean, who has time and I mean they should 100, that's what they should do. They should go and do a deep dive. Is this person credible? Does this person have any kind of background, like knowledge of whatever subject they were just talking about for 60 seconds?
But a lot of people don't, don't. They don't do that because we are, as I said, we're living in this kind of swipe and go world where, you know, that 60 seconds is all that they need to feel knowledgeable enough to deal with whatever issue may be in their lives currently, I don't know, it honestly scares me.
But what I am enjoying seeing on social media a little bit more is actual credible therapists, even people I don't know. But I, by just myself doing that background research, you know, looking into them a little bit deeper than the 60 second reel and seeing, okay, this person is a practicing therapist who has clients, who knows, seems to know what they're talking about and then they're standing up and saying, right, well I'm going to have to have some social media now because it seems everyone else has got this social media. So part of a therapist job, it would look like right now, is to have a social media channel, which I'm not sure how I feel about that, you know, but there we are, the world we live in, well, they have
[00:30:42] Speaker B: a lot to say. And it's maybe one way for that information to be disseminated to the rest of the world.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's more accessible and it's, you know, it's not.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but there's no curation. Like, your events are curated. You. I remember at icad, you used to have a conference hall with, you know, people who would pay to have a booth.
And then I remember speaking to the old CEO of ICAD and saying, well, you know, does that. Does that give them a right to be on stage?
And I remember telling her that at the newspaper where I worked, you know, just because an advertiser bought an ad didn't give them the right to put editorial copy in the paper.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: And I think that was one of the biggest downfalls, if I'm honest about icad, is that. And do you know what? I don't want to criticize any field, but I will.
The addiction field in general, all the conferences, all the events that they have are pay to play. So, like, pretty much everyone who's on stage has paid to be there. And I think, don't get me wrong, some people who pay to. To and who pay and are on stage have brilliant, you know, information. They are doing great work. But it's a case of then.
But they don't. You either have to say, right, you have to go through a very.
There has to be a process of reassess whether what you're going to say and what you're going to bring to stage is credible enough and just. And say no this and say no to those who. Who aren't. Say no to those who are just going to promote. Because also, again, you were talking about kind of what makes you lose credibility.
If you allow someone to stand on stage who has paid to be. Be there and they deliver a terrible session.
I mean, your audience, you're going to lose your audience. You're then the people that come to hear information that's actually going to benefit them. They're paying a lot of money to, you know, find out information that will help their careers, help their clients.
So if someone's paid and delivering a terrible.
A terrible session, then you people aren't going to come back to the. To the event ultimately.
So you. There is, in my opinion, if you are going to allow people to pay to be on stage, they have to be brilliant, as brilliant as anyone who, you know, has been invited, in my opinion. And that is possible, you know, but it's not all the time.
[00:33:10] Speaker B: It's kind of a tie into my pressures or privilege brand, this idea that, you know, people who are privileged maybe have a higher standard to aspire, you know, if they want to. If they want to be on stage, they need to be even better than the average in order to be let in.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Yes, I think that's absolutely true. And that's a bit unfair as well. Yeah.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: I was also thinking that, you know, when I used to work for my mother's newspaper, this is why I'm from the newspaper business, I remember thinking to myself, because I'm the owner's daughter, I actually have to get into the office before everybody else and I have to leave before, after the last person.
I had to hold myself to a higher standard because of that.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Parents generally do that too. Like, I think, you know, if I. Not that I. I did work for my dad very, very briefly, and I did not hold to a high standard when I did that, but he did and he would. There was no, you know, there was no ever any way that he was going to say, oh, yes, you could just come and get a job at the top. You know, if I'd wanted a job fully in his company, I would have worked from the bottom up and I, you know, I would have had a really tough time, I don't think. To be honest. I don't think he'd ever have let me take over his company.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Maybe he would now.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Maybe he would know. Yes, maybe I wouldn't want to now, but yes, maybe he would know. He would have now.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: You'd be impressed. I know you lost him a year ago. I'm sorry about that.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, it was hard and wonderful at the same time, I guess. I mean, which is a weird thing to say. It was actually two years ago, in a couple of weeks, that he died. But I'd had a very tricky relationship both with him and my mum, and I'd. Actually, before he got diagnosed with cancer, he had seven different kinds of cancer. But before he got diagnosed, I was actually excommunicated from him and my mum. And it was only when I'd gone through therapy finding out, you know, to kind of, would I be okay if, you know, my. I didn't have a relationship with my, specifically my mom anymore after, if she were to die, would I be okay with that. And at the time, I was like, yes, I would be.
But I hadn't really thought about whether I'd be okay not having a relationship with my dad. When I got told that he'd been diagnosed, I had to sit down and think, would I be okay if he dies? And I don't haven't spoken to him? And I wasn't okay with that. And one of the kind of conditions of reigniting that relationship was that I was able to reignite the relationship and be civil enough, at least around my. My mother.
And I agreed to do that. And, you know, in that time, so I had 18 months with him and my mum before my dad died. And I was really able to,
[00:36:00] Speaker B: you
[00:36:01] Speaker A: know, shift so much. I think impending death or someone's mortality, it really makes you look at everything with a different. Through a different lens. And I think I was able to not only repair a lot of the ruptures that had happened, certainly repair all. Any everything I needed to repair with my dad, but I also managed to repair a lot with my mum. And that was because I was able to see her through a different lens. I was able to see her as a someone who I had felt perhaps unloved by. Suddenly she was loving someone who I loved, who was my dad, you know, and she looked after him and she cared for him, and she. I could see, you know, when she behaved in ways that I thought were inappropriate, I could see that it was coming out of a place of fear, a place of. And I think it made me realize that a lot of the times when she perhaps behaved in those ways towards me when I was growing up or whenever would also have happened because they were coming from a place of fear rather than a lack of love, really. And I think it was able to. Yeah, so lots shifted in that time, and it was really. I very grateful to have had that time with him and her.
[00:37:19] Speaker B: Oh, that's beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I also read on your blog that you did. You walked the Camino with Dick Schwartz, the founder of ifs, and you were able to sort of process your father's death and actually felt him walk alongside you.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Did I read that right?
Yes, it was really beautiful. I mean, the Camino was a very intense experience because it came straight off the back of Oxford last year. And as I said, like, being around so many people, I find difficult to then be thrown into another group of.
However many people were on that. I think maybe over 20 or 30 people were together in an intense kind of environment where we were doing Workshops and walking every day, and I was sharing a bedroom with someone I didn't know. And just being. It was hard, and I think I was overwhelmed to start with. But the process, it would just really worked really well. This idea of doing a workshop in the morning and then walking all afternoon to process, you know, and you could walk. We always walked in silence for the first hour.
And then you could wear a lanyard to say whether you were happy to talk or not. And I just. Basically, I never wore the lanyard. I never was happy to talk. I just wanted. I just walked and, you know, maybe five hours a day and walking, walking, walking. I'm a fast walker, so I was always at the front and I just. It was. It was so meditative and mindful.
And Dick's really on a.
On a spiritual path at the moment. And I think that came through a lot in the workshops we had, but also in the energy that was just brought. I think a lot of people who were there were very spiritual.
Obviously, being on the Camino is an extremely spiritual path anyway.
And there was something about all of that, you know, that came together and brought my dad to me. Yeah, he. He was definitely. I don't even know it was my dad, actually. I think it was my ancestors, but on my Swedish side that were walking the path with me.
I really felt them. Very strong presence of them, you know, and it. Yeah, it was. It was really special.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: That's really cool.
And I wanted to say. So you had 6,000 people at Oxford.
It's the biggest ever. Are you hoping to grow it to larger numbers or are you keeping it? You're capping it there.
[00:39:53] Speaker A: There'll be. I think this year will be six and a half thousand in total. So we'll have 4,000 in person. Last year we had three and a half thousand in person. We'll have 4,000 in person this year and about two and a half thousand online.
I mean, we might have more online, but I don't want to grow it in person anymore. There is a really, is a fine line between. I mean, even three and a half thousand is. Is huge. 4,000 won't be much different. But this year we really need to be intentional. We were last year about this community, this idea of community building and. And, you know, when you've got 4,000 people, you cannot be with 4,000 people all at once. You know, that's not. That's not.
So you. We need to now be able to help people find their communities within the community that we grow within the large event community. We then make smaller communities, smaller kind of intentional meetup groups and special interest groups and on and on and on we can go about how to create these mini communities within the larger whole. I mean, we already take over the whole of Oxford as it stands. I mean people, I remember last year people were saying if they weren't part of our conference, they literally thought they could just grab a therapist on the street and get some therapy because everyone else, therapists, like literally the whole of Oxford is, is full of therapists. And it's lovely. It is a really special experience. But I don't need, it doesn't need to get bigger. No, no.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: And I love how you say this is not my event, it's our event.
[00:41:20] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean that's come from, you know, we've grown exponentially. We started only. This will only be the fourth year we've ever done, done it. And the first year we had 750 people and we made many mistakes, you know, many, many mistakes that first year and many mistakes the second year. And each time, each mistake, one of the things I really, I'm passionate about and actually came from my dad. That was it. So it was his Mandarin. He grew, had a very successful business. He was a very brilliant entrepreneur. And he always says, you know, listen, he, he had, his business was in like product in aluminum manufacturing. But he was always said, listen to your clients. Your clients are the ones who are going to teach you the most and every. So like whatever they say, you need to take it on board. Bessel actually says the same thing. He says the, your best teacher is not, you know, any session or any conference that you can go to, but it's actually your client, your patient, the person in front of you. They are going to teach you about them better than anything at any book you can read.
And so it's the same. It's like if I don't go to my. Each event that we run and listen to the feedback, listen to the feedback from everyone, not just the, you know, the attendee, but the exhibitors, the sponsors, the, the faculty, everyone's going to have a different experience at the event and everyone's going to experience is going to be valid and I need to hear, you know, where the mistakes were made and rectify them. And, and you know, I'd never run an event before. Really. No, I'd never run an event before running the first Oxford. So it was obvious that we were going to make mistakes and we did the mistakes. The biggest mistake in year one, I think was lack of diversity. And something happened during the event where it caused a rupture, which we managed to repair as much as we could during the event.
You know, an apology was issued on stage and people came together and repaired that then. But that we took that into the second year. We actually. Our theme was rupture and repair.
And we hired a chief actuary and engagement officer, an incredible woman called Dr. Kesha Siribo, who really helps us and advises us on how to ensure that we have diversity across our faculty. But also, we have Global Majority lunch that we do for faculty members. We have a Global majority community room where it's just for the global majorities. And we have another community room just for the LGBTQ community so that they feel safe as well when they come into our spaces. And it was thinking about all of those kind of pieces from year one that we made year two better. Year two, I think we gave the exhibitors and the attendees a poorer experience because we removed tea and coffee, for example, from the exhibit hall, which really was a. We were like, oh, there's Oxford is huge. Like, people can go and get tea and coffee anywhere. But obviously that just the community that we were creating in those community hubs, everyone just dispersed and they just disappeared. So we lost that sense of community in year two, which meant in year three, one of the things that we really focused on was creating community hubs where we put in food and we put in tea and we put in coffee, and we made sure that those were available throughout the whole conference. And, you know, every year we are learning new things and community has been now my kind of. That's the piece that I really want to make sure that we just do better and better every year, because I think it's the thing that's most valuable for everyone, not just for, as I say, so for the attendees. The way we're going to develop community, because it's so big, we want to create special interest groups that happen over lunchtime that people can get their lunch and then go together and make friends with peers that are doing similar things to them that have the same interest as them.
We also are creating a faculty community because I think it's so important that all of these incredible pioneers, they kind of. They are bright lights in their spaces, in their fields, but they might not either know each other or they might only see each other once a year or twice a year. And actually the kind of cross pollination of work and expertise that can happen at our events in that community is also really important. So now, this year, we've invited everyone who's ever spoken at Oxford to come back and come to the conference. And we're putting on a faculty lunch for them. So we're thinking about how we can create community for our attendees across multiple different touch points and also this faculty community as well. So, yeah, community, the buzzword that is huge.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: I saw that we funded, our charitable foundation, funded a neuroscience get together for these brain experts at Brown University about two months ago. And the buzz. You could see these, these brain surgeons getting together and they were just impressed with, you know, a colleague they maybe had only read about but never met in person.
And, and you could see them, you know, wanting to get together after the conference. It was just wonderful.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: That melting pot of expertise can really, it's where the, I think, where we can move the field forward. You know, they come and they. And now because we run so many conferences a year, we the opportunity to create spaces where these people can come together multiple times a year to really kind of talk to each other and develop their, their work. And we've got, we've just started something called Transform Trauma in Mexico. So we've got Transform Trauma in Oxford. We're doing Transform Trauma in Mexico, but we're having a retreat that's happening after the event, the conference in Mexico, which will be for attendees. But we're also, I'm also inviting every faculty member to come and say, which I'm paying for, for them to stay at the retreat. And I will be putting on workshops for them so that they can collaborate together in that week so that they can really. Because I really believe that's where the field will move the needle forward is them getting together and doing their own personal development as well as professional development.
[00:47:24] Speaker B: I just love how you're willing to grow from mistakes because that's such part of the designing your life ethos too. Like looking, we have something called a failure log. Just like look at the mistakes and how do we, how can we make it better? And your willingness to look at that is just, I think that's why you're, you're on fire. You're doing so great.
[00:47:43] Speaker A: I mean, it's also going. Circling back to the kind of idea of trust. I think people, you know, I mean, I don't know if you know Ed Tronic's work, but he did the whole still face baby experiment, which was a mother.
Like he brought a mother in and a child, a baby into a room and he kind of filmed them and he told the mother to be, you know, playing with the baby, interacting with the baby for a period of time. And then.
And then when he had. They had a earpiece and when he would say, she would have to completely make her face frozen, like, not react. So the baby would start to kind of pull on the mother's hair, like pull on her clothes, try and make her react to the baby, because that's what the baby's used to. And you could see the baby getting more and more stress. The less when the mother wasn't reacting. And then that causes a rupture. And then Ed would say, okay, now become alive again. So the mother would become alive and the baby would. You could see the baby calm down and settle. And this kind of. This idea of like the rupture, but the baby will be okay as long as you can create repair. Now, it's the same as in all relationships in our. In our lives, right? We. We are going to rupture them. We are going to make mistakes. The most important thing we can do to make people trust us and to continue having a healthy relationship is repair those ruptures. And I think by hearing feedback, making the mistakes that we make in life by listening to the feedback from the people we make mistakes from and committing to making a change, that's how you'll get people. That's why we've exponentially grown from 750 people in year one to one and a half thousand year two to three and a half thousand year three to now four and a half thousand year, you know, year four. That's why I believe. I truly believe that.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: That's wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Minta. I know I know you as Minta, but you're Araminta now. But thank you so much. I know we're at the top of the hour and I look forward to seeing you, Knoxville.
[00:49:38] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Dan. It's been a pleasure.
[00:49:44] Speaker B: If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. And if you haven't already, subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. But here's the real thing. I want you to know if you're carrying something you can't talk about, if you have every resource except someone who actually understands what wealth costs. I work one on one with people like you navigating exactly that.
You can reach me@diana oehrli.com.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: thanks for listening.
