Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

What if the parts of you that feel the most "broken" in relationships are actually superpowers in disguise? Tami Simon speaks with psychologist and attachment expert Dr. Diane Poole Heller about her new book, The Attachment Workbook, and why insecure attachment patterns aren't flaws to fix, but adaptive responses to understand—and heal.

Dr. Diane Poole Heller is an internationally recognized expert, author, and speaker specializing in adult attachment theory and trauma resolution. A former senior faculty member for Somatic Experiencing International, she studied for decades alongside trauma pioneer Dr. Peter Levine before developing DARE (Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning Experience), a somatic framework for healing insecure attachment. She is the author of The Power of Attachment and, most recently, The Attachment Workbook: Practical Exercises to Understand Your Patterns, Strengthen Connection, and Build Secure Relationships, part of Sounds True's Inner Workbook series.

In this conversation, Tami and Diane explore:

• Why secure attachment is biological—something we're all wired for, not something only some people get
• The hidden "superpowers" of avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized attachment styles
• How attachment wounds get physically trapped in the nervous system, and how the body completes what it couldn't finish
• The near-death experience that redirected Diane's life's work toward love and connection
• Why healing attachment doesn't require a partner, and how your relationship with yourself can be the starting point
• The research-backed power of repair in relationships, and why learning to apologize well may matter more than never rupturing at all
• Practical visualization exercises from The Attachment Workbook, including inviting in an imagined protector and healing the "attachment gaze"

This episode is for anyone who has wondered why connection feels so hard—whether you're a therapist, a partner, a parent, or simply someone ready to understand your own relational patterns with more compassion.

Listen now to discover why secure attachment isn't a fixed trait—it's a skill, and it's never too late to learn it.

This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where you can enjoy early, ad-free access to episodes of Insights at the Edge: https://join.soundstrue.com/

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ever notice how a tiny criticism can send you into a full-blown spiral, and then you spend the rest of the day furious at yourself for spiraling? Dr. Jeffrey Rutstein has a theory about why that happens, and it starts before you ever had a say in the matter: with the nervous system you were born with.

Rutstein, a clinical psychologist, Hakomi-certified somatic psychotherapist, and host of Sounds True's Healing Trauma Program, talks with Tami Simon about inheriting his own mother's fight-or-flight wiring, and how a childhood encounter with Indra Devi's Yoga for Americans sent him down a decades-long path through pranayama, Hatha yoga, and Zen practice.

In this conversation, Tami and Jeffrey explore:

• Why your baseline nervous system state is more inheritance than character flaw
• How naming that inheritance can interrupt years of self-blame and shame
• The difference between a fixed nervous system and one you can learn to shift

This one's for anyone who's ever hated themselves for "overreacting.” So…pretty much everyone.

Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Jeffrey Rutstein titled “Not Being a Prisoner To Your Nervous System.”

Find the complete interview: https://bit.ly/iate-jeffrey-rutstein

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if the type you've been typing yourself as isn't the whole story? Tami Simon sits down with Enneagram pioneer Beatrice Chestnut to mark the re-release of her classic guide, The Complete Enneagram, and to ask why facing our shadow, not avoiding it, is the real path to waking up.

Beatrice Chestnut, PhD, is a global expert, researcher, and educator on the Enneagram. She holds a PhD in communication studies and a master's degree in clinical psychology, and is a licensed psychotherapist, coach, and business consultant based in San Francisco. She is the author of several acclaimed books on the Enneagram, including the newly re-released edition of The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge, widely considered a classic in Enneagram literature.

In this conversation, Tami and Beatrice explore:

• The difference between personality (the protective "false self" formed in childhood) and our essential, true nature
• Why each of the nine Enneagram types has its own distinct shadow challenge to confront and integrate
• The 27 subtypes, and why Beatrice believes they matter far more than Enneagram "wings"
• How the connecting lines, or arrows, reveal each type's specific growth pathway — and why the order matters
• What each type looks like at its highest, most evolved expression
• Why more people may be ready to "wake up" to who they really are now than ever before

This episode is for anyone who's taken an Enneagram test and wondered what to do next, as well as therapists, coaches, and longtime students of the system looking to go deeper with the subtypes.

Listen now to discover your own path to greater self-knowledge. →

This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and it originally aired on Sounds True One.

Get a FREE month of membership at https://bit.ly/STOne-Free-Month.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why do some of the most hardened people—lifers on death row, people who've killed—turn out to be, underneath it all, remarkably sensitive? Physician and trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté has spent decades working with addicts and prisoners, and he's found a pattern that upends how we usually think about cruelty and compassion.

Dr. Gabor Maté is a physician and bestselling author whose work on trauma and addiction has shaped how millions understand pain, illness, and healing. He's the author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, When the Body Says No, Scattered Minds, and, with his son Daniel, The Myth of Normal.

In this conversation, Tami and Gabor explore:

• Why compassion is wired into us from birth — and what shuts it down
• The neuroscience of care, drawing on affective neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp's research on emotional systems
• What Gabor has witnessed firsthand working with lifers and people on death row
• The difference between "orchid" and "dandelion" temperaments, and why high sensitivity can become either a liability or a gift
• Why genes linked to addiction may really be genes for sensitivity

This one's for anyone trying to understand the roots of cruelty, or working through their own compassion fatigue—toward others, or toward themselves.

Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Gabor Maté titled “Gabor Maté: Healing Principles to Embody in a Traumatized World”: https://bit.ly/insights-gabor-mate

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tami Simon speaks with author, mystic, and racial equity educator Michelle Cassandra Johnson about her new book, You Are Protected. Together they explore malevolent energies, calling on ancestors and archetypes for spiritual support, the practice of spiritual hygiene, and how spells work, sigils, and simple rituals like salt can help us stay grounded, protected, and connected to our own energy amid a turbulent time.

This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and it originally aired on Sounds True One.

Get a FREE month of membership at https://bit.ly/STOne-Free-Month.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Physician Lissa Rankin says trauma doesn't just live in the mind, it can trigger measurable physical disease, from autoimmune conditions to chronic illness that conventional medicine can't explain. But her most provocative claim is the reverse: that healing the nervous system may be the missing piece in reversing illnesses that have resisted every other treatment.

Dr. Rankin, a physician and author of Sacred Medicine and the New York Times bestseller Mind Over Medicine, has spent years studying the link between the nervous system and self-healing, including polyvagal theory and the ventral vagal branch of the vagus nerve. In this conversation with Tami Simon, she widens the definition of trauma well beyond childhood wounds to include systemic racism, environmental toxins, and the everyday stress of simply living in the world today.

In this conversation, Tami and Lissa explore:

• Why Dr. Rankin believes trauma and chronic illness are intrinsically connected
• How polyvagal theory and the vagus nerve point to a physical mechanism for healing
• Why "developmental trauma" can affect even people who had privileged childhoods
• How collective traumas — like systemic racism and white-body supremacy — show up in the body
• Why treating trauma isn't a guarantee of cure, but can still open the door to real healing

This episode is for anyone who has tried everything to heal a chronic or life-threatening illness and wants to understand what role the nervous system might play.

Taken from the full Insights at the Edge conversation with Lissa Rankin, "Is There a Holy Grail of Healing?" https://bit.ly/lissa-rankin

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Psychologist Laurel Parnell, a pioneer of EMDR and the creator of resource tapping, speaks with Tami Simon about her boldest evolution yet: multidimensional integrative healing. Forged in the wake of profound personal loss, this new approach draws on spirit release work, ancestral healing, and cross-cultural wisdom to ask what happens when trauma therapy meets the mystery of what isn't fully ours to carry.

This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and it originally aired on Sounds True One.

Get a FREE month of membership at https://bit.ly/STOne-Free-Month.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Is a spiritual awakening only real if it completely rearranges your life? That's the question Tami Simon puts to Adyashanti in this episode of Just One Question, and his answer digs into something a lot of seekers wrestle with: the gap between a powerful glimpse of clarity and the ongoing work of actually living from it. Adya also shares his own journey of awakening in a fascinating look at what awakening can look—and feel—like.

And there’s so much more. Listen to the entire conversation from this Insights At the Edge episode “Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean?” at https://bit.ly/adyashanti-waking-up

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What if aging isn't the end of your erotic life, but its deepening? Tami Simon speaks with somatic sex educator Kimberly Ann Johnson, author of Erotic Seasons, about erotic sovereignty, why the female body is its own spiritual path, and how the thresholds of menstruation, birth, and menopause carry built-in rites of passage most of us were never taught to honor.

Please note: this episode includes candid discussion of sexual abuse and sexual wounding, including Kimberly Ann Johnson's own experience.

This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and it originally aired on Sounds True One.

Get a FREE month of membership at https://bit.ly/STOne-Free-Month.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

An archetypal astrologer once named Tami Simon's deepest wound in the first thirty seconds of a live interview. In this month's Point of Insight, Tami traces how that moment—layered onto decades of "drops" from therapy, friendship, and interviews with teachers like Seane Corn and Joanna Macy—revealed a single truth: our karma becomes our dharma, and our medicine lives inside the wound.

Find the original Insights at the Edge episode, "Seane Corn: Your Pain Is Your Purpose," here: https://bit.ly/seane-corn

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.