#148 Embracing Post-Traumatic Growth - Jessica Depatie on her Korean background, shadow work, producing a documentary - "Dark Night of Our Soul", expanding your perspective through travel, what does it mean to rest, defining growth, the hero's journey, and memes

[00:59] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path. I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. So today I am very excited to be talking to Jessica Depatie. She is a fellow curious human. She is a podcast host. She's done many different things in her career.

She's recently been part of producing a documentary around post-traumatic growth, which I got a sneak preview of in the past couple of days. Really excited about this. It's one of the themes I've injected into my book. We're going to dive into her story and the movie, maybe a little behind the scenes of how do you actually do that. I imagine it's even more complex than putting a book out in the world, but excited to have you today, Jessica. Welcome to The Pathless Path.

[01:55] Jessica Depatie: Thank you, Paul. And you said my name the French way, which is really fancy. So I appreciate that.

[02:00] Paul: Well, you coached me a little, so I was cheating, but, um, would love to just start, uh, learning a bit about, about you, uh, before we dive into, uh, the thing that triggered, uh, me to wanna have this conversation with you, which is the, the documentary you're working on. But what were some of the stories and scripts you grew up with? Around, uh, what you were supposed to be doing once you reached, uh, as they call adulthood?

[02:29] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, I have quite the script. Um, I think it was an intergenerational script, which I think a lot of us are born into. But I'm half Korean, and so part of that, uh, birthright is— I mean, I say this in jest, but it's super true— that a noble profession that's easy to understand and one that's been around for a while, like doctor, engineer, lawyer, those things. That is the thing that a lot of Korean parents want for their kids because, I mean, in the most surface level, they want us to find success. And in Korean culture, many cultures, that has to do with how much money you make, right? So the narrative has changed, but I was, um, and I love my parents, in case they're watching.

I love you, Mom. Um, I have to say it was really challenging because just the way that I'm designed, I am not a math person, and those are some very left-brain tracks to go down. But I gave it my best shot, you know. Um, I actually, I took Latin in high school. I was like full-on going to be a doctor, but in the back of my mind, and it wasn't that far back, it's like, I just need to get past a certain point, figure it out on the side, and then You know, explain later. And again, it, it wasn't that serious, but they really ingrained it in me at such a young age.

When I would go to the doctor, the pediatrician, right? They'd be like, oh, look at Dr. Chang. She's so smart, so pretty. You know, like, look how nice she is. Don't you want to be like that?

I'm like, yeah, I do. So I had this, I guess the benefit of that though was I really wanted to help people. That was part of the thing. Always look out for the little guy. And that, um, into college when I failed college algebra 3 times. And like, college algebra is the very first math class you take in college.

It was very clear that I needed to take a different path, so I went down the journalism route, and that's where I am today. Um, now it's funny, this script of mine carries even till today, because now in this path of being a creative and really wanting to help people and do what I can, and also battling a bit of this hero complex that can come from, you know, being instilled with that narrative early on. I actually went down to Costa Rica last year and apprenticed with a medicine woman for about 6 months. And my mom, poor, poor woman, she was— so this was ayahuasca combo, iboga, a few other plant medicines that I was learning how to work with, not to serve myself, but just very curious around how it all worked. And she called me crying. She, she thought I was just like doing drugs, basically.

She's like, why are you doing this? You know, what, what is— what did I do wrong that you need to go there and you need to heal? And I'm like, what are you healing from? Did I miss something? Did something happen to you? And while I didn't have anything remarkable to tell her, it was like, you guys instilled in me that I was here to help people, and I'm just gonna do it my own way.

So here we are.

[05:29] Paul: Yeah, these scripts are so powerful. Even if you move past them, are sort of in a sense still with you. And I've gotten to really know the Taiwanese culture and I sense it's similar to Korean in that their memory of like real struggle is much more recent. And the development Korea and Taiwan went through was so rapid that like they almost, they went from like really roughing it to like modern industrial culture, like so fast that like people's bodies don't update the scripts, right? And so it can be really confusing generation to generation. Like my wife's generation, like they kind of have a nice life, but like the parents didn't have that when they were little.

And it's, it's so hard to really deal with those disconnects for sure.

[06:21] Jessica Depatie: I'm actually working with a gentleman who is a Vietnamese boat refugee out of Australia. Now he lives in New York and We're working on a project on intergenerational or transgenerational trauma. And his example is absolutely perfect for what you were talking about, where, I mean, he literally was born in the jungle. I don't know if he was born in the jungle, but, you know, like jungle floor kind of stuff in Vietnam. And when he was a baby, put on a boat, and then the boat was set afloat and broke down at some point. And they were just drifting out at sea, starving.

They had one day rations for 20 days. And he just remembers his sisters crawling around on the deck looking for grains of rice. Fast forward, a lot of life happened since then. Now he lives in New York and he's a very successful, um, uh, tech entrepreneur. And he looks at his family and himself and had this awakening moment like, oh my gosh, we have so much unresolved stuff here, guys. Like, what are we going to do about it?

So this is another project that I'm setting off on, but it's a huge— I'm so glad we started with this. It's a huge topic that's near and dear to my heart because I'm an American, you know, I was born in LA. I grew up in a very, like, culturally diverse area, but I still feel very Korean, and I wonder why. I don't speak Korean, you know, my Korean family isn't around so much, but I have this tie to some unresolved cultural magic, more or less. But that can bubble up to the surface in some less than ideal ways.

[07:48] Paul: What got you interested in this stuff? You clearly figured out early you were not destined for math. Uh, what, what shifted your curiosity in a new direction?

[07:59] Jessica Depatie: Okay. Uh, I'm just gonna tell a quick story about the math thing. I was in, it started earlier than that, fourth grade. I was in a math class and I remember just zoning out like, oh my God. And just looking out the window and coming back and a lot of math had happened and making a very conscious, I even remember this sentence in my head, this is where I stop. Like, this is where I am done learning math.

And I swear to you, I don't think I learned anything past that point. So it, I, I think maybe it's like losing your eyesight or your hearing, your other senses really come online. So I just became creative because I felt like I didn't have any other option.

[08:36] Paul: It's like, I'm not the math person. I must, uh, now become creative.

[08:42] Jessica Depatie: Definitely.

[08:44] Paul: I, it's funny, I sort of had the opposite. Uh, happened to me because I was so good at math. It was super easy for me.

[08:53] Jessica Depatie: Oh, must be nice. Rub it in.

[08:54] Paul: It is, but in a sense it, I never developed a connection with my creative side.

[08:59] Jessica Depatie: Mm.

[09:00] Paul: And it was always there sort of showing up in random different things, but I never had the narrative of, oh, those are things that are realistic to do.

[09:10] Jessica Depatie: I see. Yeah. I mean, that's, that is challenging. They have whole books on that. I was just picking up. The Artist's Way just now and putting it away.

Yeah, it's a whole thing.

[09:17] Paul: Yeah, that's a beautiful book. Um, and then, so how did you come to become interested in, uh, things like shadow work and all that world of ideas?

[09:29] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, so, um, growing up I went to a small Catholic school in LA, and I early on realized that I'm different. Now And just quick note, everybody's different, right? So that was new to me too. As I grew up, I realized that that's a thought everybody has, but it was really a part of me. I felt very different. And this is a very Korean conversation.

I don't usually talk about my ethnicity so much, but again, my mom, she— so she moved here when she was 18, and she's a real rebel, like escaped from a situation in South Korea without telling any of her family for her own safety. Dropped into Chicago, somehow made her way to LA, and was the personal assistant of this amazing hairstylist who invented the foil, you know, coloring system where you put your hair in foil. Wow. And so she made a name for herself. There was some stuff that happened, so she needed to escape that situation. So my mom is like a real kind of survivor badass and not a victim type at all.

Um, in that experience though, I think that she also gained this ability to, um, or maybe more of like a coping mechanism to fit in, to like assimilate, right? And when she couldn't or had a hard time with it, it really bothered her. So when I first started at the school, which is like kindergarten through 8th grade, so basically I know 30 people my whole life, right? Um, I real— I noticed subconsciously how uncomfortable she was around white women. She would be different around her Korean friends, but when she was around white women, she'd be a little bit like, you know, awkward and standing up in weird ways and speaking weirder. Like, her English would get worse for some reason, very self-conscious.

And I noticed this, and in my little kid brain, I was like, should I also be like weirded out by these people? So, um, with that kind of like crystallizing in me, and again, in a very non-remarkable story, but was really important to me for whatever reason. It followed me for a while. I felt like I, I was just very different, even though I didn't look that different and I spoke the language. But in this period of feeling awkward, I became a listener. Like, I barely spoke.

Most of that was because I didn't think I had anything interesting to say. But in that observation period, I learned a lot around how kids interact with each other and also these curious observations around why are girls different at the sleepover than they are at school? Why is this girl different with this girl and why is she different with this girl? And I was just like overwhelmed with the masks that I could see people wearing. Also very aware that the mask that I was wearing was one of complete disassociation and not really being present. It was just a kind of like a top-down observer of everything that was happening, which was confusing for me.

I didn't have any names for it. It didn't— it was not a strength at the time. It felt like a real issue. And then when I got into about the 4th grade, um, all that weirdness had built up, and I was like basically bullied until the 8th grade. So like for 4 years, I was in pretty severe isolation, social isolation, and I didn't want to tell my parents. I want them to be proud of me, you know.

I didn't want them to think that I was suffering. So in that period, um, I had a lot of depression moments, you know. I didn't really know why I existed. I just wanted to get through it. I just wanted to get home and be by myself or play the piano or something. Uh, when I went to high school, and then I realized, or I made this decision that I was going to change everything.

I'm going to be a charming, gregarious, funny, extroverted person, that the kind of person that I think I am, but I just never really gave myself the chance to be that. Um, but one of the ways I was able to do that was with drinking. So I was like drinking all through high school in order to be that person. I learned a lot through that, and that followed me through college, that habit. Also, um, it allowed myself— I'll give myself the credit to say it allowed myself to be self-expressed, but I also made a lot of stupid decisions. So as I'm exiting college and I'm like looking at my life and some of these experiences that I had put myself in, I knew that I had to change everything.

And so I went into this process of understanding why I am the way that I am. And that's what got me into shadow work, because I knew that I'm a good person. Like, we are all good people, but I would do bad things, right? And so it was just really curious to me, if I'm a good person, then why would I do these things? If I understand the consequences of something, why do I do these things? And so now, if we were to expand that to a more universal story, Every day of our lives, a lot of us do things even though we know better.

We maybe get into the same kind of relationships over and over again, even though we know that that kind of person isn't, you know, aligned for our highest evolution. Maybe we don't eat as well as we should or we drink too much. So it was really an exploration of my own experience and seeing that if I kept going down this route, I'm going to have a serious addiction issue. And not be able to pull myself out.

[14:49] Paul: Did you immediately discover, uh, Jung, uh, or was it a pathway of different resources to find ideas like his?

[14:58] Jessica Depatie: So actually, I didn't discover Jung until about 5 years ago. And so the system of shadow work that I subscribe to comes from the I Ching, which you're probably familiar with. Um, for anybody listening who's not aware of what it is, it's one of the oldest texts known to man. It's an ancient Chinese text And it was originally developed as a bit of a divination tool, or not a bit of a divination, it was a divination tool. It's said in a series of parables. Now, today, this text has been evolved and synthesized over time with different sciences like astrology and numerology and Jung.

Like, a lot of different bits of psychology and ways and systems that we understand each other can be placed on top of the I Ching to understand more of who we are. So it really started with more of an Eastern context. And then as I expanded further into like really geeking out on it, Jung came into my life. I was like, holy smokes, like this is a whole new thing. And that was great.

[15:57] Paul: Yeah, it's, it's really fascinating. I was talking with somebody about this yesterday, how he's really deep in a Greek history rabbit hole. And if you read in history though, there's a lot of cross-pollination of ideas. Like in these times, there are all these like famous people in ancient history that were actually just alive at the same time. And you had like a thriving Chinese civilization, also stuff happening in Mesopotamia in the West. But now we're so hyperfocused in the modern ideas.

Like one of my friends says, we mostly consume what's been created in the last 24 hours. And that's sort of crazy. And yeah, I think discovering things like the Tao Te Ching for me as well, it's just like, oh, we've known these secrets forever and life is just a process of relearning and remembering these. Does that resonate?

[16:55] Jessica Depatie: Yeah. You know what your friend said about consuming things that have just been created in the last 24 hours? Like, on one hand, a part of me is like, that's, that sucks. But on the other hand, The things that we create are a result of the things that have happened in the past too. So it's kind of cool to see like meme culture, for example, creating in a second, in a, in a very like, like messy kind of way, uh, in an entire archetypal story that, you know, took pages and pages and pages, uh, several hundred years ago. That's That's neat.

[17:34] Paul: Yeah, I never thought about it like that. It's also— I mean, there's just certain stories. I think Joseph Campbell goes into this, and I saw he was featured in your film as well. There are stories that sort of like map onto the human brain, and it's always sort of worked that way. There are certain origin stories that every culture independently comes up with. And so memes are like the simple and dumb version of this in the modern day, but really they're just the synthesized version of a lot of these ideas just that map on to what humans are desiring or interested in or triggered by.

[18:08] Jessica Depatie: Oh, totally. Do you know, uh, James McCrae? He runs the Instagram, uh, Words Are Vibrations.

[18:14] Paul: I don't think so, no.

[18:16] Jessica Depatie: I'd imagine you've seen some of his stuff. I think he creates like, like a solid 20% of the spiritual funny memes out there that are really hilarious. So, um, he's a friend of mine that lives here in Austin, and he runs a meme school where he will take people through through like mythological archetypes and whatnot, and like what memes actually mean beyond the internet meme thing. And it was actually fascinating. And now that we're talking through this, I mean, we're talking about the hero's journey, right? And I think everybody listening knows what that is more or less.

It would be interesting to— if we could map out like all of the memes that are like hot right now and just plot them on this hero's journey to see where people in society today are really resonating. Like, are we are we in the underworld, or are we on that call to it? Now that I'm talking through this, I feel like we're at this call to adventure kind of like tipping point. We're on the ledge, and everybody's like, like just dancing around there, and like, I don't know, sort of making fun of the teeteriness of life. But it could be interesting if we just drop in, you know.

[19:25] Paul: It seems sometimes we're constantly stuck in the denial of the, uh, Denial of the call, right? It's so—

[19:32] Jessica Depatie: Denial is the new sexy. Yeah. The—

[19:35] Paul: that's fascinating. Yeah, I have his page up. This looks super interesting. This is definitely gonna be a rabbit hole. I'll link this up in the show notes as well.

[19:44] Jessica Depatie: Yeah.

[19:45] Paul: Maybe talk about how some of that stuff helped you. Like how did understanding the shadow and hero's journey and these things sort of help you make sense of your own life? I mean, they've, been huge for me as well.

[19:59] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, so we started this off by talking about— I was talking about how I felt weird as a kid, and I think that that is a common feeling that a lot of people will have, is I'm, I'm alone in this. And as much as we know that other people are going through things, it feels like my thing is unique and etc. Um, when you can use systems like mythology or the hero's journey, you can see like literally where you're at in the process. A good friend of mine who was the writer of the documentary, Rick Alexander, has on his— in his office this big picture, and it's like a graph of basically the hero's journey, you know. And he can look up at it all the time and say like, I am there, you are here, you know. It's just a reminder that same with the I Ching, same with the Tao Te Ching, these things have existed through time because they are our human experience.

Whether we're, you know, typing away on computers and our lives are looking practically unrecognizable to the ancient Chinese is fascinatingly irrelevant. Because if we look at the things that they were struggling with, and sure, they're talking in terms of crops and coins and whatever, oxen, but if we can look at those and find solace in our experience and see that people thousands of years ago are going through the same thing we are, just in different a different context. For me, that was very comforting, and it also felt really creative too, because then I can see, you know, instead of studying, um, people who are successful— because that's what I was doing for a lot of my life, or my early life. I was like, I want to be a business bitch, you know, I want to this and that.

And then I'd read these biographies and like, I don't know, I don't know, like, they have a lot of money, but they don't seem happy. Yeah, and at the times when I've made the most money, um, at that time I was like, well, that wasn't that fun. So there's clearly something missing here. So yeah, it was this process of just then studying wisdom, right? What does it mean to study someone who is wise? What does their life look like?

And there are little subtleties and micro-movements that those people make in their lives, and most of that is awareness. Period. Awareness of those things that they were doing. And eventually, if one becomes aware of their actions long enough, has enough of those insights, they become breakthroughs and behavioral changes without a lot of that shamey energy that can be around this kind of work. You know, when you see, oh, this is wrong with me, I need to fix it. Well, yeah, you can wake up earlier, you can work harder, you cannot drink, you cannot, not, not.

But also, that can be hard on your soul too, because there's a reason why you're doing those things. So the, the act of awareness, the act of cultivating pauses in your day before you pick up that drink, before you binge that next show, is maybe all you need. And that's not like a hot, you know, there isn't like a 5-step process to shadow work, but I would say if there was one process, it's that. And eventually enough of those micro-movements become epiphanies, and it changes something in your DNA, it changes something in your aura where that is just not an anymore and you've resolved something. Yeah.

[23:17] Paul: And the challenge for this is oftentimes the behaviors are serving us, right? I think I've seen some people challenge the word addiction because in some ways the addiction is benefiting you in some way. And figuring out like how it is serving you and supporting you can also just help you release it. Is that something Is that a frame you think about when you think about shadow work?

[23:43] Jessica Depatie: The way that I do shadow work is I will look at a very specific unpleasant thing. Addiction is a perfect example. So, and I like this process because I have certain things in my life that I want to figure out. And if I can put that out there through like my podcast, for example, where we focus just on one little thing, then it can be a Rolodex more or less, because every shadow has a different kind of strategy. So addiction in particular, it has two forms to it. It— the most obvious one, the one that we know of, is something where you do the same thing over and over again and it's very clearly not fulfilling you.

And you may get a certain high at some point, but it drops down. And then there's also the, the judgment that comes from that. So like shopping, you know, when I feel bad, I go to Amazon and I buy something and it comes in. I don't even care what it is. It was the— it was the purchase that feels good. Right?

And you shop and shop and shop. That's a kind of addiction. Another kind of addiction that's more prevalent but less known is the jump from one thing to the next thing. So a constant— but what it is is a constant state of movement, a constant state of like, okay, I'm gonna go shop. That didn't do it. Okay, I'm gonna go work out.

Okay, that didn't do it. I'm gonna go call my friend. That didn't do it. You know, it's a an avoidance, right? And then so of what? So what is the strategy for addiction?

Well, I think one of the easier ways to go about doing that is to look at the gift state of addiction, which might be something like adventure, right? Because what we're seeking is something exciting, something to get our levels up. And the reason why we might not be experiencing adventure is because we're not aware of what's actually happening in our 3D moment. When you're washing the dishes, or let's just say we take a look at a little, a square inch of soil, we could study that square inch of soil for the rest of our lives. Like, there is an infinite number of different sciences and stories and ways we can interest ourselves in the tiniest, like, most infinitesimal little bit of space. But yet I think this is one of the issues we have now.

We have access to everything. Right. We, we're not sitting on the side of the road just bored, like how you might see people doing in Costa Rica. You know, they're just sitting. You see kids just kicking dirt and stuff, and they're probably having a way better time than a lot of kids here who have like the soccer practice and this and that.

[26:16] Paul: Yeah, that it is. This is one of the hardest things I've had to deal with since returning to the US is that I've discovered in myself ability to exist in a state of non-doing and cultures that also still have some sort of tie to this state. And in the US, that is seen as a bad thing. Oh, you're just not going to do anything? What do you mean? What's, what's your plan?

What's your next step? What's, what's the goal? And yeah, it's, it's really hard to access that. Do you think people need to leave the US to experience a different state. This is something I've just been playing with.

[26:58] Jessica Depatie: No, but it's a lot easier to do that, you know. Once you step out into a different country, even if it's Canada, you know, we're, we're talking— you're in the US, right?

[27:06] Paul: Yeah.

[27:07] Jessica Depatie: Yeah. Even if you go to Canada—

[27:08] Paul: I'm also in Austin, by the way.

[27:10] Jessica Depatie: Oh, you are? Why are we doing this online?

[27:13] Paul: Because I have a baby.

[27:15] Jessica Depatie: Okay. Oh, well, I'm going to come visit your baby one of these days. So, um, yeah, like even going to Canada, it, it for me was totally different. And I've been luckily like blessed to be able to travel all over the world from a young age. But yeah, like there's no quicker way to see how— well, to expand your perspective, right? And when you expand your perspective and you come home, taking a shower feels different, you know, like the way you wash and dry your dishes, you're just like very aware that this isn't how everybody does it.

in Canada, I used not until just recently, you couldn't get an orange unless it was winter, right? Like so different. But I don't think that you have to leave your backyard. And I do feel a certain kind of way when I say that because I have had the opportunity to travel. But for anybody listening that doesn't have that opportunity to just walk outside in your neighborhood and just to observe for real, like to not be in a rush to get somewhere. You know, on your two feet, we can explore everything.

[28:17] Paul: So you said before the gift state, can you say a bit more about what that means and how that ties to adventure and how we might be distracting ourselves from that state?

[28:28] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, so this is all based on, um, a system within, I mean, okay, I'm gonna say it's the gene keys, but this has lasted for, I don't know, forever since we've been humans. But this sentence, every shadow contains a gift, right? Like the grit within the oyster turns into the pearl. And another way that we might say that is like in a Tony Robbins-esque fashion, your mess becomes your message. Like, there's a reason why this sentence has been translated over time in different industries because there is something about having a problem that, like, there are— okay, let me just use myself as an example. There are a lot of things that I do in life that are, like, not great, you know, but that don't bother me.

They're not an issue for me. But then there are some things that I'll do that aren't great that are like, this really bothers me. So I'll just start with that. Um, like, one of those things is feeling lazy. Like you were talking about. That is a thing that when I'm feeling lazy, and not the restful, like rejuvenating lazy, like I need to be lazy, but I have a lot to do and I'm really like inert, like I can't get going.

This is one of my main shadows. And because that is so like alive in my psyche, the system tells us that the things that are most lit for you, that are the biggest problems for you, are the things that we're more or less here to conquer. And to turn into our greatest gifts. Because if you're deficient in something that's important to you, um, it's hard not to work on it, you know. I mean, we can keep avoiding it, that's definitely a possibility. But if we were to, like, from a bioevolutionary standpoint, if something needs to be fixed, it usually gets a lot of attention.

So, uh, laziness, for example, that being a problem for me, I hyper-focused on it and I worked on it. And now determination, that gift state is one of my greatest gifts, but it wasn't innate to me. It wasn't something that I was good at. Now, if we were to look at something that you're just naturally good at, is it going to be your greatest gift? Probably not, because it doesn't need that much attention, right? It's not screaming for like a level up.

It's fine. So that's what I mean why like shadow state and gift state, they lie on a spectrum, and it's more or less the same kind of energy. It's just like opposites.

[30:56] Paul: Yeah. Is something like that also just calling you to actually rest too, but in a deeper, more connected way?

[31:04] Jessica Depatie: I mean, it can, you know, that's where this work gets really nuanced and it's hard to put together fun little 20-minute clips on shadow work, which is like my nightmare, you know, it's so nuanced. Yeah.

[31:15] Paul: Yeah.

[31:16] Jessica Depatie: Like resolve, rest. Rest is different than laying down, you know, like true rest could be something that doesn't look like rest at all. So it really depends.

[31:26] Paul: Yeah, I think for me, that was something that was really confusing to me. I was not working long hours, but I felt like I was, and I've now found I work in a much more like up and down flow where I can go really intensely on stuff and feel energized, but then I need a break of sort of not really doing anything. And that, that was just impossible in my previous employment, but is something I'm, I'm still trying to figure out. It's a hard thing to develop a, a relationship to, especially when I'm in the US and everyone's just busy all the time.

[32:02] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, I mean, our systems aren't designed for us to live cyclically, you know. And we even think about women and how freaking unproductive and indoorsy we feel for a week, if not 2 weeks out of the month, right? But then most women are expected to go to work every day at the same time no matter what. And I think things are— there's a little bit more awareness around things like that, but Yeah, to just blow into winter without any rest, you know, right into spring, right into summer, right back into fall and winter again is really unnatural. I don't know what the answer of that is. Um, you know, people have their 9-to-5s and things, but for me it was once I recognized that about myself, I, I needed to get out of it and I needed to do whatever possible to live more naturally.

[32:54] Paul: Yeah. So how did you get into wanting to make a documentary?

[32:59] Jessica Depatie: Okay, so this is a fun story. Okay, I haven't told this story actually. I have another thing that I say when people ask that question, but I'm going to tell a different thing.

[33:09] Paul: Okay, we, we want the, we want the deeper stories here on The Pathless Path.

[33:15] Jessica Depatie: I don't know if it's deeper, but it's weird. So it's perfect. Just another option. Okay, so like 5 years ago, I get a call from my a friend. I won't name his name. And he was like, hey, there is a— I have an opportunity for your husband, um, my partner Jeff DePazzi, who's a producer in this documentary with me as well.

And, um, Christopher Nolan is looking for a military, like, consultant on his new movie G.I. Joe that they're recreating with Mark Wahlberg. This gentleman that called me is a good friend of mine, and he was calling in his whole A-team because they had gotten integrated with Nolan's team and looking to like just reinforce this movie with as many pros as they could, right? Fitness, military, whatever. So it was really exciting. We hopped on a call with Nolan's main guy, we hopped on a call with, uh, Dana something from Disney, and we hopped on, um, conference calls with these people all at the same time.

All right, Jeff and I were stoked. We were huge Nolan fans, and Jeff is a high-level military, um, sniper. So it wasn't like far-fetched for this to happen. So all of a sudden though, I mean, we had a lot of conversations, but a month went by when we didn't hear from them. And then we're like, well, maybe this isn't happening. We're trying to reach out and stuff started petering out.

So anyway, my friend calls me a couple months later and he's like, hey, remember that whole thing with Nolan's crew? Um, I called a good friend of mine and because they needed security for some of these people that were coming in. His friend was an ex-CIA person, and when he was on these calls, he got some like weird, like, spidey sense stuff. Some tomfoolery is happening here. So he calls his friend at Disney who he had a contact with and was like, hey, is this legit? His friend was like, no, this is a scam.

This is like some, uh, this— it's a an Indonesian man in Indonesia who can change his voice to anything. So I was talking to a British man, a white middle-aged woman, like some surfer dude, you know, like all these people, and they're all the same call together, clearly not talking over each other, but I didn't notice that. And, um, yeah, and so you can— there's even a podcast that's out about this now called The Con Queen, The Hollywood Con Queen. And we didn't get far enough to any point where they were asking for money. And I couldn't— I was like, how were they going to get money from us? You know, we were on— the most annoying part was that we wasted so many hours and like we were so excited about something that wasn't real.

And also it felt gross, but it was hilarious. Um, so anyway, in the podcast— and they just caught this guy recently, by the way— um, in this podcast they go through how they actually would have you fly to Indonesia on your own dollar and you would get reimbursed, and then all the hotels and like the visas and stuff that you would need to buy to like be a part of this, the acting classes and stuff. They'd be all in cahoots together and just drain your bank account there. So it was a pretty sad story, but being a part of it was funny. Long story short, after that, Jeff and I were like, okay, we got so excited about this, it must have happened for a reason. You know, that's just how we think.

We couldn't have spent this much excitement over something that's not going to happen. Let's make our own movie. So that's basically like how we got started making a movie. And, um, yeah, that's so cool.

[36:42] Paul: I love that. Um, hidden signals from the universe. I'm, I'm glad that you didn't get conned too and go to Indonesia.

[36:50] Jessica Depatie: I like to think that I'm smarter than that, that that wouldn't have happened, but I mean, who knows?

[36:55] Paul: Yeah.

[36:56] Jessica Depatie: When you're excited about something.

[36:58] Paul: So was the original idea post-traumatic growth? I know it's called, uh, dark night of the soul, which is a phrase you see a lot in this kind of, uh, work as well.

[37:07] Jessica Depatie: So the title is Dark Night of Our Soul, and we wanted to really highlight our there instead of the, because it— even though this is an individual journey, and I'll answer the second part of your question in a moment, um, even though this is an individual journey that we're, we're all going on and reclaiming parts of ourselves that have been fragmented through childhood or in relationship and just challenges, maybe deaths or accidents or sicknesses, uh, As we do this work, the documentary also explores, is there a moral responsibility to do this, or is it an amoral option for everyone? And that question was important to us because it seems like a lot of the issues that we have today—systemic racism, environmental issues, political BS, just trouble in families, like all the problems, right? It's a long list.

Um, they could all be solved if we became more whole because when we look at the decision makers and the people, leaders, whether that's parents or educators or policymakers, they're just humans like the rest of us, right? And to, to make decisions that are going to be so farsighted that they can create short-term success and also success for people multiple generations from now requires a certain kind of wisdom that I don't think we have access to unless we're seeing through the clearest lenses we possibly can. So how we came to post-traumatic growth and how we cared about this at all was, um, Jeff was in the military, right?

And once he got out— and he was in there for 15 years and he was deployed all over the place, and he's probably one of the best snipers in the world— when he got out, it's very typical of a first responder, of a veteran, to a few years in start to see signs of PTSD. Like, it doesn't happen right away. And his version was, or is, traumatic brain injury from multiple blast injuries. And he fell out of a helicopter and hit a car on the way down. So dude has some injuries, right? And it was really hard.

It was really, really hard. In addition to that, on his way out, they're like, hey, Jeff, congratulations, you get the full PTSD package. Um, he still needed to do the doctor thing and go through all that ridiculous paperwork. But because it's just assumed that given how much time you've spent in the service, everything that you've seen and gone through and your injuries, you're 100% fucked up. And that's what they would say to all of these people, right? Post-traumatic stress is something that you're going to have, period.

Here are some resources. Good luck. See you later. We just couldn't if that was an inevitability, and for us it was like, okay, this is actually happening, there has got to be a silver lining. Because in the way that we understand life, everything happens for a reason. I have to believe that.

I have to believe that, because if I didn't, I'd be weird. Like, I'd be not in such a good place because stuff happens, you know. And so maybe it's a— well, anyway, I won't go down that route. But so we started looking into what is the silver lining of trauma. And that's how we came across post-traumatic growth. One of the interesting things, it's very curious that PTSD and post-traumatic growth were both named around the same time, you know, early '70s to late '80s, sometime around then they were both more or less discovered in the scientific or the psychological realm for reasons why you might imagine one took off and one didn't.

So we felt that as part of Jeff's continued service now in the civilian world, and with my innate interest in the dark side of the human experience and why that exists, it just made sense to focus in on this one phrase to bring awareness to something that has been forgotten at a time where it seems like we might need it the most.

[41:02] Paul: Yeah, I love that background too. This is actually something I've gone pretty deep into. If you look into psychology around the '60s and '70s, there was a split, um, in terms of how do we make people better versus how do we fix people? Um, right. And then the whole profession pretty much picked the second path. Uh, one interesting thing with this is Maslow, um, was studying the hierarchy of needs, but that was his early work.

He pretty much abandoned that, um, in his career and then tried to basically reclaim this like positive psychology. And so he would say that like everything is a mix of B needs and D needs. So D needs are deficit needs and then B needs are being needs. And that actually like psychology should basically be focusing on the being needs. Mm-hmm. Because those can actually help resolve some of the, the deficits.

But yeah, it, it seems like there is an awakening happening to this and it, it was something confusing I went to. Um, so I quote, um, Professors Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in my book. They say people that face crises often experience post-traumatic growth, and that manifests as an appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life. And this is definitely something I experienced. It didn't happen right away. It was like very slowly.

Very slow and emergent, but there's really no like stories we have in our modern world of how people work and like our ideas of thriving and ourselves that really bring this alive. And it's kind of like what Maslow was saying is like we both have— we, we probably have a mix of post-traumatic stress and growth happening at the same time, which can be really confusing. So long, long riff there, but I don't know if that resonates with some of your own reflections as well.

[43:10] Jessica Depatie: It absolutely does. We interviewed this fantastic woman, Dr. Yoko Nomura, who's an epigeneticist out of New York, and she was sharing some of her— I mean, we moved away from epigenetics for a moment, and she was talking about her Japanese culture, and she was saying that the way that we heal in the West is by trying to, like, imagine there's a, a black, like, or a white circle, right? And that is health. And then there's a black spot in there, and that is like disease or something like that. And the Western modality is to remove the black, right?

Is to focus, is to negate those things. Uh, in the Japanese culture, they add more white, and eventually the black is pushed out. So it's interesting, like, the last thing that you talked about, what I just spoke about, it's two different types of things. What we're exploring in this documentary, and, um, more with depth psychology instead of positive psychology, and this hyperfixation on what's wrong with us, which is like a whole thing, to ask the viewer to contemplate bouncing between the two because white and black, like, that is just not the world that we live in, right? And to focus on your strengths only and to add just more good can be a source of bypassing because there's still material in there that needs to be resolved. Now, not everything needs to be processed though either.

And we look at ADHD or, you know, like, I was on Adderall when I was in college, like, diagnosed with ADD or something. Like, I probably have it, I guess. I have— I get a lot of ads for it for some reason on Instagram. Instagram thinks I have ADD, that I'm bloated, and a whole bunch of weird things. And I need mushrooms. But I know it's not the hot thing, being middle, being contemplative, being not regimental about the way that we think is a really difficult thing to ask somebody because we're not asking them to do anything in particular.

It's just you are your own experience. So like the rest thing, Is this desire to not be resting a coping mechanism because you can't sit still, or is this a moment that you really do need a rest? It's all very kind of like, feely.

[45:31] Paul: Yeah. And even positive, like when I was using positive psychology in that previous question, I wasn't even referring to the modern version, but we have this positive psychology, but it's the same as like fixing psychology, because it all starts with the same belief that like we are broken and we either need to fix it by treating things and fixing things or doing better because we're also broken. So I love this phrase of depth psychology. Is that like a field in academia? It is.

[46:05] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, it's, it's great. It really focuses on mythology and using archetypes. Oh, it's like Jungian psychology basically, but also integrating myth and maybe being less focused on the man and more along around his processes and his way. So they even study things like astrology. You know, you don't need to believe in astrology, but there's a system around it to where if you— if something tells you you are a certain way and you consider how you fit into that box and you really try to figure out, okay, well, What does this mean for me? You know, subtract that, add the Bible, same kind of situation.

Subtract that, add, uh, MBTI or something. You know, it's a way to understand yourself and like some of the complexities around that. And one of the things that you had mentioned there was, um, like getting better or fixing ourselves or whatever, right? Like, so as we were creating the documentary, one of the huge questions was How do we define growth? You know, post-traumatic growth. Tedeschi and Calhoun have those 5 things, you know, like strength, better relationships, um, spiritual connection, being of service.

There's another one I can't think of right now. And those are all fine and great deathbed moments. And then also, what happens when you're not doing those things, which is a lot of part of the day? So you were saying like PTSD and, or PTS more or less, that's what they call it now, um, and post-traumatic growth, they can happen at the same time, right? And so getting better, as you probably saw in the documentary when Rick was talking, it's like getting better isn't necessarily what we might consider getting better. You know, what is getting better?

A lot of times we associate that with success and achievement. A lot of times we associate that with the number of friends we have or the amount of money we have or how beautiful we are. Um, but if we can look at the real meaning of growth, it is this expansion of consciousness. And for people that are on a quest to expand their consciousness, the seekers, probably everybody listening, um, might not use that word, but, you know, love to expand your perspective. Often it hurts a lot more than what happened before you started that journey. Like, you become really sensitive to things and you see too much.

And you recognize things about your loved ones that you don't want to see, you know? And it also comes with extra compassion, but it's also a dance, you know, between all of those acknowledgments and how we embrace them and if we want to do anything about them even. So it can get more complicated, honestly.

[48:49] Paul: I'm forgetting the author now, but I read this book of The Journey of Soul, uh, Initiation. Um, oh yeah, uh, I forget the author. I'll, I'll figure it out later. Um, I'm, I'm just gonna Google it. I have access to the internet.

[49:07] Jessica Depatie: I haven't read that, but you are like the fifth person that's brought that up in a very short amount of time, so I'm gonna have to check that out.

[49:14] Paul: Yeah, Bill Plotkin. Um, and he has this idea of the cocoon stage, and the cocoon stage is when you have to This is basically like going, leaving, going to the outer world, right? In the hero's journey. And I definitely experienced this and I sort of had to leave my job. I had to leave my identity and I had to leave my country. And when I was in Asia, I felt extremely lost and I didn't have the most support for what I was doing because I couldn't articulate.

What I was doing. But at the same time, there was a strange feeling of, at the same time of being lost, of finding myself. And that, okay, if I follow this strange feeling for a few years, it might work out. And I've definitely sort of reemerged in a much stronger way. Um, but this, this is the hard thing. There's no roadmap.

And I tell people, like, it might suck, but it might also be worth it.

[50:20] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, that is— that's shadow work right there, right? Like, it's not fun to look at yourself in the mirror and see that you've had spinach in your teeth for your whole life, but it's always worth it taking it out, you know? That feeling of it not making sense is very common too when we're following our hearts. And as cliché as that might sound, you know, you being in Asia, And being like, I know this doesn't make any sense, and I could logic my way out of it. I could make something up so that you feel like whoever you is, somebody, your supporters, your loved ones that might be like concerned about you, I could make something up so that it proves to you that I'm on the right track. But that intuitive, like, gut instinctual sense is sometimes completely disconnected from the linear way that our brains want to make sense of things.

[51:14] Paul: Yeah, and I did make stuff up that was—

[51:17] Jessica Depatie: I've done the same thing.

[51:21] Paul: And so what did you learn along the way of going down this rabbit hole and helping to produce this movie?

[51:29] Jessica Depatie: I learned that producing a movie might be harder than resolving trauma. I can imagine. So that's not true, but it. So my background is in podcasting, and I thought that there'd be a lot more rollover into just making it video or something, right? Come to find that the whole process of bringing a movie to a major streaming platform is like, it's super who you know, and also it's who you have known that is willing to support you. And so what I learned was in the work that Jeff and I have done over the last 7 years, this was our time to start calling in some favors.

And, um, yeah, we'd like, we've just been really grateful. So many people have donated their time and their teams and money. Like we're going through a Kickstarter right now to raise finishing funds for this and to execute an impact campaign so we can take some of these people on in our cast that have these remarkable stories of post-traumatic growth. To correctional facilities, to speak to first responders and veterans and people who are like on the front lines or have intentionally or unintentionally found themselves in an arena that's really difficult. Because often those people are like the greatest, greatest warriors on the other side of it. People in correctional facilities, dude, they're tough and they're smart, you know, and they're in there because they don't like the way the system works.

Right? And they're also in there for other reasons, like maybe they didn't have great families or great resources or sense of agency to work the system. But I mean, I think we would have a lot more in common with somebody in prison than we might, you know, like the President of the United States. So we really want to take this message to those people. Anyway, sorry, to answer your question, I learned just how, how much people can care. Because when I met with consultants around creating a film around this, they're like, this is a really complicated topic.

Like, are you sure you don't want to create a reality show around something? Or like, you know, a documentary about beards? Like, that would do really well. It would do well. We should probably do that next. Um, but no, like, we wanted to tackle like this topic where the antagonist is yourself.

Like, no, people need the antagonist to be somebody else. They need to be Coca-Cola. They need it to be white people, they need it to be something else. But to think that you're your own worst enemy is like kind of a hard thing to sell. So that was another thing that I learned is how controversial this topic actually is.

[54:07] Paul: That's it. I would never think that it would be that controversial, but I guess it's also just the industry you're dealing with. It kind of reminds me, a traditional publisher tried to buy my book recently and it's like they just have a playbook. They have one playbook of one type of thing they're trying to sell and it's like, this the program. It's just like not interesting to me. Um, yeah, it's tricky.

What— so what are you trying to do with the movie? I don't fully understand how you bring movies into the world. You're sort of taking an indie route now and getting some early funding, but then you're going to try to, I guess, sell it to streaming providers?

[54:48] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, yeah. So I'll walk you through the process if you like. Sure. So there's a development process And this is where, you know, you get the idea and you get really excited and then you need to figure out, okay, if the assumption is that it's interesting and there's a market for it, and which right now is the perfect market for a film on post-traumatic growth. We just went through the most remarkable global trauma ever with, you know, hashtag the C word. And, um, it.

So we're all like different on the other side of it, whether we want to admit it or not, for everyone's own reasons. Okay, so we should know about these things. Um, in fact, the studies on post-traumatic growth really started ramping up after COVID because, oh wow, people were interested, scientists were interested in how like pregnant women, women were dealing with it, how different like socioeconomic backgrounds were dealing with it. All that stuff is fascinating, new wave of research that's coming out now. So the idea is good. Um, now how much is it going to cost?

That we need to figure out. So we create a timeline and a basic structure, storyline structure of what we want to explore. Now the way that we went about it was the way that you're not supposed to go about it, but we couldn't do it any other way because when you do a purely exploratory type of documentary like this where you go in there with a theory and you don't know what you're going to come out on the other end with, You're left with hundreds and hundreds of hours of unused footage that you have to sift through maddeningly at some point to put the story together. Ideally, you know what the story is and you can create your peaks and valleys and know what your characters are, and you can timeline it out and have a rough script, more or less. You know, it's not scripted, but you know what points you're trying to hit.

So now that you've timelined everything, you have your budget, then you need to find funding. So we self-funded the, uh, pre-production and the production, the majority of the post-production ourselves. Again, something that you don't have to do. You can go out and get grants, you can get, um, business loans, you can get at that point, uh, funders early on or investors, especially if you, um, have a story that's like really like touches hearts, you know, like really resonates. Or really is applicable to big business, that they might benefit from the, the production of this. So you get some of your funding secured, and then you hire somebody like me to make sure that all these artists are wrangled.

So I'm the bad guy, basically, and I find the cast and crew, find the director, find the showrunner. Find all of the interviewees, uh, storytellers, the experts, everybody, and then we fly all over the place and interview them. And that's the most fun part, you know. You're staying in fun hotels, you meet all these fascinating people. Like, met John Vervaeke, who is so— I love John's stuff. I mean, he is a madman.

Love him. Anderson Todd, who is like the main star of the documentary, a fairly unknown guy but one of John's colleagues that he introduced us to. Anderson may be one of the wisest men on this planet. So humble, so like accurate in the way that he puts his words together. It was just brilliant sitting with him and so funny. And then once we get through production or post— sorry, pre-production, when we're recording everything, then director, editor, um, the producers who hold the, the big vision come together, and then we create the story.

And so Luke Montgomery, or Zachariah Montgomery, who's our director, also did the editing, and he was basically in his basement for months on end. It was so funny, he'd come out every once in a while, his hair is just like this, sifting through all this remarkable material. So also part of this process, if you do something that's as intense as the topic we're doing— we went through it. The universe made sure that we understood this topic like forwards and backwards. So we were going through our own super challenging bits of adversity throughout it, which was so helpful in hindsight. I mean, not even hindsight, we like, we knew why we were going through those things.

Um, they— we were playing out our own belief that post-traumatic growth is real, and we were tested. You know, there were lots of times Even recently, we're just like, what are we doing? You know, let's just get into sales or something. You know, like, why are we trying so hard? What is the point if, if distributors aren't thinking this is too complicated for people, if they just want movies about, I don't know, things that people can like watch with their mouths open and drooling. So, um, then, but clearly part of that process is a lot of ups and downs of our own emotional experience in going through this.

Once we then have our rough cut, the way that we're doing it now that we have the 30-minute version that's available to watch right now, and if anybody is listening and wants to check it out, you can go to posttraumaticgrowth.film and it'll take you to our Kickstarter page. And we're just asking for a donation of $15 to watch the 30-minute short, which is really lovely. And with that Kickstarter, we use this as a proof of concept. So we need, um, quite a bit more to raise to be able to do this impact campaign. And it's all step-by-step process because in order to get the best negotiation deal with a distributor, we need to show that we have serious teeth in the game. And then there are a lot of supporters behind this.

So the Kickstarter shows that there's grassroots movement, that people do care and they get it. The major donors, which we take that proof to, are then the top-down proof that organizations get it, things like that. And then when we go to distribution company, because we are a small indie house, that's when it's like, okay, well, you guys can keep your creative freedom. We'll help you finish the film. Um, and we'll make some good negotiations for the major streamers. Wow.

[01:00:57] Paul: That, that sounds like a lot. The, so, so I think by the time this is published, I think your Kickstarter will be over and you're sort of at this, bigger investor level. Okay. Right. I think you're closing the Kickstarter today, right? No, we're starting it today.

Oh, you're starting it? Yeah. So it should be live if people want to check it out. I'll link it. Yeah.

[01:01:23] Jessica Depatie: I think the end date is July 4th. Okay. Yeah. So it'll still be up.

[01:01:31] Paul: But also if there are any big investors that want to investors that are listening, feel free to reach out to Jessica as well. Um, that would be great. Any other places they should, um, like, how can they best support you if they're interested in this stuff?

[01:01:47] Jessica Depatie: Yeah, well, um, you know, I've been getting some messages from people that have watched the short already that have been going through it, and they're sending it to all their friends and family because it expresses, uh, maybe the complexity that they've been going through in a way that's really hopeful. Because that was a big thing about this. We didn't want to create what we call trauma porn. This isn't something where we're just like wallowing in misery. It's a real story of hope and science and spirit. And, um, so if there's anybody in your life that— and you're watching this, um, that you feel could be pulled out of their dark night, or somebody that recently has already gone through and is looking for a way to like orient themselves to what they just went through and what just happened and why they are experiencing growth, Um, definitely send them that link.

It's a $15 donation and, uh, it'll go a long way. And I can say that confidently, but I also say it humbly because of the feedback that we've gotten so far just with the short.

[01:02:47] Paul: That's beautiful. Uh, I love that you're creating this. Uh, I think it's a topic that resonates deeply with me. It's hard to talk about our challenging times in today's world unless there's like an upside. And I think the post-traumatic growth topic is important and needs to be shared by more people. So appreciate the work you're doing.

Anything else you want to leave with my audience?

[01:03:14] Jessica Depatie: I also have a podcast. It's called Shadow Work Library, and that's been going on since 2019. So you can check that out where you listen to podcasts. I just started a YouTube channel, so it's brand new. So if you guys want to check that out too, that'd be great. And let's see if there's anything else I would say.

Like, yeah, just last words. Just like, the whole point of all this is just to be more okay with who we are. I think like that is the whole point of it. So if you can go into this process knowing that you're a divine being, you just have some memory problems, and I think that that's the right energy to have.

[01:03:47] Paul: You're a divine being, you just have some memory problems. I love that. Well, thank Thank you so much for sharing your story and the work you're doing, Jessica. Thank you for coming on the show.

[01:04:00] Jessica Depatie: Thank you for having me.