GENERATIONAL TRAUMA, DOMESTIC ABUSE AND MALICIOUS CONTROL

Robert Hansen

That's all free?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, free.

Robert Hansen

Is it a credit system where you can have like 10 items? Or is it just take what you need?

Kelsey Kosmala

Take what you need.

Robert Hansen

Wow.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, take what's going to make you feel happy, comfortable, normal.

Robert Hansen

For the kids, too? Because they also probably don't have anything in their bags.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yes. Baby clothes, toys, all that stuff.

Robert Hansen

Wow, that's pretty crazy. I really like that idea of the interstitial stage. We had a couple of guests on; Penn Parrish, Joe Scaramucci as well as someone else talking about The Austin 20. The Austin 20 turned into The Texas 20.

They are starting to get all kinds of stuff delivered to them. Josh Costello was the other name I was spacing on. This is one of those other transitionary periods in people's lives. In their case, it's someone coming out of slavery or human slavery type issues.

This would be some sort of abuse. First of all, I think it's interesting that it's not just women, it's men as well. Because I think a lot of people think this is a domain that is entirely just women. It's not. It's children as well, too, as a matter of fact.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. It's interesting that you bring up men, too. That was something that the founder had pointed out. She was like, “A lot of men come in here, too. And that is not talked about at all.” Dads being abused by their wives and women going crazy on the guys, it's really not talked about.

Robert Hansen

Actually, will you spend a minute on that? Because I think maybe the audience, that might not be something that they really heard. What are some of the circumstances you've heard of about that? What sort of circumstances do the men find themselves in?

Kelsey Kosmala

Just being victimized verbally, physically. It happens all the time. Women can attack and be physical with men, and then men can shelter themselves and not fight back and then be a victim. And that happens a lot. It's pretty common.

Robert Hansen

In this case, would you say it's mostly physical, mostly verbal? What sort of abuse would you say the men tend to suffer from?

Kelsey Kosmala

I would not know a definite answer with that. Verbal is probably the easiest. With any situation, any person, it's words. But I don't think physical is far behind that.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, I can imagine a situation where a man is certainly able potentially to protect themselves but wouldn't because, what are the ramifications of hitting back? It doesn't sound particularly good.

Despite the fact that it might actually be required to save your own life, there might be some very dangerous situations. How does this all lead into the Ascension Leadership Academy? It sounds like they're partnered or something. How does that all work?

Kelsey Kosmala

I was a student of the Ascension Leadership Academy, and part of our level three course is leadership. After a few months of doing a lot of emotional intelligence work, we all get put on a team. And we get to raise funds for a nonprofit.

Everybody's got their own individual experiences and what they're passionate about raising funds for. In our group, we were all very passionate about sexual abuse. A few people found nonprofits that were local in Austin, or at least in the Austin area, and they pitched why we should raise funds.

We all voted, and Hope Alliance won. I really like that Hope Alliance won because it's outside of Austin.

Robert Hansen

It was in Round Rock?

Kelsey Kosmala

Round Rock. Yeah, good old Round Rock. I'm really happy about that because I feel like more of those kinds of situations are outside of the city.

Robert Hansen

Why is that, do you think?

Kelsey Kosmala

I don't know. It's a good question. Maybe not as many resources.

Robert Hansen

Interesting.

Kelsey Kosmala

Not as many resources, not as developed.

Robert Hansen

How did you decide that this was the cause? It sounds like everyone wanted to be involved. But why? How did you personally land on this?

Kelsey Kosmala

I have experienced witnessing lots of abuse growing up. I had a lot of friends growing up that also were in abusive situations. Even besides all that, it's really always been my passion.

Ever since I was a little kid, I always was like, “I'm going to be a therapist.” And my parents were like, “Okay, very weird.”

Robert Hansen

And here you ended up.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. I've always just been a helper. One of my gifts is meeting people where they're at, and I just have a soft spot for helping people who are in shady situations. I'm not afraid to go there and be with someone who's coming from that. I get it. I just get that mindset. I understand.

Robert Hansen

Are you willing to tell us what situations you found yourself in that made this personal for you? Or is that too personal?

Kelsey Kosmala

No, it's not.

Robert Hansen

You can tell me no, but I think these human stories are actually pretty interesting and important.

Kelsey Kosmala

Very. I want to inspire everybody else out there who's been involved in abusive situations. It's liberating to talk about it. So yes, I will talk about it.

Robert Hansen

Okay, great.

Kelsey Kosmala

I wouldn't say that I have a severely traumatic childhood, but there’s a lot.

Robert Hansen

Take your time.

Kelsey Kosmala

Okay. Well, I'm just deciding what angle to take. It’s a long story. I’ll start from when I was born, that's what I was thinking.

Robert Hansen

No, let's not start that far back. Just the highlights.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, highlights. Okay. Well, my mom's been married four times.

Robert Hansen

Three bonus dads?

Kelsey Kosmala

I've had multiple dads, multiple stuff dads. There’s one in particular, my mom and my real father broke up. We didn't have anywhere to go. And so we moved in with a neighbor. He was a dick. I'm going to breath through this a little bit.

Without going into too much details, you can just feel it. You can just feel when somebody has that desire. It was not a fun time. For me, it was very strict. He was physically abusive to my brother. That was in the text message that I sent to everybody when I was raising funds for Hope Alliance.

It was a big deal for me to say that to people because then that brings up me having to confront my brother. And I'm like, “Do you remember this? I remember this.” So it's brings a lot of-

Robert Hansen

Did he?

Kelsey Kosmala

I'm still trying to get in contact with him about it.

Robert Hansen

Did he shut you out after that?

Kelsey Kosmala

No, I think that he just is avoiding. And then he just had a baby. So I think we got a little off track, but I'm still going to confront him about that. But I had to confront my mom and my grandma. It was just a lot.

Anyways, going back to my childhood, basically, he used to make me watch porn. That's fucked up. I was six. Just some other instances and then always having this lingering feeling of, “What was that?” Then now as an adult, I'm like, “Okay, that is wrong. It's so wrong.” But you don't know that at the time when you're a kid.

Robert Hansen

You think that was with the intention of grooming you?

Kelsey Kosmala

I guess so. I've never had somebody ask me that before. I'm sure he treated me differently than my brother. So that could have been the case.

Robert Hansen

Well, so what happened? Your mother decided it was over for other reasons?

Kelsey Kosmala

Nobody was happy in that situation. But what was the deal breaker, which I confronted my mom a few years ago when I did some other personal development course. I called her and I was like, “I don't know why I just remember this. It's so vague, but I do.” And she was like, “Yep, it's true.”

She was like, “Back then, we had Blockbuster. And we had bank statements.” She said that, during the summer, he kept putting us to bed earlier than would have been normal.

Anyways, basically, he had been renting a lot of porn via Blockbuster. My mom found it in all the bank statements, and we packed up our stuff and left that day. And then we never talked to him again.

Robert Hansen

One thing I think is very common that I hear is, specifically women with children, when they leave their husbands, they very often just end up somewhere else. And it might as well be a roll of a dice.

It's not necessarily a safe place. It's not even really a place in some cases. It's just whatever they can make it to in that time period. So if you don't have a place like this boutique, where you can go get clothing and hang out and rest your head, where are you going to go?

It might be the next door neighbor, who you may have absolutely no idea if this person's grooming your child for some sort of exploitation.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yes, I'm glad you're saying that. And then it goes into, where did we go after that? We moved in with her friend, which was a party house. We were there for a few months, and then she met my ex stepdad. It wasn't a bad situation but not the best.

It was good, for what it was. It was fine. But there's still, I guess, that scarcity mindset of, “Where do I go? Can you take care of me?” And that has always been my mom, who's going to take care of us?

Robert Hansen

That’s really scary.

Kelsey Kosmala

That cycle keeps continuing. Back then, you have two kids, you're a single mom, where do you go? She wasn't supported by her parents. My real father was not paying child support. The internet was not around then.

Somebody who's going through that, it takes a lot of courage to be like, “Oh, I'm going to go to a shelter.” It's not even crossing your mind at the time. It could be like, “Oh no, it's not that bad. He just hit me. It's fine.” So it does just continue, the cycle, without some mental health help, guidance, therapy.

Robert Hansen

How do you think it affected you after it's all said and done? It can't have no effect. I feel like you're a pretty resilient person from what I've been able to gather. But also, that's got to have some sort of lasting ripple effect.

Kelsey Kosmala

I have been overly tough. It's hard for me to be vulnerable. It's scary for me to be vulnerable. Also, it's the generational trauma I'm carrying, that scarcity that my mom had with me. And I find it in myself all the time. I have to tell myself this isn't even me, this is my mom.

Back to the incident, how that affected me. I went a little off track there talking about generational trauma.

Robert Hansen

We'll get back to that.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, how that affected me, I think that my thing is freeze. I'm a freezer. There's flight, fight, freeze. And so for me, I was just frozen and numb, which is actually the hardest one to get out of.

In my adult life, the way I react to things, I have to be like, “Are you in freeze right now? Or are you in your pattern?” Then I have to tell myself, “Okay, do this other thing, even though this feels totally out of your comfort zone. And not what you would normally do. This is how you're not going to be in this trauma.”

Robert Hansen

Well, I think that it's good that you have moved on, to some extent. If you were to grade yourself, you feel like you're a normal person and you are that little girl who went through that trauma, where would you grade yourself? How have you come out of that?

Kelsey Kosmala

10 being healed? How healed am I? That's a good question.

Robert Hansen

Because I'm still sensing there's quite a bit of pain there.

Kelsey Kosmala

Sure. Yeah, there it is.

Robert Hansen

This is not something that's gone.

Kelsey Kosmala

No.

Robert Hansen

Despite the fact you're out of the situation. I think that's where I'm getting at. You can be out of the bad situation and still be completely destroyed by it. Just because your body is no longer being punched, just because you're no longer being raped, these wounds just carry on forever. So I'm curious how you feel in your situation.

Kelsey Kosmala

I want to say 50-50.

Robert Hansen

Okay, and you know how to get the rest of the way? Do you have a path? Do you think you're on that path?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. I've done so much personal development and so much therapy, so many yoga teacher trainings. I've done so many healing things to just get to the source. I also think I'm very capable, you know what I mean? It's not like I'm in this damaged place all the time or anything like that. But there is a struggle with a lingering self-worth thing, for sure.

Robert Hansen

Of course. Why don't we talk about the different types of abuse? Because I think there's so many different categories, and they're all actually different. The effect on the person might be very similar. But the way in which the abuse happens, I think is different enough that it's worth diagnosing.

One is, I think the most obvious one, sexual abuse. But that can take all kinds of forms; adults having inappropriate relationships with children, adults having inappropriate relations with each other and so on and so on. And that's a bit of a hard one.

For instance, it's very difficult to know in a relationship where two people are together, husband and wife like, “What do you mean he raped you? You have sex with him all the time. He's your husband.” or whatever.

Do you have any stories about that example where women are just forced into doing things that they wouldn't want to even in a situation where it's expected that that would be a natural thing for a husband and wife to be doing?

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, I feel like in general, there's a big lack of communication when it comes to sex and consent. There's always the influence of drugs and alcohol. I have some examples in my mind, but they are not husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend. I have to think about it.

I definitely think that could happen in a situation where somebody is drunk and on drugs and violent. That's their thing that they want to do, and they will do it. Yeah, I think that happens all the time.

Aggressive, I guess, from both parties, I haven't really thought too much about a woman trying to rape a man. But sure, I'm sure it happens. Yeah, situations where there's couples who are not happy in their relationship and they're stuck because of the toxicity.

Robert Hansen

I've definitely been in situations where women have been overly aggressive on something, whatever it is. Mostly, I just shoot them down. And they're not going to physically harm me. So it's not really an issue.

I could definitely see people being in situations where that would just be like, “Wow, I do not want this to occur. What is going on?” either direction. And sometimes that can get truly physical. Absolutely, I could totally see that happening.

The violence, in and of itself, without the sexual nature, just true physical violence in the example of beating your brother, for instance, or somebody just coming home drunk or on drugs and just starts beating people up because the dishes aren't done or whatever crazy thing. How common is that, as it relates to the sexual abuse version of that? Is that extremely common these days?

I realize this is a very common thing, but it strikes me as something you almost hear out of antiquity. This is something that used to happen in the ‘50s. The angry husband would be coming home and as a domestic partner got us haven’t done one very specific thing. All of a sudden, he just goes on a rampage.

It doesn't feel like it's out of the modern day, except for perhaps some backward societies. But that can't be true. It still has to be happening all the time.

Kelsey Kosmala

Sure. Well, according to Hope Alliance, which is where I have all my data because I work directly with them. And they're dealing with people firsthand, 33% of women have been abused by a romantic partner.

Robert Hansen

That’s a lot. One out of three. That seems almost too high. How is that possible? Jeez. These are self-reported. People are asking this question of, are these people who come in through the program? Or this is just in general when they ask any old woman walking down the streets, “Have you had something like that?”

Kelsey Kosmala

This is through the program. Actually, that's a good question. I would imagine so. To clarify, this is just with Hope Alliance, Round Rock area and the people that they've worked with.

Robert Hansen

Got it. Yeah. I'm curious how that relates to the physical abuse. Is that on par? Are they about the same stats? Or is this primarily sexual nature?

Kelsey Kosmala

I have this thing in my head where I don't even know what's the difference. Is physical abuse sexual abuse too? Are they doing that because that is something that arouses them?

Robert Hansen

Possibly. I think that there's definitely a type of violence a man hitting his boy because he didn't put his beer glass back or something. That's clearly not a sexual thing. That's just being an asshole. But I think that you could say that all of these are driven from an enormous need for power. And so they have a lot in common.

It's funny, I had a cab drive back from a recent trip. This Muslim guy, and he was talking a lot about his religion. I asked him a lot of questions, very similar to this. I just got to know him. He was a very interesting guy. I was saying, “What would happen if you just had a massive windfall and you just had all this money all of a sudden? What would you do with it?”

He said, “I would probably find a way to give it away as quickly as possible. Because the problem is, I think that whenever I get power or anyone I know gets power, I suddenly start becoming a terrible person. And I don't think that's wise for me. When I look around at my friends, they'll start raping women, they'll start getting in fights, they'll buy the nicest, whatever. Then suddenly, they're a gigantic jerk to everybody around them because they have this money. It becomes a source of power, this negative attractor.”

I thought that was a really interesting point. I never really thought about money being power. Obviously, they can relate to one another very closely. But in this case, money being the root of all evil, where he actually is like, “No, I literally cannot have this money. I’ve got to get rid of it as quickly as possible. I would look around for any social program that had the largest net effect from my local community, and that's where I’d put all my money.”

That's a pretty powerful statement for somebody who's literally driving a cab. This is not somebody with a lot of money. So for him, a few dollars tip actually is meaningful. I think that sexual abuse and physical abuse are all drawn from the same type of need for power. What do you think?

Kelsey Kosmala

I agree. I do. I feel like money can change people, too. It does give people power. It makes people very powerful. And so there could be some similarities with greed, power control. I can see a correlation between those two things.

Robert Hansen

What about the emotional and the psychological control that some people try to put in place like, “You're not allowed to do this thing.” It's not necessarily they're blocking a doorway. They're just saying, “You can't go see your friends. You got to stay here. You can't leave the house.”

That kind of thing happens frequently. I actually know multiple people, mostly men, actually, who are in situations where they're on lockdown. They are not allowed to leave.

Kelsey Kosmala

Men?

Robert Hansen

Men. Yes.

Kelsey Kosmala

Whoa. Wow.

Robert Hansen

Their women are very clear that they-

Kelsey Kosmala

Can't go anywhere?

Robert Hansen

Not without them.

Kelsey Kosmala

True. That does happen. That is very true. Yeah, unhealthy, codependent, clingy. I think that we are very screwed. In America, I don't know, just relationship dynamics in general can get so possessive when it's not pure love. And there's this trauma there. The triggers come up, and then the reactions come up. Then it goes to trying to control the other person.

Robert Hansen

Financial control was another weird one. I never really thought about it. But of course, I would imagine this is mostly men on women abuse, where men have money. And they do not let the women do anything with the checkbook. They don't give them a credit card or very limited spending account just enough for groceries or whatever. Is that something you see?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, that was part of Hope Alliance. She mentioned that. Definitely, people come there for that as well, which is so interesting.

Robert Hansen

I think so, too.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. Gosh, I don't have stats written down on that.

Robert Hansen

I really just have never seen it in person.

Kelsey Kosmala

There's financial abuse. That's what it's called, financial abuse, where there's allowances. I guess both ways. Sure.

Robert Hansen

Sure, good. I guess I've never seen it. Period. I would imagine it was probably mostly just because men tend to make more money, but it seems like an odd way to control somebody.

Then again, I look back on my childhood. I definitely was told what I could and couldn't do and given allowances. You know what I mean? It's just like an adult version of that. I don't really think about it in terms of a partner doing that same thing, more or less, treating the other partner as a child.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, that can come up a lot in relationships for sure. Yes.

Robert Hansen

That's quite interesting. The other one that I hadn't heard, which I thought was interesting is withholding STD protection and birth control with the intention of making the other person pregnant or giving them a disease.

Kelsey Kosmala

So evil and mean.

Robert Hansen

I agree.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, it's control. I think people just go into this place where they're not thinking logically. And they are so in love, so to speak, even though it's really codependency. They just lose it, and they just go to extremes and just go nuts. That is insane.

Robert Hansen

I think making someone carry your child is definitely built into human beings in general. Procreation is literally what we're here for. I have seen men do some very strange things to try to bed women.

Incredibly, my life has been a catastrophe of hilarious, terrible stories. But I don't often see them trying intentionally to get a lot of women pregnant or one woman pregnant, though I have heard of it occurring.

Kelsey Kosmala

I usually hear about the other way around, somehow a woman just wants to get pregnant.

Robert Hansen

That’s right. Poking holes in the condoms and so on. I truly do think that's a sort of abuse. I think it's really terrible when it does happen because, obviously, the other person didn't consent to what just happened. They thought one thing was going to happen, and then something else happened.

You can make the argument the other way. You could say, “Yes, but why would you sleep with me at all, if you didn't know that there was some risk? So I just increased the chances of the bad thing happening substantially.” That's pretty interesting.

The one that I personally have the most experience in is stalking. It's just in my wheelhouse of things I know how to do. It happens a lot in my industry. I've helped a lot of people who have been stalked, all kinds of versions of stalking to maybe not stuff that everyone's aware of.

What kind of experience do you have with that with Hope Alliance? I would imagine that whoever's left behind is desperate to figure out whether or not-

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, well, they have security gates surrounding and barbed wire and all that stuff. You have to have a code to get in, and there's people there all the time. So they can go and not be found or they can't get in.

Yeah, that's definitely a thing. Because when someone's escaping and there's an unhealthy, violent person and they lose their victim, they're lost. Their identity is gone. Their being is gone. Who are they without this victim?

Robert Hansen

I've had a couple of interesting experiences. One of them was a woman who I was mentoring, actually. I only have a couple of rules with mentoring. One of them is you just can't lie to me. Just tell me the truth about everything. Because it's like lying to your doctor or something. It doesn't benefit you. I'll just give you bad advice.

Same thing with an auto mechanic. Why would you lie about your car's sputtering or something? It just doesn't help anything. Lawyers, same deal. This woman who gave me a lot of insight into her life, as a result, we were friends.

She was telling me a lot about the intricacies of how her life is set up. Because one of the things that you need to do to be good at security is you need to have passwords and you need to have VPNs and ways to protect yourself from spying effectively.

What she quickly told me is that she wasn't allowed to have passwords that were long or safe or whatever. And I'm like, “What are you talking about?” I thought she meant there was some program preventing her from doing it or something.

She's like, “No, my husband. I'm not allowed to change my password. Or if I do, I have to let him know what it is. And it has to be something that he can easily remember because he needs to be able to get into my phone and unlock everything at any time.”

It took a while for me. At first, I just thought that was in case he needs to call the babysitter or something. It didn't really dawn on me at the moment that there might be something much more deep going on there.

A year or so later, I found out that that was definitely a very abusive relationship. And that was just used as control. All this guy wanted to do is look at every single message that she was being sent to figure out who she was talking to because surely she was going to leave him. And eventually, she did. So that was not an unfounded risk.

That was a very big eye opening thing for me where when I see people sharing passwords now, I definitely give them a little bit of a side like, “Are you sharing this because you have to? Or are you sharing this because you want to? When you say you want to, do you really want to? Or is this something that has just occurred?”

I wanted to open the conversation to signs, what should we be looking for? That's a good sign. If I see that happening now, I know what I'm looking at. What kind of signs should people be looking at when they're looking around at a bar or at their friend group or even in the early stages of dating? What kind of things should people be looking for when they're looking for somebody who's an abuser?

Kelsey Kosmala

The first things that come to mind, the way that they're talking to service industry people. I always notice that if there's some sort of degrading tone with anybody public or in customer service.

Robert Hansen

What does that tell you about them?

Kelsey Kosmala

I just always feel like if there's some sort of degrading with status-

Robert Hansen

That means they want control.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah.

Robert Hansen

There's a science around body language. There's, I wouldn't call him a friend exactly, somebody I know who is the foremost expert in body language in the world. A lot of the things he says he can figure out are only just a small fraction of what's really going on.

They can say like, “You're looking this way. Or you have this feature. You're doing this one thing and this little tick.” All of those are just a percentage adding to what he thinks is actually happening here.

You can never just take one, if I rub my nose, that's obviously a sign I'm lying. Or I have an itchy nose. Or if I'm looking up into the right, well, there could be a fly over there. That doesn't mean I'm telling the truth.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, that's why I don't want to be so absolute with the body language. I'm trying to think of more specific scenarios, like what you were talking about with the password.

Robert Hansen

Well, get back to me.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, I will.

Robert Hansen

One of the other things with stalking is doxing. Are you familiar with this term? It basically means putting people's information online. Basically, you'll hack into something and figure out the social security number, their credit card, anything you can think of that might hurt them. You'll put that on the public internet for the purpose of making their life hell.

Kelsey Kosmala

It’s a whole new world.

Robert Hansen

I know. It can also include email, which I think a lot of people don't really realize is that bad. But the amount of stuff that gets added to your email over time, it's not like it ever gets better. It's always just gets worse.

There's more information about you, more people are talking to you, more passwords are getting sent to you, more forgot password flows more, here's how to log into your bank. Whatever.

All this stuff just grows and grows and grows, and it never expires. The non-ephemeral nature of email is very dangerous. I had a friend of mine, I can call him a friend now. At the time, we were a bit adversarial. He used Gmail, which a lot of people use.

I never really thought Gmail was a great solution to security. So I always stayed away from it. But someone found an exploit in either his account or password, I'm not exactly sure how it happened, and they broke in.

From his perspective, he's like, “Well, I don't really use this account. It's just this throwaway account that I have. I have like 100 other email addresses, this just happens to be one of them. And I don't really care if it gets compromised.”

The problem is, it was additive. He started off with this tiny, little garbage account. And it got worse and worse and worse and all this stuff. Then his girlfriend sent him some risqué photos. Then he was talking about how he felt about people, and so my name was in there.

Because we're adversarial at the time, he had some bad things to say about me. I obviously did not care at all. I was at his side immediately. I’d taken his side like, “That's horrible people did that to you. Anything you said, I don't care. It's immediately disregarded as if I had not read it. We can start over.” And we're friends. We're actually friends.

In his case, I don't think it completely ruined his career. I don't think people completely lost all faith in his abilities and credibility. But I could definitely see in certain circumstances, that shame of whatever was in there could easily wipe someone out and cause them to do all kinds of crazy things. Or just the threat of it, “I have it, and I could do this terrible thing to you. Now, here's some of the proof. And I've got a lot more.”

I'm curious, a lot of these people, when they're leaving their husbands or leaving their spouse or whatever, they're also leaving behind a treasure trove of information that can be used against them. I'm sure there's a lot that was underneath the bed, you know what I mean?

How do these women feel about that? They've got to be very concerned about their image and how they're going to be seen and how this person is going to talk about them after they leave. The existential threat of leaving is sure you might be physically safe, but now what? Now what's coming at me?

Kelsey Kosmala

That's like a whole job right there, somebody who separates all internet stuff.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, but it's also physical evidence. The Polaroids and the accessories, let's just put it that way, of their life that may be okay confined or whatever in the privacy of their bedroom. But as soon as that gets out to their employer or let's say they're a religious family or something and suddenly their parents find out that they're introducing things that maybe their parents wouldn't like, whatever.

I'm trying not to get too graphic here, but you get the idea. People have a lot of secrets. That seems to me like a type of control that someone could wield from beyond the breakup and make it very difficult for someone to say, “Yeah, I prefer to leave somebody and risk all of this evidence getting out there.”

Kelsey Kosmala

I think that in the moment, if you're really being abused and violent, that's probably not something that's going on in somebody's head. That's not until later, until you're out.

Robert Hansen

See, I think it's got to become part of the calculus at some point for most women, if they're leaving. Most. Because one of the only reasons people stay with somebody who's just wrong for them, let's say, I'm not even talking about abuse, just somebody they don't like, is they start looking around like, “What's the calculus? Which friends am I going to lose?”

Because they're going to want to go with the other person. “What parties am I not going to get invited to? What am I going to tell my parents?” Because they thought we were getting married or whatever.

There's got to be something going on the back of everyone's head going, “Oof, what am I losing by doing this?”

Kelsey Kosmala

Oh, sure.

Robert Hansen

It's not just financial stability or whatever. It's the sum total of all of those different things and the risk of retribution, true retribution, not just physical violence but in any dimension you can think of.

My job is to do bad things to people, so I find the worst things I could possibly do to exploit people. And to me, it seems like the things that are left behind after someone leaves is just a treasure trove of bad things you can do to them.

Not that I'm advocating doing these things. I'm just saying that's the kind of thing that seems very scary on top of the normal, “Just can we get out at all?” Well, yeah, you can get out. But then what?

Kelsey Kosmala

That's a whole nother layer. That's a whole nother job. That's a whole nother new job that will get filled eventually. If they're going to try and stay in a relationship to save things like that, that has been stuck in the abuse.

Really, your body is more important. You got to get out. And then it's like, “Okay, we'll figure it out.” I don't know, that's really your world with the cybersecurity and everything.

Sure. I guess that can also destroy your life with money, and that's unfortunate. I am not sure what to say about that. I hope that somebody wouldn't stay in a situation because of that.

I can see how that would hold somebody back from getting out now that you're pointing all these things up. Is it the most important? Your body is more important. So screw all that, get out. And then I don't know, deal with it.

Robert Hansen

In the case of physical abuse and sexual abuse, perhaps, I think you're right. The most important thing is your body. Next thing is your children. Because if you're dead, your children are probably not going to do very well, et cetera, et cetera. And you go out of your biggest fears then your finances then all this other stuff.

The reason I'm bringing that up is I wonder how many women just don't because of that. They’re looking at their cards in their deck. And they're sitting there late at night going, “What am I going to do? Am I really going to risk it?”

I have a feeling a lot of people stay in relationships for completely different reasons than the abuse. It's not like the abuse is overlookable. It’s that they can't because of all these other things. It's like, “Oh, they really do have some incriminating image. Maybe it's actual crimes.”

A lot of people are criminals like, “Well, I'll tell the cops about that time you did the whatever.” And custody is often one of those biggest reasons, the biggest lever because a lot of these women will probably have done some drugs or whatever like, “Well, I've got photos of you doping up or whatever. And I'll take your kids away from you.” That kind of thing. You know what I mean?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah, that's a whole nother layer. That's unfortunate. That's a sticky situation because then if you try and sort that kind of stuff out before you get out, then the husband would know. That's probably happening. I wish I had stats on that.

Robert Hansen

It's hard to know because it's hard to prove a negative, these people didn't do something. I'd be curious to know because I'm sure some people eventually got over that and said, “Screw it, my life is worth more. I'd rather go to jail and be somewhat safe than be in this relationship where I'm definitely going to get killed or whatever.” Interesting.

Kelsey Kosmala

Altogether, 54% of assaults are not reported by police. So there's like a whole nother 50% out there of people just staying in it. Who knows what the percentage of that piece would be of people staying because of all of the legal stuff and finances and whatnot?

Robert Hansen

54% of people have been physically abused or sexually abused or any kind of abuse?

Kelsey Kosmala

Any kind of abuse.

Robert Hansen

Okay. All right. That sounds about right to me. I know a lot of people who've had something happen in their life where they'll tell their friend group, but they're not going to go to the police. Partly, I think because the evidence just isn't there. It happened. It was quick. What are you going to do?

Kelsey Kosmala

Oftentimes, people don't even know that they're in an abusive situation like the password story that you were talking about.

Robert Hansen

Right. Exactly.

Kelsey Kosmala

Whether they're being abusive or they're the abuser. You know what I mean? They're saying mean things and controlling the other person.

Robert Hansen

Right. In information security, there's this weird issue where, obviously, for many reasons, it'd be good to monitor people's emails. You just make sure they don't have viruses, make sure that they're not doing bad things like sending corporate secrets out to the competitor.

There's a lot of reasons, just normal business in the course of normal business type stuff that you'd want to do. But I've talked to a couple of people very highly placed in very large companies who said the problem is, occasionally, we'll end up finding out that someone's in an abusive relationship.

If there's a crime being committed, it's not necessarily the person they're monitoring who is the criminal. They can also be the victim. But yet, there's a crime happening. And now they have evidence of it. Now they have a duty of care.

They have to go do something about this. They have to tell the police about this. You're just sitting there at work minding your own business. And all of a sudden, the cops come in and say, “Sorry, we're going to have to take you away from this person. We're here to arrest your husband.” or whatever.

It's like, “Whoa, what just happened?” Like, “Well, we were monitoring your email.” Which I think is going to happen a lot more than people realize coming up.

Kelsey Kosmala

Wow. Okay, good.

Robert Hansen

Well, good and bad because now I think what's going to end up happening is it's going to force it underground. A lot of these normal communications that were subpoenable and were things that you could say, “Here's some evidence. I can go back in time. I can show you all these emails that were coming in.” Blah, blah, blah.

I think what'll end up happening is more and more people will start using ephemeral messaging and start coming up with ways to hide this information. Yes, some people go to jail. And that's good. But ultimately, it will make it, I think, much harder for law enforcement.

I'm a little on the fence about that. Obviously, it would be great if you could put more people in jail. There's some civil liberties stuff involved there, too. It's like, “Well, I'm getting high with my friends on the weekend. Should you really bust down my door?”

It's like, “Well, there's a duty of care. There's a crime committed.” Like, “Yeah. But come on, man. I'm not hurting you.” This is a different story. But what about the situation where you're at the end of your rope? You've over withdrawn your account. You don't get any allowance this month or whatever. That's technically abuse.

Should employers be sitting there monitoring that closely, all these emails? I don't know, I don't have any good answer. What do you think? What would you feel if your emails were being monitored like that?

Kelsey Kosmala

That is a tricky situation. I wouldn't want that.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, me neither.

Kelsey Kosmala

I wouldn't want that. I think that there's going to be a new job created where somebody handles that afterwards.

Robert Hansen

I think it's already there. It's already happening. I think it's our IT departments.

Kelsey Kosmala

Should everybody be surveillance because of abuse going around in the world? I don't know.

Robert Hansen

It is already happening for Facebook, for instance? If you send messages like child pornography, for instance, it is being monitored. They will identify it, and they will alert the police. So this is already happening. We're already in surveillance state.

It's just that I don't think people realize how deep this is going to end up going in their lives, which may ultimately be good. I had this weird conversation very frequently with people.

Perfect privacy means nothing you say can ever be intercepted by anybody for any reason. It's just completely your communications, your thoughts are yours. And no one can tap into that unless you let them. Would you have perfect security where you have no privacy? None at all, but nothing bad can ever happen to you.

If you had to make the decision, if there was no middle ground and you had to pick one of the two, I'll let you think about it for a second. And then I'll tell you what other people say. You can decide for yourself. So it's split. It's exactly 50/50.

I'll ask 100 people and exactly 50 of them, to the number, will say one or the other. It usually splits down whether they have children or not. If they have children, they're not always but almost always going to pick the security. They'd rather have perfect security and throw privacy on the floor, they don't care.

Single people want privacy. They're doing a lot of weird stuff in the evening, and they don't want anyone to know about it, which I guess makes sense. But to get perfect security, you really have to get rid of all sorts of civil liberties.

You have to live in a totalitarian regime where the government gets to say, at any given time, that anyone who does blog goes to jail. And they already know who that is. They already know the people who are going to get arrested, down to the very location, exactly where they're at. Because they have to have that information to keep them safe.

That is a very awful society. A lot of countries have tried this, it did not go well for them. People keep saying it will be better next time. It never is. The alternative is perfect privacy, where abuse can go uncovered forever. It can just go on and on and on and on. So I don't have a good answer.

My gut tells me laws are almost always poorly written. So I'd rather have better privacy than better security. But that doesn't mean that I think either are particularly great if I had to pick one.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. There's pros and cons to both and everything. But that is a weird two-sided coin situation. I would prefer privacy.

Robert Hansen

You're single, right?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah.

Robert Hansen

Aha!

Kelsey Kosmala

Yes, I would prefer privacy. I guess it's better to live with trust than being all scared. That's my motto. I would rather live in trust that bad things are not going to happen than live scared.

Robert Hansen

Well, I think the Founding Fathers would have agreed with you. They did not want to police states. So you're on the side of Benjamin Franklin. What about the abuse differences between strangers and adults, where the adults actually know the people involved? It's like someone in your household. How does that break down?

That is clearly an abuse that happens. A buddy of mine got hit in the back of the head with a brick one day, just randomly. It just happens. He lost his sense of smell, and he's never smelled ever again. It's serious brain trauma.

I had another friend of mine down here in Austin. This homeless guy came behind him, hit him with a bottle. Almost knocked him out right in front of the police station for the purpose of getting some free room and board that night on behalf of the taxpayers.

So random abuse does happen, happens all the time, but it's a different kind of abuse I think. I don't necessarily think it has the same long term, even if it has the same physical symptoms.

Kelsey Kosmala

Compared to when you were a child.

Robert Hansen

Right. I think this brings me to your generational abuse thing. How do you see abuse between those different cohorts where one is like, I know this person, they're supposed to keep me safe, and yet here we are, versus just some random act of abuse?

Kelsey Kosmala

While abuse happening when you're developing, is going to put an imprint on you and change you forever. It does. It changes you forever. I mean, you can work through it and go to therapy and work on getting that energy and that programming out of you, and then that's what will break the generational trauma.

But really, when something happens traumatic, when you're a kid, it's going to stay with you forever and it's going to impact your decision making and your worth. But you can have trauma as an adult as well, but I think that we have the tools to get past it. Whether it be something physical like that you do physical therapy and you can move forward.

Perhaps maybe you don't notice, but maybe your body inside might still forever be working through it. And then, it manifests in other ways. And it manifests mentally or some other physical manifestation.

So I just think that we have the tools as adults to get past it, but as a kid, something happens and then you think that that's normal and then all of a sudden it creates a whole new reality, a whole new programming of what is right, what is wrong. And then you mimic and then they mimic when they become adults and continue.

Robert Hansen

One of the things I think is most common about trauma survivors that I've noticed is hyper vigilance. They're always on the lookout for the next thing that's coming at them. And therefore it's very hard for them to ever feel stable or loved or care for.

Kelsey Kosmala

That I could speak to. I feel like that is them being in the trauma still. I actually am thinking about a friend I just met up with a few days ago and I could just feel it coming off of her. And I was like, "It's not normal to be scared. There's good people in the world."

So it does. It puts you in that fear. And I've done a lot of work to where I can still, I know that there's good people out there. You can go into the world and trust and not be scared that someone's going to steal something from you or something at the store. Something bad is going to happen.

It's that fear mentality. The scarcity is a side effect of trauma. That's a way to tell if somebody has been traumatized. If they've got that fear mindset, that scarcity.

Robert Hansen

Yeah. I mean, in every different dimension, like monetary. I've got to always have a little bit money set aside because you never know when you're going to have to run. Or always having a little extra food and not just because it's a good safety thing, like, "No, really I might need it."

Kelsey Kosmala

And I like that you're bringing up money and food because money is directly correlated with your worth. There's a correlation there. People who money makes their identity. There's some sort of self-worth thing going on.

So it can manifest in that way of hoarding money or spending money or super successful and wanting to make a ton of money and then using it for control. It's tied into survival. Money is your survival and it's at that level of survival.

Robert Hansen

And if you don't have food, you're not going to last very long. I mean, shelter is another very, very important one. So it's kind of cool that this group helps people just find a place to crash for a month or whatever it takes. And then, what's the process?

So someone comes in, they get in contact with the group and then what happens? How do they go through the process? What does that look like?

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, first they go to the hospital. So they call the hotline. Then there's somebody who goes to them and gets them to the hospital.

Robert Hansen

Because they got to get pictures of the abuse or the evidence of it.?

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, they probably are bleeding or had their head bashed in or their vagina is open and bleeding. I mean, if abuse is happening, then they probably have to go to the hospital or just to get a checkup, just see where they're at. It's the first step.

And then, they get taken that same person. They go through a few people. There's a social worker, there's a few different roles. And then, they get taken to the shelter. They get a room, they get a bed, they get to pick through the store there, get clean clothes, get clean, there's a kitchen.

And then, they actually provide transportation for the kids to go to school so that the parents can just kind of like decompress. A little bit go through therapy, eat, just get comfortable, get their head straight a little bit.

And then, Hope Alliance will literally take care of their kid, take them to and from school while they just kind of figure out what their next move is.

Robert Hansen

And is there a typical thing that happens after that? Do they get help and get work or help get a permanent residence? How does that work?

Kelsey Kosmala

That is up to them. There's resources to help them get to where they're going. They have 30 days to stay.

Robert Hansen

It doesn't seem like very long.

Kelsey Kosmala

Sure.

Robert Hansen

Is that a problem or is that just the process?

Kelsey Kosmala

It's just the process. I don't know how it works. If somebody wanted to stay longer, then there's the argument as of, are you mooching or something?

Robert Hansen

Of course. Having a time limit makes some sense. Absolutely.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. Like are you just mooching just living off the government or whatever. So that's just their regulation. I think that's probably standard for most shelters. And I know that the magical number is seven, where when people come and then they leave, they usually come back and forth seven times before they're finally out.

Robert Hansen

And does that mean that they're going back to the same abuser or they will find the next abuser?

Kelsey Kosmala

Usually.

Robert Hansen

Okay. All right.

Kelsey Kosmala

Wow. It's a lot of back and forth until they finally realize, "Okay, I'm controlled and I'm in a pattern."

Robert Hansen

Wow. That's a lot. This actually does dovetail itself a lot with what Joe [inaudible 00:07:24] was saying, where it's a recidivism rate of like 95 plus percent of people who go back to human trafficking. That's extremely high.

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, that's a whole another, I figured we were going to talk about that too. I mean, should we go there?

Robert Hansen

If you want.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. Well if you think about that, that human trafficking, it oftentimes happens in adolescence. So if that's all you know, that's how you make money, that's how you have your relationships, that's how you have your person taking care of you. And who knows how they're going to make you feel that it's okay, you have this guardian taking care of you.

And then, that makes you feel so safe. "Oh, I'm taking care of you. You're good. I'm the one feeding you." And then, where are they going to go? Out into the scary world where they don't trust anybody and you have to make money to live and you don't have any skills. Like, what are you going to do??

Robert Hansen

Yeah. The skills seem like the hardest one for me. If you don't have any skills at all. You've effectively been a child your whole life, the world is not a friendly place to people like that.

Kelsey Kosmala

No, and there's the self-worth. And then there's also the body is probably craving that because that's what it's used to.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, I would imagine so. I think Joe was saying something along the lines of, and also it's the lifestyle. There is a lifestyle associated with whatever that abuser had. It may not have been a great one, but it was something, it was some sort of familiarity.

Kelsey Kosmala

Something, some sort of intimacy or drugs. Yes.

Robert Hansen

I think it's very difficult. I think this is more women than men, although I've seen both. There's a nest, a deep nesting instinct. Like, once you find a nest, you really don't want to leave the nest. Like that's your nest. I mean, your nest might suck and you might all collectively want to move together and build a better nest somewhere. But that's the nesting instinct.

And if your nest is over there and you're over here, and that's a pretty strong draw to get back there and be around your stuff and have your clothing. The familiarity, just the parts of your life that you've become accustomed to.

Kelsey Kosmala

Sure. And who knows what kind of family dynamic they created in that kind of dynamic that would make somebody want to go back.

Robert Hansen

So you have said at least twice that I've seen written that you believe the root cause of all war and manipulation and control is the generational abuse?

Kelsey Kosmala

I believe that. I do.

Robert Hansen

So I need you to explain that. That's a pretty controversial. That's a bold claim. I'd love to hear why you think that's true.

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, abuse stems from the worst vibrational frequencies. Shame, fear, guilt, control all that is what creates abuse. And that's the same feelings of why somebody would want to create war, manipulate somebody else. I mean, now that I'm saying this out loud to you, I just feel like it's exactly the same thing.

If there's war going on in the country and people actually physically fighting each other or online or something like that, it's the same kind of feelings. It's the same intention. Does that make any sense?

Robert Hansen

Sort of. So you're saying a political, despot who wants to invade some country, you're saying he was abused when he was a kid or how does that all work itself out? What's the actual logistics of the abuse?

Kelsey Kosmala

You're like, "What's the logistics of abuse?"

Robert Hansen

I need to know if this is true. And I'm not saying I think it is. I don't know. That'd be really interesting to try to figure it out.

Kelsey Kosmala

I mean, I don't understand why war and a manipulation would happen without trauma. I don't get why somebody would be evil without that.

Robert Hansen

But why generational trauma? For instance, I think Hitler, the bulk of his trauma was actually experienced in World War I. It was just sitting in the trenches, seeing all his buddies die. And then, he comes out and there's a lot of issues related to him having trouble getting into places he wanted to get into and feeling like he was out of control and watching his country decline because of bad treaties.

That doesn't seem like generational issue, although maybe also. That seems more just like somebody who's very mentally disturbed and PTSD. And definitely short man syndrome, trying to identify as much control as you could possibly get.

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, I feel like there's been a lot of trauma in previous years, right? People were mean to each other, people would hit each other and that was just kind of the norm. So over the years, I feel like...

Robert Hansen

Oh, I see. So you're saying culturally in general, people were more abusive back then?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah.

Robert Hansen

Interesting.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. In our past, there's a lot of war and there's a lot of control and people not liking each other and countries. And I feel the Holocaust and slavery and all that. Like over the years that was kind of the norm. And I feel like we're just now coming to a point where we're aware of this trauma, this like fog. And we're starting to be nicer to each other. Although war is still happening. So I don't know.

Robert Hansen

Well, maybe Putin has had a very terrible childhood. I really don't know. I mean, you could be right about that. I tend to kind of back up and say, "Well what would it take to have a good leader then?" If you want a leader who presumably war is bad, or at least starting a war is bad. Maybe protecting other people is good but a minimum starting a war, I think we can all agree in general is not great.

What would it take to have a good leader? So we have nuclear weapons, we have biological weapons, we have chemical weapons, we have a lot of insanely good conventional weapons. And a bunch of weapons that people don't know that we have.

Somebody's got to be in control of that. Someone's got to be their finger in the button ready to say, "Yeah, I want to use this, or this has to be done." And not only that, it has to always be an option because if it isn't an option, someone who does have nuclear weapons said,well, they're not going to use it because that that person who's in control isn't capable of doing that terrible thing and destroying all of humanity at a push of a button. Just to prove that you are never going to win this war.

So don't even start it. So what kind of person do you think it would take to have somebody who's strong enough mental willpower to be able to destroy all of humanity, like actually can do it, but also has zero inclination to want to.

Just like there's just no point in doing it. You need somebody who's as dangerous a person as you could possibly ever imagine. And yet all of the self-control. It seems to me you need somebody who's a little messed up in the head. I don't know. I mean, if I had all the power in the world, what would I do with it? I don't know. I think I'd probably sit on it and not do anything with it.

And you need somebody who's willing to actually press that button. I don't think I would be the best president of the United States, for instance, because I don't think I would press that button. So I think you need somebody who is willing to end all life. That's a very specific kind of person.

Kelsey Kosmala

Maybe that's not the outcome, pressing the button. There's other alternatives.

Robert Hansen

Sometimes. I mean, if someone's throwing nukes at you, your option is to do nothing and get nuked or press the nukes back. And if you don't press the nukes back, well then civilization will survive. There will be civilization. And that's what would be going through my head.

But if there's no risk of you pressing that button, if you don't come across as being crazy, at least, whether you press the button or not maybe is a different issue. If you don't come across as the person who will push that button, definitely will push that button, then there's no risk. Then you might as well just get rolled over because you're never going to protect your society.

This is a very complicated question. So I look at political leaders and there's all kinds, right? There's leading hearts, there's comedians, there's, despots, there's all kinds of different types of political leaders. And it seems to me that the political landscape is largely, who you know and how well you poll, which is kind of a weird way to pick a leader.

But the other half of it is, are you the kind of person who's crazy enough to kill every person on the planet, or at least be perceived to be that kind of person? I really don't know.

Kelsey Kosmala

I think that you've got a point.

Robert Hansen

So back to the generational trauma piece. One of the things I think is pretty interesting is, I don't know why this came about, but there's this concept of the nuclear family. There's proliferated all over the place. It really is just, everyone talks about it as if it's a thing. But I don't think it actually is a thing.

I mean, not really. If you look at our biology, if we look at how we function, human babies are worthless. They're just big ball of messiness. They're hungry all the time and they don't know how to clean themselves and they're just constantly a problem.

If you only have a mother or father, well, one of them is going to have to go give food and resources, if not both of them, especially, back in the cave mandates or whatever. And if you have two children, that's just double the problems. That's not making it easier.

So that's the nuclear family part. The two and a half kids. You have to have grandparents and uncles and aunts and people around you and a society around them to take care of those kids because the parents are going to have to sleep. They're going to have to do stuff, they're going to have to leave, they're going to get sick. Some of them are going to die.

You can't just have two people in a relationship and call it a day and just say, that'll be enough. It just isn't enough. It really, really isn't. And if for anyone listening, if you're not actually building a cohort of people who can work with you and help you with your kids and your life, you're missing out on a huge part of what humans evolve to be.

But I think back to this generational abuse thing, one of the biggest problems with a woman on the run with her kids, whether she's truly on the run or just in a shelter or whatever, if she really loses or if she hasn't already lost all of what was the nuclear family and all of her rest of her support system, they're just gone. She really doesn't have them.

So if that shelter isn't providing her that exact kind of support, that an uncle and an aunt, a grandma, a grandpa or whatever. The people around there would be that support system for that person naturally. We don't have any safety net at all at that point because people really have divorced themselves of their direct siblings or whatever.

Like, "No, no. They live halfway across the country." You're like, "Oh, I see them on Christmas and Easter." Like, that's just not how humans evolved. I mean, we had a very tight support system. How does that all sort of tie in, do you think?

Kelsey Kosmala

The lack of support?

Robert Hansen

Yeah.

Kelsey Kosmala

I feel like that is part of why everybody is so lonely these days. They're so scared. Without support, you're just on your own and then you're making your own decisions and your decisions might not be good. And then you've created your own reality of could be totally skewed, not going to help you.

I feel like the lack of support is a major problem for anybody with kids, without kids. Lack of support will hold anybody back.

Robert Hansen

Well, I also think it probably contributes a lot to this problem because this is the generational part. So if your parents had whatever issues they had, and then you have children and now you have issues can't look backward and say, "Hey, can you give me support my parents?" Because they're just not there.

They're not part of your life really at all, hardly. And if they are, they're probably toxic and so on. There's all these other issues. And then, it just kind of trickles down, generation after generation where you do have true generational poverty as well as abuse because you're never really getting out of that cycle.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yes. I believe that is correct. Like low income, staying low income would be an example of that. Single mom has kids and then the kids become single and divorced, and divorced is prominent in the family. I think low income is like a pretty good example of that.

Robert Hansen

I forget where I heard this or read this. The number one thing that people need to think about when they're trying to identify whether they're going to live a prosperous life or not is don't commit crime, don't have kids with the wrong person and have a job. That's it. Everything else, we'll just sort of take care of itself.

And I think having the children with the wrong person is a real problem. That's how you end up back in this cycle. It's like, "Well, he reminds me a lot of my dad." "But your dad was an abuser." You probably shouldn't be with anybody who reminds you of anybody.

Kelsey Kosmala

That's the familiarity piece. Going back to what you know.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, exactly. So the Ascension Leadership Academy, tell me about it. What is the goal of that?

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, I'm glad you're asking. I love talking about it. It's a five month long program. Well, in my class there is about 54 of us and the first two months is feedback on each other. It's trauma healing. It's going back into your trauma with everybody and getting triggered and then overcoming it.

Robert Hansen

That'll be pretty cathartic.

Kelsey Kosmala

It is traumatizing.

Robert Hansen

I bet.

Kelsey Kosmala

It was so rough. But it was so fun as well. So you do lots of really fun things as well. It's like a rollercoaster. You're going up and down. You become best friends with everybody and there's everybody there. Super successful people in there for sure.

Robert Hansen

Interesting.

Kelsey Kosmala

Oh yeah, definitely.

Robert Hansen

As mentors or going through the program?

Kelsey Kosmala

Going through the program. Pretty much everybody in there. A lot of very successful single people who can't find love. That was like the main thing.

Robert Hansen

Is that what it is?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. There's a lot of that.

Robert Hansen

It's a dating.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. There's a lot of that. Well, everyone, you know, it doesn't matter. Trauma happens to everybody. So there's everybody and there's super successful people in there and you're getting to the root, you're getting past it. You're giving each other feedback on how being in your trauma comes up. You learn to kind of recognize it with each other. Like you're in it right now, I guess.

And you learn what your go-to. I learned that what mine is and I get scared. Other people will get controlling. Other people could get manipulated or manipulative. Some people can get avoidant. Not present. Scattered.

Robert Hansen

I'm sure there's a lot of runners too. People just want to avoid conflict.

Kelsey Kosmala

Oh sure. And then people start dropping out. I think we started with like 54 people and by the end there was probably 30 of us. It's a five month... So then, yeah, the first two months is a lot of that. And you also have to get comfortable giving feedback, which is hard when you like somebody, your friend especially if they're not in a good place.

And kind of being the tough love, holding people accountable. Learning that not holding people you love to a high standard or really anybody is enabling. Learning all that, and then after the two months of that, you go into three months of the leadership part and that's all of a sudden everyone's on a team.

Robert Hansen

Certainly friends again

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. And then it's like, I got voted captain, I was the captain. And everybody has a role and then it's like you have 20 days to raise as much as you can for a non-profit, basically. And it was, "You have 20 days to do it." And we raised almost $200,000 in 20 days.

Robert Hansen

That's great.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. And we painted a mural for them and put, "Feel abused?" Put the hotline there and we had a party and an auction and people donated at the party. It was super fun. And then, you just feel really fulfilled after.

You're like, "Wow, I just got to know everybody here so well." Best friends after we've been hanging out like every single day since. And you really learn how to just see people for who they are and not what they do for a living.

It's really just like learning that a lot of people who go into that program are successful and have gone into this thing of judging people for what they do for a living. And you just kind of break through all that and realize that humans are humans and everybody has fear and everybody has shame and everybody gets scattered and everybody feels not confident, everybody does.

Robert Hansen

We sure do.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. So that's what it was about. And then, a lot of people in there, they're in there because they are trying to work through something. A lot of times they haven't found love. That was probably the biggest one. They're looking for the love of their life and they haven't found it yet.

And they don't know why because they have the house, they have the money, they have the job, they have everything. And then, they're like, "Why haven't I found my partner?" So yeah, that's what it's about.

Robert Hansen

Yeah. You remind me of something. I do ask people what they do for a living, but it's not really because I care so much.

Kelsey Kosmala

It's an American thing.

Robert Hansen

It sure is, but actually I really don't care. But I use it as a shortcut to find out a lot more about them. No, because my follow up question is the interesting one.

So they'll tell me whatever it is. "I'm in construction." Or whatever it is. And the next question I'll ask is, "Do you like your job?" And all of a sudden it turns into a completely different conversation because now they're talking about their personal feelings and how things are going.

And now we have a really deep intellectual conversation about where they spend the bulk of their day and how they think about it. And you can really drive down very quickly into people's lives without being super intrusive. Just like, "Oh, what do you do?" And then, the follow up questions a little bit harder, but people like when you ask them, like, "I'm interested in what it is and you can really get down there. So I like the American question

Kelsey Kosmala

I avoid that question. That's something I pick up on when someone asks me that.

Robert Hansen

Well, I hate answering it.

Kelsey Kosmala

Really? I automatically just start judging the person. I'm like, "What? You just asked me what I do for a living?"

Robert Hansen

I realize it's a little off-putting sometimes, but I find that I'm ingratiating enough that I think people get over it, you know what I mean? Like, okay, "I see where you're going with this."

Kelsey Kosmala

You have your plan, you have your follow up question.

Robert Hansen

Yeah, I definitely have a follow up question because I really don't like the small talk. I don't want to know what they're doing for a living. I don't care at all. But I do care about who they are and what they're interested in and why they got where they're at. That's much more interesting.

Kelsey Kosmala

That's really nice if you say that to somebody, that would be appreciated.

Robert Hansen

Yeah. I agree. So about the mural that you said you painted, that struck me as something kind of interesting. Well, another version of this that I've heard is when somebody goes to the bar, a woman specifically typically will go to a bar and say, "Ask for Angela." Like, "Hey, is Angela here today?" And that's one of those, "God helped the poor bartender’s name Angelica." Or Angie or whatever the name is very close to.

But it's basically a way to tell the staff that I need an angel. I need somebody to come and get me a cab because I'm in a bad situation. It might just be a bad date or it might be some creep or you just don't feel comfortable driving with this person because they're just not safe or whatever.

Are there other things like that you are aware of, little tips and tricks that people can use to kind of protect themselves and alert somebody of that sort of distress? I mean, obviously a phone number's great, but sometimes it's hard to pull out a phone. You're in the middle of a date or something. It's like, "Sorry, I'm dialing a number to come rescue me from this date."

Kelsey Kosmala

Sure.

Robert Hansen

I'm sure there's other things like that. And I really like those sort of secret code words. It's sort of type in your bank code backwards on the ATM and suddenly the police will show up.

Kelsey Kosmala

The only thing I could think of is more Codey stuff on your phone. I mean, make sure somebody knows where you are if you're going somewhere new. Always make sure someone knows where you are. I mean, kind of the basic stuff, don't go anywhere alone at night. That kind of stuff is what's coming to mind for me.

But I mean, there is a barrier. It's hard to get to your phone if you're in a situation where you're just startled and you don't know what to do and you go blank and you're like, "What do I do?"

Robert Hansen

Especially if you get yourself sort of alone, then it's even more dangerous.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah.

Robert Hansen

I mean I think I think the telling the bartender some sort of secret password or whatever, I think that's a great example of that. I know there're really probably should be similar things at hotels for instance. Say something very specific to the concierge or give some sort of sign like, "I'm in serious danger. I'm being kidnapped, I'm being held."

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. If we had some sort of symbol or a sign language or something, like a universal sign.

Robert Hansen

Yeah. I think there should be something like that. So maybe you can come up with it.

Kelsey Kosmala

I'll be the one, "Everyone. Don't worry. I figured it out."

Robert Hansen

Yeah. I think it'd be pretty easy to train staff and that's something that you could do behind someone's head or whatever to say, "This is a serious situation. Got to get the cops involved." Okay. So you are also among other things kind of a traveling yogi. You've taught a lot of yoga. How'd you get involved with that?

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, like I said, I've always been interested in psychology. That's my jam. Data and all that, that is the other side of the spectrum. I'm a psychology person. So I went to community college. I got my associate's degree in social and behavioral science, and then I got to the point where I was going to transfer, but I wasn't supported. I didn't know what I wanted to do.

So I was like, "I'm going to Costa Rica, I'm doing my yoga teacher training." I was just fascinated by the body and the breath and the psychology behind, I guess the intelligence of your body and learning to heal yourself from the inside out, is just fascinating to me. Just anything with the mind and the body is like my jam.

So the reason I got my yoga teacher training was because I wasn't supported in college. And so I felt like that was like a trade school kind of a thing. So once I got into it, I was obsessed. And then I went to India and I was like, "I got to go to India. I got to get to the root of this." And then it just went spiraled.

And then I did my Ayurveda, yoga teacher training, which is the oldest written medical system and it's how to live a life that will keep you individually present and healthy. I could keep going. It looks like you want to say something?

Robert Hansen

No, not at all. I guess my take on yoga, the mystical part of it, I could take a leave or whatever.

Kelsey Kosmala

You got to believe that mystical part.

Robert Hansen

But I do think that there is definitely something about the mind-body connection. 100% believe it. I 100% believe it.

So for example a trick that I learned, this actually came out of the Air Force. They realized one of the most important things about sending bombers up is you need to get your bombers back in the air as quickly as possible.

So you send your bombers up, drop a bunch of bombs and you land, and now your people are exhausted and you got to get them back in the air, but they're tired. So you got to get them to just go to sleep as quickly as possible. So after years of research, they realized there was something very simple they could do. Basically, it's sort of yoga-ish.

You basically relax your jaw. You start with your jaw, relax it, close your eyes, sort of your whole head at the same time, then your whole torso at the same time, then your hips and then your legs. And then, you just breathe naturally. Get in comfortable position, breathe naturally.

And then, you basically don't think about anything at all. And if you have to think about anything, if your brain's trying to think of something, picture yourself in a dark place firstly. And then, just think the words, "Don't think" over and over again. "Don't think, don't think." And just do it over and over.

So on a whim, I decided to try this, it absolutely works on me. Typically, I get to get to sleep in under 90 seconds using this technique. And that's what they found as well. That's what the Air Force found. So they get a bomber pilots in a seated position, nice and relaxed-ish. And then they send them through this thing and 90 seconds later they're asleep.

So I definitely think that there's something very real about what you can do with your brain, how you can get it into a certain rhythm. There's a lot of things about blinking very, very quickly to make stimulate sleepiness and a bunch of other versions of this. So I do believe there is something, I'm not denying that.

And I do believe breath control is very important. And I do believe centering yourself and being more cognizant of yourself and your body and how you really feel as opposed to the direct emotional thing that's hitting you right this very second. Take a step back intellectually, think about what's going on. How do you deal with that?

I mean, how do you deal with a naysayer like me who, I believe in the physical components. I believe in the, something I can hold up and do experimental science on, but I have a hard time with the spiritual aspects.

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, I mean, I was in that world for three years. I mean, I appreciate your point of view. I mean, I appreciate it. I'm open I do believe in science but I am a firm believer of energy and we can still be friends and whatnot. But I feel it. I know it, I feel it. It just makes sense to me. It's just the way my brain is. But how do I deal with you? I mean, I respect you.

You have your own brain, you have your own way of looking at things. It's up to the other person, if they can tolerate me. That's really usually what it is. But I'm open to everyone and I'm open to lots of different points of views and I totally respect your point of view.

Robert Hansen

I was just curious if that's like, "Oh no. To be good at yoga, you have to believe the spiritual aspects of it." You can sort of divorce yourself of it. Because the meditation aspect of yoga...

Kelsey Kosmala

I see what you're saying. So to be into spirituality and yoga but not...

Robert Hansen

So to me, like meditation for instance seems wholly separate from the spiritual aspects of it. You can just be centered. You can just breathe. You can just focus on your body and the way you feel without having any belief in anything other than what's happening physically at that moment

Kelsey Kosmala

I think that approach works for people like you. And I think that's kind of a quick way to do it, honestly. I actually really like the new way of people talking about being present and the exercise you're talking about. If that's what works for other people, cool. You don't have to be this guru, yogi to get that. Like Eckhart Tolle for example. Did you read The Power of Now.

Robert Hansen

I don't read. So for people watching, I don't read. Well, I'm very dyslexic. So it takes me a long time to get through a book. So audio only

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, I think of like The Power of Now he has that kind of a brain and he really talks about the power of now in presence. Just from not such a woo point of view. And it just goes to show, you don't really have to, it's just about presence.

It's as simple as that and using a technique like yours, if that's what gets you there, that's cool. But it really is the same thing, just being present, being clear.

Robert Hansen

I have another version, another crazy thing. This is a more physiological thing, but the kinds of things you can do with your body, I think are actually quite stunning. And I really don't think we understand our bodies hardly at all.

But I think this was probably Cold War era researched the Russians did. And you just kind of have to imagine the horrors they must have enacted upon whomever they were doing this initial study on.

But the premise was, they were worried that in a nuclear war or a biological war or whatever, they'd have no access to medicines. Let's say a flu was going through a town. They're not going to be able to give them Sudafed. They're not going to have supply lines to get it there.

Especially in Russia because there's a lot of very rural aspects of Russia out in the middle of nowhere in snow. You're not just going to randomly get out there.

So they're like, "Well, you're going to have to protect yourself. You're going to have to be able to clear your sinuses and you're going to have to be able to breathe normally without any drugs. So what can we do? Can't I use a pen to do it?" You can imagine the horrors they must have come up with to try to figure it out.

So someone came up with the idea, "Well what if you're drowning? What happens? What if you're in water up to your mouth, but not up to your nose? Does your body just let you die?"

So they must have tried this on somebody. And it turns out what happens is, if you nose is stuffed and you're drowning from their mouth down, your body will say, "Hey, I need to breathe." And it will actually release your sinuses and allow you to start breathing.

It takes a while and it's actually quite complicated to make it happen. But basically you just basically more or less suffocate yourself. You suffocate yourself, you breath all the way out, hold your breath all the way in rather, is that right? All the way in? Oh, it’s out. It's all the way out. This is very important you do it right.

Breathe all the way out so you have no oxygen in your system. And then, very slowly, as slowly as you possibly can, after you're done and you're starting to panic and you're holding your mouth this whole time, you slowly start breathing in as slowly as possible through your nose and your body will go, "Oh my God, I'm, I'm going to die."

All of a sudden your sinuses will go whoop and all open up. It's a very weird feeling. And I've gotten good enough now, I don't even have to use my mouth, covering my hand over my mouth. I could just do it.

So sometimes that back before COVID when being sick in meetings was a thing, I could do it two or three times and no one would even know what was happening. And that's all mental really, if you think about it. I'm not actually touching my mouth at all. It's just a breathing exercise at that point.

No different than a meditation exercise, really. Obviously I'm suffocating myself, which is a bit weird, but it is still breath control. I think that there's a lot to that that we just really don't understand.

Kelsey Kosmala

I agree. I mean, when I did yoga teacher training in India, all the gurus would talk about how they would be able to hold their breath for hours.

Robert Hansen

Probably not that.

Kelsey Kosmala

I mean, I don't know.

Robert Hansen

See, I could verify that pretty easily. "Here's a bag."

Kelsey Kosmala

I mean, I haven't tried.

Robert Hansen

I wouldn't recommend it.

Kelsey Kosmala

I think that it's doable though. I think that the body's very intelligent and highly intelligent and you can probably breath.

Robert Hansen

Surely people go deep sea diving for instance, and they're able to go down to the bottom of the ocean and hold their breath at the bottom for four or five minutes and before they surface. I mean, that's an insane amount of time and crazy pressures as well.

I mean, they have to do a lot of training to get to that point. This is not something you just go and do one day. But that again is all breath control. I would drown for sure. There's just no way I'd be able to hold breath for four minutes.

Kelsey Kosmala

I'm kind of messing around right now. You could even not breathe.

Robert Hansen

Please breath.

Kelsey Kosmala

You can kind of breathe with your belly though and kind of just keep it all internal. It doesn't have to be air coming in out of your mouth or nose. You can kind of like expand and contract internally and keep up the breath

Robert Hansen

And kind of force yourself to believe you're breathing even though you're not. That's interesting.

Kelsey Kosmala

And I do believe the mind has the power. I mean, if the mind believes that that's what's happening, I do believe that it could probably happen.

Robert Hansen

Yeah. One of my favorite experiments, I don't think this is an experiment. I think this is actually treatment, is veterans who've had their arms blown off, for instance, will often in the moment that the bomb's going off, they will have clenched their hands.

And now, they have this weird ghost pain of their arm where they're clenched as hard as they possibly can. Now their arm's not there anymore. There's no way to release their hand. It's an insane amount of pain just holding on as tightly as you possibly can. That's what their brain is thinking.

So the treatment is, they have a mirror they put up and they say, all right, with both hands because you're mimicking this with your other hand, move it around, do up, go down, move it around, takes a while and then now open your hand. And they opened their hand and now their brain is seeing this mirror, which is actually the other hand that's not blown off.

And it believes that they finally opened their hand for the very first time. Insane pain for years and years and years, and all of a sudden it's just gone. And that's just brain. I mean, there's really nothing physically happening there at all.

So I think the power of the mind is completely underrated. I think you absolutely have a lot more control over yourself, your body, how you react to things, how things impact you than most people are aware of.

Kelsey Kosmala

I agree.

Robert Hansen

Cool. I'm glad we're in agreement. All right. So your current gig the Tantra Institute. Talk about that

Kelsey Kosmala

The Tantra.

Robert Hansen

Oh, I spell it, I say it wrong. All right. Tantra, tell us about it. What is it?

Kelsey Kosmala

Okay. I'm so excited. So Tantra is a branch of yoga and it's about enlightenment and manifestation. And really, enlightenment is probably the best word to use through sex, through intimacy, polarity, masculine and feminine energy.

And using that as a catalyst to get what you want and using it as a practice, like as a spiritual practice, like a meditation practice. Tantra would be like sex meditation, basically.

Robert Hansen

Is this meditating while you're having sex or before, or how does that work.

Kelsey Kosmala

While you're doing it and before and after. It's a ceremony. It's sacred, it's special. And this can be with yourself, could be self-pleasuring or with a partner or multiple people or whatever your jam is, whatever feels right.

But it's very interesting, the Tantra Institute has multiple classes and courses and events that they do. And it's all circled around understanding masculine and feminine energies.

Robert Hansen

What is that for the audience here?

Kelsey Kosmala

Audience, okay.

Robert Hansen

I think a lot of people are getting a little sensitive around gendered terms. I personally am not by the way, but I think it is worth explaining.

Kelsey Kosmala

No, it is. So there's a difference between masculine and feminine energy and then gender. So you have masculine and feminine energy. I have masculine and feminine energy, and it's learning in relationships and in intimacy how to kind of bounce off of each other. Like a very beautiful relationship in a masculine and feminine dynamic.

And you can do this with two men or two women. You could have the masculine and feminine dynamic with two women or two men.

So it doesn't even really have anything to do with gender actually. Masculine is like grounded. It is the container, it is the decision maker. Maybe that's not the right word. The action taker. The doing, the kind of holding the stake.

Whereas the feminine is like the receiving, it fills the container, it's the light, it’s the expansion. Whereas the masculine would be kind of holding it down. Feminine energy is like an expansive energy. I'm so excited to work in this industry.

Robert Hansen

What is it? Let's say somebody wanted to do this. How do they get involved? What is the process?

Kelsey Kosmala

So with the Tantra Institute, you could look it up online. You look it up online, there's lots of resources. Wait, is that what your question was?

Robert Hansen

Yeah. So let's say somebody wanted to do this either by themselves join or as a couple or whatever. What's sort of the sort of process? What do you do with them? What's the ceremony look like?

Kelsey Kosmala

Sure. So what I'm actually doing is I'm doing Tantra speed date.

Robert Hansen

What's that?

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, before I say that, there's other courses and stuff that my business partner and other teachers are doing that I will get into later. But I'm just kind of starting. Tantra speed date is a dating event with Tantra. So it's different than your typical speed dating where you just have a conversation. It's stuff where you're eye gazing.

You might be dancing with each other for a song. It's more of an energetic connection. It's like, "Okay. Am I vibing with this person while I'm dancing with them?" It could be hugging each other. Like, "Do I like the way this person is hugging me?" And learning about how to consent. "Do I even want to? Do I feel comfortable with this person asking?"

Robert Hansen

So is there any talking happening at all?

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah.

Robert Hansen

So you will find out if they hate your cat or something?

Kelsey Kosmala

Well, it's all kind of prompted. Some of the exercises will be talking to each other about what your vision is. Just more deeper stuff than just the small talk. What's your vision? What do you want? That kind of stuff. And each station is different. I mean, it's all PG. But it gets more intense as you go along.

And then, there's some tools that will kind of help make you feel vulnerable, it's designed to put men in their mask. I shouldn't say men.

Robert Hansen

You're allowed to say men.

Kelsey Kosmala

In the speed dating dynamic it is men and women, unless we do like a gay event. But it's designed for men to kind of own their masculine. Like for example, one of the stations is for the men to get on one knee and then look up at the goddess that you see and appreciate her for what she is. And my message, that's why I'm smiling.

I'm so passionate about this. I want the world to know that when that dynamic is happening, we can relax. The feminine can relax and we can be ourselves and we're not so wound up and tight is when that dynamic is happening. And oftentimes, I feel like this information is so new.

That's why I'm so excited to announce it to the world. There's the wounded masculine and the wounded feminine. A lot of men are in their wounded masculine it manifests as controlling. And that would be like a wounded masculine, but women have it too.

They have a wounded masculine, which would come out as controlling the other person or however it manifests. And then, there's like the wounded feminine where maybe a man who has the wounded feminine energy would be that they're not vulnerable. They're not opening up, something like that.

Robert Hansen

This has a lot of similarities to the good king and the bad king archetypes as well. Or the good queen and bad queen. Same thing where the good queen is, you know, caring and loving over people and whatever. And the bad queen is, you're not allowed to leave. Your mine forever. That kind of thing. So similar archetypes.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yeah. Which goes again with the trauma thing, you know what I mean? So the wounded masculine would be the traumatized masculine and traumatized feminine.

So anyways, in the speed dating event, it's more than just a dating event. It's really showing people how to just connect and maybe you meet someone that might not be romantic that you genuinely vibed with. A business partner or friend or whatever. I did my first event a few weeks ago and it was sold out. I was so proud. And a whole group of people went out to dinner after. It was so nice to see.

And I'm doing the eight-week erotic sovereignty course with one of the founders right now. And it's about using sex and the study of it and self-pleasuring to get rid of the shame. The shame trauma. Shame is the lowest vibrational frequency that is the worst that you could feel.

And there's so much shame in sex. And so one way to get that out of your body is to go into it feeling, doing the work to not feel shameful about it, will get that trauma outta your body. Does that make sense?

Robert Hansen

Yeah.

Kelsey Kosmala

So that's the world that I am entering.

Robert Hansen

And how long have you been doing this now?

Kelsey Kosmala

I just started. It's kind of familiar to me and natural for me since I have a background in yoga. So I've been familiar with this kind of stuff before, and the energy piece I'm very familiar with. But I just facilitated my first event three weeks ago. It sold out and I'm going to do my next one, July 6th.

Robert Hansen

Is this Austin only?

Kelsey Kosmala

It's all over the US. It's in Amsterdam. I'm actually taking over that whole piece, which I'm so excited about.

Robert Hansen

Awesome.

Kelsey Kosmala

I'm handling all the Tantra speed dates all over the US. And we're going tp be facilitating, we're going to train more facilitators. We want to keep expanding.

Robert Hansen

So people can meet you on the road.

Kelsey Kosmala

Yes.

Robert Hansen

Awesome. Okay. So how do people get in touch with you because there's a lot of things we talked about here? There's the Hope Alliance, there's the Ascension leadership and the Tantra Institute. How do we get in touch with you?

Kelsey Kosmala

You can DM me on Instagram. And I'm Kelsey, K-E-L-S-E-Y, Kosmos with a K, K-O-S-M-O-S. I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, Kelsey Kosmala. You can just look me up and you can find me on all the platforms.

Robert Hansen

Well, this has been very interesting. We covered a lot of topics, but I think it was worth doing. And actually, strangely, these things all very much dovetail into one another. So it makes sense. I mean, your life has followed an interesting trail to get us here.

Kelsey Kosmala

Indeed.

Robert Hansen

It's very interesting. All right. So Kelsey, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. And all the best.

Kelsey Kosmala

Thank you. Thank you for having me.