Transcript of What if the traits that make you successful stop working? Complex Trauma, High Achievement, Attachment & Nervous System Survival with Dr. Christopher Barker New

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Welcome to Notes from the Edge, where we have the conversations we should have been having all along. We talk about the things that we're not talking about. I'm your host, Lisa Lacey, writer, trauma educator, executive advisor, and author of the upcoming memoir Notes from a Certified Madwoman. Welcome to the Edge. Hey, hey, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of Notes from the Edge. I am your host, Lisa Lacey, and this is the place we have the conversations we should have been having all along. Guess what? You're not talking about it. So today we're gonna— and today's special guest is Dr. Christopher Barker. And today we're going to talk about something I think a lot of people miss. Trauma doesn't always look like you're falling apart. Sometimes trauma can look like high achievement. Dr. Christopher Barker is a clinical psychologist, speaker, author, and host of his own podcast called Holding Space. His work focuses on the lasting effects of complex trauma and childhood adversity, including how attachment experiences can shape relationships, identity, emotional well-being, physical health, perfectionism, burnout, and high achievement. That's a lot, you guys. Through his clinical work and public education, Dr. Christopher translates psychological and neuroscience concepts into practical conversations.

We like things we can understand in here about trauma resilience, emotional regulation, and healing. He hosts conversations with clinicians, researchers, authors, experts, and survivors through Holding Space, and his upcoming book expands on these themes by exploring how early experiences shape adulthood and how lasting healing can actually occur. Dr. Christopher, welcome to Notes from the Edge. How are you today, my friend?

I'm doing great. It's great to be here. Thank you.

Well, we are so happy to have you here. So it is Notes from the Edge, so we're gonna go ahead and just jump right in. Um, let's just start off with the person who Nobody thinks is traumatized because they're successful on the surface, they're productive, and they're getting stuff done, and they're the one that everybody relies on. So how can high functioning, from your experience and all the people that you've worked with, how can high functioning actually become a survival adaptation?

Well, that's a really good question. And we expect people who are traumatized to look like they've been through something really horrible. And sometimes trauma is— what I mainly deal with is complex trauma, which is much more subtle, much more insidious. It can be things like the lack of attachment in early childhood. It can be a lack of attachment to a partner. It can be lack of a sense of understanding what's going to happen next. So frequently we have people who grow up hypervigilant, we have people who grow up dissociated, we have people who grow up with shame and not really aware of when they're actually okay. So high functioning and psychological health are not synonyms. Sometimes competence is a genuine strength. Sometimes competence became necessary because Nobody was reliably taking care of things. So people who grew up, for instance, not knowing for sure that they were going to be okay if mom is in a good mood— what's a good mood anyway? All these things that we miss, it seems so subtle. And how they impact us in adulthood is we carry these things forward and we try to overperform. And if we overperform, then Somebody's going to notice and give us more to do, and then we're going to cheerfully jump in there and do it until we just can't handle it anymore.

And sometimes we break down under the strain of that. But again, it came from a good place. It came from a coping place, but it just— it gets out of hand.

Yeah, and it does eventually become too much of a strain. I, I lived it. And I want to circle back to something and have you expand on it a little bit. You said complex trauma is different, it's subtle, and it's insidious. So walk us through a little bit of the difference— complex trauma.

Sure. I mean, there's all kinds of trauma. There's the kind of trauma, and what people tend to think of is, oh, a plane crash, or somebody dies, or something terrible happens to your life. But complex trauma is a little more like what wasn't there, a good attachment to somebody, a good feeling about being able to come home at the end of the day and have somebody greet you with open arms. When we have attachment problems, when we have uncertainty about who's going to be there for us or who's going to be good or who's not going to be good, we don't grow up with a very good feeling about ourselves. And this can happen at any point in life. It doesn't have to happen in early childhood. It can happen in high school, it can happen in college. And we develop this feeling that I'm not okay. And it's not that all these other people are wrong or that I'm doing something wrong. The feeling becomes there's something wrong with me. And it comes out as shame. It comes out as a feeling of not being able to be productive enough. It comes out as not being loved enough.

And we tend to do things like foreclose on the future. I know this is how it's always going to be, which is— I mean, you know, we call that crystal ball thinking in CBT. But we sort of try to predict, we try to control our environment by knowing that, well, it was always this way, it's always going to be this way. Not necessarily. But that's what we carry forward. And sometimes that can change relationships, that can change Work relationships, it can change romantic relationships, it can change relationships with your children. Um, knowing that things were always a certain way and predicting that they'll always be that way, it's like, oh, here it comes again. No, maybe it's just a bad moment.

Yeah, maybe it's just a bad moment. We like to ask better questions in here too, and that's a pretty good one. Maybe it's just a bad moment, question mark. I like that. So we talk constantly now, we hear it, fight, flight, freeze, fawn, uh, but survival can become an identity. So what happens when somebody no longer knows where the adaptation ends and their actual personality begins? So how can survival become an identity, Juan?

Uh, good question. Okay, I wouldn't necessarily try to discover some pristine real personality underneath all our adaptations. Uh, we're all pretty much shaped by the things that happen to us. Um, the better question is whether behavior still involves choice. Sometimes people may say, I'm just independent. Um, perhaps needing something feels terrifying. Maybe I'm the funny one actually means I learned to regulate the room before the room could become dangerous. I'm easygoing can sometimes mean I learned not to have needs. And all these things combined, you can remain competent, funny, generous, independent, and also learn to receive, complain, ask for help, depend on someone, and say no. I just did a podcast on what friendship can involve, and friendship is a give-and-take type of relationship. And it is something that doesn't necessarily follow any particular rules. Who can you call at 3 AM and say, can you be there for me? I really got something going on now. And they're not a Facebook friend or they're not somebody on Instagram. Actually call somebody, actually make contact. That's, that's what friendship is. Healing doesn't require firing the survival strategy. It doesn't mean we have to run the means it doesn't have to run the company anymore.

So survival strategies are okay. We can have those.

Well, and you, you said a word that I absolutely love, and that's the word choice. So talk to me about the idea of being on autopilot in our own life, as opposed to making conscious choices about choosing our friends, even choosing who gets our time, our energy, choosing those reciprocal relationships. When does it become— how is it that we can determine we're on autopilot and not making conscious choices about our own lives?

I call my book Now and Then: Complex Trauma and Disruptions of Relational Time. It's kind of academic sounding, but what it really means is Sometimes our relationships with other people are changed. The way we see time in relationships has changed. We're waiting for the next thing to happen. We're waiting for the other shoe to drop. We don't always feel like we have a choice in what comes next. We don't always feel like we have a choice in what we can do next. If someone comes in and they're in a bad mood, oh, that's the end of things. They're They're in a bad mood. I did something wrong, or they don't like me. And those sorts of things happen. But what we have to learn is that we can take a moment, we can take a pause, and we can say, okay, I'm starting to think that thing again. I'm starting to do what I always do and imagine that this is the end of things. But what if it's not? What if I have choices? What if I can choose to go this way or that way? What if I can just say— Hey, you seem like you're in a bad mood.

Even you can say, is it something I did? But you can say, how's your day going? What's going on with you? Those are choices that we can make instead of automatically going to the thing that has carried us through so many years, being hypervigilant, foreclosing on the future, saying, oh, it's always going to be this way. I know what's coming next. You may not.

You may not. And I love the question, what if? What if?

What if?

Yeah, exactly. It's a great question. And it's such a simple one, but it, it can actually change your physiology. Asking the what if instead of it's always been this way. Here it comes. I expected it. It's over. You don't get the text in 2 hours and then the relationship is automatically over. Yeah. Yeah. So—

And what if it's both ways? I have to throw this in there because a friend of mine wrote a book for children called Willamina. Wilhelmina and the what-ifs. And she was worried about things. It was, um, a child who was going to go to the new school the next day. And what if this goes wrong? What if that goes wrong? What if it goes right? What if we have choices? What if we can look at things in a different way? So yeah, that's, that's kind of the way what-if happens.

Very valid point. So ask the good what-ifs. Ask the healthy what-ifs. Ask the what-ifs that get you Looking forward to, uh, to what comes next, or at least bare minimum getting curious about what might happen if it actually does work out for you. Yeah. Curiosity is a beautiful thing. So you'll— you work extensively in childhood experiences and particularly with attachment. So why can people intellectually Understand all day long that a relationship or behavior is unhealthy and still feel magnetically pulled towards the same pattern over and over again?

Insight and attachment don't operate on exactly the same level. Uh, you can understand a relationship perfectly and still feel powerfully drawn to it. We frequently mistake energizing experiences for love, for productivity, for good things. We run towards red flags simply because they're energizing. And if we've experienced a lot of trauma that attaches to us energetically, if we experience things that have happened that have gone bad, We may go back into those bad things thinking that it's okay because we're experiencing energy again. I hate the word triggered. I honestly hate the word triggered. It's become overused. When you trigger something, I mean, you basically start an action that is out of your control then. And people will use that as, well, I was triggered, that's why I did that. You become activated. You feel a sense of activation, you feel a sense of energy, and with that energy, instead of the bullet out of the gun, you can make a choice then what to do with that activation. You can say, I'm feeling something here, I'm feeling, I'm feeling activated, can we talk about it? And that's a big difference between just acting on it and acting about it.

I too am pretty tired of the word triggered. I think, I think it's, uh, it's, uh, ran its day. We've used it a lot. We've used it a lot. So I want to talk about perfectionism because we tend to praise it before we question it. When does ambition come from desire and curiosity And how can we tell? What's a good question, Dr. Christopher, to ask ourselves if we think maybe our achievements, our desires, our goals, the things we're running for are tied to attachment somehow? What are some better questions we can ask ourselves to maybe dig in deep if we think, oh, I might be one of those high-performing survivors, or this might be a survival identity or adaptation that's no longer serving me? What are some good questions to ask ourselves?

Again, I'd look for freedom and flexibility rather than feeling— than judging the behavior itself, rather than feeling compelled to do something. Looking at it as, is this what I want to do? Is this something that I'm choosing to do? Something that you have enthusiasm for, that can be ambition. Something that you really want to accomplish, that can be ambition. Something that you feel energized by because you feel like you have to do it in order to even hold the same place in your life. That's something that comes from an attachment injury. That's something that comes from complex trauma. That's something that isn't productive. Ambition is fine. Healthy ambitions tend to be, I want to see how good I can become. There's curiosity. There's satisfaction that comes from that. The type of drivenness that comes from perfectionism is often, I have to get it right or else. And frequently, if you ask people who are perfectionists, well, what if you don't get it right? If you get right down to it, it's almost as though they're going to explode if they don't. There's an absolute terror of not getting it right. So when it becomes something that's a survival strategy, as opposed to, I want to get everything right because this really means something to me, you know.

Yeah.

For instance, I've been doing podcasts all day and my voice keeps cracking, so I keep picking up my water cup and drinking from it. Um, so I want to get this right, uh, but I don't feel like I have to because you seem very nice and I I don't think you'll like throw me out. So that's the difference though. That's the difference between perfectionism that is healthy and perfectionism that comes from like being an artiste, being a fine-tuned performer who wants to get things right.

Yeah. I love your questions. A good question to ask, guys. You just said it. Do I want this? It's so simple, but it's a good one. What do you want? Because a lot of times we, we were not afforded the opportunity to stop and actually consider, what do I want? What kind of music do I like? What kind of movies do I like? I mean, start with the simple things. So, and you said a word I want to circle back to, and that was attachment injury.

Such a Interesting term.

Talk to us about attachment injury, because I don't think people realize how important attachment— and you noted doesn't even have to just be in childhood, it can be in friendships and work relationships and adult relationships too. We can experience this. So talk to me about the injury of attachment.

dysfunctions? There were some studies that were done, um, by Ainsworth and Bowlby, um, back— God, I guess close to 100 years ago now. So much has changed. But we, we started looking at— they called the experiment the strange situation. And what they would do is they would take an 18-month-old child and the mother would be there, then the mother would leave the room, and either the mother would come back or a stranger would come into the room. And the real interesting part is not how the children reacted when the caregiver left, but how they reacted when either the stranger or the mother came back. And if they were blasé and not really particularly caring if it was the mother, or if they were blasé and not particularly caring if it was a stranger, that shows that they weren't particularly attached to that parent. If they become frightened when the parent comes back, That shows that there is an injury there, that the attachment has not worked out successfully, that this is not somebody they can trust. They don't know what to expect. So when they come back in the room, am I in trouble? Is this good?

Are they in a good mood? And things like that can happen even in adulthood when we have a partner who is remote, when we have someone who becomes distant. When we have a boss who doesn't give us feedback, when we have someone in our life who gives us very mixed signals, that damages the attachment that we have to that person, that place, the situation. And we don't always have a sort of a healthy connection to that. Healthy ambition says, I'd love to succeed. Perfectionism says, I'd love to succeed so I can finally be okay. Healthy attachment says, I feel good about myself. I know I'm okay. I know every time I see this person, I'm going to be all right. And unhealthy attachment says, now what? And that's the sort of thing that we want to avoid. But, you know, again, it happens. And how do we cope with it? We have to recognize it and we have to talk to somebody about it.

Yeah.

Take it outside of our heads.

Yeah, talk to me about that— finding the right kind of support and getting it out of our head so it's not stuck on that ever-ending loop and then just getting worse and worse and worse, spiraling.

I know, I— it really is. And that is what that loop feels like. You have to always ask yourself, is this because of me? Is this because of something I've done? Is this because I'm not acceptable? And then you find evidence for that, because if that's what you're looking for, you're going to find it. If you're looking for ways in which you can be okay, you'll find that too. But all too often we look for what's wrong rather than what's right. That's one of the changes that mental health has been going through in the last few decades is, okay, so what's going right? So we look at things like wellness. And we look at things like, okay, so what's going well for you in life? We do gratitude journals. We do— we talk to people, we go to therapy, and we talk about what's right as well as what's wrong. We need to know both sides of the coin. And so being able to take that outside your head and just have these ruminative thoughts, the hamster wheel of what did I do wrong now? What's going on? What's going to happen next? Oh, it's not going to be good.

That wheel is dangerous. It hurts. And to be able to talk it out with someone, to be able to bring it outside of yourself and say, I'm having this feeling again about like, you know, never— everything's not going to be okay. And have people say, okay, so tell me more about that. And this is why we have to sort of like avoid trauma. We talk about trauma-informed language. We have to avoid saying things like, what's wrong with you? Or what is going on inside you that is so wrong. We can't make that kind of judgment. We just have to say, what's it about? How is it for you? What's this experience like? So that we can really understand and not shut the door on them.

Yeah, how is it for you? That's a good question too. You're so full of them today. How is it for you? I just, I think that is an amazing question to ask Your partner, ask your friends, just to get an inside view on their internal experience. Like, what's really going on with you? And we had also done— we've been doing podcasts all day today too, so we had done one on asking our, our friends on their internal experience and how to best support them and the people that we are in service to. Um, how can we show up in better ways? And I love that question. Um, you know, how can I support you in this? And, you know, what's it about? And tell me more. And just be there. Just to name your podcast Hold Space, without judgment, without needing to fix it. Just can you sit in the dark moment for just a minute? with them and, and let them articulate that is enough. Sometimes it really is.

It's very powerful because all too often we will say, oh, that's good, or you must have been feeling terrible. And at that point, we're sort of interpreting for people what their experience is instead of just allowing it. And that puts us in a power imbalance. Because once you tell somebody, oh, that must have been terrible for you. Well, maybe it wasn't really terrible for me, but well, maybe it really was. And all of a sudden you change. It's kind of like, well, no, it had its good points and it had its bad points. There were times during the podcast that I felt myself choking up. And, you know, but it was okay. You know, again, it's kind of like we have to just sort of be there with the person and use trauma-informed language. That's one thing that's really important.

Yeah, yeah. So there's been an enormous cultural shift towards trauma-informed language. Speaking of that nervous system language, um, mental health awareness, what are we getting right about trauma-informed language, and where do you maybe see some more opportunities for improvement with trauma-informed language?

I think knowing what it is is important. It's a little slippery because in the sense of we're not learning a specific different language, we're more learning how to be there with somebody. We're more learning how to sit with them, how to hold space, as you pointed out, to just like really see their point of view and not to say something that's going to shut it down, not to say something that's going to do that. I have one person that I see who said, why is my brain doing this to me? Well, it's not just your brain. It's also your whole nervous system. And, you know, we're all familiar with The Body Keeps the Score. It does. Your whole nervous system gets involved and people can feel things, sometimes a touch, sometimes a temperature. Sometimes it can be just like something that is irritating them. Your whole nervous system is involved and it starts things firing and it starts things flowing. And sometimes to just have your experience interpreted for you shuts you down, and you experience this instead of an openness.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think finding safe people to open up to is so vitally important, because if we If we have been struggling and we haven't said anything and we finally get the nerve to share with somebody in our inner circle and we choose the person who has not proven to be inspiring and uplifting and supportive of us, it may shut us down permanently. So, um, talk to us about making sure we're finding the right support network to, to lift us up.

If it makes you feel good, if it makes you feel validated, if you feel heard, then it's a good relationship. I tell people this about therapists too. I say finding the right therapist is a little like dating. I won't bring you flowers, but you have to be willing to try. And if you have a couple of conversations from someone and you're just not getting it, if you're not getting the sense that this person really understands you, that this person's not there for you, go find somebody else. Because it's important to be able to have that conversation, to have that feeling, to have that trust. Because, I mean, we have to be able to trust the people who are in our network. We have to be able to trust the people who are closest to us. We have to be able to find some sense of belongingness and safety. And from this comes repair. People ask, well, how do you fix complex trauma? There's not a switch. Sorry, I wish there was. I keep a magic wand on my wall, one of those Harry Potter style things, because people ask for it so often. And I wave it around, I'm like, are we better now?

Uh, but, um, it's, it's— so there's a certain amount of performance art in therapy. But, um, honestly, there— it comes through repeated experiences. Friendship comes through repeated experiences. Love comes through repeated experiences. Repair comes through repeated experiences. If you finally feel like it's okay to attach to this person, if you finally feel like it's okay that I can express my feelings, that I don't have to be constantly on guard for the thing that's going to go wrong, then that adds up. And it doesn't happen quickly. And you can have a bad moment. It does not mean square one. That's another phrase I don't like— square one. We never go back to square one. We've learned something along the way, and repair is happening. And eventually enough things get repaired that things are good. It takes a while.

It does. It takes, you know, some of us may be managing this for the rest of our days, and that's okay. It does get easier with practice. You know, it doesn't get easier.

It's also never too late to start. I mean, you can be 80 years old and starting to learn repair. It's fine.

Yes, yes, yes. Well, what I love is that you just gave our listeners out there permission to find the right fit for support rather than blaming themselves, right? Because a lot of times it's like, oh, well, I must have done something wrong, or I'm not doing it right, or I'm not getting this right too. So instead of the self-blame and inner critic and self-criticism it may just not be the right fit for you and your nervous system and the building of your brain, right? So sometimes you may have to go through 2 or 3, you know, 3 to 4 sessions. You know, you want to give it a good, a good try, but it is a— your therapeutic relationships are just that. They're relationships too. And you said the key word is trust.

Yeah.

And if you don't feel safe to trust, it's going to be really hard to pull some of those roots up that have been hanging around since you were 7 years old.

I'll tell you a personal story. One— I mean, therapists are in therapy too. If we're doing it right, we are also examining ourselves. Um, and I, I went to this therapist one time who I don't know. I sort of felt like she was really bored. And I was— I left that session feeling like, I don't know, what did I do wrong? I went back in the next time and she said, you know, I just— I don't know about this. I don't know if this is really going to work out because I'm sort of like feeling difficulty connecting with you. Let me refer you to somebody else. And I was so relieved because I was like, it's not me. It really is a bad fit.

And I don't even have to address it. She did it for me, even Even better. Even better. But also a great example of a good therapist, right? Because she knew too that it wasn't going to be a mutual, um, reciprocal fit. So yeah, you both have to be in that agreement together. That's so important. So say somebody's listening, Dr. Christopher, and they realize, oh man, some of these things I've spent my whole life judging myself for may have just been the way I survive. Where does— and the word healing, healing is so used too. It's so overused. It can mean so many different things, but we'll use it for lack of a better word that you may be able to give us a better one that you've done so well today. But where does healing begin without making their entire life another self-improvement project that they have to succeed at or be perfect at or get right?

Okay, well, you actually raised a number of good points there. Healing— I prefer to call it repair because simply there's something that has gotten off track somewhere. And so we use these little experiences to repair the, the trauma from the past. We use these little experiences to bring us to a better place. We use these to develop trust. We use these to develop a sense of competency. We develop a sense of choice, sense of freedom. And these are all healing experiences. Repair is a form of healing. And how do we get that? Again, step by step. We do it bit by bit, and it comes from repeated experiences in which repair feels possible, in which somebody is actually there for us, in which somebody doesn't do what we expect them to do, or when they do something that we hope they would do, and we're able to just kind of be there for all that. Does that answer your question? I got lost in my own words there for a moment.

You answered it perfectly. Build on the moments, right?

That's how—

and I love the word repair, um, in, in place of healing. So thank you, you answered that perfectly. And yeah, build on the moments of time where—

Yes.

Um, your experiences are showing you a different way, showing you that it can be different, showing you that it is different now, showing you that in this present moment you are actually safe here because it's not way back when, when you were 12 and your mom did whatever thing happened, or the bullies at school, or whatever it was. So I absolutely love that. So remind us again the name of your book. Tell us where we can find you and the book. Oh, Dr. Christopher, you are frozen on us.

Yeah, that's okay. That happens sometimes. Technology, right?

Now you are back.

The name of the— I am back. The name of the book is Now and Then, subtitled Complex Trauma and Disruptions of Relational Time. And it's going to be out, I hope, in a few weeks because it was on its way to the printers the last time I talked to the publisher. And there's going to be a workbook that follows after that, also titled Now and Then. The workbook, and that has exercises in it in which, like, think about a friendship in which something worked, and what did you do? And we have checkboxes and all kinds of. I make it as easy and accessible as possible. I'm actually using it with some of the people I see now, and they like it. And also, you can find me in my office a lot of times. You can find me on. My podcast, Holding Space with Dr. Christopher Barker, because there are quite a few holding spaces I didn't even realize. But you leave me questions, leave me comments. I always respond as quickly as I can. Leave me suggestions for future podcasts, other things that you want to talk about. You can email me, drchristopherbarker.com. Is my website, and you can go on there, and I have a relational time quiz that you can take and sort of see what your sort of, um, what some of your repair strategies are and what some things that may not be working so well for you.

But it's all positive stuff. It all is like, what type are you and what kind of dynamics are working with that?

So I love it. And guys, you don't have to write any of that down. We'll have clickable links. As a matter of fact, we'll give you 3. We'll give you one to the website, a direct link to the quiz, and a direct link where you can get the book. Congratulations on being so close to publishing, by the way. That's a huge accomplishment. Trust me, I know. All right, Dr. Christopher, before we let you go, we always ask our guests 2 questions. Are you ready for the first one?

Yes.

Okay. In your own life, what did you perform in order to survive, and what did setting that role, mask, or performance down do for your life?

What did I perform? Um, going to graduate school and, and learning and achieving my doctorate was difficult. I did it, um, one or two courses at a time, and I worked alongside that, so it took me forever, but I learned a lot along the way too. I have learned to be more authentic. I have learned to really Not always worry about saying the right thing, but to say something and to say something from a caring place. And if you do that, odds are you'll get it right.

That's great advice. Just say something from kindness and go from there. All right, last question. What do you want us to be having conversations about that we're not talking enough about?

So many things. Um, I guess mainly we need to address a few things in society now. Loneliness is a big one. Um, who we can trust and who we can go to is another one. Um, I found very often that people are using chatbots and AI to try and get some kind of therapy. And great, that's good for organizing thoughts. That's good for sort of like learning things about— so what are those cognitive distortions my therapist was talking about? What's CBT? You can do that. But, you know, when you're asking it things like, is my husband cheating on me? Is— does this person love me? Am I mentally ill? It's not gonna know because it's not going to ask you the things that a therapist would. Like, for instance, well, what does that mean to you? Why didn't you mention this? And remember that time 6 weeks ago when you said this, and that's kind of different from what you're saying now? We are able to think analytically, we're able to think critically, and we need to be able to think about ourselves that way also. And not just rush for an answer, because sometimes answers are so easy to seem to get, but they're very hard to achieve.

So pace it out, do your repair, find yourself, and, you know, and be glad for what you find.

And connect with other humans. Humans connect with other humans.

Yes. And it can be as simple as like finding an activity, going to meetup.com, not just once, But like repeatedly, and being able to see the same people over and over again, then you start to form a connection. We need to stay connected.

Yeah, we've never been so connected but disconnected at the same time. So friends out there, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Dr. Christopher. What might you be performing in order to survive? And what may setting that role, mask, or performance down do to lighten your load just a little bit? I am your host, Lisa Lacey, here with our special guest, Dr. Christopher Barker. And when you find the answer to that, we will both see you at the edge. Dr. Christopher, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.