Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

Terri Cole calls it an invisible wound: the imprint left when a daughter never receives protection, presence, or emotional attunement from her father. This week, Tami Simon talks with Terri Cole—Sounds True's own Boundary Boss—about her new book, Father Wound, and why even women with loving fathers can carry this wound without ever naming it.

Terri Cole, MSW, LCSW, is a licensed psychotherapist, relationship expert, and best-selling author who has spent nearly three decades helping people break dysfunctional patterns and build healthier relationships with themselves and others. With Sounds True, she is the author of the trilogy that began with Boundary Boss and continued with Too Much: A Guide to Breaking the Cycle of High-Functioning Codependency. Her newest book, Father Wound: Break Unhealthy Patterns to Reclaim Your Worth and Power, examines what happens when a father or father figure is absent, abusive, immature, or simply not emotionally attuned—and why daughters of patriarchy carry a version of this wound no matter what kind of father they had.

In this conversation, Tami and Terri explore:

- How to recognize a father wound even when "my father wasn't that bad"

- Why Terri defines the father wound as, at its root, a worthiness wound

- The difference between self-parenting and re-parenting, and what healing your inner child looks like in daily decisions

- The "father wound trance": how old patterns resurface in adult relationships, and how to work with transference instead of being run by it

- Mourning the Dream, Terri's exercise for grieving the father you wished you'd had

- Why healing this wound personally is tied to healing patriarchy at a collective, societal level

Who this episode is for: anyone doing inner child work, anyone who keeps finding themselves in the same relationship pattern and wondering why, and anyone ready to ask whether their sense of worth was shaped long before they had any say in it.

Listen now, and start reclaiming your worth. →

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

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What do Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, a roadside run-in with the law, and conversations with Eckhart Tolle, Caroline Myss, Rob Bell, and Liz Gilbert have in common? In this month's Point of Insight, Tami Simon follows a single image — the river — through her own life and through the teachers she's spent twenty years interviewing, and asks what it means to finally stop resisting the current and enter it.

In this Point of Insight, Tami explores:

• How Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha first introduced her as a young person to the river as a symbol of timelessness and impermanence
• A humbling roadside encounter with a police officer that became an unplanned teaching on the dangers of "self-congratulatory" thinking
• Eckhart Tolle's answer to a question he's asked often at retreats: how do you know if you're making progress on the spiritual path?
• A practice from Caroline Myss's new Spiritual Homebase community, viewing a current challenge first through the lens of fear, then through the lens of faith
• Author and former megachurch pastor Rob Bell on reframing risk, and why the risk of not taking a risk is often the greater one
• Elizabeth Gilbert's new memoir, All the Way to the River, her relationship with Rayya Elias, and the "two doors" conversation that changed the course of her life
• The Buddhist teaching of the "stream-enterer," one of the earliest stages of awakening to an impermanent, flowing nature

For anyone standing at the edge of a change, a risk, or an uncertainty they haven't yet stepped into — press play and enter the river.

And if you’re intrigued by any of the guests mentioned in this episode, be sure to visit http://soundstrue.com/podcast to find their full episodes of Insights at the Edge.

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

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

In this conversation, Tami and Diane explore:

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this conversation, Tami and Jeffrey explore:

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this conversation, Tami and Beatrice explore:

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this conversation, Tami and Gabor explore:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this conversation, Tami and Lissa explore:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We are devoted to our phones, but not to much that is real. Tami Simon speaks with yoga nidra teacher Tracee Stanley—author of the new book Living Ritual—about ritual as an antidote to distraction and loneliness, the practice of asking what within us is dying and what is waiting to be born, and how devotion becomes the one thing we can count on.

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

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

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Let’s hop in our time machine and head back to the very first episode of Insights at the Edge, with Tami Simon interviewing Geneen Roth in 2009. Geneen, who’s also been on Insights as recently as this year, was fresh off losing decades of savings in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Tami asked her how to work with the voice that says “you idiot!” Geneen's answer separates honest grief from self-cruelty, and gives you something to actually do about it. Seventeen years later, it still lands.

(86 words)

Listen to the full episode, “No Situation is Unworkable” → https://bit.ly/geneen

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You've read the books, said the affirmations, made the plan—so why hasn't anything actually changed? Tami Simon speaks with Michelle Masters, a coach's coach and author of Wired for Money, about the survival wiring that locks in before we turn six, the family loyalties we inherit without knowing it, and what money looks like once you strip away everything we've projected onto it.

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

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

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Journalist Matt Gutman hid his panic attacks for twenty years—until one hit him live on air. Tami asks him which of the psychedelics he tried actually changed things. His answer takes us to a mat in Peru's Sacred Valley, through something like ego death, and into a scream he didn't know he'd been holding.

Find the complete interview, "Conquering a Lifetime of Panic Attacks," here: https://bit.ly/matt-gutman

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What if what ails us isn't a problem to be solved, but a dimension we've forgotten? Tami Simon speaks with Thomas Moore—bestselling author of Care of the Soul and, at 85, still writing—about his new book, The Cure at Walden Pond. Moore makes the case that Thoreau was never really a naturalist, and that what he found at Walden is the cure our culture is starving for.

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

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

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Pānquetzani's ancestors survived colonization. Her response is to make her life an altar to them—slowing down, dancing, feeling pleasure, doing the healing they never got the chance to do. The traditional healer tells Tami what it means to raise children with a freedom her grandparents didn't have, and how a fifteen-year-old's metalwork revealed a family legacy nobody had mentioned.

Listen to the full episode, Pānquetzani: "Tune in to the Womb: Thriving Postpartum": https://bit.ly/panquetzani

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At 36, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche walked out of his monastery in the middle of the night with a few thousand rupees and no plan. Weeks later, he was dying of food poisoning on a street in India—and chose not to call for help. In this encore episode, Tami Simon speaks with the beloved Tibetan Buddhist teacher about what he found on the other side of that night.

Rinpoche is now partnering with Sounds True on a brand-new course, Wild World, Steady Mind: 21 Days to Embrace Modern Reality with Clarity and Calm, filmed on location at his monastery in Nepal. Visit soundstrue.com to learn more.

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What if you're only half human? In this Point of Insight, Tami Simon traces a thread from decades of her own practice and the discovery of the central channel to a startling moment mid-interview with Lee Harris—when she suddenly felt wings. A reflection on angelic support, the mystery each of us carries, and what it takes to finally fall back and trust.

Find the original Insights at the Edge episodes here:

Lee Harris, “Be a Future Human and Find the New”: https://bit.ly/harris-lee

Richard Freeman, “Living Yoga”: https://bit.ly/richard-freeman

Robert Peng, “The Master Key: Awakening the Four Golden Wheels”: https://bit.ly/robert-peng

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