#28 Grieving Lost Dreams After PTSD | Recovery Secrets Series

Welcome to the Overcoming PTSD Podcast. My name is Brad Schipke, and this is the limited series called Recovery Secrets Daily Coaching. Now, these were private sessions that I originally ran as a paid coaching program, but now for the first time ever, I'm making all 100+ sessions available for free for all of you podcast listeners. And this series is over 100 days of practical strategies that have helped thousands of trauma survivors fully heal. So make sure to subscribe because I'm dropping a new episode every single weekday until the archive is complete, and you definitely do not want to miss it. So without further ado, let's dive on in.

All right, we are live here. Welcome to our Recovery Secrets daily coaching session. We are so, so excited to be here with you back today. We're going to be talking about grieving kind of lost dreams and opportunities. So weird topic to be excited about, but we are excited to, to bring that content to you because it is It is something a lot of people experience.

Hey, welcome anybody who's new. Great to have you here. Great to see you. For those who don't know me, I'm Brad, but this is a great topic today. And like Haley said, it's a weird topic to be excited about, but I'm excited because I'm excited also because it does have such a huge opportunity for growth and for feeling, feeling good, feeling better. And I think it's something that a lot of people, most people suffer with, right? When you go through a loss, whether it's a loss of a loved one, Loss of time, right? Time to pain and PTSD. It's easy to look back and be like, I wish things were different. And I wish that I did this. I wish I did this. And really just, you know, really feel that grief and really beat yourself up because of it and prevent yourself from really, you know, having a better future. Like you bring that forward, it kind of infects everything in the future. And I definitely felt this in many, many, many areas of my life for quite a long time. And I know You, you faced a lot of it too. But kind of what we're gonna be walking you through is, is a really great way to, to work through that grief. So any, any of you are experiencing grief, you know, this, this will be a really great topic for you. And, and again, I believe most of us experience grief in one way. And the way that I like to think of grief is like basically the negative emotions you feel from loss, right? So what any loss that is, that's what we're going to be, be covering today. Right.

And so not specifically grief, but specifically grief around kind of lost dreams and lost opportunities is what we're gonna focus on. Mm-hmm. Because there's a lot that be covered in grief. And we can, you know, we can— and we'll talk about the very basic kind of simple framework that you'll hear throughout us kind of teaching and talking on grief. But today, we're going to skew that focus a little bit towards, you know, dreams and opportunities that, that have been lost from specifically from PTSD. So this was a question we got maybe last week or the week before on, on part of the Q&A, right? And it was a little bit too big of a question to just answer and needed kind of its own Content. So, and it's, it's something a lot of people experience. Like I said, like Brad said, it's something we've experienced. So again, when we're talking about grief, we're talking about specifically here, we're talking about grieving lost dreams, right? Or lost opportunities. So, you know, when you think about having PTSD, when you think about experiencing trauma, it's not typically something that when people think about it, they don't typically think about missed opportunities because of that or lost dreams because of that. They typically just think about the pain. that an individual might be in or the specific pain that they experience from an event or events. And what can be pretty tricky about PTSD is, you know, you experience that event and that is hard enough as it is. And then you experience, you know, symptoms from that and that is hard enough as it is. But then that continues to affect and infect a lot of different areas of your life, including your relationships, including your work life, including your self-esteem. Including all sorts of things. And included with that is because typically it takes so much time, or for other reasons, you know, it could infect your relationship and then you lose opportunities there. It could just take so much time, so much energy, all of that pain that you're not able to put that energy and time into something else, right? So it could be there. There's all sorts of different ways that this can happen, but Again, it's not something people typically think about when they think about trauma, when they think about PTSD, but it is very, very often something that happens where you lose opportunities. Now, it could be big and small. It could be the opportunity at a specific job. It could be the opportunity for a specific meetup with a friend that in the scheme of things, not that big of a deal, right? Or it could be, you know, it can get a lot bigger and much, much bigger from there. And there's, there's all sorts of different things that go into this. So. It is a really important thing to, again, kind of think about because what it can, what can happen really is this can kind of sneak up on you, this kind of grief. You know, sometimes it's anger, sometimes it's frustration, it's sadness, whatever it is can sneak up on you. And a lot of times you might not fully understand why, but it's because of a lost dream or a lost opportunity or something like that. So kind of a sneaky subject.

Yeah.

When it comes to things like that.

100%. And I mean, I think sneaky, sneaky is kind of a, it's a, it's a good term for it because it's a lot. I think it's, it might be something that a lot of you might not even be aware of. I knew I wasn't really aware of it and you might not be thinking, thinking of it as a loss, like lost time, because it's not a loss of a loved one. Like that's when you think of grief, that's what you typically think of. You know, you lose someone in your life that you love. Excuse me. And you need to grieve, right? And you need to go through the grieving process, right? Whatever that means. People just say that, but we're going to give you, give you some things that you can do, but it's important to be aware that, you know, that's a loss. That's a, that's a pretty significant loss. You know, for me, I'll, I'll talk for myself. The days, the weeks, the months, the years that I lost to the pain, to PTSD, to doing nothing, to, to basically missing out on my dreams to having these dreams and then just watching them kind of go by, you know, having, having these opportunities come up in my life and just having them go by, watch them go by. It was an extreme loss for me. And it wasn't until I started looking at it as a, as a loss that I had to grieve from. It wasn't until I did that, that I actually started healing from that and could actually start building and focusing on my future more than on my past. So that's, that's a really good, good frame and a really good awareness to bring into this is like, this is a loss and just accepting, hey, this is a loss. This is painful in and of itself and something to address.

And I love that you bring that up because, you know, a lot of people when they think about grief, they typically think fairly one-dimensionally, which is losing someone or, you know, in some cases, I hate to say something because your pet is still someone, right? The one of the, believe it or not, Few classes in college that actually applies, in my experience of my collegiate work, applies to the real world. I took a class in college. It was called Thanatology, the study of death, dying, and bereavement. And in that class, I learned a really valuable lesson that I didn't realize looking back, but that I really needed to learn. But it was on grief. And it was basically on— we did this entire section on grief and what grief means and what loss means, basically, and what are the things that you could lose, right? And so You know, you can lose someone, you can lose something, you can lose a sense of something, right? So you can lose a sense of safety, you can lose a sense of belonging. And those things, because they're losses, very often need to be grieved as well, right? You can lose your, you know, I remember one of the things we talked about was like, I know for me, I know I have a lot of friends that have like maybe their one stuffed animal, their one like blanket that, you know, they've had since they were young and it's their like thing. And, you know, if you lose that, As an adult, it's easy to be like, well, it's just a blanket, right? But it meant something to you, right? And it's okay to grieve those losses, even if they're not what we would consider something that needs grieving and you need to go through the grieving process with. So I love that you brought that up because it is important to recognize this as a process where you can allow yourself to grieve. It's okay to grieve this. It's okay. To see these as losses. And that's kind of going to be step 1 to kind of what we talk about here, is acknowledge the losses and grieve the losses, right? We don't want to pretend that they're not there when they're right there. We don't want to ignore them. We also don't want to just have kind of negative emotions about them. We want to allow ourselves to grieve them, right? To let go of them in that process of grieving them and acknowledging them and acknowledging that. Their, their past are gone. Because then once we kind of let go, we can move to— if we're going to split it up into 2 very, very simple steps, it's grieve and let go, and then it's change the perspective and move forward. Okay. And so again, what we're painting this with, 2, 2 steps and feelings, and then what happens after.

Yeah. And if, if you've been with us for a while, you might keep hearing me bring this up. processing of, of trauma, there's really 2 main parts. And obviously there's a lot of subfacets to it, but 2 main parts. One is the release of emotion, right? And in this case, the grieving process. So you have to grieve, you have to let it out. And then 2, a change of belief, a change in your thought process, right? And then that's exactly what we're talking about here is that change in perspective of the past. You know, you reinterpret things and see, see the world, see the past, see the future, see your life in a new way. Right. But the first step is acknowledging that you have this emotion, you have this pain and letting it out. And I remember when we first kind of discovered that it was like by accident, you know, because there's no book that says, oh, there's, you need to do this and then you need to do this. But it was like, we went through all these different processing tools. We went through our grieving process and we're like, holy cow. Like, cause we always try to like simplify it down and be like, okay, like what, like all of these have like a similar thread. It's all pain and we're all processing and we're all like letting go of emotions and like There's change happening, but what is really happening? And we found that in every single process where you were able to make that transformation from a place of pain to a place of basically growth, you know, so before processing and after processing, it had those 2 things. They all had those 2 things. There had to be a release of emotion. There had to be a change of belief or a change in the way of your thinking, a change of, or a reinterpretation of your life or the event or whatever it is. So That is the process with this grieving as well, with whatever. This is where like all grief comes in with whatever grief that comes in, but specifically with the loss of, the loss of dreams, the loss of time, loss of opportunities. You have to let yourself feel that, you know, you can't push that down. A lot of times we want to push that down and that's kind of, that can be instinctual. And that was something for me that I had to learn. It's a skill you have to learn to be able to let those emotions out.

That's a good one. That's a good starting point. The releasing emotions, that was a Wednesday episode that we did, and I linked that. So that'll be pretty close in the newsfeed. That'll be in the last day that I linked that in there. So you can check that out. You can watch that because, like Brad said, that's going to be step 1, is releasing those things, acknowledging, breathing that. And then step 2 is going to move to— and we'll talk about step 2 in a minute. But do you have any 2 cents kind of based on your personal experience on, on this specifically in regard to like getting into that first step?

How do you get into it?

Yeah, just like, or, or here's what I want to ask you more specifically is getting yourself from a place of, cause I know you experienced this. I know I experienced this too, but I'm just curious to see if you have any thoughts on this. Like for a lot of people, it so much seems like There's sometimes anger towards this, this loss and there's frustration and there's sometimes beating themselves up to get from that place to a place of grieving. Do you have any kind of thoughts or personal experience on that specific sector of the journey?

Yeah, I think, I think it all comes down to, you know, acceptance, like getting to the point of acceptance. But all those, I mean, all those emotions that you described are accurate, like all those, like You feel angry, right? You feel angry at yourself, at the world, at the, maybe the, the people or the things that hurt you that maybe you feel have caused all those emotions that you're feeling that are causing you to, you know, maybe miss those opportunities or not do the things you wanted to do or react in the ways that you're reacting. So you have the anger, you have the underlying pain, you have the underlying sadness, you have the depression. All of those things kind of pile into, into each other, but You know, when, when we talk about like a release of emotion, it's good to, good to keep it simple, especially in the beginning and just allow it all to come out. You know, like an important part of processing is allowing yourself to honestly express how you feel. So like, honestly, how do you truly feel about this? Because a lot of times we lie to ourselves, we lie outwardly, you know, we try to pretend that the pain isn't really there, but the pain is there if we're being honest with ourselves. Right. So we have to be honest. You have to allow those things to come up. Now, definitely watch, if you haven't seen the releasing emotions coaching session, definitely watch that because we go through all the different nuances to, you know, how to do this effectively and in a way that you are in control and you won't feel overwhelmed by it. So that's, that's a really great, it's a, it's a foundational thing. Like when I'm saying like there's 2 things to processing and it's like the release of emotion and the change of perspective or belief or reinterpretation, the release of emotion, that's a really important skill. So it's worth going back to that, even revisiting it and really practicing that skill. But it's important to let all of those emotions out in a safe way. Honestly, honestly, right? Honestly expressing how you feel from top to bottom, you know, from anger to sadness to grief to depression to maybe a little bit of hope. To acceptance. You move through all of that. So you have to, you have to kind of wade through all of that, your honest, true feelings to get to the other side. And if you are denying those emotions, or if you're pretending that they don't exist because you don't want them to exist, that's a lot of, like, a lot of the times it's like, we just don't want to feel this way. So we're going to pretend that we don't feel this way. But honestly, if we're honest with ourselves, we really do feel that way. And if you stay in that kind of state of, I don't like the word denial. I just don't like it. But if you stay in a state where you're denying the truth or you're lying to yourself about that, the pain will always stay, right? The only way that's going to get out is if it gets out, if you let it out, if you process it, right? So honesty in that process is so important. Allowing yourself, allowing yourself to feel that is so important because sometimes we make our, we make our feelings seem trivial or we make ourselves feel weak because we're expressing emotions or things like that. And those are all things we can talk about later, but Being honest when processing is important. Now, this got misconstrued once when I said it, so I'm just going to clarify it. One of our clients once took that as, I will always honestly express my emotions in any scenario, right? And obviously there's scenarios in life where it's good to control your emotions and just control your emotions, right? So you can't be, I mean, you can if you want, but we don't recommend, you know, Breaking down crying everywhere you go just because that's how you honestly feel in that moment. Like there's certain situations that might not be appropriate, but when you're processing, it's essential. You know, it's essential to let that out so that you can process it and heal it. That's what I'm mainly talking about here. Like Lynn says, not good in the work meeting.

Not good in the meeting. Right.

Not very productive in, in all scenarios.

That's not our moment to grieve everything that we've, we've lost. Right. But one thing that I want to And actually on that point, and then I'll go back to another point, there's a time to release that and then there's a time where we want to work to reel in our emotions, right? And so this could be positive or negative emotions. Now, this is a skill that we both still have. And so I'll share a couple of times on coaching calls and sometimes we'll do lives and people will just share the most amazing wins and It, you know, if, if I were alone, if I was just listening, if I was reading it, like it would bring me to tears, like how much people change and grow and like how much their lives have transformed, you know? Well, when we're on a live call, you know, I, I allow myself to get emotional just almost to that point to, you know, to the edge of tears.

Right.

But I don't actually, you know, I'm not, I'm not actually gonna, you know, cry with joy on a coaching call. Right. So I, I allow myself to kind of feel those emotions so that I can Honestly express whatever I need to express back to them. Like, I'm so proud of you. Thanks for sharing it. Right. But, but kind of keep the door closed a little bit. And that's a skill and that's a muscle. And what you will be able to learn in life is how to control, again, whether they're positive emotions or negative emotions, you'll learn how to, how to kind of taper them and control them to your environment and to what's appropriate. And that's okay. And that's a great skill to have. Right. And then when it's okay to just kind of open that door completely. But it's, it's a muscle that you build and it's, it's a really, really, really good one to have.

Yeah. So, and it's, I mean, and it's, and of course, like Isa says, it's up to you. You know, like if you want to feel those positive emotions and you want to let tears of joy come out, you can do that. You can do that. You know, like you, we're not saying not to do that, like not feel tears of joy or not feel joy in certain circumstances and just be flat. You get to choose, you know, and that's the most important part is that you get the control. to live the life the way you want to live it.

Now, I want to go back on your thing that you said on honesty, right? Now, there's a couple things that I just wanted to mention before we move into basically after letting all this out, what to do next. And that's equally as important, right? And so a couple things on that, right? So you're, you're not necessarily going to be able to sit down and just as one, in one sitting, grieve in this one umbrella all of the lost dreams and opportunities from PTSD. It's gonna have to be situation by situation. It's— now you can sit down and go through a couple situations at once and like release those emotions, but odds are you're not gonna be able to get 100% of everything when you first sit and kind of release those emotions. There might be things that come up, you know, in, in 2 months that like you weren't aware of, and you become aware of like, oh, that's, that's something that I lost to this, or an opportunity that I missed however many years ago, or whatever it was.

Mm-hmm.

And kind of do it case by case. So you're not gonna be able to sit down and do this kind of one umbrella, all of the things that PTSD has made me miss or lose. So just kind of keep that in mind. This will typically be more of a case-by-case process, but you can also do multiple things at once, you know, when you sit and you're kind of actively doing this. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention, because Brad had mentioned honesty, which is really, really important, is feel what is honest to you. It's okay to feel angry and frustrated and sad and empathetic all in one sitting. And so sometimes you just need to kind of get something out, and the words that you're saying might not make a ton of sense, but they represent how you're feeling. So you just kind of let them out, and then once you kind of let that out, it's out, right? And you can move on to the next thing. It's okay to— it doesn't make you a bad person Doesn't make you a bad partner, doesn't make you a bad parent. It's okay to hold all those things in the same space. So I wanted to touch on that. And now, if you are ready, I'd like to transition into, okay, so now we've, you know, we've released these emotions, we've grieved, we've identified, you know, a lot of different things that PTSD has, for lack of a better term, kind of taken from us, whether it's through time or opportunity or relationships. And, and now the question is, okay, so now what? Right? And so now here's your mindset exercise, basically. And this is why mindset is important. Now what we want to do is we want to move into a different perspective, right? So now we've allowed ourselves to feel these emotions and get those emotions out and get the negative emotions out. Now it's time to accept where we are in life, to practice that acceptance, to see where we are, to not fight reality. Here is where we are. Now it's time to look for the opportunities, maybe because of that situation, right? To look for the opportunities that we have been given because of that situation or by proxy. Look for the opportunities. Now it's time to express gratitude for the things that we've learned along the way, for the things that we wouldn't have had if we didn't go through these things. Now it's time to look at what's next. Look at the future, to make the future the best that we can, to do the best that we can with the cards that we were dealt and really take a step forward into positivity and into opportunity and into gratitude and into the future and into opportunity. And I think that opportunities is the thing that for me, I like to press on hardest is, you know, because a lot of people will really struggle with this. Like, Kelly, how could you possibly say that this has given me an opportunity? Well, here's one example of many, and the power is going to come from you doing this yourself, right? But one example of many is most people, most people in life live a tolerable level of pain. They live just uncomfortable enough in their— like, right, more than 50% of people who get married get divorced, right? The other 50%, not all of them are happy, if, if the majority, right? So most people live a tolerable level of pain. Now, each and every one of you have been through something extreme, right? And when we reach an extreme level of pain, what it does is it drives us into action. The only reason that you're here is because you've reached a level of pain where you said, I need to do something about this, right? And so instead of living at a tolerable level of pain that like most people do for their entire life, you've dipped down below that threshold where you're like, something needs to change in my life. This is too much pain. Right? And while that really, really hurts, what it does is it gives you the opportunity to not only heal the too much pain, but to heal all the other pain too. So that as you grow and grow and grow and grow, you go above that tolerable level of pain until you don't have pain in your life, until you're allowed— like, you, you get to the point where you live your life with joy and peace, which is something that most people never ever achieve. And the only reason that you can get all the way there is because you've kind of come all the way down. Okay? And so just, just things like this, just to think about with a different perspective. What has this given me? This has given me the opportunity to see other people and to see their lives and give compassion like, like very few other people can see. Because I know what goes on behind closed doors, you know, because I know how much pain someone can be in and still put on a smile, right? Because I know someone can have a bad day and maybe that's why they cut me off. Right? And whatever it is, you know, again, it's looking for— it's not even so much a silver lining because there's— it's not just one thing. There's so many different things. Looking for the opportunities, looking for the gratitudes, expressing that gratitude. I'm grateful to have, you know, I mean, look at you. You're here. You're here. You've been through that pain. You're going through that pain and you're here. That's amazing. That makes you stronger. You might not feel strong, But you're strong for going through what you've been through, and you continue to be strong, and you continue to show up, and you continue to better yourself where most people don't. Where most people turn and run, you've turned and faced it. That's amazing. Okay? And so again, all of these things—you're learning these skills. Your relationships are going to get better because of these skills that you're learning. Your self-esteem—you're going to get better. Your mindset's going to get better, and that's going to radiate out into the world. So you take. These, these things, right, that you've grieved, these lost dreams, these lost opportunities. And then you think about what's possible because of the things that you've been through, what you can do that's even greater than maybe the things you wanted to do originally. So, do you have any—

I mean, I think that's beautiful. Thoughts on that? But really, yeah, I'll, I'll kind of bring it back and summarize it. You release the emotions and then you change the perspective, right? You change your perspective, you reinterpret things, right? Because the way that you're interpreting your past now is very painful, you know, the way that you're thinking about it, your beliefs about it. So it has to be reinterpreted. But for me, it's like a release of emotion and then an acceptance of a big, a big kind of thing that you can bring into this is the acceptance of like, or goal to strive for when you're releasing emotion is the acceptance of basically the realization of like, I can't change anything about the past. And I'm spending the only time that I actually have focused on the things that I can't control or things that I can't change. And for me, it's about changing that perspective from being past-focused to future-focused and accepting, accepting that, hey, I can't, I can't do anything about that. And obviously that's a process. It's not something that I'm just saying, hey, just, just accept it right now. It's a process of grieving, right? You go through the process, you release the emotions, and you eventually get to a point where you're able to accept it. Move on and reinterpret that. So I'm not saying like it's an instant, like snap your fingers, just accept it, just get over it. You know, it's the past. I mean, with some things you can do that, but even that, it's a process. But I mean, yeah, I thought, I thought you, you summed it up.

Well, and I want to press on one more thing because I know that it's going to come off extreme, but I just want to, I kind of want to make a point. You don't have to, you don't have to worry about getting to this point in your processing and in your healing, but you most likely will, you know, if you continue to follow this process, you continue to heal and get further and further. You know, I'm at a point, and I never thought I would ever say this, right? And I've been at this point for a while where I am unbelievably grateful for every single thing that I've been through in my entire life that has led me to this point. Because it's only because of the pain and the traumas and the experiences that I've had and the growth that I've had to do because of those that I have everything that I have now, that we have the relationship that we have. That I am the person I am. So I can look back and I can say I'm unbelievably grateful that I've been through all these things and get extreme enough to say, if I had to do this life again, if I got the opportunity to choose, go through those things or not go through those things, I would choose the same path because that's how much I love who I am. I love the life that I have. I'm grateful for the life that I have. I'm grateful for the skills that I have. I wouldn't trade the growth, the relationships, the skills for anything, including avoiding that pain in the rerun if I was able to do a little game over there. Okay, so again, that's extreme, and you don't have to get to that point where you feel that way, where you think that way. But a lot of times what will happen on the healing process is you will get to a point where you say, you know what? I'm grateful to have been through what I have because I'm stronger because of it. I'm better because of it. I have greater skills. I have better relationships. I have a better relationship with myself. I have a better mindset that I have great routines, and I'm going further than I thought was possible in my life because of the things that I've been through. So again, I just wanted to paint that. I know that can seem very extreme. If I heard that at rock bottom, I'd be like, you are so stupid for saying that. You have no idea the things that I've been through.

You have no idea what I've been through. You don't know what it's like. You don't know how I feel. Right. The pain. Yeah, it's wild. But I mean, the pain is real.

And that doesn't take away from the pain either, right? You don't have to just pretend that this isn't painful, right? It doesn't take away from the pain. All of that was still extremely painful. It's the most painful. I mean, it's really the most painful. And then you start to feel yourself climb out of it and you start to feel the growth and you start to see the growth. And you start to feel the strength. For those of you who have ever been in any sort of workout routine, you know, first couple days, first couple weeks, you had so much feel in it. Then you start to feel—

You feel weaker.

You feel weak. Yeah. And then, then, and now—

You feel sore. It hurts more.

You continue to go and then you feel strong. I remember little things, right? When, when I wasn't working out for a while and then I started working out again, we were in an office where we don't have drinkable water, so we have to bring up cases of water. It still boggles my mind. And so we have to bring them up. We're on the second floor and there's no elevator, right? And so we have to carry these cases of water up the stairs. And I remember not working out for a while and it was heavy, but I could still carry it. And then after a couple of weeks of working out, I lifted the water and I was like, wow, this feels like light as a feather, right? And so that'll happen in your healing as well. We'll get stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger because of the things that you've been through.

Yeah. And that's just a side note on processing itself. Like when you first go to release your emotions for the first time, maybe it's 15 minutes and you, you sleep for an hour or 2 hours. Well, we're, we're going to teach you a tool down the road called bilateral processing. When I first did that, I had to sleep. It was, it was exactly that because I released so, so many emotions. I was so exhausted, you know, because like it was my first workout, you know, it was my first workout. Of my mind and my emotions, just getting everything out, and I was exhausted. But then in time, I was able to process more and more and more, do longer and longer sessions, go deeper and deeper into my healing. So all of this is a skill. So don't be discouraged is my last thing here. Don't be discouraged if it's challenging in the beginning, or if you can only do a little bit, a little bit. And I want you to focus on progress. Not perfection, right? So you probably have this image in your mind that like, maybe it's maybe the image, because it can be easy. Like when you just like hear us talk about it and be like, all right, this is all I have to do. And I just do this once and then it's done. Be like, no, like sometimes you might, like, you have to release some emotions. Then you like nap for 2 hours and then you have to release emotions. Maybe you have to do that every day for a week or 2 weeks. I had something like my, I, the deepest trauma, the deepest pain that I had to process, it took me probably 6 to 8 weeks of just every day, an hour a day plus, hour to 2 hours a day, just letting the emotions out. But when I let it out, it was gone. You know, it was gone. So know that it's a skill. Know that it builds on itself. But, and know that there's hope. You know, know that there's hope at the end of this road that things do get better. Because that's a big part of, of everything is like, you, you have grief of the past of everything that you've lost, but you have so, you have so much in your future and A big part of this healing process and the growth process is not just healing the pain. That's the first step. The next step is building a future for yourself that you actually want to live, building a life you want to live, building that hope for the future and doing all the things. Like, we all have so much time, you know, like, I don't care if you're in your teens or if you're in your 80s, it's like you have time. And we tend to think, you know, we can't, we can't do something because of things in our life, whether it's our age, I remember when I was in my early 20s, I was like, I can't do this because I'm too young, right? I'm not experienced enough. And then you hear that from the older people. It was like, oh, I'm too old. I can't learn this, or I can't do this, or, you know, I can't have this, this goal or this dream or whatever it is because, you know, my time has passed. And there's always reasons why we can't do something, but we need to start looking at the reasons why we can. And all of you guys are so capable. We are so capable. So. It's so important to remember that and build that hope for the future and have those goals, have those things to strive for, because those are the things that make life exciting. You know, like when you, when you think of like, we all want to feel hope, but what is hope? It's like, it's a belief that the future is going to be better than the present. Right. So keep building that future for yourself, make that future bigger, bigger than your past. And one way you're going to be able to do that is by processing, processing the past. It's going to, it's going to shrink down the past, be like, okay, I can accept that now. Now let me just focus on, on building my, my future. And I love this. Dale says, I'm starting my career at age 66, right? There's nothing— that's, that's amazing. That's amazing. Like society just tells us that, hey, we have to basically, when we're around 66, basically give up and do nothing and just kick back in an easy chair and wait to die. Right. So a little, a little off topic there, but it goes, it goes along with this because of the lost streams and everything else. Like you still have time, like there is still time and having that hope and that belief in yourself is so important. I know I've been in a few business, business, not masterminds, but like online groups and communities and programs and coaching programs and things like that. And, you know, some of it is like pretty technical. And like, there's always, there's always people in their, you know, 50s, 60s, and like 70s who are getting, getting at it, you know, and learning it just like I'm learning it. And it's never too late to whatever it is, start that business, write that book, anything, whatever your dream is, you can do it in some capacity. And it's all about building that, taking the time to think about it, taking the time to think about it, right? And then start getting after it.

So you're never too young, you're never too old. And that is a great lesson. And that I think is a great way to leave. And one more thing before we move into our Q&A, I think I want to just hone in on for a second. For me, all my entire life, pain, pain, pain, and healing, it's all worth it. And when I say 100 times over, I'm not exaggerating. 100 times over, 1,000 times over. Over. It's, it's worth the pain, the healing, the growth that you get having the, the feelings, being the person that you are on the other side of it. Even if you're only that person and you only get to live that for 3 months or 6 months or a year. And I'm not kidding when I say that it is that worth it. It is that amazing. There is such a stark contrast between being in that pain and then being the person that is fully healed. It is that worth it. You're never too young. You're never too old to deserve that freedom, to deserve those feelings, to deserve that peace, to deserve that self-love, to deserve all of those things. So just the thought I wanted to leave you on there, just because it kind of came up here. But tomorrow we're going to be talking about something that's mindset-based, but it has everything to do with depression. Right. And so depression will be the conversation that we have tomorrow. But there's one thing specifically that we're going to talk about tomorrow that quite literally overnight can change your life, can change the way that you see your pain, see your PTSD, see your past, and see your future. So the way that we kind of ended our conversation today, we're going to kind of start our conversation tomorrow. So stick around for that. We have an awesome week planned next week as well. Which is where we will do our sobriety and pain through PTSD. So amazing job with everything today. A lot of resonating with that, those lost dreams and opportunities. So, Lindsay, I used to feel bad for feeling bad, so I beat myself up for feeling down instead of embracing it and being honest with myself that I was feeling down and it was okay. Lynn, great awareness and great job. It sounds like making that shift. This is a tremendous shift, and I wanna press on this because this is something I've struggled with. I know it's something Brad struggled with. Something a lot of people struggle with. The more you beat yourself up, the worse it's gonna get. And a lot of times our instinct, when we're not feeling well, when we're not feeling okay, when we're feeling bad, when we're having a bad day, when we've been triggered, whatever it is, is to be hard on ourselves. When you can stop and you can say, okay, this is not a great day and that's okay, I'm not feeling well and that's okay, it shortens the length of time that you don't feel well. So when you beat yourself up, you take one moment and you exacerbate it into sometimes a week, sometimes weeks of bad moments instead of it being a bad moment or a couple of maybe hours or just till the end of the day, right? Just that day of a bad moment. And that is the key to doing that. If you want to take your triggers, your whatever it is, and you want to shorten The length of time that you feel them. Stop beating yourself up. Say, okay, this is how I feel. That's okay. It's part of being human. It's part of this process. Now, what can I do about it? Okay, I could take it easy on myself today. You don't have to like spring into action and like jump on and like do your recovery tools. Just, you could take it easy. That's okay. What can I do about it? I'm gonna be kind to myself. I'm gonna take it easy. I'm gonna go to bed early. I'm gonna do a little processing before bed. You know, I'm going to do a little processing, then I'm going to, you know, read a book, go for a walk, go to bed early, and I'm going to make tomorrow the best it can be. You can— you have the choice to, again, shorten that duration as short as possible or elongate it indefinitely just by that, just by beating yourself up or not beating yourself up. So, Lynn, I love that you shared that. I love it. Judy's sharing it's an amazing skill to have to be able to control your emotions. Not to not have emotions, but to have them and control them correctly. One of the things that I'm striving for, that's an amazing skill that you'll learn on the journey. When to release, when to process, when to reel it in.

Mm-hmm.

And how to control those emotions. Even, you know, even after you heal, there's gonna be, you know, conversations that you have that whether it's with a coworker or a boss or a friend that can be emotional, whether it's positive emotions or negative emotions. And having the skill to taper those emotions to what's appropriate or what you want out of a given situation is an amazing, amazing skill. Because what you can do is you can control the situation with that control as well. Awesome. Lynne Sharon, it's good to have a safe space to share those emotions and not at the person we are angry with until we can discuss it calmly with them if necessary. Essential.

That is essential. Because especially anger in particular, it has the capacity to do a lot of damage.

Right.

To a relationship, depending on what it is. So having that safe space, whether it's a literal space to express that anger, or one of my favorite ways to express anger was in a journal, right? So writing it down. And sometimes I would get really angry, you know, I mean, just, you let it out. But then what you always find with anger is once, once you— anger is always a top-level emotion to protect you from feeling the underlying pain. So once you get through the anger, once you express it, you start to get to that underlying pain. And you start to get to the real reason of why you're feeling that way. And then you can start to address the root of it versus just kind of reacting at this top-level emotion.

So Isabella sharing, and I appreciate you sharing this, Isabella. I had a tough morning with my son. He threw a fit and didn't want to go to school, which I totally relate to. Sometimes I throw a fit and don't want to go to school. I went back to my old modalities and yelled and physically put him in front of his shoes to put them on. I realized in that moment I need to step away. And breathe. So thank you for that. So that's awesome, awesome awareness, Isabella. And I really want to press on this point. You know, what you're building is the awareness. And so what you're going to be able to do more and more and more is what I kind of call like you're going to get to it faster and faster and faster, right? So right now you notice like once you were in that action, like, wait, that's not right. And then you were able to take a step back and breathe. You're going to notice that faster, just naturally, because you're working on yourself, because you're working on all this before you get to the point where a voice gets raised, before you even start to kind of have the thoughts. And you're going to notice the emotions right away, whatever they are, and be able to step. So you're going to kind of work your way back to the genesis of those things. So that's— I'm super proud of you. That's amazing, amazing progress. And that's going to continue to change your life and his as well.

Thank you.

That's awesome. So Dale asking, you talk about emotions, but aren't thoughts just as important to release and change? So, so yes, in short, Dale. So the thoughts are gonna drive the emotions, right? The thoughts are gonna drive the way that you feel. So when you're going for releasing emotions, it's okay to kind of let those thoughts drive those emotions and help you kind of get them out and feel what you're feeling. And this is where the honesty is gonna come in. The thoughts are where you want to be honest with yourself because you won't always be speaking these things. You won't always be speaking about how frustrated or sad or angry you are or what you're feeling, but you'll be thinking these things, right? So those thoughts in the kind of first stage there, allow them to be honest so that you can express those emotions. They're going to be leading those emotions, right? And then in the second stage where we talked about, okay, now we're focusing on The progress. Now we're focusing on what opportunities that we have. There too, you want to be aware of your thoughts, and there is where you're working more to control the thoughts and build the muscle of actually, we're going to focus on this, the opportunity that this has given us, the opportunities that we didn't have before this. So there's where you're working on that change.

Emotions can be expressed in— I mean, when you think about it, it's, it's like auditorily, which is like Thoughts, like what, what, what is being said kinesthetically. So like what your body's doing. It's another one visually. It can happen visually through visual images. And then even, even some people taste and smell. That's less, less common, but it can happen.

And sharing today's teaching helped me feel like I'm not so far behind. Something I, I wanna press on with this point is you're not behind. There is no behind. There's no behind. There's no ahead. It's not a race and you, you can't, you can't lose. You can win. You can win by taking care of yourself.

Also, you can, you can do so much in such little small amounts of time. It's, it's wild. Like when you really think about like what you can achieve and what other people have achieved, not that you don't necessarily need to look at other people, but you can do so much and with, with such small resources, small amounts of resources and Small amounts of time.

So Judy Cherry, I love how this is set up and love how you teach. I'd love some more stuff on how to process stuff as it comes up on the docket for sure.

I'm thinking in 2 weeks we do the, cause I think that would be about a month. Yeah.

I'm not, I'm thinking not next week, but the week after.

So in 2 weeks, we're going to do a processing bootcamp on one tool. So we're going to spend the entire week just going really deep into one tool and that tool is Protectors. So we already talked about one tool, which was introspective healing, which is great. And that's a great kind of introductory tool and it gets you really thinking about different things. But so not next week, but the week after we're going to do a processing bootcamp, deep dive, deep dive into one tool, the process or the protectors tool. And I can tell you that that single tool has helped me more than any other tool like that. That has helped me process so many different things, uncover so many unconscious things. And help me work through those in remarkable, remarkable ways. So by the end of that week, you're going to have, if you, if you show up each day, you're going to have an extremely thorough and deep understanding on how to apply that. And the best part about it is once you know it, you know it, and you can apply it for the rest of your life. And, but the biggest thing will be showing up, actually learning it, and then learning it. And we'll press on it throughout the week, but you have to learn it and then you actually have to do it. We're going to talk more about that.

But powerful. What I love about that tool is it's a non-invasive way to heal. It's great to heal. I mean, there's a lot of different things. Some people love it and it's their go-to tool, like Brad said. And then for some people, other tools are their go-to tool. But it's a non-invasive way to heal. It's a great place to start. It's a process of love and acceptance, which is really, really cool. And it is something that you can basically use on a dime and Yeah. The more comfortable you get at it, the, the, the bigger you build the skill, or the greater you build the skill. And it's a really, really amazing process. It's good for a lot of different things where, as you build the skill, it will get stronger of a tool for you, if it's a tool that you really like, is more complexities. So for those of you with CPTSD or trauma that was prolonged, multiple traumas and singular traumas, but CPTSD is where it's going to shine a little bit harder.

It's a cohesive, it's a cohesive tool. It deals with all, all the emotions, all the different problems that you're feeling. So you can feel that inner kind of connection and peace. Bonnie, I saw that you wrote, you know, the thing that I need to work on, or the thing that's kind of distressing me right now is that kind of what we were talking about today, that lost time, those lost dreams or whatever that was, lost opportunities with a family. And that's just the next level of healing for you. You know, that's the next kind of wall that's come up that you're going to have to break through very lovingly. Like some of my analogies are not the best.

Breakthrough. You're going to have to fight this. No, you're going to delicately heal this. So you're asking, what did you say the bootcamp tool will be? So the bootcamp tool will be a tool we call protectors. And it's a healing process, again, based on a foundation of love and acceptance. It can be a little bit strange to kind of wrap your head around at First, so we'll kind of leave that for the week. And what I would just say, and because it again it can be a little bit weird to kind of understand at first, and it's it's more of a process of leaning in a little bit at first and trusting the process, trying it, and then is where kind of the click happens. So go into that week with an open mind. It's a non-invasive tool, which means it requires some us to. have some concepts for complex things that are going on in our mind and in our subconscious. So keep that in mind going forward. But that's what we're— that's what the tool is called. But I'm excited for that one. So I have a couple of topics that we'll cover in— we have a docket plan for next week that will cover some of the things. And we'll cover sobriety, which we didn't get the chance to talk about this week. Like I said, tomorrow we're talking about depression. There's one thing specifically in depression that Is unbelievably life-changing because it's much bigger than just the topic, or it applies to much more than just the topic of depression. So definitely stick around for that tomorrow. Amazing, amazing job this week with everything. Y'all are rocking and rolling. You're showing up. Keep showing up. Keep putting the time in. Keep taking action. Keep chipping away at this journey. Everything that we talk about, it all comes together. So amazing job, everyone.

And you guys are being consistent. Which is the most important thing, being consistent over the long term. Because as soon as you start, you know, going lax or you start like being, oh, I'm, I'm good. I don't have to do this. You slowly start to decline, right? You're either growing or you're decaying, right? In life. And we always have to be constantly sharpening our minds basically forever. So you're always constantly growing. And that's something I always say after these sessions, like, man, I get just as much out of this as I'm sure you guys do, if not more. So it's great.

You're— so you think about, you go to the gym, you lift weights, you know, we're just lifting heavier weights. You know, we've, we've done enough weightlifting, so to speak, to be healthy and healed, and, and you just kind of up the ante, right? And so you continue to lift weights, you continue to work out, we continue to grow stronger. And that's the reason this content is so amazing. No matter where you are on the journey, whether you're just beginning or, you know, you're, you're way past healed, right, and you're where we are, And you're just out there living your life, just looking for the next level of life, even though the healing is done, you still get a lot out of it. And that's kind of the reason that we built it this way. So we're super excited. Just love each and every one of you. Appreciate you being here. Thank yourself for putting the time in for you. You deserve that thanks. You deserve that acknowledgement, not just from us, but from yourself as well. So that's what I have for final words.

And with that, we will see you guys tomorrow.

Bye, Ryan.

Hey everybody, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about how you can coach with me directly, there's a link in the description you can check out. There's absolutely no pressure. The main thing is I wanted you to get value from this episode here, but I hope you have a fantastic day and I'll see you in the next one.