#47 How Emotional Honesty Helps You Release Trauma And Stop Flashbacks | 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 everyone to our Recovery Secrets daily coaching session. It is so good to be here with each and every one of you on this morning. We have an awesome topic for today. We talked about motivation, you know, getting yourself to do the things that you need to do. One of the analogies that we use from that session that is going to kind of continue to come up throughout the week is Putting blinders on, right? And just taking kind of one step at a time. Yesterday we talked about building affirmations and goals into a routine. We also talked about the formula for affirmations, which I know a lot of people said they found really, really helpful, which is an awesome thing. And so today we're talking about honesty. So I'll let Brad do a little intro here while we make sure everything's rocking and rolling.

So welcome, welcome everybody. Great to be here this morning. Great to see all you guys this morning. Like Kayleen said, we're talking about honesty and Why it's so important in just life and recovery. If you've been with us for a while, you know that in order to solve a problem, you need to be able to be aware of the problem. And if we are either in denial or we're lying to ourselves or we're not being honest to ourselves or, or other people or anything, like we won't be able to be aware of the problem. So learning how to be honest with yourself is such an important skill, but it can also be a challenging thing because when you're honest with yourself, sometimes it can be painful. You know, because we have to be honest about everything in order to truly solve the problem. And sometimes you're like, you know what, like, you have to admit things that can be painful. So we're going to be talking about all of that today. And by the end of this, honesty, like, it's more than just like a, like a nice thing to do. When your parents say, oh, like, be honest, or, you know, like, be honest all the time. It's like, it goes much, much deeper than that. And it's truly a foundational principle to healing. And if you're hitting a— like, I know in my recovery, my healing, I hit many roadblocks. And the thing that was preventing me was me being honest, me just being truthful with myself to admit that I actually was hurt, or to admit that this thing is actually not what I want. I actually want this, if I'm being truly honest. So this is going to be a really cool topic. I think it's going to open your eyes to this topic of honesty because it is so important. It goes so much deeper than just telling the truth to other people. And that's really not at all what we're gonna be talking about today.

So, yeah, and I think it's a great topic for that reason. I think a lot of us, at least in my experience coaching and personally, can get a little misguided as to, you know, what honesty is. And one of the things we're actually gonna talk about today is what honesty isn't. And it, it's a really interesting thing to talk about because a lot of times you think, tell the truth. And like, when I was growing up, it was like, you know, just the truth is easier to remember, or, You know, fess up to the things that you've done wrong and all sorts of stuff like that.

And usually so you can get punished, you get honest and you get punished. Right, right.

And so we're really going to be taking the focus of honesty and putting it on really being honest with yourself. And this is really, really important in processing. And for those of you who are with us for our processing boot camp, we— you'll know that this is one of the foundational things that we talked about where we set you up for success that week. It was, it was honesty, it was patience, it was self-love.

Mm-hmm.

And so we wanted to do a little bit of a deeper dive on honesty because it is so essential. I mean, with the healing journey in general, it's going to change your life when you start to kind of implement this. And when you start to really get honest with yourself, you're going to see things differently. And it can take people a long time to kind of figure this out for themselves. I know it took me quite a while to figure this out for myself. And having this conversation can really kind of accelerate a lot in your healing and a lot in your life. We are so excited to talk about this topic. Do you want to dive in?

Yeah, absolutely. I think kind of like what I was hinting at before. A lot of the biggest reason why we're not honest with ourselves is because we were either honest in the past and we've been hurt. So we've learned to put up these walls and not be honest, not be truthful, to push away what we truly want, to push away what we truly feel, and basically pretend to feel something else or be something else or do something else because other people want us to. Or we've even learned that, hey, if I don't express what I truly I'm feeling or what I truly want, I don't get hurt, right? So it can be a protection mechanism to not face that honestly. Secondly, when you're honest with yourself, some people, a lot of people, when you're honest, a lot of times you're facing really deep, dark, painful things inside of you. And a lot of times you're going to be facing things that you may be ashamed of or may bring up guilt or may be whatever it is. And when you're honest in the past, sometimes you beat yourself up. So I find that those are kind of the 2 biggest roadblocks to being honest is like, You are basically trained that honesty is bad and being your true honest self and expressing your true honest self and expressing your true honest feelings is bad. And you're punished for that in one way or another, maybe not directly punished, but you're taught that it's not good to feel how you feel. It's not good to want what you want. It's not good to whatever, input anything there of what you truly honestly want or believe. So you're taught that it's bad. And a lot of times Because of that, we beat ourselves up for the things that we're honest about. So it's like this kind of— can be like this circular kind of thing that reinforces, I'm just going to avoid this pain. Also, it's just painful. Like, you want to avoid it.

And there's a reason that we lie. Typically, there's a reason that we do that. And it could be because we're afraid of getting punished. It could be because we don't want to face this thing. We don't want to admit this thing. There's a reason that we lie. It could be shame. It could be embarrassment. There's all sorts of reasons that we do that. The most dangerous thing though is when we lie to ourselves. And you know, today when we're talking about honesty, like a key element to honesty is bringing honesty to your entire life. Most importantly and most foundationally though is to bring it to yourself. I don't really care, to be honest with you, if you lie to the people in your life. That's a later problem. That's a not right now problem. The first thing you need to get good at is being honest with yourself. Because once you're honest with yourself, and only once you're honest with yourself, can you then start to radiate that outwards. Because if you're honest to others, or it's going to be harder to be honest to others if you're not even being honest with yourself, right? Because there's just going to be a disconnect there because you might think that you're being honest to others, but you're lying to yourself. You're lying to the foundation, the core piece of what's going on here. So that's really where this is going to be focused. And again, it's really important on the recovery journey. So I want each and every one of you to think about maybe a time in your life. Now, it could be being honest with another person, but it could be being honest with yourself. Where honesty has lifted a weight. And that's typically how I feel honesty— like, honesty feels overall is like you have this big heavy weight on you, and then you get honest and that weight lifts.

Mm-hmm.

And now sometimes when we get honest, we're gonna have to deal with some repercussions. If we're honest with others, it might be repercussions from them. If we're honest with ourselves, it might be repercussions. And that doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. But things that we need to do to fix what went wrong or what's going wrong in our life, or fix the way that we feel or processing that we need to do. And that's a really, really powerful thing to have. But that's how I would most often describe it, as once you go through this process of being honest, a weight gets lifted. Do you have any experiences in your life?

100%.

Where you feel like that has just— like, for me, sometimes I felt like the weight of the world is now off my shoulders.

Yeah. And it's something that I always have to kind of be aware of and be conscious of, like Am I being honest with myself? Am I pursuing things that I want to pursue in my life? So for me, being honest, I mean, it transformed my life in so many different ways. You know, it helped me set boundaries for myself because I realized that I didn't want to be treated certain ways in my life. It helped me in my processing, specifically with protectors. For the longest time, I did not let parts of myself or emotions, certain emotions up to be expressed because I thought they were bad. You know, like I thought it was bad for me to be angry at somebody. Or thought it was bad to cry about a certain thing or be sad about, you know, a certain event or whatever it was. So I had all these walls up and that prevented me from healing. And once I was able to allow those parts of me and those emotions to come out honestly, I was able to address them and heal them because I was no longer repressing them, holding them back and putting up these walls. I let everything down. I was honest with myself and I loved myself through the process. And that's huge too, is like back before, you don't beat yourself up. you come at this from a place of just pure unconditional love, and you're able to accept how you truly feel, what you truly want, with open arms. And that really changes everything. And that changed everything for me.

Okay, so, so what we really want to talk about is honesty when it comes to processing, right? Honesty when it comes to dealing with your emotions, honesty with yourself. And what I really wanted to touch on today was what honesty isn't, because I think it's It's just as important to define some sometimes, very often, what something isn't as it is to define what something is, right? And so what I want to touch on really quick because when I was kind of learning about honesty, when I was starting to first be honest with myself, I would just swore a lot. I would just beat myself up, right? And that's what I thought honesty was was just saying, okay, okay, you're like a piece of crap and here are all the things that you've done wrong and blah blah blah blah blah. And that's not honest. Being honest is looking at reality basically for what it is, literally what's there in front of you. You're searching for the truth. And so honesty looks like, hey, I really messed up in this situation. And I see why I messed up in this situation. And from there, once you know why, you know, you did something wrong, once you know what it is you did wrong, this is how it affected me. This is how it affected other people. It's basically this process of kind of gathering data.

Yeah.

And then with that true, honest data, when we think about data, typically it's factual, right? We're just gathering quite literally data. We're gathering facts. Once we have that, then we can do something with it. If that data is skewed one way or another, right? When you learn about research, when you learn about doing experiments and gathering data, that's one of the things you learn about. You know, if you have someone who's extremely biased gathering the data, they're going to omit stuff. And if they leave stuff out, you don't have a full picture. And so being honest with yourself is not beating yourself up. Being honest with yourself is seeing things for how they really are. And it's seeing the hurt and it's seeing the pain and it's acknowledging a lot of different things. It's acknowledging your flaws. It's acknowledging your weaknesses. It's acknowledging your strengths. It's acknowledging what you deserve. Okay? So there's really, and I hate to paint it like this, but there's really like 2 sides of this.

Yeah.

It's acknowledging what's wrong and it's acknowledging what's right. And so I remember a handful of times in our relationship when we were able to get honest with each other. And when I really, when I was able to get honest, I would just own up to my flaws. I'd say, hey, that's a me thing. And this is something that I'm working on and own up to those flaws. Right. And then I also remember times having a conversation where, again, to kind of put the spotlight on me, it was like, hey, listen, this isn't going to work for me. Like I'm setting a boundary here. I don't appreciate what's been going on, and I don't deserve to be treated in this certain way, right? And so both of those things are an expression of honesty, and they start with self. What matters is that I first had that conversation with me. You know, someone's treating me a certain way, I can honestly look and say, hey, that's not right, I deserve better. And then from there, honesty is going to bring a feeling of calm, a feeling of peace. You can Set boundaries, right? If it's an external thing also, right, you can acknowledge, hey, what keeps going wrong in my life? I keep maybe having issues with my partner, issues with my spouse, reflecting on those things and saying, you know what, I keep bringing destruction to the table. That's me. Okay, now that's not beating yourself up. That's being honest with yourself. I have some serious things that I need to work on. Okay, then you can start to work on those things. That's what honesty is, right? So again, it's not beating yourself up. It's not being mean to yourself. It's literally just gathering data so that you can move forward. And when we talked about protectors in our processing boot camp week, it's one of the things we talked about. You want to be honest with your protectors. You want so that they can reciprocate that, but so that you can truly understand what's going on.

Mm-hmm.

One of the things I found most frustrating about just growing up, and I still find most frustrating about the world, Is a lack of honesty because there's no real conversation if no one's being honest. And I remember sitting at maybe someone's dinner table or whatever it was, and like you know what's going on maybe with each individual. And then at the dinner table, or you know when you go out to an event with friends or whatever it is, everyone's lying. Everyone's like having this surface level conversation of like, oh, things are going great when you know that person just lost their job, right? Because you have a different relationship with them, and you know this person is struggling in this way, and you know this person is struggling in this way, and everyone's having this. Great, like everything's going super well and we're all super happy, and it's not an honest conversation. But again, that starts with you, because a lack of honesty— I mean, it can mean a lot of different things, but if you find yourself being dishonest very often, I want you to understand that there's a reason for that. And it's because typically we're trying to avoid pain, we're trying to avoid shame, we're trying to avoid embarrassment. And the reality is, to just being human beings, is Part of life is things going right. It's things going wrong. You know, you can be honest and be proud of an accomplishment that you've had. I've had moments in my life where I'm super proud of an accomplishment, and I don't tell anyone because I don't want anyone to think like I'm bragging or whatever it is. And that's my insecurity of whatever it was. And so it's all about starting with you, starting with the foundation. So that's what I want you all to think about is how can I be more honest with myself, understanding. And if you've done our Processing Bootcamp week, you can work with protectors on this. You can maybe even specifically, and I've done this, work with an honesty protector. But understanding that there's a reason that you're being dishonest and unlocking that reason, that below-the-surface reason, is going to unlock that honesty that you can have with yourself.

Yeah, and that's how you access all those subconscious things that you're not even aware of. It's like true honesty and acceptance of whatever comes up when you're doing any type of processing or protectors in particular, because so much of what affects you is subconscious. And the only way to allow yourself to become conscious of what's subconscious is to get good at being honest and allowing when that comes up to acknowledge it, to accept it, and to not push it back down. So it's huge in processing. But you said like a lot of people are ashamed, you know, when you express things honestly, or that you've been hurt in a certain way or whatever it is. And I'm just gonna say straight up, that's something that like you're gonna have to get over. And one of the best things that just totally shifted my entire mindset on being honest and facing pain and just owning up to things is the thing that is going to make me better. And above anything else, I want to get better. I don't care what I have to do. I'll do it. If I have to own up to this, that's what a successful person in healing and just life does. You know, they look at the problems, they don't beat themselves up. They're not ashamed of it. They're proud of themselves because they're facing their mistakes. They're confident in themselves because they're facing their mistakes. They're accepting their mistakes and And that's the only way you can improve. You're never going to improve if you just keep pushing things away. If you keep pushing pain and problems away, you're never going to improve. You're never going to get better. The only way you're going to get better is to be honest and own up to it. So logically, and for me, it's like, that's something you can be proud of when you accept a flaw, when you own up to a flaw and you don't have to— I'm not saying own up to anybody else, but own up to yourself. Be like, yeah, this is me. And then you own it and then you take it and then you take charge of it and you can change it. And that's something you can be confident in. Yeah. And that was the mindset that I brought in. Like when we were first struggling and I first even became aware of what PTSD was, I had no idea what it was in the beginning. And I went to therapy. I'm like, I just kind of intuitively knew this. I know the one thing that I need to do when I'm in there to get the most out of this is I need to be perfectly honest. Because if I'm not honest and I'm not basically putting it all out on the table, there's no way we can fix it. Because then we're just going to be, you know, tiptoeing around what the real problem is. And we're going to spend all this time just chit-chatting, but we're not going to be addressing the real problem. So I knew that I had to be honest, right? And that was one thing that I needed to, or that I wanted to bring into that session. And it proved to be extremely true. And I was able to make a lot of progress, not only in like that therapy session, but then I took that into my own. When I started doing the tools on my own, I was able to take that principle of honesty and just own up to everything and not feel bad about any, anything. And I was able to go that much faster. So It is really a foundational principle to healing, to processing, and you don't have to admit anything to anyone. That is like a very important point. It's like, you don't have to tell anybody your true honest feelings. Like, I hardly tell anybody.

You just have to be honest with yourself.

That's the most important thing. I was like, you don't have to tell anybody. Like, it's not about the honesty that parents try to teach us. Be honest so I can punish you. It's like, you don't have to be honest to anybody if you don't want to. And that's something I had to be honest with myself and be like, honestly, I don't want to tell you these things. Like, you asked me a question about this. Honestly, I don't want to tell you. So I'm not going to tell you. I wouldn't say it in that way, but that was like my internal dialogue. So I didn't tell somebody what I was honestly feeling, cuz I was like, I don't wanna tell you. I was being honest to myself and I was being true to myself. I wanna tell a little story about a coaching client, a one-on-one coaching client I had. And it was very frustrating to work with this person cuz I worked with them for probably 8 weeks total. But the first 4 weeks was literally just digging at this problem. And I pre-framed it in the beginning of the one thing that I ask is that you be perfectly honest with me with everything that we do. Cuz if you're not honest and you don't tell me What's going on, everything that we do is gonna be pointless cuz we're not gonna be like facing the problem. And then session after session, they were having the same problem and like we tried to go at it at a different angle, different angle. And then by the 5th session they said, you know what? I haven't actually been truly honest with you. I've actually been dealing with this. And then that's when we actually were starting to make progress. And that's when we broke through and we actually solved the problem cuz we weren't working on the real problem cuz she wasn't honest with me. You know, we weren't able to solve it. Like, I didn't know what we were working with there. She said everything was okay and everything was going okay with this thing, but it really wasn't because she wasn't like— she was actually feeling a ton of pain, but I didn't know that. And then I couldn't help her. But the biggest thing is like, she wasn't honest with herself because it's not like I was doing the work. Like, the coaching is very similar to what we do here. You know, like, I help her through the tools. I teach her the tools. So once she was able to be honest, it wasn't even being honest with me, but it was honest with herself. She was able to then go in and process what she needed to process. So honesty is foundational. And for many people, it's the thing that is preventing them from further and deeper healing.

And from a lot of other different things. You know, like Brad had mentioned, at the kind of dawn of journey, not even really knowing what we were dealing with, right? Not even really knowing that PTSD was what we were trying to solve. You know, we were trying to solve all these problems and not understanding kind of where it came from. And I remember when we kind of first had that conversation, and You know, we were kind of exploring it, and I was like, "No, I don't think so," because that wasn't a label that I wanted. In some sense, it wasn't a label that I felt like I deserved, right? Just by definition or by what we had kind of thought about PTSD and all sorts of different things. And you know, we had to get honest and obviously learn a lot more to understand really what was going on. But honesty was part of that journey as well, and I would say. For me, one of the biggest moments of honesty that changed my life was being honest about addictions, being honest about the things I was addicted to and owning up to them.

Like, this is a real problem.

And owning up to them personally. And I have described this so many different times. And I sometimes describe it when I do addiction coaching. But when I was honest with myself and said, hey, I'm addicted to this thing. Now, it was quite literally years of wondering, like, am I addicted? Could this be— I had multiple addictions. Could this be something that I could be addicted to? Like, are other people addicted to this? You know, Especially if it's something like, like television or video games where like the world accepts those things and they're not in the DSM as addictions, right? It's not alcohol or drugs, so it's not an addiction. And when I got honest and when I like just put on blinders, blocked out the world and was like, what's true to me? I was like, I'm addicted to this thing. And when I said that, and when I truly acknowledged that, it was like a switch. flipped in my life. And I went from being like ashamed, embarrassed, not like, oh, hating myself because of it, not liking the way my life was going, anxious, depressed, all sorts of stuff like that, you know, around this, these activities, to like confident beating on my chest and just saying, hey, like, and which is a weird feeling to have, like, I'm addicted to this thing. And I just owned it. And most importantly, I owned it to myself. I didn't have to tell anyone else in my life about that. But you know, since I haven't, like, nope, I can't do that. I'm addicted to that thing. That's a problem for me. And eventually it was like, you know, people were like, really? Like that? You know, or whatever it was. And I was like, yep, that's a problem for me. And I was honest with myself, which allowed me to go into these situations confidently. That's one of the things that allowed me to start my sobriety journey for a handful of different issues, but it allowed me to take that step into true sobriety is owning it. I'm addicted to this thing. There's nothing wrong with that. And to me, that honesty allowed me the freedom to get sober, and it gave me this confidence to truly beat on my chest and say, this is an issue that I have. This is a weakness. This is a flaw, whatever you want to call it. And I'm freaking working on it. Okay? And that makes me more confident, more proud of myself than what anyone else could say about anything in my life because I know the people in my life are addicted to things and they will not get honest with themselves enough to say, you know what, this is an issue I have. To me, the strongest person, the person I admire most, is the person that says, you know what, I'm weak in that area. You know what, I'm an addict, and that's the way it is. So I can't engage in this behavior, or I can't be around these people, or I can't go do this thing, at least for right now. Because that's a problem for me. That to me is the strongest thing that a person can do. And I think a lot of times, and probably less and less in society, we often see that as a weakness. I remember one of our good friends is an addict. I remember talking to him, you know, when he was still addicted and then when he was sober, you know, years later, and seeing a change in him and really seeing how different he was and how confident he was and how okay he was with being an addict or an addict in recovery. We all have different words for how we like to kind of say that, but how confident he was about being an addict and being on this journey. And I was like, wow, that's inspiring. This guy was addicted to whatever he was addicted to for his entire life. And then at some point, his life started to be in jeopardy. His relationship started to be in jeopardy. At some point, he got honest with himself. He said, I'm an addict. And he has been doing his thing ever since to stay sober and to rebuild his life and build a fantastic future. And he's done it and he's done a great job. And he has no shame in that because he's honest with himself. It doesn't matter what I think of him. Although I think quite literally, I think the world of him because he's able to do that. And he was one of my first references of like, this doesn't have to be some cold, dark, in your closet alone thing. Be honest, be open with yourself. And beat on your chest about it. Be confident about it. It's good to acknowledge your flaws. It's good to acknowledge your weaknesses. I'm addicted to this thing. Great. Now we can solve the problem. We don't have to hide from that. We don't have to be, you know, be afraid of that. We— and more than anything, I think I want you to get out today is I want you to live your life for you, not for anyone else. And a lot of times we're not honest because we're afraid of what other people will think. You know, a lot of times it's about ourselves. But it's about us being afraid of what someone else would think. You know, when we feel shame, when we feel embarrassment, you know, you've already done the thing. We all are in our houses. I mean, at some point, like running around in our underwear and that's fine. But you know, once you open the blinds, you don't run around in your house in your underwear because you're afraid of what other people will think. Okay. So I want you to live your life for you and understand that that's the most important thing to bring that honesty forward for you. To be honest about everything. Hey, I have issues. We all have issues. You are just being honest about them. That's it. And because you're being honest about them, you can then solve them. If you're not being honest, if other people in your life aren't being honest, they're only doing a disservice to themselves because they can't solve the issue. You know, I know some people in my life who struggle with their weight a lot and, you know, won't get on a scale because the scale doesn't lie, right? And the scale is going to be honest with them.

And, or go to the doctor, or go to the doctor, right?

Because the doctor's going to be honest with them. They're going to tell them the truth, hopefully, right? And that honesty is really important. You know, a doctor, hopefully for the most part, is not going to fib to you. They're not going to lie to you because honesty is what's going to set you free. Honesty is what's going to get you to say, hey, something needs to change. This is just the way that it is. You don't have to beat yourself up. You don't have to feel ashamed. You don't have to feel embarrassed. You're a human being. That's a part of being a human being is being deeply flawed and then figuring it out and fixing it all and working to strengthen yourself. So anyway, I digress.

So how do we take this seemingly big concept that can be used in all these different ways, right, into practice? So I'm just going to talk about one way in regards to processing specifically, because you got so many great examples, right? And so many different references and areas where you can use Or where you, where honesty will help. But in processing in particular, you want to allow yourself to be able to express those emotions, right? So all this, everything that we're teaching you, like we did our processing bootcamp on protectors. And if you're just joining us, if you're new, definitely go check that out because we spent 5 or 6 days going really in depth on this one tool, protectors. And that one tool has helped me heal so many things I was conscious of and unconscious of. Not conscious of. But with that tool specifically, when you're talking to a protector, when you're talking to a part of yourself, you need to bring that honesty. You need to allow it to say how it truly feels without being like, nope, that's wrong, or no, that doesn't make sense, or you know that's not true, right? Because a part of you might feel something that isn't logically true, right? Example, in my own life, when I was younger, I had an experience where someone was yelling at me. Right? So I was doing something, I was like messing around, I annoyed them, and they ended up yelling at me. And I never thought anything of it. But what you'll find too is as you start doing some of this processing, more memories will kind of like pop up or come out of the blue that you didn't really think were a problem. And this was one of them for me. Like this just kind of popped out of the blue and I was like, oh, that's weird. So then I went into it a little bit more and I ended up talking to a part of myself and I had to— it started saying things that like didn't make sense. Right? So it said, you know, I was terrified. I thought they were going to kill me. And I knew logically, like in my— well, it was all in my brain, but like the logical part of me was like, no, there's no way that person would've ever even laid a finger on you. Like they wouldn't have even come close to you to hurt you. But I had to allow that part of me to express how it felt, right? Because that was the truth. That part felt As though this person was going to kill me. And it felt all the emotions associated with that. Now, had I denied that, I wouldn't have been able to process those emotions, I wouldn't have been able to release those emotions. But at that point, since I was so deep in my processing, I knew I had to be honest, I knew I had to let that part of me express how it felt. I let it say its piece. And I went through the whole protector process. Again, if you're new, if you haven't seen the processing boot camp, will change your life. So if this doesn't make sense, that's okay. It'll all make sense when you go through that. But, um, yeah, it started saying things that were absolutely crazy, like logically crazy, like that none of that makes any sense, right? But it doesn't matter because that is what that part of me honestly felt, and I had to allow that part to express it honestly. And then once it expressed it honestly, once it processed those painful emotions, I was able to come in with the logic and show it, hey, that's not actually the case. So I went in and I allowed it to express it honestly, and then I was able to shift that belief at an emotional level. So that's kind of how you can bring this concept into practice, into processing, and that's where you'll kind of get like the biggest leverage. But it's an overall principle that will help you in so many different areas of, of your life, down to set, like setting goals like we talked about yesterday and affirmations, just being truly honest about what you want and removing everybody else's opinion. It helps in so many different ways.

And so what I want to point out about that, there's 2 things I want to point out. We talked about, and we use this word disconnect, right? There being an emotional and a logical disconnect. And so as you do your processing, but we had used the word disconnect. So there's a logical often and an emotional disconnect. And typically, especially when things happen when we're quite a bit younger, as we grow older, we'll understand like, oh, well, that was just like, that person just, just yelled at me like that. I mean, yeah. I was being annoying. I was annoying a little kid.

They were going through a hard time at the time.

They were stressed and they just, you know, raised their voice.

They didn't mean it.

Yeah. And they didn't mean it. Right. And we've all been in that position. You know, as we get older, we've been in that position where we get a little hotheaded for a second and it's really nothing.

Some of us more than others.

Some of us more than others. So there's this disconnect between logical and emotional. And the honesty is the thing that's going to align those things. So typically those things are out of alignment before we do processing. Logically, we know we shouldn't feel these feelings anymore. Logically, maybe we know we're safe, but we don't feel emotionally safe, or we don't feel like we should have felt that was as big of a deal. There's all sorts of things that come into play. And so honesty, it's what's going to get that logical and emotional into alignment. So I wanted to point that out because you might do some processing and be like, well, come on, stop. That's ridiculous. Like, that's not true. Right.

You have to make sure you deny it. You push it away.

Right. And that's being dishonest. So the honesty's gonna be the bridge there. And then another thing I wanted to point out, because I think it's important to point out, you know, sometimes we can take this and we can take this further than it needs to go, meaning we can try to involve other people in this honesty. Okay? So Brad just shared a story that involved somebody else. What's really important is that his processing did not need to involve that other person at all whatsoever. So he's able to heal solo on his own. He didn't need that person to apologize. He didn't need to express that to that person. He was able to heal on his own. And that's an important thing because sometimes it can get a little tricky, especially in your partner relationships, where you can try to bring this into conversation where it doesn't always need to be done. Now, in partner relationships, there's a time and a place for honesty, for conversation, for expression, for sharing.

And there's a healthy way to do it.

And there's a healthy way to do it. But you really want to make sure that you keep the focus on you first and foremost, because what you'll be able to do is once you keep the focus on you and do that processing, you'll learn during that processing if it's something that you feel like needs to be shared within your relationship or you'd like to have a conversation about, and you're going to be able to bring it forward in a much different way. So just wanted to kind of put that 2 cents in there that even if it involves another person You don't have to wait for an apology. You don't have to involve them necessarily in it. You want to keep the focus on you as much as possible and be honest. I want to share one more quick story about this. This was a number of years ago now, but I was working with someone one-on-one and we were doing coaching and it was an honesty issue. And, and she had kind of said to me, like, you know, I feel really awful and bad for saying this, but like, sometimes I just feel like my kids are a burden and I like hate myself for saying that. But, you know, that's like sometimes how I feel. And I know, like, that's not true. I love them more than life itself. And, and so we had kind of paused the conversation and, and had to kind of stop and say, okay, it's okay to be honest when processing these feelings. And whatever it is that you feel about that situation, about that, those relationships, allow that to come out, allow that to be processed. Just allow yourself, as wild, as wacky as it may seem, to feel those things, even if they're so far left that you're like, there's no way I feel those things. Allow yourself to be honest in that expression of emotion, in that processing. Once you finish that, you're going to be whole. You're going to be able to align with how you truly do feel, which is that you love these little kids or whatever it is more than life itself.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and so being honest Sometimes it's gonna feel uncomfortable because sometimes we know maybe we shouldn't feel that way. We shouldn't feel like our kids are a burden or our partner is annoying or whatever it is, right? But we do. There's some part of us that does, and that's okay.

Yeah.

And it's important to acknowledge that, get those things in alignment, and then you're able to move forward in a really wholesome way. And you don't have to feel those things anymore because those, they're going to seep in. They're going to infect the relationship, whether you realize it or not. So when you take the time to acknowledge them, be honest about them, feel them, process them, whatever needs to happen. Then you allow yourself to move forward in the relationship without it, which is really amazing.

Yeah. And it might be true that you feel like your kids— in this example, she might have felt that it was true, or it might, it might be true that she felt that her kids were a burden, but it wasn't objectively true to her. And once she was able to be honest about how she truly felt, she could again change that belief to what it really was. Once you're able to address that, you're able to kind of make that transition. to that rational, logical point of view, right?

And so one of the things she was working on was her relationship with her kids and, you know, having these moments where there were some lashouts or just she wasn't acting in the way that she wanted to act as a parent, or would get a little short, would get a little irritated. And, you know, we're all human beings at the end of the day, but wanted to be better in that relationship, in those relationships, and was able to do that once acknowledging that hard thing and once kind of going into that and being honest about it.

Mm-hmm.

And so my challenge for you today is to be radically honest with yourself. Understanding that radical honesty does not mean beating yourself up. It does not mean beating yourself up. I like the term Goldilocks. It's Goldilocks honesty. It's just right. Okay. So right down the middle. So you're not being overly critical of yourself. You're not being so kind to yourself that you're blind to the things that are flaws, the things that are going wrong. You're going right down the middle, just right. You're being exactly honest with yourself. I have this flaw. I am addicted to this thing. And I'm still a great person. I still have a lot of strengths. It's not all bad or all good. It's not black or white thinking. It's black and it's white. There's a ton of gray in between there. A lot of different shades going on. All right.

Yeah.

So it's somewhere in the middle. And that's really important with this honesty is you're not being so honest. You're way, way too soft and way, way too kind to the point where you can't even acknowledge things that are going wrong. Which means you can't fix them, and you're not being so hard that you're beating yourself up. Same thing, if you beat yourself up, if you go too far to either side, you're not going to be able to fix things if you're just sitting there beating yourself up. All right, so you want to find that nice middle ground, and when you find that middle ground, although it can be hard, although it can be challenging, painful at times, you're going to have this confidence with yourself, and you don't have to tell anybody else any of these things, but you're going to have this confidence with yourself. You're going to be able to hold yourself up, up straighter. And that's the kind of person that, that you want to be, is someone that's honest with themselves, is someone that is working on the things that are weak. You know, we all have weak areas, we all have strong areas, and working on being a better person. And there's nothing, there's nothing I like to see more than someone who's like, yep, there's an issue for me and I'm working on it. Like, that makes me excited for them. That makes me so proud of them. That makes me want to better myself. Yeah. So doing this is going to bring you as well as everyone in your life up as well. Yeah. Do you have any final words?

Just in regards to the Goldilocks thing, I'm saying it's like, it's about like accepting. It's just accepting reality. It's like you're not adding any judgment towards it. You're just like, it is what it is. It's like that kind of mindset. So I was going to say in regards, if it's a German tale, there's a lot of dark German tales. Like you remember with my friend Christian?

Yeah. Don't tell any of them.

I'm not going to tell them. They're freaking dark though.

They're scary.

Yeah, these ones were different. These were dark. Well, no, those were like the Grimm fairy tales, right?

Are those German fairy tales?

Those might also be German.

I think they are German fairy tales.

But I don't think these were the Grimms. These are too dark.

Like, they'd have to change everything about it in order to make it something you could put on TV.

They're like a horror, like honestly horror stories.

So tomorrow we're talking about addictions, compulsions, validation, and acknowledgement. So this topic, it's going to come into the conversation that we talk about tomorrow. So it's a really great foundation. to a lot of different things in your life, but specifically what we're going to talk about tomorrow, which if you struggle with addictions, if you struggle with compulsions that maybe you're not labeling as addictions, but you're kind of feeling like I want to stop this thing, but I can't quite get myself to stop, or this thing is wreaking more havoc on my life than I'd like it to in any way, shape, or form. It doesn't have to be this big giant rock bottom story, whether it's drinking or pornography or video games, or it's eating, or it's hard drugs, or it's television, or it's spending. All sorts of things can be addictions and compulsions, and we want to make sure that we address those things. So Carrie sharing, I couldn't be honest or own my authentic thoughts or feelings until I took some time to educate myself about emotional intelligence. I couldn't identify what I felt except fear and anger, which both showed up as aggression.

So that—

this is a really interesting thing that you did, Carrie, and I'm really proud of you for doing this, right?

You—

because you educate yourself, you learn more, you gather more information, and then you're able to make a change, which is basically all that we're doing here— gathering more information so that we can make changes in our life. And I think that's a really awesome thing and an important thing to bring up. You know, a lot of times, for some people more than others, emotions are gonna get basically bigger and bigger until they show up as fear or as aggression, as anger, as aggression. That is typically like what we'll call the top-level emotion. And sometimes we'll use the visual of like an iceberg. So an iceberg is pretty small on top, but underneath the water has a lot going on that you can't see. And so typically anger, aggression is the tip of the iceberg, quite literally. And underneath is typically fear, sadness, hurt, shame. There's all sorts of things that could kind of be underneath that. And that can be quite challenging for a lot of different people. So if you're feeling that, that anger, that aggression, typically there's almost always, there's stuff under the surface there. And honesty is going to be a great way to start to uncover what's going on beyond that anger. So when we can start to kind of dig a little bit deeper, where is this anger coming from? A lot of times anger comes from hurt and it comes from sadness. It comes from pain. And so those are the kind of sentiments that go deeper and deeper. And so that's awesome that you're able to, and you were able to educate yourself, learn a little bit more and see, you know, that things are showing up as that, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are that. And that's a really important distinction to make. They're showing up as a certain thing, but they are not necessarily as they appear to be.

Yeah. Humans are like onions. But yes, that's an amazing thing, that realization of like fear and aggression and— or anger and aggression, and underneath that it's generally pain and fear. It's awesome. And that's when you really get to start to get to the root of it. So that's, that's an awesome, awesome step.

Really powerful, Jen, sharing such a great conversation. Live for yourself. The most important relationship is with yourself. Absolutely, hands down. If you don't get that right, it's going to be hard to get the others right. I'm super honest with myself and others, which is awesome, Jen. I love that. My partner and I have also been talking much more deeply and truthfully about things, our relationship and my healing. That's an amazing thing, Jen.

That's awesome.

And I love that you're, you're bringing it to yourself first, right? Once you bring it to yourself, it gets a lot easier to bring it to your life, to the people in your life. Like, once we're honest with ourselves, it's easier to open up. And because you've let those walls down within you, right? And for the relationships where you choose to do that, you're then able to go And oftentimes very calmly, very peacefully, just be honest within that relationship. That doesn't mean a lack of emotion, you know, but it's the really powerful thing, and that's going to transform everything. I mean everything. But it starts with you.

And honesty is so important in a relationship. Constructive honesty, so important. Delaine says, this is hitting me hard today. I feel like I need to cry, but I can't. And what you're going to need to do is you're going to have to start really spending some time getting in touch with those emotions. Finding a safe spot where you feel like you're completely safe. There's no one around you. You won't get interrupted. No one will hear you. And then start trying to relax your body and allowing yourself to feel those emotions. We did do a, a full coaching session on releasing emotions, and maybe you'll want to review that. But what you want to do, Delaine, is finding a comfortable secluded spot where no one could hear me or see me. So I felt completely comfortable releasing my emotions because when I was around other people, I just couldn't, I couldn't feel like I just had this huge wall where if somebody was seeing me, I just like, boom, like no emotions, right? Whether it was like dissociating or just pushing them down. So I had to learn how to feel my emotions. I had to learn the skill of letting my emotions out. So what you're gonna wanna do is find that safe spot, relax as much as you can. So do some deep breathing to calm yourself down, to relax your body. And then you just wanna like scan your body and relax all your muscles. Right. And then you'll find where the, the emotion is being held in your body. For me, it was like in my chest and you'll want to try to relax that and release that and then just relax your entire body. And you'll start to feel the emotion actually moving in your body. And I remember when you first realized that as well, it's incredible when you start to actually learn the skill of releasing emotion and letting go of emotion, which is an essential— no, which is a required thing for healing. If you can't release the emotion, you will not. heal. So this is a skill you will need to develop in order to heal, like feeling these emotions, letting go of these emotions. So just to let you know how important this is, like this skill is, but you'll just need to spend time doing it because it is a skill that you build and you've likely spent your entire life building the skill of not feeling it. So it's going to take some time to build the skill of letting the emotions out. So be patient with yourself. I know like the natural trajectory of skill development is You know, pretty much the same. It's challenging in the beginning, then it gets easier and easier and easier, and then you get really good. So don't expect yourself to be perfect at this overnight. Um, so it really just comes down to spending the time relaxing and, you know, releasing the emotion and just slowly, like, and even talking to yourself saying it's okay to feel, it's okay to cry, it's okay to let all this out, but really giving yourself the time and the space and finding a safe space. So for me, there were times where I could get some time alone in my house, which was a safe spot. Where I could cry to not be heard. Or sometimes in my car, I would drive to an empty parking lot in our town where I could just, again, feel completely safe because I knew nobody was around. I'd always go early in the morning too, when it was dark and I knew no one was there. That made me feel even safer. But those are just 2 examples. But like I said, that's an essential required piece for healing. If you don't have that skill, you won't heal. You'll make progress, but up until a certain point, you won't be able to fully heal until you learn that skill. Just like with a lot of different things, but that's a, that's an essential piece. Like I've coached a lot of people where, you know, they, they're making progress, they're making progress, they're making progress, but then they just hit this wall. And once they learn the skill of letting go of the emotions, just opens the door and they just launch ahead.

So. And it is a skill and it is learnable. Right. And so for some people, like Brad and I are very different emotionally. Like you're going to be able to express emotion, like no problem. Right. Like I could cry right now, happy cry, like thinking about a baby. Like I could just think about a baby, right? And then what I also want to point out for those of you who can feel emotions like that or are more on that in touch with emotion side, like I am, there might be certain things that you have pushed down for so long that you don't even realize. And so Brad was saying, like, you know, when I learned this skill, because there was really one thing in particular that I didn't even realize was an issue because the second The emotion started to come up. I pushed it down until actually Brad had pointed it out. He said, like, I forget what he said, but he was like, have you dealt with like this thing that he knew that was maybe something I need to deal with? And I was like, yeah, sure. And then he said something.

I intentionally tried to trigger that emotion in a good way. Because if you're triggered by something, right, if I say something and you're triggered by it, and it wasn't like an intense thing where she would have flashbacks or anything, but if you get an emotional response, that's another way to say it. From this thing, that means it's still raw. It means there's still healing to be done. So I said that.

So he said something to try to trigger me. And I, in like literally the span of 1 second, felt the emotion come up and felt myself push it back down.

And it like shocked me because I was like, whoa, like, yeah, because even you've heard me talk about it a lot at that point, but you're like, I had never really experienced it. Yeah.

And it really, it happened in a split second. I was like, oh, okay. So that's something I need to build the skill specifically with this one thing. To release that emotion.

I'm so glad you had that experience because really good experience.

And so, you know, same thing, even though I'm so, so in touch with my emotions, I just sit and build this skill and sit and talk myself through it. And, you know, it's okay to feel this thing and like allow it to come up and just try not to, you know, be resisting it and pushing it back down. And it took a little while, but yeah.

Because processing, there's 2 main pieces to processing. One is a release of emotion. If you can't release the emotion, You're not going to process it. And then a change of belief, like a fundamental change of how, like in your thinking at a rational level. So you have like the rational and the emotional side switching.

Good question. So Delaine, this is a great opportunity to start to try to be right. And many of us aren't. And I really appreciate you sharing that. Just sharing, I'm not at all honest with myself. That's you being honest with yourself, actually.

Yeah, it is.

So that's a really great start. That was your first step to being honest with yourself. And I don't know if you even noticed that. But maybe just kind of taking how that felt to say, you know what? I'm not honest with myself. That's the first step to being honest with yourself is saying I've not been honest with myself.

I've never realized that. Yeah, that's true. So admitting you're not honest with yourself.

Larry's hearing my cat somewhat disturbs my safe spot sometimes. I was surprised, Larry, living with cats, how loud they can be in like the middle of the night.

Really?

Do you remember? No. I remember living with Mary Jo's cats. It would sometimes just like be sprinting around at night and like just like sprint into a room.

Yeah.

Remember? It was like, it was really weird. And I never experienced that because like dogs sleep at night. So Larry, maybe a solution, a potential solution is seeing if there's a way, like we had a room when we were living with the cats that we always kept closed so the cats couldn't be in there. You know, I mean, cause once they were in there, what we're going to do about it? But so they couldn't be in there to ensure that that space was cat-free.

Yeah, that, that's a great.

Solution. Yeah. So Jillian Turing did meditation and hammering. So I'm glad the meditation techniques helped. That's awesome. We have— actually, I forgot I had seen— I'd seen something for you. There's a bunch of tools that we teach specifically for flashbacks because that was something I struggled with. It's not something everyone struggles with, which I didn't— I didn't even realize starting this journey.

Yeah.

And there's a bunch of techniques that we talk about. I also teach them In our Recovery Secrets coaching, there are tools like visualization. I have a bunch of visualization exercises that help with flashbacks. There's a tool we call the butterfly hug. That's an amazing tool for a variety of different reasons. Meditation is a great tool to start to kind of add these tools to your toolbox so that you can have them when you need them. And then of course, the long-term goal is to heal the root of what's causing them. And that's the beautiful thing about what we're doing as a whole, what we're doing overall. Is, you know, giving you help to cope with these things, but also giving you and setting you up for the tools to process the underlying reason that these things happen. Because once you process the reason that those flashbacks happen, you no longer have flashbacks. And that's a really cool, beautiful thing. And it's an amazing thing. And what I want to point out, because maybe you haven't heard it before, Jillian, but, you know, and for anyone who has struggled with flashbacks. What's really cool about people who have flashbacks is you're an expert— your brain is an expert typically at visualization. And so typically the strongest exercises to help cope with flashbacks are visualization exercises. And there are certain processing tools that we teach and that you'll learn and that you'll hear about that visualization plays a Very big role, and so because you're already an expert, or your brain rather is already an expert at that visualization, what we're going to be doing is transferring that skill and using it in a different way, in a more positive way. And that was something that really kind of changed my life: understanding that it's the skill I already have. It's a muscle I already have. I'm just my brain is just using it in a way that isn't serving me. And we can actually change the use of that. So Lisa asking, how does it help with, uh, photographic memory? Lisa specifically, how does what help with a photographic memory? That's a good question. How do the tools help with a photographic memory? So it really depends on the tool. So processing tools and coping tools. I'll talk about the coping tools. The coping tools are designed to basically shut off manually, shut off your brain's stress response system, right? So if you think about when you are stressed, your brain is basically flicking certain switches on to say, okay, here's— we're dealing with this. It's freeze, fight, or flight. There's a dinosaur in front of us. Here are the switches we need to turn on in order to be in go mode, right? And so what the recovery tools, the coping tools do, are they're going to manually kind of turn those switches off. And they have A lot of benefits beyond that, which we won't kind of get into today. What the processing tools are doing are they're taking the information that we have in our brain, and you can think of it like it's sorting it differently, it's storing it differently. So it's taking all this information that, for lack of a better term, is just a jumbled mess and has not been sorted, has not been dealt with. I want you to think about like that pile of mail, like just on your desk, and it's just a pile and it's chaos.

Yeah.

And then we go in and we sit and we say, okay, that's junk mail, that's junk mail. And here's taxes stuff, here's bill stuff, and we sort it out and then we take action on it in regards to mail. And so nothing's really gonna change with a photographic memory. What's gonna change is the way that our brain is storing it and sorting it. And so, you know what I had a common misconception about early on and what a lot of people might have a common misconception about. Is that you know if healing is possible, healing means you forget what happened. And so you don't forget what happened, right? The unless you already don't remember, which is like that's a different thing. Is those memories are still there; the charge is just different, right? So I could go through and paint an exact picture of the things I used to have flashbacks on, right? Because those are things that they really truly happen, and they're in my brain still, right? The images are in my brain, and I could call them to memory, or I could call them to the front, right? And There's no distress because the emotional charge has changed. And so that's all about sorting it differently. So Lisa, let me know if that makes sense, but that's the kind of basic—

Yeah. Processing too. It's like, it's a reinterpretation of the past. Like if you think about events, it's like the events are the events. We add our interpretations to the events. Right. And so processing and like the process that Caitlin kind of talked through, Is like a reinterpretation on an emotional and logical level of what happened, right? And even things nowadays that we just automatically assume are wrong and morally wrong weren't always morally wrong in the past. Like, I forget what civilization this was. It was Hammurabi's Code, where it's like an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, where like if you did something bad to somebody, they would do it. Like if you poke someone's eye out, they're going to poke your eye out.

If you stole, they would take your hand.

Yeah. Yeah. Or like you built a house and their house collapsed and someone would collapse, you died, then, then they would do that to you, even if it was like a mistake. And that's something that like, we wouldn't necessarily think is morally okay now. Like if somebody, you know, we have a different morality for punishments nowadays than we did back then, but in the past it was morally okay then, but that's just like an interpretation. And those are all the things that we add to our life. Like the event is the event. We add everything else. We add the emotion, we add the whether we want to or not, right? Like, I'm not saying that it's, we intentionally like cause ourselves pain and like traumatic things are scary. They are painful, but it's a reinterpretation of that event because the event is the event. It's how we interpret it that really tells us or dictates how we feel and how we act after the fact.

That was a great question. You missed it. It was all about a photograph. It was good. It was good. But we'll do this one last question and then we'll wrap up here for the session. So amazing job. I want everyone to pat themselves on the back for being here, for taking action, for showing up. We love you. We are so, so happy to be here with each and every one of you. So Carrie's asking, have you found that they help? So we were talking about, just to fill you in, we were talking about recovery tools. So like coping tools, and then we were talking about processing tools, right? So healing tools. Have you found that they help to modulate A brain that has a COMT gene mutation. And so just to give like a little background on what this is typically, and, and this specifically, a gene mutation can be related to an increased—

sneeze—

an increased risk of certain things. So if you have this gene mutation, you're at a higher risk of, in this example here, having behavioral issues in your life. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you're guaranteed to have behavioral issues. And to keep it as a shorter explanation, it doesn't have anything to do with your ability to, if you do have behavioral issues or you do have certain issues, heal those issues or change those issues or fix those issues. So the short answer is—

Or make them as best as you possibly can.

Well, yeah, but really truly heal and fix them. Yeah. So the short answer is anything like that, it typically what it is, it's an increase risk of something. Now, just because you're at an increased risk, you know, when you're maybe working up on a roof, you're at an increased risk of getting injured. Now, you're not guaranteed to get injured if you're shingling a roof. That's not a guarantee. Some people work their entire lives on roofs and never have a problem, but you are at an increased risk for that. But in our case here, just because you're at an increased risk, it doesn't have anything to do with you being able to heal. And you being able to, I mean, cope well, because we're talking specifically about the recovery tools, the recovery toolbox tools are still going to work and the processing tools are still going to work regardless of things like that going on.

I think like the biggest danger to things like that is how they affect your belief about recovery, like in a different vein, like when people or some, when some people are diagnosed with PTSD or CPTSD, it's not so much the diagnosis. That causes them to, you know, be in pain forever, but it's the diagnosis that then creates the belief that I'm broken and I can't ever be healed because I have PTSD and I can't ever get better. Right. So there's this belief that's built around this diagnosis. So in, in regards to a lot of things like that, that can be the most dangerous thing is like the belief that's built after the fact.

Right. And so, I mean, really, truly, and there's a lot of Recovery Toolbox tools that we work with. We don't work with one, like, coping tool, and there's a reason for that. And it's because it— all the tools together, and there's so many different benefits again that I'm not gonna— we'll do a whole session on why those tools specifically, what they do in the brain and how helpful they are. But all, like, all the tools together, they're doing different things for your brain. So You can kind of think of it like they're going in at different angles. They're helping you build different skills. And so I'll share a quick story before we hop off here. When I was in high school, I tore my ACL. I actually didn't tear my ACL. My cousin tore my ACL for me. All right. So she tackled me and messed up my future, but in a good way. Yeah. Lizzy. She knows who she is. All right. So she tackled me and popped my ACL tore. Right. And when I was really kind of working on fixing it, obviously for, you know, it's painful, but for a couple of different reasons, because I was an athlete and a sports player and There were things I wanted to do that I needed a knee for. I need to be able to walk and run for. When I was deciding kind of what to do about it and they were doing all these tests and all these imaging on my knee, they had basically said, here are your options. You can get surgery to fix the ACL, to try to repair it, or you can live without it for the rest of your life and strengthen the muscles around it. And it really caught my attention. Because at the time, I actually wanted to enlist in the Coast Guard, and Coast Guard would not accept me at the academy if I had surgery. There was a lot that kind of came into play. And so, I knew that I couldn't have surgery on this knee and then be able to do what I wanted to do. All right. And so, I said, all right, well, tell me more about this other option, this non-surgery option. And, the physical therapist had kind of said to me, well, it's really common for athletes to Tear their ACL. It's extremely common. And he said most players, I think is what he said. I'm not sure if this is a legitimate statistic, but most players in the NFL, so most football, American football players, don't even have an ACL. And a lot of times they don't even know about it. They don't even notice because there's so much tackling, but because the other muscles in their knee are so strong that their knee doesn't need it. Their knee basically learns How to live without it. And so the reason that we teach a lot of different things is we work to strengthen a lot of different areas. And so even if our brain is weak in one area, we have all these different angles, all these different areas that we work with to ensure that we're still able to be healthy regardless of maybe of this one weakness, or in the case of the knee, regardless of the ACL. My ACL is not attached. I can still walk and run, jump, and do all these different things. Because now I spent the time specifically with this, I strengthen the other muscles in my knee, and so I don't need it anymore. And so that's just an example of how everything we do kind of works from different angles. And that's the reason that we don't take a one-dimensional approach to this, because one dimension is going to leave a lot of dimensions uncovered. And so we want to make sure that this is a wholesome journey for you and you have absolutely everything you need. And that's why we teach different processing tools. We don't just teach one processing tool. We teach so many different Recovery Toolbox tools, which are the coping skills. We teach so many different things on mindset, on routines, and on— I mean, we cover addictions, relationships. There's so much that we cover. And that's the reason we're kind of getting a wholesome journey here.

So love it.

Amazing job, each and every one of you. And Lisa, I saw this here, using the butterfly hug discreetly throughout your day. Amazing job with that. Butterfly hug is an excellent It's awesome. Excellent. One of our tools there. Fan favorite, coach favorite. But we're gonna jump off here. Amazing, amazing job. Keep rocking and rolling. We love you. We believe in you at the very highest level. We'll see you tomorrow. Tomorrow's an interesting conversation. It's about addictions. It's about compulsions. Even if you don't feel like you fall under the realm of addiction or compulsion, and you just feel like maybe you have a couple of bad habits that you'd like to kick, you'd like to get rid of, definitely show up because regardless, it's going to help you with those things. And it's part of that wholesomeness. It's part of Having a wholesome recovery journey, making sure that we deal with everything that that we need to deal with in order to be the people that we want to want to be. So, do you have any final words?

Nope, that's it.

Okay, love you. Believe me at the highest level. See you bright and early tomorrow, and awesome job.

Yeah, have a great day.

Bye everyone.

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 app.

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.