#61 How to Measure PTSD Recovery: The Simple Tracking System That Actually Works | 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, everyone, we are live here. Welcome to our Recovery Secrets daily coaching session. It is so good to be here with you all on this wonderful Wednesday, at least morning for us. I know for some people it's like a different day in the evening, but it is great to be here with you nonetheless. We have an awesome session planned here for today. If you're gonna be joining us live, feel free to say hey in the chat box so that we can engage with you throughout the episode. And so that we can welcome you and say good morning to you. It is always a great thing to do. So let us know in the chat box if you're here. I'll let, or Brad will do a little intro. I always say that.

Good morning, everybody. Great to be here. I know I always say I am so excited for today's lesson, but today I am particularly excited because I am a data man. I am someone who likes to look at data and track things and, you know, see how things improve over time. And today we're going to be really talking about how to really set some metrics to your recovery, which might be a really new process for you. Because I'm someone who I like to see how, how well I'm doing. I like to track my progress. I like to see if I'm getting better or worse, whether it's in the gym, in my relationship. I literally have tracked things with that. I literally have tracked how many fights we had in our relationship, not in a bad way, just out of curiosity. Hey, are we having less fights or more fights? But I love tracking. I love doing those things. And it can be super helpful for you to see how you're progressing over time in your overall recovery. By defining 2 key metrics that we're going to go over today, how to actually track it, the theory behind it, and really just the overall process. So it's going to be a really great topic. When I woke up this morning, I got here. I forgot that this was the lesson today. And when I heard it, I was like, yes, yes, we're covering this. Cause it's so, it was, it was so transformational for me because it, it allowed me to understand when, when I fully processed a trauma, right? When I fully completed it. And this was just like a little test that was our little test that I was able to basically run for myself to see if I, you know, basically fully completed something. Cause it can be like when you're dealing with emotions and trauma and all these, all this stuff, it's like, it can be hard to really know if you're making progress. And like, how do you know if you're done? How do you know if this thing is fully processed? Like, how do I know if I can move on to the next thing or whatever it is? And today we're going to bring clarity to all of that. So I'm excited, obviously.

So whether you've done processing yet or not, this is going to be a great addition to it. So you can like start out this way. You don't have to have done processing for this to make sense.

Right.

And, and if you've done processing, this is going to be a great addition to help you get clarity on it. And Brad's not kidding when he said he's very, very excited for this and he is a data man. Okay. And so our personalities, for those of you who maybe know like Myers-Briggs personalities, which we have had fun with in the past, kind of figuring out our complete opposites, our personalities, except for one very important thing. That we're both introverted. Okay, but other than that, we're complete opposites. And his personality is a very unique personality, and it's very focused on data. And so he's also not kidding when he said he's tracked certain things in our relationship, and not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way where he's trying to—and he brought this into my life—always trying to make things better and trying to figure out how do we get better? How do we know when things are better? And I remember working with a coach a number of years ago who I still work with actually, and. One of the things that he said when we were first coaching together was, okay, how are you going to know when you achieve that goal? You know, I shared my goals with him and he said, how are you going to know when you achieve it? And I was like, wow, that's, that's a really interesting question. Because for a lot of goals that we have, we actually, we, there's no metric that tells us, hey, we've achieved this thing. I want to be happy. I want to be at peace. Okay. But how are you going to know when you've achieved that versus, you know, I want to, I want to save up $10,000. There's a metric. I want to lose 15 pounds. There's a metric. Right? And so what we're going to do here today is help put metrics on that processing to help you know where you are in the process. You can, I mean, graph it. Now it's not, it's not going to be a straight line type of a thing. There's variability here, but it's going to give you something to look at and something to basically make decisions off of, which is the kind of the goal of data, right? So when Brad was tracking fights in our relationship, it was okay, here's, and it part was for curiosity, but part was for how can we get better? You know, it's about every, or whatever it was, I forget what it was like 45 days, 60 days, whatever. Or maybe, you know, he'd share like, hey, this is our longest streak, we're at 100 days. And there's all sorts of things that you can make decisions based off, right? So when we were at 100 days, he shared that information with me. And we're like, hey, that's great. Let's celebrate that. Right? Or when we notice, hey, like, it's about 45 days where things are starting to— like, on average, we go 45 days before we have some sort of a fight. And he also had metrics for what's a fight and what's just like, You know, we both get a little short with each other, disagree, whatever it is. Right. And so it's really, really cool because you can make decisions off of it. So that's why Brad's psyched about this. And I'm also psyched about this. And this is a great addition to your processing.

I should probably track some good things now. Yeah. Like how often do we go on date night or something?

I know. Maybe I'm going to track how often you give me flowers.

Okay. That's a good one.

That's great. Twice in the last week.

That's right. It's been a good week. It's been a great week. So I wanted to touch on the point where Kayleen said, Whether you know processing tools or not, this will be beneficial for you because we're going to go through how to kind of track the micro or sorry, the macro kind of distress level, average distress level you're feeling kind of as an overall human, which anybody can do at any point in time. You don't need to have any sort of skill level to do that. So we're going to talk about the, the, the, the macro tracking and also the micro tracking. So when you're specifically trying to process a specific trauma or specific memory or specific belief, We're going to go through that process as well, how to focus down on that. And I see Mimi's back with us today. This is a topic when I thought of it this morning, I thought of you because you're also, I know you're also a data person as well. So I'm excited for that, but yeah, it's going to be awesome.

So today's topic is processing or tracking processing, tracking processing. So let me welcome some people here. You can see my little GIF that I put in there of SpongeBob and Patrick. Facebook asked me if I wanted to put that in and they were really, yeah, it was just right there. All I had to do is click on it. So I didn't like search for that or anything. Facebook just really knows me. So welcome, Jen. Welcome, Lena. Welcome, Helene. Welcome, Judy. Welcome, Jeanette. Welcome, Larry. Welcome, Sunny. Welcome, Joe. Welcome, Mimi. Welcome, Carol. Welcome, Bonnie. Great to have each and one of you, each and every one of you on here with us this morning for this session. So today it's all about— welcome, Delaine. It's all about numbers, right? It's all about tracking. It's about data. If you're not a data person and you're maybe more someone like me that goes kind of based off feelings, or, you know, I listen to like my gut instinct a lot, which is not necessarily a bad thing to do.

No, it's good.

And doesn't mean That data people don't do that, right? It's still going to be a great addition. And so if you have a little bit of a resistance to data, I encourage you to lean in because it's going to help you get where you want to go faster. And it's going to be an enhancement on those feelings. And it's going to give you a lot of clarity on feelings and what you're feeling, why you're feeling, where you are in the process. And again, help you to make better decisions. And, you know, for certain things in the recovery journey, we're talking about making big changes, like a huge left turn. Like giant left turn. And then sometimes what we're talking about doing is making small tweaks just to kind of get back on track, to make sure that we're on the right path, on the right line. And data is going to help us do both of those things. Make a huge left turn if we need to make a left turn, and also just, hey, let's make this decision and, and get a little bit closer, because it gives us something to look at, something to like tangibly see and track where we're going and where we are. So I'll let Brad jump in. Yeah.

So it's, this is not going to be anything complicated. Like Kayleen said, if data is something that kind of turns you off or whatever, this is a super, super simple process. Everything that I track, I try to keep as simple as possible because when it gets too complex, I don't do it plain and simple.

That's just the honest truth.

Yeah. Like if I, if it's not simple, if it's not easy for me to do, if it's not easily grasped and understood, then I'm not going to do it. Right. So I try to keep my systems as simple as possible. This will be super simple. So to start off, I'm going to, I'm going to talk about kind of the underlying theory of what we're trying to achieve with things and kind of the different things you want to track. And then from there, we're going to go into more of the how-to. So different ways that you can kind of build this into, it doesn't even need to be super consistent, but build this into a routine or just like the different ways you can track it, whether it's on the computer, on your phone, whatever it is, the actual how-to. So. I'm gonna be using the handy-dandy red marker, which is encouraged to do this morning, which is encouraged because it's very much aligned. Kaylin is an educator, a teacher, so she understands the power of— what do you call it— visual.

Yes, the, the, the red marker.

The red marker. The colors.

The marker and I have a love-hate relationship, but okay.

So for those of you who don't know, the first metric that we're going to be tracking is your distress level. So if you don't know what your distress level is, it's pretty, pretty easy to understand kind of intuitively. What level of distress are you feeling on a scale from 0 to 10? So the first thing I'm going to walk you through is kind of the macro, the global level. And you can do this right now. Like, what— ask yourself, what is the average distress level that I experience, you know, day to day? Like, what is that average distress level on a scale from 0 to 10? And Obviously 10, maybe not obviously, but 10 is, is the most distress and 0 is absolutely no distress. So 0 distress. And obviously, and that's a really good metric just to track how well am I progressing in my recovery over time. And that is the first metric you kind of want to focus on. And again, it's very simple, 0 to 10 scale distress level. How am I feeling on average over the past few days, whatever it is, Mimi in here, number 2, that is progress. That is progress. And Mimi, tell us, tell us where you first started. And if anybody else wants to share too, it's, it's always a great, great time just to reflect and start using, using this tool, this process, just to start reflecting right, right now. You can put it in the chat or not. It doesn't really matter, but reflect for yourself. What is my average distress level right now? Mimi said my average distress level was 20 out of 10. That is progress, man. That is amazing progress. Let's, let's assume you're coming into the pro— the process you're starting. At the max distress level, right? What you want to do over time is you want to track that. And hopefully as you're implementing these things like Mimi, you'll see that go down and down and down and down. Um, and on a side note, for those of you who don't know any processing tools, we did a processing bootcamp on one of my favorite tools, Protectors, which is coaching session 35. So if you, if you search 35 in the platform, you'll go through that bootcamp. It's incredible, an incredible training. And that's where you can start if you don't know anything about processing. So if you're starting, when you're on this journey, you're going to start naturally at a high level, right? But over time, as you implement these processing tools, as you learn more things, show up to more coaching sessions, you're going to see this decline. And over time, as you track it, you're going to see this get down lower and lower and lower. And, you know, the goal is zero. Even me, I don't have zero all the time. I probably hover Even at like a 1, sometimes 2, sometimes 0, but like the goal is to get that down as far as possible. So how you want to track this is just having a global, like I said, kind of a global, this is the global distress level. How do you feel as an overall level?

Now, one thing I want to just kind of butt in here and say, first of all, awesome job, Bonnie, too, right now. And I love what you're sharing, cause I'm going to go off of this, Bonnie, right? Bonnie's saying mine's now like a 0 between a 0 and a 1. This is a subjective scale.

Right.

And because it's subjective, there's, there's a little wiggle room, right? And so that the goal here is between 0 and 1. If you get to a 1, that's an amazing, amazing, amazing win, right? And that's just as good as a 0. Okay. And a 9 is just about as, as good, and you're going to see where the good comes into, as a 10 when we talk about the other thing. So understand that this is, this is a metric that we're using to track something that has some flexibility to it because it is subjective, because What I'm considering a zero, right, is is absolutely nothing. You know, completely at peace and calm, and you might not even know what that kind of looks like. And so you might find yourself, and you're like, well, I don't know if I'm at a zero, but I'm at a one, right? And that's great, and that's an amazing, amazing goal. And then what you might find actually, as you kind of just continue to you know, like build these skills and live your life, is then you might find that day where you're like, oh, this is what a zero is. And that was something that happened in my journey where I was like, okay, I'm between a zero and a one on this. This is amazing. My life is completely different. Because I was at a 10 all the time, right? And then there like came really kind of a part actually within our relationship where we were able to basically fix the things that kind of happened within our relationship. And once we did that, we really turned a corner and it kind of solidified that 1 into a 0. And I was like, oh, like that's way, way different than, than the, like what I kind of thought I had, right? And so it's just understand that it's subjective. So your goal is between a 0 and a 1 here.

And, you know, I drew this graph in a very simplistic way. Recovery isn't a consistent straight down. Like for a lot of people, actually, when you're first learning the skills, the processing skills, everything else like that, you can stay pretty elevated for quite a while. And generally this is what we say around 100 hours you get of processing, you get your biggest breakthrough and you can see these big, big dips, these big jumps down in your distress level. So just know that this is just for example purposes to keep it simple. And just to show the overall goal and know that, you know, this is how it ends up averaging out. You know, you do see over time, you see an overall decline, but it's not a straight line like that. It's like, it'll go up and down and things will change and you'll become aware of new traumas. And, you know, as you're uncovering things, you know, it might pop up for a little bit and then you'll go back down as you process it. So just want to point that out, that this is kind of a simplified version of what the graph and what the tracking will look like. So. As you saw the first level or the first thing we want to track is I'll just call it the global distress level. Right. And hopefully y'all can see these next ones and there'll be 2 other things we'll track later on. So how you can do this is just in, I like to do it in Excel just because that's how I like to do it.

Because he's a data man. You can do this on a piece of paper.

Actually, you know, I just still call things Excel, Google Sheets. It's what I use, but you can do this on your notes. You put a title, global distress level, and then you put bullet points underneath it and you can do a date next to it as well. So I like to put the date and the distress level. So I would put, you know, you know, a date, you know, obviously I'd put the date all the way down and then maybe you start as a 10 and then you're at a 10 the next time you check in and then you're a 9 and then you're an 8 and then maybe you're a 9 again. And then maybe you jump down to like a 4 and then you go back up to a 5 and down to 3. 2. So over time you're tracking this and it can be beneficial to build this into your, your routine, like a weekly routine, check in on a weekly basis. But even if you just like check in, like whenever you check in, you know, like, how am I doing? You know, just every once in a while checking in on that. So that's how that's gonna look. Any more kind of thoughts on kind of the global distress level before I dive into the, the next one?

Yeah. So you, you're gonna find some variability in this, right? And so I think it, yeah. So I saw Judy sharing, right? So mine jumps like around a lot, right? So sometimes it's a 0, sometimes it's a 10. That's kind of part of the— that's part of just like being a human being and struggling with PTSD is there's going to be moments where it's like, oh, I actually, actually feel great, right? And maybe that's a 2, maybe that's a 0, maybe that's a 5, maybe that's an 8. And then sometimes where it's like max, right? Because you're like triggered, right? And so what we're looking for here is basically an average. So if you took like, you know, the last 5 days, And you said, you know what, Tuesday was— I had a great day Tuesday. It was an amazing day. Wednesday was the worst day ever, right? So you have a 0 and you have a 10. So on average for the last 2 days, you know, you were at about a 5. So that's kind of what we're looking for here in regard to global. And you want more data than that. You want to look like over the past week, over the past couple of weeks, over the past month, what has that looked like on a more kind of broad scale? And again, there's going to be a little variability here, but also there's going to be variability.

Mm-hmm.

Day to day, week to week, moment to moment. You might have some good weeks, some bad weeks, some great days, some not so good days, and, and some excellent moments and some really bad moments. And that's why we're taking the average here because we're looking for basically a trend over time.

Yeah. That's awesome. I love that. And that's— sorry. I was just going to say that's a common thing that comes up. It's like, I don't really know. How do I put a number on it? Pick an average. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's subjective. Just pick a number that feels right for you. And that is the average over what you felt.

And you'll get better at kind of picking that number out.

Yeah. Also, also one last thing. This was, this was another thing I want to say. Sometimes the reasons for those spikes is when like you get triggered, right? So you can get triggered and that's when the trauma comes forward. And those natural kind of spikes and dips throughout even your day are normal as well. Like when you become, when you come in contact with stimulus that triggers you, It's obviously going to be more elevated. And then you kind of like go back down into like your average state that you're just kind of in all the time. And then it can go up and down.

So, so this red line here is what we call a distress level. So right now Brad's talking about what's your overall distress level. If you look back at the past month, 2 months, what is it on average, overall distress level? And so what you'll basically be doing, if you draw this line and you can draw this, if you're more of a visual person, I encourage you to draw this. If you have a red pen, great. If not, That's okay too, right? But draw this, and what you could do is literally just put a mark on this graph, right? Draw this graph, 10 to 0 and time, and and with a red pen draw a red dot, right? If we're going to consider time, time is right now. We're just beginning this journey, this tracking journey. So right here on the graph, plot a little red dot. Okay, if you're a visual person, this is a great thing to do. So maybe you say, you know what? Last two months, my average distress level was. In 8, plot where that is on the graph, and then go back and look at that graph a month from now, even a week from now, whatever it is. And you look back and say, okay, last 2 months, now here we are, like a little bit further in on this x-axis here. In the last 2 months, my distress level was a 6. And that's where you're going to see that kind of trend over time. So there's a bunch of different ways to do this. But there's another line that we're going to draw on this graph.

I'm gonna draw 2 more lines. Oh, okay. Wow. I've changed. I've changed.

He's changed tack on me here. Will you draw the other line? I will.

I will, but I'm going to draw it in a different way because I think it makes more sense. Because this line right here, this is going to represent the average global distress level. So that's red. Then the next thing that I'm going to talk about is the, the more specific, the micro tracking. So the tracking of individual traumas, and there's 2 different metrics you want to track there. So you want to, you want to track the specific, the distress level of a specific belief, trauma, or memory. For this example, I'll just say specific belief. So right over here, could you write under, under there specific belief? So Kayleen, where she's going to write, she's going to write specific belief and then just DL for distress level belief. And then in that last column, we're going to write, Kayleen wrote specific.

Believability.

I was going to write believability. Specific belief. So we're going to be tracking the specific distress level of a belief that you're working on or a trauma, and the specific believability level of a new belief. So the overall kind of goal of processing is to change your beliefs and change the underlying emotions of it. So you're changing it on a logical plane and also on an emotional plane. So when you're working with a specific trauma, the first goal is to reduce the distress level, right, of that specific trauma.

So with any given trauma that you're working with, trauma or traumas or event, whatever it is that you're working with, there are 2 things that we're tracking, right? So the first thing we did here is just global, just overall, how do you feel, right? The next 2 things here go together. These things are basically a pair. And it's 2 things. It's your distress level and what we call your believability level. So for each thing that you work with for each trauma, memory, event, belief, situation, you're going to track these 2 metrics that Brad's about to explain.

Yeah. So the first thing you start tracking, like I was saying, is the specific distress level of the trauma that you're working with or a specific level of belief. So let's say you're, you're going down from a 10. And again, the goal is to go from high to low. So the goal is to, you know, take your high, high distress level for that specific trauma and take it down to zero. So let's say I'll do it a little quicker here. You go down from a 10 to an 8 to a 5 to a 0, right? So once you, once you take your trauma and bring it down to a distress level of 0, you're not done, right? That's just the first step. The second step is to basically invert the false belief or the negative belief that was created by the trauma and install that new belief. Until you reach a believability level of 10. So that is the next thing you want to transition to at this point.

So why don't you draw it out?

So the first thing you're doing here is with this specific belief. Again, this is the blue is the distress level of the specific belief is like your goal is to get it down to zero, right? Or as close to zero as you can. And at this point, this is where you transition from processing to installation.

Now, these things are going to happen in tandem very often, and you'll see that in the graph, right? Because these 2 things are going to be changing all at the same time. You know, there's, there's going to be times where you finish, you complete this process of distress level before you complete believability level. And that's where you want to, you just want to make sure both of these things are done, but very often they're going to happen in tandem. And when we talk about future processing tools, we'll talk about how they're both part of the same actual session where you're doing processing.

So how you could see this is that maybe when you first start processing this specific belief, as Kayleen said, you're kind of naturally increasing your believability level on this, this new belief, right? But at this point, this is like the inflection point where you stop processing and you start installation. So right here, you might be starting at a believability score. So then from here, you go down to 0, and then you go to Believability. And let's say you're starting at a 3, so you're not necessarily always starting from a 0 believability. So then from there, you do certain installation processes to increase this. So you install it, you either visualize yourself embodying that belief in the future, or you build affirmations around that new belief to start really start believing it. And maybe you start taking actions in your life that align with that new belief. So your believability and your certainty in that new belief starts to increase. And as you work on it and as time goes by, it'll get stronger and stronger and stronger until you're at a 10. And that's the goal, right? So then from here on the graph, what it looks like is you're installing, you're installing, you're installing until you're back up, you're at a 10. So at this point, you've taken the distress level of a specific trauma, a specific belief down to zero, and you've installed a new belief so that you are Absolutely certain in it, and it's at a ten. And that's the that's the goal of the specific processing. So you do that trauma by trauma, and you focus on one trauma at a time. So let's say I was you know I have a trauma from my past. I'll use an example with us, like getting in fights. Let's say that was like a trauma for me, and I have a I start tracking it, and I have a distress level of ten. I'm going to work with that trauma with processing tools. So I'm going to talk to my protectors. Around like the protectors that were hurt from those fights. And I'll start to heal those protectors and I'll see that distress level for that specific trauma go down. And I'm going to work with it until it gets to a zero. Then I'm going to transition over and start installing a positive thing. And the positive belief might be everything's better now. I have a loving, safe, supportive relationship, right? So maybe in the beginning, I don't really fully believe on an emotional level or even logical level That I, you know, I have, I have a safe relationship where that's loving and supportive. Maybe I don't believe that fully. Right. But that's what we're working on next. Since there's no more distress in it, I now want to work on creating this new belief. So we started, let's say I asked myself and I started at a 3. Okay. Like I kind of believe that that's true, but I also, I'm uncertain about it. So then I, maybe I, you know, I do some visualization. I visualize our Our relationship in the future going well. Maybe I look in the past and I'm like, oh, there were a lot of good moments and things aren't actually the same. You know, they, we don't have fights anymore. And maybe I look for in real time, like, like when we're having a conversation, when we used to fight, I'm like, oh, this is when we used to fight. Things are different. So I'm building this believability up until I get to this, this 10 level. So that's kind of like the process you go through. So this global level, you're kind of just tracking. All the time. You don't have to do anything to track that. This, when you're tracking a specific trauma, it's more goal-specific. There's more, there's more of a process to it. So you're looking to get the distress level down to 0. That's the goal. And you want to do that as quickly, quickly as reasonably possible. And then you also want to build that up to a 10, the believability up to a 10. And you focus on that. You focus on one trauma at a time, one trauma. Let me get it down to a 0 distress level. And then that same trauma, I work on getting the believability level up. So it's at a max 10. And then once you get to that 10, it's locked in, that trauma is done and you can move on to the next biggest trauma. And focus in this process is so important. One of the biggest things I, I do when I coach people is I get them to hyperfocus. Like, what is the one biggest trauma that you're facing? Or the one, one thing that's causing you the most distress? Pick one. And then you focus on that one and then you track that one until that one is locked in. And then you focus on the next biggest one. You only do one thing at a time. And I can't really stress that enough because it's simplicity. Like when I, when I'm trying to work on too many things at once, nothing really gets done. I do everything a little bit, but I never really make any progress. And that's what happens. And that's what we found in, in coaching and healing and processing is when you try to, you know, you have your hands in too many buckets, you're not gonna make much progress. But if you really focus on the, the biggest problem that you're facing right now and you lock that in, You make progress, you feel so much better, and you don't have to worry about that anymore because it's done. It's processed. It's good.

And so let me butt in here and ask you all a question, right, in the chat box here. What happens when you fully focus on one specific trauma, right? So when you get your distress level down— again, it's subjective, so 0 or 1 is our goal— and you get your believability up to a 9 or a 10, same thing because it's subjective, right? What happens to your global distress level if you get For a specific trauma, memory, belief, whatever it is that you're working with, event. If you get that distress down to a 0 and the believability to a 10, what happens to your overall distress level? Let me know in the chat box there, right? Because this is how you're going to make overall progress, is by focusing on one thing at a time. You focus on this one, you get this one distress level to a 0 and this one believability to a 10, and then Right. As Mimi shared with us here, your overall distress level is going to go down. And then you focus on the next thing. And then that overall distress level is going to go down again. And sometimes that's depending on how big the, you know, trauma or event or whatever it is that you're working with here is, it might jump down a lot. There are going to be a handful of things that you work with in regard to like looking into your past, and there are going to be a handful of what we'll call big T traumas. Now it all needs to be healed, but there's going to be a handful of traumas that you work with. Mm-hmm. That take this distress level on average from a 10 down to like a 6 or even lower, because they were the things that were causing you the most distress. So when you focus on, okay, I'm going to get the distress level to 0, the believability level to 10, you're making significant strides in your recovery, right? And so we even said it yesterday, I think, right? There's an old saying, chase 2 rabbits, lose them both. Same thing. Just focus on one thing at a time. I promise you, it's the fastest way to overall, excuse me, reduce your stress level.

It is, it is the fastest way. So I saw in here that, uh, scrolling for me, Sunny said, give, give more examples, right? So one more example that I could use here is I'll pick a specific belief. So maybe right here for the specific belief that I'm trying to change, I, I choose I'm, I'm not lovable. I'm unlovable, right? Like I don't deserve love. Whichever one feels most resonant to you is the one you choose. So for me, let's just say, I don't deserve love is that belief I'm working on. And then I work on processing all the traumas related to that belief. I get that down to a zero, right? The distress level down to a zero. So when I say, I don't deserve love, I don't feel any stress. No emotions come up. And that's what it means to have no distress levels. Like when you can say to yourself, or when you can think about the belief, I don't deserve love, like you don't have any trauma response anymore. The distress level is zero. Or as close to zero as you can get it, right? Sometimes trying to get it to an absolute zero is not reasonable because you can also do some processing and some processing can happen when you move over to the installation level, installation process, but zero is the goal. So let's say, you know, I get it down to a point where I say, I don't deserve love and I don't have a trauma response to that. I don't have any stress. I don't have any worry. I don't have any anxiety, whatever it is. It's just calm or very, very little. From that point, I work on installing— since, you know, the initial belief was I don't deserve love, the new belief could just be the inverse: I always deserve love, right? And then I work on building that belief, right? And we have some, some coaching sessions in the past on how to build new beliefs in our processing bootcamp or in our mindset bootcamp. So if you search bootcamp in the platform, you'll find the bootcamp for beliefs, and you can check that out on how to, you know, break beliefs and build beliefs and install new beliefs as well. So that's a great Great thing to check out as well. Yeah. Hopefully that example gives a little bit more clarity.

Next Wednesday, I want to do a session on beliefs, right? So when we talk about processing, this is something that kind of grinds my gears as a, as a viewer. You know, sometimes I just want you to understand that there are processing tools at your disposal, right? Because it's like, okay, so how do I actually do this? Right? So we did a bootcamp on processing on one of the tools. So we teach typically 4 processing tools to give you a basic kind of toolbox of things that you can use to actually do this processing. So one of them we did an entire bootcamp on. Next Wednesday, I'm going to give you another tool. I want to teach another tool. I want to do beliefs. I want to go through the beliefs worksheet so that you can see how to actually put this at play. And so you can have something because protectors is a great tool, but we have a toolbox of tools for a reason. And that's because certain traumas or beliefs or memories or whatever require a certain, a specific tool, right? You want to use the right tool for the right job. And while they're all great and they actually can all be used, Kind of interchangeably, it's great to have a collection of tools in that toolbox. And so next Wednesday, I'm going to, we're going to do a session more specifically on beliefs, but beliefs as a processing tool so that you can have another tool at your disposal to start to work on this process. And what you'll see when we go through, I'm going to give you a worksheet from our program, Broken to Unbreakable. What you see, what you'll see when we go through that worksheet is you'll see these 2 things at play. These two things will be at play: getting the distress level down and building this new thing up. And it's a really, really powerful process to have. So zero distress level, just to kind of reiterate what you said, a zero distress level is, and we say between zero and one because it is subjective, because it is subjective, right? But as as low as possible, meaning there's there's no response. Zero distress level when something's fully processed and it's at a zero, you won't get triggered by it. That's basically what it means. You can think back on it, right? So I have traumas in my past where I could think back on them, and we're doing. that, you know, however many years ago would have triggered, triggered me or made me feel, you know, certain types of emotions or had flashbacks or whatever it was. Right. So you can look back on those things. Now, it doesn't mean they have no meaning to you, right? But you can look back on those things and there's no distress. So zero distress, right? And I could go through those things in my mind right now and there's zero distress. That's what we're aiming for here. And then with the believability, right? So let's say now you could be processing a memory, for example.

Mm-hmm.

Get that distress down to zero, meaning nothing will trigger a distress response from that event, situation, or memory. And your believability will be based on a belief maybe you have about the world or about yourself, right? And so the world is a safe place, whatever it is that you're working on. And you get to the point where that, that has a certainty, right? So when you tell me, or when I, when I say, okay, the world is round, right? We live in a round globe. You're not just going to sail to the end of the ocean and then fall off a waterfall, right? The world is round. There's an absolute certainty in that for the majority of us, okay? Or other things you have absolute certainty in. So I want you to think about some of the things that you hold as absolute certainty so that you can get an idea of what a 10 will feel like for believability level and what distress will feel like for 0, okay? A 0 distress is you think about You know, I don't know, you think about having breakfast this morning, and if that wasn't a traumatic experience, there's basically— there's no emotion attached. Okay, you just— it was just a thing that you did that happened in your life. Okay, that's what that goal is. And then again, with the believability, think about something you hold as an absolute certainty. The world is round, the sky is blue, grass is green, all sorts of stuff like that. Okay, things that you hold so that you can get an understanding of what those 2 things are going to feel like. Okay, you're gonna get to a point where, and it doesn't mean it doesn't matter. This is an important point for some people. You're gonna get to a point where your trauma or traumas, it, it has the same, the same kind of impact on you in regard to a moment-by-moment basis as does breakfast that morning. Okay. Where those 2 things elicit the same response in you, which is no response. And that's your goal here. So just kind of a, another 2, another something to think about. So that you can understand how you're looking to feel in those moments.

I love it. So also what Kayleen said, we try to get this down to as close to zero as we can. This is if the process goes perfectly, right? So again, just like this graph, graph is like overly simplified. This is if the process goes perfectly, you could, different things that could happen is like maybe you plateau at a 2 or a 3, right? This could happen at that point. I mean, you still wanna, you still wanna keep going to see if you can get it lower. To see if you can break through that. But sometimes it can be beneficial to switch over to installing and see if that can help loosen things up and break through that plateau. Because sometimes in installing you do process and it brings that distress level down just by the fact of you now believe that you are at peace and that can bring you a level of peace. So this is like the perfect in theory process. Be free to ultimately be free to experiment with different things. So you can move on at a 3 if you're plateaued and you're like, I just can't break through this. I'm going to move to installation. And then when you go through the installation, you just check back on the distress level. If it goes down, that's the goal, you know? So now let us know if this makes sense in the chat or if you have any questions and we can move on to answer your questions about this to make sure that you understand it. And while we're waiting for questions, so make sure you get those in. I want to make sure that this is so simple for you that it's easier, easier for you to do it than not do it. All right. So that's my goal. Are you good with me racing this?

Yeah, do your thing. Right. And so what Brad was just saying there in his last point is these things are going to happen together. It's not like distress level goes from 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5. That would be the perfect world. And then believability goes from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. They're going to happen in tandem. There's going to be plateaus and little peaks and valleys and all sorts of stuff that happens in that process. And you're going to learn— that's so loud.

I'm so sorry.

You're going to learn more and more about that as you do more and more processing and as you track this more and more. So it's a way for you to help you make decisions, to help keep you on track, to help keep you focused. And also, it's a way to help keep you motivated, right? When you see a distress level going down, a believability going up, and your overall distress level, you know, when you're chipping away at that, you say, hey, wait a minute, I'm making progress. Like, not only maybe do I feel better, right? And not only are— and this will happen a lot, like, especially when it comes to mindset stuff— not only do people in my life say, hey, you look healthy, hey, you look happier, hey, you're more positive, like, people will start to notice stuff like that. Not only is that happening, but I quite literally have a metric that is telling me I am making progress towards that that goal. Again, the ultimate goal being zero for everything. Zero for everything. There's no distress for your past, for trauma, for PTSD, for CPTSD, for whatever it is that you have in your past that right now is causing distress in your present.

Love it. So if you guys like this table kind of tracking, you can build this table in Excel or on Google Sheets, whatever it is. But an even simpler way Is like what I mentioned in the beginning. You can just do it on the notes on your phone. So the first thing you want to write here is the average global distress level, right? So just for this purpose, I'm going to write AGDL. So that's average global distress level. And then you just make a list of bullet points where you put the date and then the number, the date that you track it and then the number, and then you can track the average global distress level. Then you can also put underneath this and just start with this. If you don't know the processing tools, just start tracking your distress level. See how it goes down over time. It's going to really help you become aware of how things are progressing for you. And then you can look back and be like, wow, I am, I am winning. I am making progress.

And there are other things that will affect that overall distress level too, including the mindset work that we do, the routines work that we do, stuff that we do in regard to addictions, relationships. Like there are other things that are going to help that overall distress level, believe it or not, besides just the processing tools, but the processing tools are really going to take big chunks out.

So the next thing that you write is like the, uh, the bad belief, right? So in here I just wrote, I'm worthless, and you don't necessarily have to write that, but I would write that down just to be aware of it. And then you do the same thing, date and then distress level.

So you write the belief or the memory that you're working with or the event, whatever it is that you're working with there.

And then below that one, you want to write the good belief, the positive belief. And in this one, I am worthy, right? And then again, you do the date and then the believability level. Right? And then you want to get that up to a 10 and this down to a 0. So that's like a simple way. I'm not sure if you guys can even see that, but it's the average global distress level, the date, and the distress level. You want to get that down to a 0, the specific belief that you're working on to get down to a 0 with the date and distress level, and then the specific, specific belief you want to install. And then you build that up to a 10. So you don't even have to worry about the installation. You don't have to write that down until you bring the the first one down to a zero, but that's a simple way where you can just do it on the notes in your phone, track it, make it super simple, know that you're making progress and help you keep focused on the things that, like the most important thing. And like I said, you wanna focus on the one biggest challenge that you're facing in recovery.

So if you have any questions, feel free to get them in. Amazing job with this session. Uh, you can obviously tell Brad was not lying at the beginning. He, this is his, his very favorite, one of his very favorite things to, to do and talk about when it comes to metrics, because it helps us make decisions. Helps us see where we're at. It helps us know that we are making progress because even though you are making progress on the journey, it can sometimes just still feel like you're not. And like, it's a very, very long journey and it is quite a long journey. But when we do stuff like this, it helps keep us focused. It helps keep us on track, helps keep us motivated and seeing that things are changing, things are becoming different. And, and that's really exciting because if things have changed, things can continue to change and you can continue to make more and more progress. If you, if you've gotten your like average distress level from a 10 down to an 8, you can get that from an 8 down to a 0, right? And so that might look like 8 down to a 6, 6 down to a 4, 4 down to a 2, 2 down to a 0, but it's possible. And so that's what's really cool about this. So amazing job. If you have questions, feel free to get them in. And tomorrow we're talking about relationships, which is very exciting. We are talking about lightening up in your relationships, which all week I've been struggling to say. And then Friday, this is going to be your last chance slash reminder to Vote on the topic that we have in the community, but we are going to do the topic that was voted for within the community because we had a couple of suggestions. I believe it was on Monday for topics that we're going to do Friday. And on Monday, we decided our next bootcamp will be our boundary bootcamp in a couple of weeks. So we're excited about that. And like I just announced today, next Wednesday when we do our processing session, although we might actually do it Thursday so that we can have a little extra time if we need it next, but next week we're going to teach. Specifically how you can start to work on beliefs. So protector, the protector tool that we taught in the bootcamp is more specifically geared initially towards a feeling that you have, an emotion that you have. Now, that's not to say you can't work with protectors when it comes to beliefs or memories or anything like that, but that's the jumping off point with protectors. And so we're going to give you another tool that you can have in your toolbox, which will be beliefs and specifically using beliefs for As a processing tool. So you can look forward to that next week as well. And I believe, do you remember the front runner for our topic on Friday? I believe was, do you remember?

Not the specific wording.

But something about motivation and sticking with what you start, something like that. Yes. So that's what you can look forward to on Friday.

So I hope you guys, hope you guys enjoyed this. Let us, let me know if you enjoyed kind of this level, more in-depth kind of tracking and things like that. And we can do more of it, more things like this. Also would love to hear your feedback on, you know, just the overall, the content, if you're enjoying the content, if you, what, what you want to see more of in future, future coaching sessions. So if there's a specific topic, let us know. Or if you want to see like more bootcamps or whatever you like, you know, if you want more bootcamps and not just one a month, you want 2 a month. And then in between there, we can fill in with these things. Let us know there. Cause like, I want to, I want to hear back and I want to hear the Hear the feedback, but we can dive into questions on this if you're ready.

Absolutely. So I love this. Mimi was sharing yesterday, clients told me I looked so much better and I'm feeling great. That's an awesome thing. That's going to happen as you heal. And that's one of those things that you can't, you can't always see in yourself. You sometimes do. And there's certain thresholds where you see it in yourself, but just like if you, you know, watch a puppy or watch a kid kind of grow up like week to week, you don't really notice a difference because you're seeing them every single day. But someone who hasn't seen them in a couple of weeks or hasn't seen them maybe in a month. Is gonna be like, wow, there's a big difference. Cuz the last time they saw them, they looked so different and they didn't get all that in between time. So that's an awesome feedback. And, uh, give yourself a big pat on the back for that. I mean, because it's not, it's not a small thing to have that. Maybe sharing mindset is so great. Had a lot of obstacles during my move, big and small. Faced them with calmness, zenitude. I love that. And a smile and even laughter and sometimes the checkbook. There's nothing wrong with that. When I, we, we recently did a move, I guess in the fall and, uh, I was like, you know what, there are some things that I'm, I'm gonna write a check for, and because it's going to make my life a lot easier. So there's nothing wrong with that. That's awesome, Mimi. I love that, and amazing job with that because you absolutely crushed it. Awesome. We love you guys too, very, very much. So Larry asking to define global. Global is just overall, so just the big picture. When you look back on the last month, 2 months, 3 months, on average, what, what would you say your distress level is? And you could even kind of, if, if you're more of a statistician and you're really looking for like the exact number, what I would do, and this is just more for fun, is each day write down what was your average distress level for that day. So it's a little bit closer, it's a little bit more top of mind. And then once a month goes by, add them all up and divide by however many numbers there, there are. And that's going to give you an exact number for your global distress level.

You could track it every minute. Just not do anything all day.

And maybe that would make you feel calm or very distressed. Awesome. Judy sharing, this is awesome info. I love the way that y'all teach together. We certainly have our strengths. It's a ton of fun to be able to come up to do and do this together. And I love, you know, there's some sessions, I forget what it was in the past couple of weeks where like you almost didn't say anything the entire session because I just kind of kept going. And that was kind of this session, but on the other side—

I was literally going to say, I think this is the first session where I actually just talked. The whole time.

I got to get a word in, but I still butted in and I was like, I just have to butt in just one second. No, but it's awesome to have to be able to be here and do this and have different passions and interests. Because if I did this lesson, it would have been much shorter. Oh, really? Yeah. But it's, I mean, it was great. I mean, really, really amazing, especially I love that you put like the global and then how you put both of them on the graph together and different visuals for looking at those things. I think that's That's really super, super awesome.

Well, it was, it was huge in, in the one-on-one coaching that I've done, you know, to be able to help people focus down on one thing specifically and also track their progress as a whole. Right. For me as a coach, being able to dial in like so much of the time was just being like, what is the biggest thing? Like, what is the one thing? Like, and what belief would you put on that one thing? All right, let's work on that one belief and get that down to a zero. And then it would just be like holding them accountable on On the one thing is to make sure that they're making progress on that one thing to get it down to a zero. Like if you coach with me, this is exactly what I would do. First session, I would sit down and be like, what is your one biggest problem? What is your average distress level? And what is your average distress level for your one biggest problem? And what are you going to do about it over the course of the next week to get that distress level down to zero? And also how much time are you going to spend processing so I can hold you accountable to the amount of time that you will be processing? And for anybody who coaches with me, That's— they're like, what? They're like, what's the distress level and how much time are you going to put in processing?

Seriously. And guess what? It works because what he does is he, he's like, nope, do this. Spend more time on it. If you want these numbers to go down or the believability level up, spend more time on it. It's directly correlated to the time that you spend and the amount of focus that you have. So long as you're not working on 10 different things at a time. And it's okay if you have 10 or more different things that you want to eventually process. That's okay, and that's really normal. Pick the biggest things or the things that you're comfortable doing on your own. Focus on them. Focus on one at a time. That's something that we hone in on in our program Broken to Unbreakable. Focus. There's a difference. There's a very big difference between somebody who focuses on this journey, focuses on one thing at a time, and somebody who kind of jumps around between different things. Now, it doesn't mean the person that jumps around between different things won't heal. It doesn't mean it's impossible for them to heal. It's just going to take a lot longer because you're doing 10 things at once instead of one thing and then the next thing and then the next thing. Because when you're doing, when you're chipping away, when you're doing one thing and then the next thing, and then the next thing, not only are you focused, but you're building momentum. You're building motivation. You're going to just like, the distress level is going to fall that much faster because you're seeing more and more progress. And the more that it falls, the more energy that you're going to have and the faster you're going to be able to do all the work, which is a really very, very cool thing.

Yeah. So one thing Kayleen said, if you want that distress level to go down faster, put more time in. That is literally the one The one metric that if you want, if you want to heal faster, you have to put in more time. You have to put in more reps. You gotta put in the reps. You gotta put in the time. And when I say put in the time, I mean in processing, doing that deep healing, deep reflection. I didn't see that. It's too focused. It's all about the time you put in. You know, if you, if you feel like you're not making the progress you wanna make, ask yourself, how many, how many hours this past week did I spend on processing? And if it was 0 or 1, you have your answer. You need to Bring that up. Minimum for my coaching clients, I said 1 hour a day, every day. That's like, for us to even move the needle and make the time worth it together, if we're going to work one-on-one, you have to do at least 1 hour a day. Some people would do 12, some people would do 20. So, and the people who put in more time, more work, the faster they saw the results. It's literally, it's just an element of how much time are you putting in with the processing tools. That's the biggest, that's the biggest lever you can move.

That's the biggest thing. Oh, I love that. That is the biggest lever. And, you know, a lot of people will ask me, A lot of times I get this question, actually less a little bit now, probably just because I don't do so many emails, but like, what's the one thing? What's the biggest thing? If there's one thing I should do, what should it be? And if I had one answer I could give you, I wouldn't be so long-winded and we wouldn't be here each and every day. Right. But put the time in. And that's sometimes that's putting the time into learning. Sometimes that's putting the time into mindset to get yourself in the right space. But once you know the processing tools, you can, you can do the content that we're doing and everything that we're doing in regards to mindset and routines and making these tweaks. And you can make time for processing, right? And so if there's— and this is not a forever thing. Here's the thing about this journey: you don't have to put this time in forever. There were days, and you don't have to do this, right? This you can you can do a lot less than this. But there were days where I did processing all day for multiple days in a row. And guess what? I made huge strides in my recovery. One because I was a little obsessive, but two because I really wanted to kind of get on with my. Life. And it was taking so much from my life that, you know, I couldn't work, I didn't have a great relationship, like everything was kind of out the window. So it was like, well, I'm, I'm either going to be miserable this time and in pain and hurt and triggered, or I'm going to do processing this time. And I'm going to work it and I'm going to work it hard. And I'm going to run and I'm going to run fast. And I was able to do that. And so I was able to spend multiple days all day doing this processing, making those huge strides. Now the cool thing about processing And we talk about a processing routine, right, as one of the 3 routines that we recommend— morning or evening, morning, and processing. If you do a processing routine and you are chipping away at like 45 minutes to an hour each day, every day, at least 5 days a week, you're going to chip away at this goal, at the goal of getting everything fully processed and everything healed and your believability up. And eventually you don't need to do that anymore. That's the cool thing is this is a deposit. And each time you do it, you're, you know, you're paying more and more and more towards this thing that you eventually own. And then that's it. Once you pay the mortgage on your house, that's it. You don't have to pay the bank anymore. That's it. You're done with it. Once you finish your car payments, that's it. You own that car. Okay, that's it. You're done. So you get to a level where you don't have to make that time investment anymore. So I want you to think about that. When you're on this healing journey, it's for a finite period of time. And it's, it's in a lot of cases, a very beautiful period of time in your life, because you're learning so much, you're growing so much, you're doing so much healing. It's amazing, you know, and that's one way to look at it. But it's finite. The doing the affirmations every day, doing the processing, doing the mindset work. You're building habits that will stick with you for life and you're building skills that you'll always have, but it's a finite period of time where you really have to do the work. You really kind of have to, to work it and work hard at it. Love it. Finally got to talk today.

Also, I see a few of you guys messed up. Jen Delaine, a few guys said you're interested in like one-on-one coaching. If you are interested in that. Put it in the comments, and then I can reach out to you to see if we can we can get something together. But just say I am interested in coaching, or I am interested, or interested. And then I'll go through and I'll look through that and see if we can set something up to see if I can help you guys. But I'll let you know there's certain requirements, you know, to to get started as well as like I'm gonna ask you some questions to be like do you know these certain things? Are you willing to do these things? And then you know go from there.

But it's a haul to work with him. Bonnie knows. Bonnie knows.

Who else did you work with? I'm very reasonable, but I, I just provide that accountability and I ask the right questions to hold you accountable and to help you hold yourself accountable. And most important, like just to achieve your goals. So if you're interested, put that in, obviously no pressure, but just figured I'd throw that out there in case anybody was. Cool. And Kayleen has to leave in 2 minutes sharp.

Yeah. What email? I'll reach out. Oh, you're going to reach out based on the Facebook group. Oh, okay. Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.

All right. I'll do some research, see how much it You guys know by how much you've shown up in, you know, different things, and then I'll reach out personally.

So amazing, amazing job here today. We have an awesome couple of sessions coming up later in the week and then next week as well. And then of course, in a couple of weeks, we're going to do our Boundary Bootcamp. I have to hop off today. So amazing job. I love you all. I believe in you at the very, very highest level. Start doing this whether you're doing your processing or not. If you don't know any processing tools yet and you're kind of waiting to learn them, or you haven't watched the bootcamp, or you're waiting till next week to learn the one on belief Just start tracking your average global distress level, just to have some sort of metric. All right, so any last words? That's it. All right, we love you. We believe in you at the very highest level, and we look forward to seeing you bright and early tomorrow morning. All right, see you tomorrow. 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 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.