#97 Bilateral Processing Bootcamp Q and A | 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 Call. It is so good to be here with each and every one of you on this lovely Monday morning. Great start to another amazing, amazing week. We have a lot coming up this week. A lot. Well, actually, maybe not a lot, but I'm very, very excited for what we have coming up this week. And we'll do announcements and stuff like that in a little bit here. But we are actually doing the final session in our Processing Bootcamp week because we missed a session last week. So that's what we're going to be doing today, just kind of rounding out what we talked about last week. And for those of you joining us live, feel free to say hey in the chat box so that we can welcome you and engage with you throughout the session here today. This session is going to be a high engagement session, so make sure that you—

Mm-hmm.

Just let us know you're there in the chat box so that we can answer questions and stuff like that. This lovely man.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Brad. If you are new, great to see you here. Welcome to the family. Great to have you as part of the family. And like Aileen said, this is going to be a very interactive kind of workshop, kind of Q&A session for you guys. So our last, last kind of action step for you on Friday was to actually implement bilateral processing, whether it was your first time or 100th time, to actually spend some time this past weekend And go through the process, go through the worksheet, do it, fumble around, take the, take the imperfect action and see how it went. And then come back here on Monday today to, you know, answer your questions and things like that. So we want to hear from you guys, put it in the chat box. How did it go? How, like, first of all, how many people were able to get in a session? Would love to hear that. And then let us know how it went. Did it go well? Did it not go so well? What challenges did you have specifically? And make sure to take this time to reflect on that. If you did do processing sessions, reflect, how did it go? How could it go better? What challenges did I face? And if you did face a challenge, put that in the comments and we can help you through that. Cause that's what this, this day is for, is to kind of iron things out. Cause we wanted you to take action and kind of by the nature of learning things, you're going to, you know, kind of fumble around a little bit. You might not understand something fully until you get in there. And start taking action. So Lena says, me, she got it done. That's awesome.

That is awesome.

That's it.

Oh, great. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Larry. Good morning, Delane. Good morning, Lena. Good morning, Pat. It's great to have you here. So my follow-up question to Brad is, right, did you do it? And then if you did it, how many sessions did you do? Right. And so that's the, I mean, I mean, that's what I want to know, right? Because we had challenged, I mean, we were joking when we signed off on Friday, but we had kind of challenged you to Say, okay, well, now you can do, you can do 1, you can do 2, you can do 10, you can do 100.

Right, right. You do as many as you want.

As many as you want this weekend, right? So, but reflecting on that session is going to be pretty important, right? And last week we talked about the steps of bilateral processing. And the very last step of bilateral processing was what? What was the very last step of bilateral processing when you're doing a session, right? We had those 4 steps. First was identification, right? So we were just identifying the memory and the belief. Next was the processing. So that was the bilateral stimulation with the processing. So the negative belief and the negative memory. Then was the installation, which was a positive belief and a positive future experience. And then what was the final step of the process? Because that's kind of what we're doing. Nice job, Lena. That's kind of what we're doing here today. That close and recap is yes, to kind of do that safe space and take a few moments to breathe and just kind of settle out. But it is also to reflect on how did this session go?

Yeah.

Did I get stuck? Where did I get stuck? Why did I need to move on? If you, you know, had a situation where you had to move on from the bilateral stimulation before you got to the 12 sets, why did you have to do that? Was it for a good reason because your automatic belief, positive belief came to mind? Was it for maybe a reason because you felt like you were getting stuck, you plateaued? Why did that happen? That's all information that we want to use moving forward in our next session, right? Because if we're getting stuck on one thing, then maybe we need to take a different approach. And so the cool thing about this is maybe you're working on a specific negative memory or a specific negative belief, and you can interchange those things. So just to start off, there's 2 different variables, right? You have a negative memory and then a negative belief that best represents that memory. So there's 2 variables there. What if we swap one of those variables? Meaning if we're working on a negative memory, what if we pick a different belief that still represents the memory? Right? Then we're taking just a slightly different angle. Or if we want to keep the belief, what if we take just a different memory that represents that belief? Okay. So there's different angles and doing that close and recap is going to help you figure out, okay, maybe I need to take a different angle on this because I got a little stuck. Let me just try this from just a slightly different point of view. And sometimes that's all it takes to be successful in this process.

100%. It's not a perfect process. As you were saying that, it's not going to be perfect. The recovery process is a discovery process. It's Trial and error, like kind of working your way through the woods and, you know, finding your own path there. And that, that's just kind of the nature, nature of the beast. But that's great. But I think we have a few, a few things here that we can, we can start to, to walk through. But we had some, some, you know, great people here saying that, that they, they tried the process and a few people said it went well. So I'm excited. So if you, if you are just joining us now, let us know, were you able to get the bilateral processing in? And then let us know what challenges you're having, because this is going to be a very interactive session.

Awesome. So welcome Barbara, Ella, Pat, Mimi. Great to have all of you here with us this morning. So Leah sharing, I turned from bilateral into journaling. I couldn't continue with the bilateral because I got stuck. So I want you to take that as this opportunity to kind of reflect on, okay, why did I get stuck or where did I get stuck? Right. And that's not a bad thing to do, to, to feel stuck and then say, okay, I'm going to journal this out to see if I can kind of unstick this, right? If I can figure out a way around this or a way to kind of tweak this, that's certainly not a bad thing to do. Right. But then additionally, just thinking about why did I get stuck there? Where did I get stuck? And how could maybe I take a different angle in my next processing session to see if I can kind of work around that?

Yeah. So I think you did a great job, Lena. First of all, taking action on it and then, you know, getting stuck and not giving up and still being like, how can I solve this? Right. So you started journaling and started trying to figure out what You know, what was the point or why, why did you get stuck? So then you, you continue journaling, which is great. And sometimes it takes, you know, working at something from different angles to really, really understand it. So hopefully that journaling went, went well for you. Hopefully it unlocks some new kind of discoveries that you'll be able to bring forward in your processing. And that's one of the reasons why we give you 4 different processing tools is because, you know, different traumas might need different things. And at the same time, you're going to get stuck and there are going to be roadblocks that you're going to have to learn from and overcome. And sometimes you need to kind of work at it for a while to break through that and get to the next level using that same tool. So don't get discouraged. Happens. That is part of the process to get stuck, to hit roadblocks. But just, just keep at it and you're doing great.

Yeah. I love it. So Delaine sharing, it was painful. And then I went to sleep and had the worst nightmare. I did 3 sets. So big, big kudos on getting that work done. Now I want you to see this nightmare, Delaine, as actually a really, really, really good sign. And the reason that it's a really good sign is because we're doing all this processing, right? So you did 3 different sessions of processing, and what you're doing is you're asking your brain basically to open doors that your brain has shut down. And in asking your brain to open those doors, not only are you doing the processing during that actual session where you're doing it, but your brain is gonna continue to process that information after the fact. So after you get done with your close and recap for this tool specifically, for all tools, your brain's gonna do this, but after you get done with your close and recap, your brain is continuing to work. On that thing. And we talked about this, I can't remember if it was Thursday or Friday of last week, rest being an important thing here, right? So sleeping, naps, just relaxation, rest is a very important part of this process. And we had talked about like naps count, you know, so if you're doing multiple sessions in a day, and you're doing a session and then sleeping or reading, relaxing, whatever it is, and then another session, there's going to be, especially in the beginning, a lot of exhaustion that comes with that, because there's a lot of mental effort going into this. And that's a normal thing. And so what's happening is our brains are continuing to process after we close out that session, which is why that happened. Because what happens when we sleep, right? We go to REM sleep and go through our different sleep cycles. And our brain, especially in REM, that's when it's doing that processing. So it's taking that information that you were working on earlier that day or earlier that week, whatever it is, right? And it's bringing that in to try to continue to process it. Now, all that happened, you know, when you have a nightmare, whether you wake up or not, basically what's happening is you're, again, your brain is just processing that information and it might not make a ton of sense. And so if you wake up from that, what I would recommend, Delaine, is actually going— this is something that you can do. This is a, a little bit of a left turn here, but you can use that nightmare as a jumping off point, even if it wasn't necessarily a memory. If it was a memory, great. If it wasn't, great too. You can actually use that as a jumping off point because your brain is attempting to process it.

Mm-hmm.

With that kind of information in that way, if that makes sense, Delaine, let me know. And so, but again, I want you to see that as a good sign because your brain is, is kind of opening that up and it's, it's presenting that and it's trying to process it on its own. That's really, really good. That's like you teaching a kid how to ride a bike and then at midnight they get inspired and they go out and they try to ride the bike and they fall down and you have to go and get out of bed and help them. That's a really good thing. Really, really, really good thing. And I really want to press on that because I know how tough it can be to, to have nightmares and have a nightmare. I, I really, I want you to see how good of a thing that it is that that's happening.

That's good. It is good. And, and it's, it's important to not take it as a signal to stop or to quit or that it's not working or, 'cause it's scary, right? It is scary. And that's part of the reason why we're here is to support you through this, this scary moment and the uncertainty. Because I, I, I didn't personally have nightmares, but Kayleen had a lot of nightmares for different for different traumas, right? For different things that came up. And almost, I, I remember when something new would come up for you, the nightmare would appear.

Yeah.

Right. But you use that as more data, more information to then go deeper in your processing and you stuck with it and it healed the nightmare. Right.

Right.

I don't know if you already have nightmares delaying, but that's something I think about too, is just if you're already having nightmares, all this pain is already inside of you. Right? And the work that you're doing now, even the nightmare, even the nightmare that is attempting to process that trauma in your sleep, you are taking steps forward in your healing that you will not have to take again, right? It's like what we said before, all the work that you're putting in is getting you that, like, one step closer to that goal that you want to achieve, which is full recovery from, or full healing from that trauma or traumas you're trying to process. So it is really important that You know, the distress level can spike up and it can, that, that can mean different things. It could be nightmares. It can mean higher anxiety, whatever it is, but it's just kind of the way you want to think of it is just that pain has been stuffed down inside of you for so long. And now we're opening the doors a little bit and that's going to cause a little bit of a spike. But if you keep at it, and I really hope that you keep at it, you're going to see it go down and down and down and down to a point where you no longer have nightmares. You'll never have a nightmare about this ever again if you keep going, if you keep processing it, but use it as a, as a signal to keep going that you're doing the right thing and it just gets better from here. You know, it, it, it's something you can't really avoid. You know, you can speed up the process by doing more processing sessions, but there's a level of pain that we just need to kind of endure and release to get to the point where we want to get to. It's just a matter of, are we willing to, to go through that? Because it's not a pretty process. You know, this is the thing that like, Some people misconstrue what we say that, you know, when we're positive and we're happy or like we're happy and, you know, we say you can do this and it is possible to heal. Some people misconstrue that, that, you know, we're saying it's all, what do people say? Sunshine and butterflies or rainbows or whatever it is. But it's not, it's not, it's painful. It sucks. Sometimes you're waking up in the middle of the night, you know, from a nightmare in sweats. Or for me, it was just a lot of anxiety and I couldn't sleep. Right. A lot of fear that I couldn't sleep. Also, like Haley said, if you have a nightmare and you wake up in the middle of the night, you can use it as a jumping off point.

Yeah.

In the middle of the night to do some processing. I would do so much processing in the middle of the night because I would wake up and it wouldn't be a nightmare, but it would be, it would almost be like a panic attack that I would wake up from. And I would use that energy, right? That, that seemingly negative energy to then go and process. And after I would do processing sessions in, in bed, and that would help me go deeper in my healing and also help me go back to sleep after the fact. So that's another thing that you can do. Or for anybody who has sleep disturbances where you wake up, you can get processing, processing sessions in the middle of the night. And a lot of times that, like when you don't do processing, you're kind of just struggling with it anyways. You're kind of just awake or you're just tossing and turning and stressed out the entire night and you don't get a good night's sleep anyway. So might as well do some work to process it, which honestly doesn't take that long to then, you know, it all help you get into a deeper and calmer sleep. So that's a really important thing though.

Good sign though. Good sign. And it can be counterintuitive because it can feel like not a good sign, but it is a good sign.

Yeah. Just keep, keep working, keep doing as many processing sessions as, as you can every day and it'll just get better and better.

Yeah. So patch hearing, I didn't try to process. However, I had a trigger situation yesterday that I definitely plan to process, which is super, super awesome. Now, one of the things I love about knowing the processing tools for yourself Is that once you learn them, and you really just need a small level of comfort with them to do this, but once you practice them a couple of times, you'll have them at your disposal, meaning you'll be able to be triggered and then go right into a processing tool, which I think is one of the coolest things because—

Beautiful.

Right then, right there, your brain is saying, hey, this thing hurts. And you're basically saying, okay, great, I can help, you know, and just take yourself out of that situation. Or like Brad said, if it's middle of the night, if it's wake up from a nightmare, Right then, right there, whatever it is, you know, stop and do the processing, which is a really, really cool thing. And I'm not a huge fan of the term like acceleration, right? You can like accelerate. There's no shortcuts in this journey, right? But it's a great way to use those as opportunities to actually be productive on your healing journey and take big steps forward, really big steps forward.

Well, in a sense, it does accelerate your healing because it's out, it's there. It's there ready for you to work with. You don't have to try to conjure the emotion. The emotion's there and you can work with it and you can process it. Because sometimes what can happen is if, if it goes back into, if that emotion and that trauma goes back into a dormant stage or dormant place, it can be harder to, to fully access those emotions. It might take more work and more time to actually do that. But if it's, if it's out, if it's ready for you to work with and you get it done right there, a lot of times you can go very deep into the healing, which is another good, good trick. But Pat, you're doing an amazing job now changing your mindset around triggers, because that's what happens when you know the tools. You don't see triggers as something scary. You see it as something that helps you further your healing. Because all triggers are is exposing what is hurting you, right? It's exposing what needs to be healed. And now that you have the tools to actually heal what's hurting you, all those triggers are opportunities for healing and growth. They're no longer these scary things that you need to avoid. They're these things that are just giving you information or data on what needs to be healed. And that's exactly what you're looking at it as, Pat, which I just want to press on more because that's an amazing mindset that will serve you. Pain is good. Triggers are good. Once you know the processing tools, those are the things that are going to help you become aware of what you need to work on. So that's awesome.

Could you pull out the whiteboard?

Yes. Yes, I will.

So now that you all know the processing tools, right? And again, this is like the conclusion of our bootcamp week. So for those of you who are new, we just did 4 sessions in a row. That's what we do once a month. We'll do 5 sessions in a row on one specific topic. So this is kind of the close to that, which is, is a really good thing. But if, if you're brand new, you might be like, I don't know what these people are saying.

Yeah.

So that, that's why. And tomorrow we'll get back to kind of our round robin thing. But the really cool thing about is once you know the processing tools, Everything is just data. Everything is just data. Sorry, I just dropped my pen.

Oh man.

It's washable, I think. So everything is data, data, data. Maybe you need to process that.

I don't know. No, that's okay.

No, it's all good.

They're pretty old.

Okay. It'll come right out though in the wash. Yeah.

I wouldn't care either way. I know. Still wear them.

And that's the cool thing. So pain triggers any sort of conflict, any sort of thing that you face in your life, whether it's just like a normal human experience thing, Or whether it's a trigger from, from, you know, past trauma, or whether it's trauma, whatever it is, it's all data. And that's really how you can see it, because you can see it and then you can take it up and take it because you know the tools and you can use that data. And for lack of a better term, but for our examples here, plug it into the formulas we give you and get the outcome that you want. And that's a really, really cool thing. So we have this saying, for those of you in Broken to Unbreakable, you'll hear this around the community. It's just data. It's an opportunity to take that information and do something with it. So you get triggered, you're out somewhere, something hurt, something comes up. It's data. That's data we can use. That's data that we need in order to actually move forward.

100%. So great job, Pat.

Love it. Ella sharing, I processed so much since Thursday, which is awesome. Ella, good, good, good job with that.

Good job.

Great job remembering more of my life, the great memories and what needs acceptance and processing. That is beautiful, beautiful, Ella. Big, big kudos on all the processing that you've done. And you brought up a really interesting thing that we have not actually even chatted about yet. And can easily get overlooked with all the work that we have to do in regard to processing. What's cool about processing, and you'll find this the more you process— some people find it early on, some people find it a lot later— is not only do you get to kind of go through the bad and heal the bad and heal from the bad, it also will bring up a lot of really, really, really good things. And the more that you heal, typically the more that that happens, right? Where you may be looking back, you have one view of your life and it's very like painful and dark and, you know, there's just a lot of trauma involved. And as you heal, you might look back and more and more you might start to see some light moments and you might start to see and kind of almost just remember some moments where it was fun or it was beautiful or it was great or whatever it is. Those moments start to shine through more and more and more, which is a really cool thing as well.

Yeah, that's awesome. Great job taking action, getting it done. And You know, that's, it's a beautiful thing. The more you process, you know, the less bad there is and the more good that you can see.

Awesome. Good morning, Bonnie. Great to have you with us. Good morning, Judy. Barbara. Yeah. Yeah. So, so sorry. All that happened in my head. Yep. Delaine asking, so does it make sense that the nightmare was about my trauma from 10 years ago and not my earliest trauma that I was processing earlier? Yes. The answer is yes. Right. And so the reason that we have the steps Or rather, the reason that we do sets when we do the processing in the bilateral stimulation is to refocus our brain on what we want it to be working on at that moment. Because there is, there's going to be more than one pain unless you're an anomaly. There's going to be more than one pain that you need to process, that you need to heal. And so when we're doing those sets, you know, those 12 sets of bilateral stimulation, we're bringing our brain back to say, hey, actually, this is the thing that we're focusing on. This is the thing. This is the thing. Because if we don't do that, it's not that it won't work, but our brain's going to go to different places of pain because that's what we're asking it to do during this process. And it's going to go to different areas. And so what might happen and does happen and is really common to happen is you start to, you know, tell your brain, okay, this is the thing that we're working on. But as you're doing that and you do that more and more, your brain's going to start to say, okay, here are some other things that we need to work on as well. And it's going to almost present those as opportunities to you. And so that's what's happening here is you're working on this one thing. And your brain is saying, oh, okay, so also this thing.

That's it.

It's, and that's the way that I literally think about it is your brain. I actually think about it like your brain's full of like little versions of you. Have you ever seen that SpongeBob episode where it's just a bunch of little SpongeBobs?

I have actually.

Oh, it's so funny. And it's just a bunch of little versions of him, like running around filing papers and super funny. And so that's the way that I think. I obviously know that our brains aren't like that, but that's the way that I conceptualize what happens in our brains as well is there's these little versions of you just holding up these different signs. And so you imagine like 100 different little versions of you running around in your brain and you're trying to get one to focus on one thing, but another one's like, hey, also this thing. And it's just holding up a billboard. It's just holding up a banner, just trying to tell you, hey, this thing hurts. This thing hurts. And so that's what's happening at night is that's— and okay, so that's what's happening at night. And that's what your brain is saying it wants to work on next. And so what I would do, Delane, is I would make that a priority. Because your brain is asking you to make that a priority. So even if you're not fully done with the other one yet, you can, if you want, and now it's totally up to you, just kind of put that on pause and transition your focus to be this thing. So this trauma from 10 years ago, because your brain is asking for it.

Mm-hmm.

And so sometimes what happens, and this might happen in your processing sets, or it might happen like it's happening with you, Delane, where your brain is gonna get kind of stuck on a protruding memory or protruding trauma, whatever it is. Mm-hmm. And it's gonna go there, go there, go there, go there, go there. And you can think about that in any given moment. There's an area of most pain, most hurt, and that's where your brain is gonna wanna try to go. And so because it's going here and because it's causing you distress like that, it's bringing it up like that. You can really just think of your brain really asking you to, hey, please let's focus on this thing. And that's okay. And that's an okay thing to do to shift your focus. 'Cause now that you've started to kind of open that door, your brain is presenting it to you. So let me know if that makes sense, Delane.

Yeah. Awesome.

Joe, great to have you here.

Allow your brain to go where it needs to go. Your brain will make connections that may not consciously make sense, but your brain makes these connections that sometimes you can't comprehend. And if, like Kaelin said, if it keeps going back there, process it, spend time there that your brain is basically telling you, this is the thing you need to work on. So we need to be aware of those signals that our brain is giving us and listen to it and allow our brain to go there. You know, allow our, like, you're basically, your brain is telling you, this is the thing that's causing you like a lot of stress right now. This is the thing that you need to focus on. And it's telling you that through nightmares, right? That's the way that it's telling you. Sometimes it's through self-talk or anxiety or belief or whatever it is for you right now. Your brain is telling you, work on this thing. This is what you need to focus on. So during processing, you need to allow your brain to make these connections. You need to allow your brain to go from this memory to this memory. If it gets stuck on this memory, it means there's something, there's a, there's a charge attached to that memory, a trauma attached to that memory that needs to be processed. Right. So that's a really important thing just to tag on. So you want to allow your brain to do what it needs to do. And you also want to allow your body to do what it needs to do. Right. And by that, I mean expressing the emotions that your, your body naturally wants to express. So a lot of times in, and we have, we've done whole coaching sessions on releasing emotions and how to allow things as they come up. And if you have trouble with emotions, I encourage you guys to revisit those sessions. However, I just wanted to touch on that. It's important to let your brain do what it needs to do and also let your body do what it needs to do and allow it, allow it, allow it, allow it, allow it. Because we repress so much of our emotions and it becomes, it can become such a deep grooved in habit. But if you're unable to allow yourself to express the emotions that need to be expressed, you will not heal. You will not fully heal if you repress all the emotions and you do the processing and you can see things in a new way logically, but you don't emotionally let those Let those traumas go, you're not going to make progress. You're not going to heal. And that was the biggest roadblock and skill I had to develop. And again, most of the, most of what, what I mean by releasing emotions is really just allowing your body to do what it wants to do. Like my body sometimes wanted to shake. My body wanted to cry. My body wanted to, you know, release the emotion in a certain way, but I would repress it. I would hold it back. And I learned that over my entire life and through the, through processing, as you're doing the processing, allow your body to do what it needs to do. Allow your brain to make the connections it needs to make. Get out of the way, get out of the way. Stop judging yourself. You know, if you judge yourself for crying like I used to, get out of the way, let your body do what it needs to do. Let your body cry. Let your body shake. Let your body do what it needs to do. Because that's your body releasing the trauma. That's your body releasing that energy, releasing that emotion. And it's an essential, and I mean essential, I'm using that word very deliberately. It's an essential piece to processing.

Yeah. And it's going to look different, you know, for, for everyone and for everything and for every moment. There are going to be moments that are very, very emotional and then moments where they're just slightly emotional and there are all sorts of kind of in-between things there. So Kim sharing, I process the belief I can't, I can't take people telling me I've done something wrong using alternate hand clenching, which is awesome, Kim. It brought up several memories and that was hard. So really good job doing this, Kim. Really, really super good job doing this, especially, you know, the way that you did it, right? So you kind of got creative in, in that bilateral stimulation, which is super, super cool. What I would— I'm going to give a little 2 cents, and I know it's not really a question. I'm going to give a little 2 cents, Kim, here, because amazing job doing it, to go a little bit deeper with that belief, right? And so again, it's okay that this is a challenge. It's okay that it's, you know, it's a little bit difficult. And if you wanna follow up on this in regard to what was difficult, was it difficult to deal with the hand clutching or stay focused, or was it difficult to follow process or just emotionally difficult? We can talk a little bit more about that, but I would recommend diving just a little bit further into that belief and thinking about how you feel like that represents you, right? So I can't take people telling me I've done something wrong. What does that say about you? Or what is that? What do you feel like that says about you? Meaning like, how do you feel?

Mm-hmm.

When someone tells you you've done something wrong and take that, that is the belief. I feel whatever it is. I don't want to like, I don't want to lead you any sort of place, but how that represents you, what it says about you, if that makes sense. And it's going to, it's going to be wrong. That's important. It's a negative belief. So it's going to be wrong. So when I say what it says about you, it's, it's going to be wrong, but it's going to represent that feeling. And I would then jump off with that. The next time. So good, good job doing that though.

Yeah.

Really good job.

I would also encourage you, Kim, with the hand clenching to, if you're doing with your eyes closed, move your eyes left and right with the hand clenching as well. I think that will help. I mean, if it's working for you, it's great. But I think that will help strengthen the bilateral stimulation for you. And then also I just wanted to, wanted to say, you said it brought up several memories. You said when that was hard, you might've meant, and, and that was hard. when the memories came up. But that goes back to what I was saying before. Your brain is making these connections, right? So you're starting to discover how this one trauma or this one belief has really impacted you throughout your lifetime, right? So your brain is starting to make these connections where like this belief and this emotion is attached to this situation and this situation and this situation and this situation. And you're starting to create this memory network of all the interconnectedness of different events in your life. So basically, again, that's, it's more data for you to use in your processing. You're going to learn more and more about Why you were hurt, how you were hurt, how this has affected you, and all of that will help you. And you don't need to like cling on to all that information, but just be aware of it. And it's all just painting a bigger and bigger picture for you so you can learn more about it and heal more. So you're doing a great job. Most important part, you're taking action, right? You're hitting these roadblocks. You're, you're saying this is hard. That's good. That's good. Every skill that every new skill that anybody learns is hard in the beginning. Every new skill that Anybody wants to develop is challenging. You hit roadblocks, you stumble, you're imperfect. But you guys who are taking action, you're, you're doing the imperfect work. And the goal isn't perfection. The goal is imperfection because all you need is imperfection. You don't need to be perfect in the process. You need to be imperfect. You need to just do the process and you will be successful at this. And remember that healing is guaranteed if you never quit, if you keep processing, if you keep working, if you never accept Impossible as a possible outcome, you will get there. So I want to just bring that forward again too, because it is challenging. And when you're when you're sitting there alone with your thoughts and your traumas and these memories and all this pain, it can be easy to forget that. But healing is literally, and I mean this literally guaranteed to you, guaranteed to you if you don't give up, if you keep going, if you keep working through those roadblocks, and we're here every step of the way to help you through that.

I'm going to use the word inevitable.

Inevitable.

It's a big promise. It's a big word, right? But that, that is what it's going to be. So I love it. Awesome job, Kim. Mimi sharing, Delaine, that's exactly what happened to me. I had to process the oldest trauma before the rest and found out that the first one was linked to a lot of other ones and a lot of other life reactions. So that's awesome, right? And so Mimi's done an amazing, amazing job, as many of you have here, because I know many of you are also in Broken to Unbreakable with us. Of doing a tremendous amount of processing and a tremendous amount of healing and have kind of been through these, these beginning stages in this, you know, I don't know, beginning. I don't even want to necessarily call it confusion, but just stumbling, right? Stumbling and figuring this out. And that's really what it is. And what the cool thing about this is that your brain is just telling you something. All these stumbles and all these kind of like questions and discomfort and all sorts of stuff like that. Our brain is just trying to tell us something and we just have to figure out what it is.

Yeah.

Right. And so I use the example sometimes of, of Shiloh, right? He's awesome and he's so smart, but we don't speak the same language. He does not speak English as much as he sometimes tries to. And so when he's talking to me and, or he's trying to signal me in some way, I have to figure out what it is that he's looking for. And it's my job basically to decode his behavior and his sounds and his, his eye movements. And he's a herding dog, so where he's trying to lead me and stuff like that. And that's all that it is. If, if he's crying or if he's whining or if he's barking or whatever, he's trying to tell me something and I have to figure out what it is. Now, over the years, we've developed a relationship where I know what it is sometimes before he even asks. I know what's going to come next, or I know what he needs, even if he doesn't. I'm like, you need to go and do this thing. And he does, you know? But that's what's happening with our brain. And that's the relationship you can develop with yourself emotionally. All you're doing is trying to figure out, okay, what are you trying to tell me? And you can think of it like that. You can take yourself kind of out of the situation. Imagine that there's just like a little version of you living in your head, right? And you can imagine that that's the you that talks to yourself, that self-talk. Right. And just kind of sit and ask, okay, what are you trying to tell me? And then take some guesses. Some guesses. If you've ever babysat a dog or a cat or a kid, and moms can understand, especially young, young kids, their own kids' language, but to the rest of us, for the most part, it sounds like mumbles. And so the kid is definitely talking to you, but you're like, what? And the mom's like, oh yeah, he's asking for yogurt. You're like, what? No way. Right. And so If you've ever been in that situation where you're kind of an outsider, you might have to take a couple of guesses, right? And so maybe you, you babysit a kid and they can speak fluently to their parents, but you are an outsider in the situation. You take a couple of guesses. Okay, do you wanna go outside? Do you need to go to the bathroom? Right? Same thing with a dog. Okay, are you looking for food? Are you looking for water? Are you looking for a walk? And you just kind of go through these things and you take guesses. And guess what? There's no harm in that guess. You hand the kitty yogurt, he doesn't want it. Okay, so. Let's try again. Okay. And so that's all that we're doing. And I want to kind of bring it back to that because I think a lot of times when it comes to something like processing, we can work it so much up in our heads and it can be this big, complicated, crazy process. And sometimes it can feel like Brad and I have all the answers and we do. We don't have the answers. We work to lead you to your own answer. You actually have the answers and you have a lot more answers than you realize that you have. We have the processes and we have a lot of answers because we've done it, because we know what our own answers were and we've worked with people. We know what their answers were. So we have all this experience to go off of. But at the end of the day, it's still your answer. You still have to kind of give yourself that answer. And so I want to break it down to be that simple, asking yourself, what are you trying to tell me? You're asking yourself that. What are you trying to tell me? What am I trying to tell myself? And then taking a couple of guesses.

So, anyway.

Awesome, Delaine. I'm glad that helps. Awesome. Love it. Larry's sharing, I need to read through all the material from last week. I reached a new point in my physical recovery process, which is great, Larry. I can now restart my daily physical stretches and exercises and restart and reimplement my recovery habits and routines.

Excellent, excellent.

Beautiful, beautiful place to start. So this is a good follow-up, Kim sharing. So it was emotionally difficult, right? Which is normal. That's going to happen, that discomfort. There's a reason that our brain shut the door on this in the first place. And because it's difficult and it was because it wanted to protect you. And now we have different tools and skills that we can use to make sure that we stay protected and also are able to work through this, which is awesome. And then sharing a couple of where, where my comment was, right? What does that say about you? I lose status, respectability, credibility. I lose my authority, my ability to control. People take away my freedom or my ability to act for myself. When I lose respect, I may lose a say in decisions that affect me. Okay. So there's like a lot.

Mm-hmm.

Going on there, right? And so that, that's a big, big thing. Now you put the number 9, you put the number 10 in here in regard to these things. Those are big, big things to work with. And I'm, I'm really glad that you presented them. And I appreciate it.

I think those are sets. I don't know if you— sets of her processing, set 9, set 10, the notes after each set.

Oh, okay.

I think that's what, what she's saying. That was the 9th of my 12 notes.

Oh, okay.

12, I think, steps.

Okay. So, okay.

So, so she's going deeper. Like she has that belief and those, I think how I'm interpreting is like, those are the notes that Kim wrote after the 9th set processing set.

Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, that's, that's cool.

So she is going deeper and she's writing it like, great.

That's really super great. Right. So you're stumbling upon that. So in your earlier comment, you had said, you know, I can't take people telling me I've done something wrong and your brain already is kind of telling you, okay, so this is what it means to me. This is what it, it says to me. Right. It's about respect and status and authority and all these different things and freedom. I mean, you take something like, you know, I, and again, I'm not going to diminish it. I don't mean to diminish it when I say this, but you say, you take something like, it drives me nuts when people try to tell me what to do or tell me that I'm wrong. And so you take it from something that like drives you crazy or gets on your skin or really bothers you. And then it's about freedom. It feels like it takes away my freedom to act for myself. That's an enormous, enormous thing. So that's a, a great discovery that you've had during that process. Now, what you can do here, Kim, is I want you to take all these notes and go over them, which you are, right? So you're already going that much deeper, and you can use these as a jumping off point in your next session, right? So you can use any one of those things.

Mm-hmm.

You know, I, I, I feel like I'm losing my freedom in, and then take a, a negative memory or scenario, or my authority, my control. My respect. I feel like people don't respect me. I'm not worthy of respect. And some sort of negative memory. It could be the same one that you worked with last time. And so you can take those notes and make adjustments based on what your brain is presenting you. Your brain's saying, here are these things. We want to say, okay, great. We're going to use that moving forward.

Oh, to dial that in further, what you can do is you can go through what you wrote down and identify if any of those new beliefs that you wrote down are causing you more distress or seem more true to you. Or seem to describe how you feel more. And then you can use that instead of your, the last belief or the initial belief. Because that's what can happen is you start with something, you take your best guess, and then you kind of work through it and you discover, you know, okay, well, this is more true, right? You know, maybe it's like, you know, I lose my authority or whatever it is. And that really emotionally causes you distress, but in a good way, right? Because that means that you've hit a nerve and that accurately did, or more accurately depicts how you truly feel and how that trauma has affected you. So feel free to use this as— this process as a— it's like an iterative process where you— it's, it's subject to change, right? It evolves and it grows and it changes with the new information that you're getting. You can change the belief if you want to something that is more true to you, or even a memory like we went through on Friday, if it's more distressing than the initial one. Or like, uh, who was it here? Was it Delaine with the nightmares or Delaine with the nightmares, right? Where, you know, her brain is telling her, hey, you need to focus on this thing. You started with this, but it eventually led you to the thing, or led Delaine to the thing that she needed to focus on. So this process can be subject to change. It can evolve. It can be different, but it's trial and error and it's iterative and it changes in time. So be open to that, that change as well, but you're doing awesome. Yeah. I love it.

Great. I mean, amazing job. Right? Yeah, I love it.

It's incredible.

Just like questions about processing in general because you're taking action. You don't have questions really, like deep questions, until you start to take action, right? Which is awesome. Joe, welcome. Joe sharing, I haven't processed yet, only here Wednesday and Thursday of last week. What's today's topic? So today's topic, we're doing kind of a Q&A. So at the end of last week, we had prompted, okay, so for those of you who were here that last week, take the time over the weekend to get some processing in and then kind of show up with questions about the process. So that's kind of what we're doing here today, a workshop question and answer. session here. But I would absolutely recommend, so you were here Wednesday and Thursday, going to Friday's session, and then you'll have all the information that you need to, to start processing in this way with this tool.

Awesome.

So Mimi sharing, Keleen and Brad are the Jedi Masters and we are the Padawans. I love that Mimi calls us the Jedi Masters.

Amy, you're, you're at least a Jedi Knight level.

Well, is, is there, what's below Jedi Master?

I think it's a Knight.

A knight? What's below that?

I don't know.

I feel like Mimi is a Jedi Master now too, honestly. We have a handful of Jedi Masters here.

We do actually.

We have some, some secret Jedi Masters in this group that are just also experts. Yeah. Because they've done the work. This is the cool thing about this. This work is once you've done the work yourself, once you've done the healing yourself, you're an expert at it, like truly and genuinely, you can do it. I mean, teaching it is another kind of challenge, but you're very, very capable of doing it yourself and then articulating that information, because what you find when you actually take action on this, when you heal, is that it's, it's not this big, giant, complicated process that the world can tend to make it out to be. No, Mimi, uh, better than a knight. Oh, what's above Jedi Master?

I don't know.

Yoda?

Qui-Gon Jinn status?

Yoda?

Yoda might've been a master.

Oh, I thought Yoda was like the biggest deal.

I don't know who the biggest deal is. Everybody's better at something, I think.

Okay.

He's pretty dang good. Joe said Thursday you said not to process. So on Thursday we did say that.

We did.

But we said wait until the next lesson so you get a full understanding of the process. So on Friday we, we completed the process or what we wanted to teach you. And then we said over the weekend, take action on this and give it out and, or give it a try and then come back on Monday today and ask any questions.

Yeah, we did at the end of Thursday session, the action was don't take any action yet because you don't have the full picture yet.

Yeah, yeah. We wanted to make sure we explained everything thoroughly and you had a full understanding on how to do it, how to do it safely and in the most effective way.

Friday was the season finale.

Yes, season finale.

So if you have any more questions about processing, feel free to get them in, whether it's about the work that you did over the weekend or if you have just general questions on the process and you haven't done it yet, this is a great opportunity to ask those questions and, or if you have any concerns about doing processing on your own, anything like that, is a great opportunity to, to bring those things up. I do have a few announcements. We have our second session with our health and wellness coach Ryan this Wednesday. I will tell you what time it is: at 1 PM Eastern time. So this Wednesday, 1 PM Eastern time, is our next session with Ryan, and he's going to be doing a session which I'm very excited for On the topic, are you overcomplicating it when it comes to your health? Are you overcomplicating it? His last session that he did was awesome. I got a ton of value out of it. I'm very excited for the session this Wednesday. Now that being said, our normal Recovery Secrets session Wednesday, we are not going to do. So we decided last time when Ryan did his session on Monday, it was so much information back to back. What we're going to do, no Recovery Secrets session on Wednesday morning and just Ryan's session Wednesday afternoon at 1 PM, which again, I'm so excited. Excited for. If you haven't seen his first session, I highly recommend you go back and do that. It is in the platform. He has his own tab under the platform, or you can click on one of the tags, health and wellness, and it will pull that session up because it was a ton of fun. So we're looking forward to welcoming him back next week. We have our 100th Recovery Secrets session coming up.

Wow.

Which is so, so super duper cool. And we don't really have anything special planned, but we, we need to plan something special. Because 100 sessions, many of you have been here for 100 of them.

Do a giveaway.

A giveaway. Okay. What do you want to give away? I don't know. Okay.

Something cool.

Something cool.

Okay. Maserati to you.

Do I get to enter?

To you.

Okay. So we'll be doing a giveaway for our 100th Recovery Secrets session, which will be next week, which we're going to be redeemed 1,000 years from now. Yeah.

It's a coupon. You get a coupon for a Maserati 100 years from now. 1,000. What'd I say? 1,000 years from now?

I think 1,000 is a better option for us.

This really is Acidic paper that just disintegrates, that disintegrates in a thousand thousand years. Yeah.

All right. And the coupon's going to be at the top of Mount Everest.

Yes.

Just kidding. So a lot of fun things coming up. We also have a community social night coming up. Believe if it's not next week, it's the week after, and we're going to do a theme which is caps hats hats. So hats is our theme. Remember they did that in the Q&A once?

Yes.

Believe this was Mimi's doing on the Q&A.

Yep.

Mimi's idea again for a themed community social hour. So that's coming up. So you can look in the events section on Facebook to see what's coming up there. We did our game night, which was so much fun. We had people win prizes, which is super, super cool. For those of you who haven't emailed me back, please email me back that you win, for those of you who won prizes, so that I can get your prizes out to you, which we're very excited about. But we're going to do some sort of giveaway on, on our 100th session. Anyway, maybe a hat. No Session Wednesday, only Ryan's Session at 1 PM.

Just give away a hat.

We can give away a hat.

It'll be a surprise though. Also, I want to say this. Mimi said what we were talking about before, can't be better than you both. And I want to say, yes, you can. And I think that should be the, the, whenever you learn from anybody and about anything, I think the goal should be, be to, and I don't like, I feel, and I'm not, I don't like calling myself like a master. This is just a saying, and I'm not trying to imply that I'm a master at anything, but The student should always exceed their master or something like that. Or like there's some kind of saying that's like that, that I really like because it's easy to put yourself in a position of, I'm not like, I'm learning from this person. I'm not as good as this person. I'm not as smart as this person. I'll never be as smart as this person because they know so much more than I do. And it's good to, I think it's good to learn from other people and also know and understand that you can be better than the person that you're learning from always. And I think that's how it should be as well. It's like the people that you kind of teach or help, I think at some point, hopefully that they can, they can, you know, surpass you. And I think that's a, I think that's a beautiful thing. And I think it's a, there it is. Shamika, thank you. The apprentice should always outgrow their masters. And I believe that. And I think everybody's capable of that. And I used to have that mindset of like, when I would learn from somebody, I'd like, I put them on this pedestal that they're basically like superhuman. I can't do that. They can do that. Whether I knew that consciously or not, but I think that's an important mindset for everybody here to hold is like, we're just human beings, you know, born from our mothers, we're babies and, you know, we're here where we are and everybody else is capable of getting here and much, much, much further than, than we're at. We're kind of just here to share what we've learned, the lessons we've learned along the way of our healing journeys and to hopefully help, help other people achieve that same thing. But I think that's an important thing.

Yeah. Massive in the making at the very, very least, but massive. Yes. So Kim sharing, how about a free private coaching session as the giveaway? That's a great giveaway. That's a great giveaway. Maybe we'll do a number of giveaways on our— we'll do 100 giveaways.

Yeah.

100 Maseratis.

No, 99 Maseratis, 98 Maseratis, 100 seconds of coaching and one session, one second of coaching for everybody.

No, for 100 people, for 100 people. Ella sharing, humble Brad, yet both of you have mastered yourselves, and so you are masters and we are masters. Yes, absolutely. And that, like I said before, is the cool thing about this, is you become the master when you do this. And honestly, it is such a great feeling. And I'm not going to be as humble as Brad because I want to paint the picture, and I wanted to do this for a while, and we don't really spend a lot of time on this. I figured we have a couple of minutes here at the end to really help you understand That life after that, like that this is worth all the work and life after this is amazing.

It is very different.

Amazing. It is so different. It is fantastic. You get to wake up every day and be calm and be excited and be happy and at peace. And you get to have conflict with people without it actually even feeling or being like conflict in any regard. It just feels like a conversation and you get to grow emotionally and socially and in all these different areas. But it is just constantly really nice. I don't even have the words to describe it. It is really super duper nice. You have your back. You know that you're capable, worthy, lovable. You feel confident. You know, you feel sure of taking the next steps and sure of yourself in, in whatever kind of you're wanting to do, even if it's something that you've never done before. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's just, it's a really, really neat thing. And, and you all are capable of having that, you know, like Brad said, like a lot of people will kind of put us on a pedestal and, and think like that level isn't possible. It's not possible to be happy and excited and at calm and peace or at peace all the time. And it, and it really, it super is. It's possible to have the relationship that we have, which we painted a very, very, very long time ago, where we don't fight, where we don't raise our voices, where if we have conflict, you, you would not know that it was conflict. It's that level of communication, because that's all that it is, is communication. And it's really simple to overcome that conflict, and it's a really cool kind of relationship, and relationship with yourself and the world around you and all sorts of other things. So yeah.

Well, I don't see that as you not being humble, because you're saying it's— that's all possible. You're just kind of delineating the difference between not being healed or being having PTSD and what healing is like and saying, hey, it's possible to do that in simple terms. But like, it is very different and it is very challenging, right? But we're all capable of doing that. If you saw, if you saw all the dark moments, one of my favorite quotes by Michelangelo, maybe Shamika, you can help me with this one again, because I don't know if I'm going to get it right. If you, if people saw how, how long it took me to achieve my mastery, it wouldn't seem that incredible at all. Something, something along those lines where it's like, People saw how much work it took me to achieve my mastery, it wouldn't seem that amazing at all. And if you— it's like, I love that because the people that we look up to in any arena, if you saw what they went through, if you saw the, you know, the time they put in, the effort they put in, the sacrifice and the pain they went through to achieve what they achieved in any arena, it wouldn't seem that miraculous. 'Cause you're like, well, yeah, obviously they achieved that because look at what they did to get there. And the same applies to recovery, right? It's easy to see us where we are now. But you didn't see the years of us fighting and throwing things and literally punching holes in walls. Like we were at that point and breaking down and, you know, having all these, these, you know, negative and suicidal thoughts. Like you're not seeing that part of us, but that existed. We went through that. We already went through that part of our journey. So it is painful. It is hard. It is challenging mastery. If you want to become a Jedi master, you have to go through the pain. You have to go through the struggle, but the benefit of This community, these lessons, these sessions, these coaching sessions is you get to bypass and skip many of the roadblocks and leap ahead further than you know, further and faster than you know we we previously would have been able to think was possible. So hopefully that was a Ella says love Michelangelo. I think I think I got it mostly right.

I think you you got the gist of it. Yeah, you did. I don't know if you got it verbatim, but you got the gist.

I'll just say I got it perfect. And whoever, you know, translated it from, you know, Italian just made the translation wrong because I got it right.

It was their error?

Yeah.

I actually think it was Michelangelo's error. He just said it wrong.

He said it wrong. Yeah.

He said it wrong. So amazing job. Anyway, there's a lot to look forward to after healing. I promise you it's all worth it. And then some, you might not even be able to paint that picture in your mind or believe that it's possible. Brad painted the life that we have now a very long time ago. And for a very long time, I did not believe in it. I did not believe it was possible. I was working towards it, and I was kind of doing a, you know, shoot for the moon, land in the stars type of a situation, you know, just hoping that if I aimed for it, at least we would get close enough to, to be better than it was, not knowing that we could achieve it. But there's a lot to look forward to, and I promise all the pain, all the discomfort, all the effort is worth it. It is worth it. And I don't know I'm sure we don't say it enough, and I'm sure you don't say it to yourself enough. It is worth it, and you are capable, and you can do it, and you can get to that life. You're not going to be stuck in this forever. You're not going to have to do this healing forever. It can seem like that when you're in it, but it is not going to be forever. Even if it's a year or two years of doing the work that we're doing right here, it is not forever. And like Brad said, we— you get to skip over a lot of the hardship because We're doing processes and stuff that we've taught over the last number of years and, and of course worked on ourselves. So there's a lot to look forward to. Keep at it, keep rocking and rolling. Lorena, I see that you did a processing session. That's amazing. Big, big kudos on that. And I love that you said you broke the resistance. So for those of you who have a little resistance, break it. It doesn't have to be with this tool. Break it with something because that's the only way you're going to get there. And you really are going to get there.

I got to run.

So Brad has to go.

But great job, guys.

Great job today. Love you. Believe in you at the very, very, very highest level. Remember to keep taking action. Action is the most important thing and the only thing that matters at the end of the day. It does not have to be perfect. You do not have to cross every T and dot every I. Take some action, break the resistance. You can have the life that you, you can't even imagine it right now. Even when Brad painted that picture for us a long time ago, and that's the life I started aiming for because I didn't have a vision myself. Once I started to create my own, of course, I, even as I imagined it, it was, it's that it's 100 times better. So final words here today, go take some action. Amazing, amazing job. Now we're going to be back to our round robin for the rest of the week. Remember, no session from us on Wednesday, only Ryan's session, 1:00 PM Eastern time. Looking forward to it. Anyway, love you all. Believe in you. Look forward to seeing you bright and early tomorrow morning. 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 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.