What are you willing to do to heal your PTSD?

Welcome to today's Overcoming PTSD podcast with me, Brad. And over here is Kayleen, my very good friend.

Very good friend.

My very good friend and very good life partner. Uh, today we have a great, uh, episode planned for you guys. Kayleen has a really great topic. I think it would help a lot of you guys. And, uh, yeah. So what are we talking about today, Kay?

Well, first of all, I'm excited to be doing this again. It's been a while since we've done a podcast and it has, it is so awesome. And I just want to to chat quickly about, like, the reason that we're doing this is because so many people listen.

Yeah.

And we get emails constantly, like, about the podcast, the podcast, the podcast. So, we're excited to be back doing this and really hope to bring some tremendous value to all you listeners. So, we're gonna be back putting out new content, which is awesome. So, today I thought we would have a conversation that You know, Brad and I, I don't know if it was a week ago or more now, we were having a conversation about one of the ways that we used to decide if we were gonna be coaching with someone, decide if someone was the right fit for coaching with us. And this morning I recorded a masterclass for our membership program on this topic specifically. And really the topic itself is centered around like, what are you willing to do to heal your PTSD, right? Like, that's, that's the question centered around. And I'll give a little bit of background story. And Brad, if you want to share a little bit about this too, I had told the story this morning when I did the masterclass that, you know, we used to do the survey. Do you remember that?

No. You don't remember the survey?

The survey for, uh, uh, the phone, uh, for the phone consultation.

Yes.

And one of the questions we used to ask on the survey, so we used to do a survey and then this is how we, you know, used to do coaching, right? And then we used to get and do a phone consultation and decide if someone was a good fit to coach with us. And one of the questions on the survey, if memory serves, or this is the story I told at least this morning. Now I'm hoping memory serves and it's true. One of the questions was, you know, what are you willing to do to heal your PTSD? Do you remember that?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. And we were having a conversation about this a couple of weeks ago, thinking back to The majority of people answered that question as what?

I think, I think the question was like, how committed are you to yourself and your recovery? Right. But like almost every single person, cause no one, no one, it's kind of a, it's kind of a funny question. No one wants to say, no, I'm not committed. Right. Like you're not going to go through this form and fill out. And most of the time it's hard to admit to yourself that you're not committed. So basically 100% of people who filled out that form. Said, I am 100% committed and I will do whatever it takes to heal.

Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So maybe my— I had a little twisted when I was thinking about it. Right. So, but the, the point being so many people, like the majority, the vast majority of people, maybe like 95% of people said something along those lines of like, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to heal, to get rid of this thing. And Brad and I were having a conversation about this, like I said, And what we've seen over the years is that most often that was not the case. People were actually willing to do very little to heal their PTSD. And so that's what I did my training on this morning.

How did you know that? How'd you know that?

How do I know that? Yeah.

Well, from the beginning, only about 50% of people actually showed up.

Right.

Oh, you remember that?

That's right. Maybe even less at that time. This was many years ago now, but Didn't show up for the scheduled phone call.

And nothing against those people, but it's, it's the reason why it's important to talk about, I think, is because it's, it's so easy to, you know, we always talk about like honesty, how honesty is so important, you know, in your relationships, but most importantly to yourself being honest to yourself. And a lot of times we, uh, we lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel better in the short term. But it hurts us long-term because we just live this lie. So we're like, and this is just one lie that a lot of people tell themselves, like, I am committed, I will do whatever it takes. I'll, I'll do whatever it takes for as long as it takes until I heal. And you, you've probably heard people say that, but when it really comes down to it, is that true? Are you being truly honest, or are you just saying what you want to be true? And I think that is such a huge distinction.

Well, and I like that you say that because it's like, are you just saying what is expected of you, right? Because as someone who's in pain, like, you're to say, well, I'll do anything to get out of this pain because maybe you're hurting your family and yourself and your future and your kids and all these things. And so the expectation is that you say, I'm willing to do absolutely anything. But again, we found that that wasn't the case. And like Brad said, it's important to talk about because you really need to get honest with yourself about this. And I think for so many people, they say like, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. But they also fear what it takes. And the training I did this morning was on—

And that's just one aspect.

There's a lot of things, right? Yeah, there's so many things that go into this.

You fear what it takes and yeah.

And the training I did this morning was on being uncomfortable, right? And so you're gonna have to do things that you don't wanna do. And I'm not talking about like facing your fears in this huge way that's like scary. And I'm not talking about like exposure therapy or anything like that. I'm just talking about like instead of watching that movie, you have to sit down and you have to learn and you have to, you know, kind of like self-reflect and you have to process your past. Like you have to put the time in. And for a lot of people, even that alone, they're not willing to do. They're not willing to spend 30 minutes a day. They're not willing to spend 60 minutes a day. They're not willing to spend a couple hours a week on this. And in the beginning, honestly, it was like, just to be honest with everyone here, like it was really demoralizing for me because I was like, wait a minute. Like I wanna help you. You said you wanna be helped. You said you're willing to do what it takes and you're not willing to get on the phone with me, which, you know, there are other reasons for, right? That can be a scary, a scary conversation. But, you know, if and when we ended up coaching together, it was like, you're not willing to dedicate even a little bit of time a day. Right. And so it comes down to a couple of things, right? Pain and pleasure and getting good at, you know, doing what's uncomfortable, but understanding that like this takes work. And I think a lot of people don't, don't like that and they don't want that. And it's uncomfortable to hear. And when I was doing the training this morning, I kept repeating like, sometimes my job as a coach is hug and kick in the butt at the same time. And like, this is one of those moments. Like, this is not a walk in the park. This takes work. This takes effort. This takes time. This takes dedication. You need to make this a priority in order to be able to achieve it like any great goal. And that happens as a daily process, right? So. If you're not willing to watch one less episode of television or spend one less hour on social media and forfeit that for spending an hour focused on yourself healing, you're not gonna heal, right? And that, I think, like, it creates this negative feedback loop for people where they just get more and more demoralized. And, and we live in a world where it's like dopamine hit after dopamine hit after dopamine hit, magic pill after magic pill after magic pill. And you come to kind of expect that and lose sight of the fact that You need to— and I'm going to use the word sacrifice, but like in the scheme of things, we're talking about a very small sacrifice. You sacrifice 45 minutes a day for being healed forever, and I think people don't see that.

Mm-hmm.

Well, for a lot of different reasons. You might not believe that full recovery is possible. You might not be able to see that hopeful future, and you might not be able to correlate, okay, 45 minutes spent on this every day for the next couple months gives me freedom forever. You don't have to spend that 45 minutes a day forever.

I think that's that's that's a really really great point, and that's straight from the master's mouth. 45 minutes a day, like do you believe that? Right? Just 45 minutes a day that you can heal. Honestly, most people don't even do 45 minutes a day. But we have we have a um I'll keep her name private, but we had a client who did one hour a day, and after three months. Right. A little over 3 months, between 90 and 100 days, between 90 and 100 hours of processing, doing an hour a day, cuz she was consistent with it. And that's something we always talk about, being consistent. She healed some of the most complex, like crazy traumas from her past that she's held, held on for her entire life. So once you know the tools, once you know the, the processing tools and you're consistent, it doesn't take that long at all. But it takes a lot of It takes a lot of inner work to even get to that point. And this first thing that we're talking about today is like, it's about being honest, right?

Right, right.

So it's like, well, why— I like going back, I want to go back to that because it's like, well, why, why do you need to be honest with yourself in the beginning? Why is it like— because why would, why would we even talk about this topic if it's not important, right? About someone just on an application that, you know, Maybe it doesn't have that big of a— it might not seem like it has that big of a bearing on this person's life, but it does, right? Because it shows a deeper, um, pathological way of thinking, habitual way of thinking, right?

Right.

Uh, a habitual way of lying to yourself and being dishonest with yourself. And that if you don't attack it, right, if you don't really confront and be honest with yourself that you're being dishonest with yourself. See, that's like the first thing. Admit to yourself and be honest to yourself when you're being dishonest to yourself. That's kind of like the first step. But if you can't admit that, you're not going to actually, one, be able to identify what the problem is. You won't be able to ask yourself the question, why am I not committed? Because you believe you're committed, right?

Right.

Why am I not doing the actions I like I, I need to take to heal if I already believe that I'm committed and doing everything that I possibly can to heal, you know?

Right.

Because if you have that belief that I'm doing whatever, I'm doing everything I can to heal, which a lot of people do, and we have, excuse me, a lot of experience with that, of people seeing that, it's like, how much are you gonna do if you believe you're everything? If you believe you're doing everything you can, you're doing the best you can, And there's nothing wrong with those things, believing that you're doing the best you can. But it's going to prevent yourself from really identifying and being like, why am I not committed? What are the things that are preventing me from taking these steps forward?

Right.

Is it fear? We talked about it could be fear. I'm afraid of the future. I'm afraid of healing and then getting hurt again. I'm afraid of taking steps forward just to fall back to where I am right now.

I'm— Some people are even afraid of being healed because we build this identity around being hurt. And, and as weird as it sounds, it's very, very common for people to— usually at the last stage of the journey, they've done all this healing, they've made so much progress, and they're like right at the finish line, they stop. And they stop because the unknown is scary. And right now you live in a known of pain, and you know what to expect, and it's painful, and it's terrible, right? But it's known, and it's comfortable in a sense. And the unknown, even though it's pain-free, you know, in comparison, is scary. And a lot of people are fearful to lose the identity of someone with PTSD, someone who's experienced trauma, someone with CPTSD, whatever, someone traumatized, someone hurt, or You know, you know, broken. All these things like our identities that we build around ourselves, and some people are afraid to lose that, right? And so there's, there's that element too. So there's a lot that kind of goes into play with, you know, like this, this mindset. And like Brad said, it's, it's really important to talk about because although in the scheme of things, does it matter that, that one person didn't answer the phone? No, but what is concerning is like the global mindset really on healing, on PTSD. And again, this is like, I know it's our first episode back in a while, but it's gonna be a hug kick in the butt moment, right?

Well, that's just who we are.

That's just who we are, right?

Okay, that's who we are because that is exactly who I was with Katie.

That's what you need. And that's what you need. And like, we're not afraid to tell you the truth. And this is the truth, right? And it's— I try to deliver it as softly as possible because I'm empathetic. But the reality is most people, you know, will say, you know, I'm doing everything I can. And when we dig in a little bit deeper, I want, you know, and I want you to think about this right now when you're listening. What are you actually doing? What are you doing? Are you going to therapy once a week? That's great.

I was gonna say you're avoiding the reality. Well, you're avoiding the truth and we can get the situation right.

So it's like, everything I can. Are you spending time on this every day? Are you investing in this? And I'm talking about financially, right? Are you working with a coach? Are you investing in it time-wise, right? Are you listening to content like this? Here you are right now investing time-wise. Great job.

Are you reading books? Are you implementing those?

Are you taking action on those things, right? And so like there's different like layers to this, and I really want you to reflect on that because there was a point in my journey where And Brad will tell you, and you'll learn more about this as we, you know, do more and more podcasts. Like, he was, he was kind of my coach, right? And he was like, first of all, you can do this. Second of all, you're not doing everything you can. And it was very frustrating. And I had to really self-reflect in that moment and say, okay, well, what am I doing? Because I'm doing everything that society tells me I can. I'm going to therapy once a week. They won't let me go more than that. Right? And I'm reading books on trauma. And I'm— I was thinking about this the other day. Do you remember I was trying a bunch of different things, right? And different things to do before bed and different like routines and progressive muscle relaxation and yada, yada, yada. And there was a time period, right? So I really, really had a hard time with nightmares. And we were reading something online. You might've even been reading this and you sent it to me. And it was like, Drink a glass of warm milk before bed. Do you remember that?

Yeah.

And I was doing that, right? And so I was doing a lot of these little things, but—

That's so silly. This, this is such a great point.

Yeah.

Because it's such a waste of time. So much of the stuff out there is such a waste of time. Like, maybe you are doing a lot of stuff, but maybe you're doing the wrong stuff. Like drinking a warm glass of milk before bed. I mean, maybe There is some type of placebo effect or something that helps you sleep or whatever. I don't know.

Right.

I don't know the science behind warm milk.

Sure.

Uh, maybe it makes you feel like a young baby again.

Uh, a young calf. If you were breastfed by a cow, by a cow, by, yeah.

If you had a very odd childhood of growing up on a farm and your, your mom was lazy and just left you outside in the barnyard, uh, maybe it reminds you of that and that gives you some strange comfort. But the point is, like, you might be doing a lot of things, right, that don't actually do stuff. And we did so much of that.

We did so much of that. And so many people do so much of that.

That's the craziest part of this. It's like—

And you fall into this trap, right, where you convince yourself— and this is where you need to get really honest with yourself— you convince yourself that you're doing things to heal. And there's a difference between things that are cathartic and things that are going to help you heal, or things that are Like keeping you busy, right? Busy work. I remember in school, I hated busy work. It was like, okay, we have a sub for the day and he just assigns us math problems for no reason, for no reason, right?

Yeah.

And what you're doing is busy work. You're doing things to keep your hands busy. You're, you know, you're— and some of them are good, right? Maybe you're meditating and you're doing progressive muscle relaxation before bed. Those are good things. I don't want to discourage you from doing them. Even drinking milk before bed, do your thing, right? But Really look at what you're doing, right? Because if you're really wanting to heal, if you're really wanting to like have true freedom from this, look at the actions that you're taking and asking, are they getting me closer? Because like art, art is great, right? Nature is great, very cathartic, and in some ways can be very, very healing. And at the same time, you need to ask, is this getting me to the place I want to be going? Is drinking milk before bed getting me— is that helping me solve the root problem, right? And when you really start to think about it, you start to see how many things that we do on a daily basis that are coping and that are not dealing with the root problem. So, and coping can be good and bad, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like doing progressive muscle relaxation, doing butterfly hug. Like we teach a lot of different coping skills because they're, they're powerful. And coping can be bad. It can be drugs and alcohol and all sorts of different things, but what we really want to make sure that we're doing is the work, the deep core work that's getting to the root of what you're going through. And I think people get stuck in this trap of like, oh well, I'm going to therapy once a week, maybe even twice a week if, you know, your therapist allows or has schedule, you know, that you can do that or whatever.

Or if it's deemed safe.

Yeah, if it's deemed safe.

By the therapy gods.

And then you think that like that's enough. And that's great. I don't want to diminish anyone for actually going out there and trying, right? Because you're, you're doing something and that's really important. I don't want to take I don't wanna take that away. And at the same time, I really want you to understand that you can do more. And by going to therapy once a week and doing coping skills throughout the week, maybe some self-reflection, maybe some journaling, while they aren't bad things, they're not— you're not doing everything that you possibly can. And this takes a lot of work. I think that's the reality that like, we just wanna be straight up with you.

It takes a lot of consistent work.

This takes a lot of consistent effort, which means you're gonna have to chip away at it every day. Now that doesn't mean if you, get 12 days in a row and then miss 2 days, like you're going back to zero. You just need to be as consistent as possible. And so 30, 45 minutes a day, can you, 5 days a week, 5 days a week, can you, are you willing to put that time in? 30 minutes a day. I want you to think about how fast 30 minutes goes by every single day, right? And for the Americans listening, the average, and we're American. In case you can't tell, the average American, right?

I'm like real American. I'm like Mayflower American.

Yeah, Brad's one of those Americans. Average American—

That's what people always say when I say that. It's like, oh, you're one of those people.

You're one of those people, yeah. Watches, I think it's like 4.5 or 5.5 hours of television a day, right? And so I'm not even asking you to stop watching television. Can you forfeit 30 minutes of that? Right? Or maybe, maybe you're really busy during the week, right? Between kids and partners and, and work and all this stuff, you like literally don't have any time for yourself. Maybe can you stay up 30 minutes later, get up 30 minutes earlier?

Yeah. Maybe you can ask yourself the question, how can I make time?

How can I make time for myself? Can you spend 3 hours on a Sunday morning?

Because then, then it comes down to like, that's like another thing, another lie that people tell themselves. I don't have time for this. Well, it's like what you're doing, you have, everybody has 24 hours in the day, right? How you spend your day shows me what your priorities are. And it's okay if recovery is not your priority right now, but you have to be honest with yourself the way that you're spending your time. Recovery is not your priority. Because if healing was your recovery or healing was your priority, or, you know, up there in your list of priorities, you would be doing it. You'd be taking actions on it. Your actions are reflective of your beliefs. It's one of the best ways to determine what your true beliefs are is to look at your actions. Like, what are you doing?

Right.

And I'll tell you how committed you are or how you prioritize that.

And I think another, like a splinter of this conversation is really thinking about, right? So at the beginning of the session, at the episode, I kind of talked about, okay, like short-term and long-term, right? For those of us, and I've been in this trap, I have been in this like instant gratification pleasure trap for sure, right? When you get home from work, you know, it's going to seem more enticing and easier and more pleasurable to, you know, maybe grab a drink from the fridge and turn on the television instead of, you know, go into the— into your room, pull out your recovery workbook and work for 45 minutes. it's gonna seem more enticing short-term to, to, you know, go to the TV or watch a movie. But thinking long-term, you know, if you don't chip away at this, you're not gonna get to that goal. But I want you to think a little bit further about that, right? Because Brad's saying like your time will show where your priorities are, right? Think about how many areas PTSD affects. So maybe you have kids, maybe you have a partner, maybe you have pets, right? Maybe you live alone, but you live in some sort of community, or you work, right? So we are all in contact with people in some way, shape, or form at some level. Think about the amount of time PTSD actually takes from your life and what it actually takes and the toll it actually takes. Because I remember doing— I don't remember how long ago this was, Brad, but we We did, I mean, many, many years ago, like a time study on PTSD.

Oh yeah, we actually did this.

We actually did this, and I forget like the literal number that we came up with, but it was like every 30 minutes or something, we had an alarm go off and we tracked, okay, like how much time PTSD was taking. And we splintered it out to every area, right? So like if you're anxious, that PTSD is taking that away. If you're depressed, that's PTSD. If you lash out at a partner, that's PTSD. If you're isolating, that's PTSD. If you miss work, that's PTSD, right? If you snap at your kids or you're not present with your kids, you're distracted or you're numbing, you're isolating, you're using, right? You're addicted. All of that's PTSD. You're having nightmares, you're not sleeping well, you're, you know, insert whatever it is that's going on in your life. And like, think about the toll that that has because it's not just, okay, you lashed out at your partner, you lashed out at your kids, you weren't fully present, you didn't make the healthy meal that you wanted to, you didn't show up to work today. It's a lot more than that. Your future is dependent on what happens today, right? And I want that to be an empowering thing. Like, your future is dependent on what happens today. So you achieve your goals based on what you do today, right? So if in 2 years you walk across the stage and someone hands you a diploma, that's not based on what you did 2 years from now. That's based on what you do today. You show up to class, you do the assignments, you do the work, you pass. If 4 years from now, you're standing on a podium and someone puts a gold medal around your neck, it has very little to do with that moment. It has everything to do with the 4 years leading up to that, meaning it has to do with today, today, today. What did you do today to train, to practice, to focus on that goal? So it's not just you lashed out at your partner. It's you lashed out at your partner and that's gonna continue to damage your relationship, affect your relationship, affect their self-esteem, affect your self-esteem, affect, you know, your intimacy, your family unit, your the energy that you have with each other, the way that you speak to others, the thoughts that are going on in your head, which affects your job, which affects your kids, which affects your livelihood. I mean, like, I could go on and on and on, and I really want to press on that because you're not just choosing TV over recovery. You're not just choosing, you know, even if it's something positive, you're not just choosing to go for a walk, or you're not just choosing to go out to the bar. You're not just choosing to, you know, go to dinner with a friend. You're— and I'm not saying to not, you know, do things that make you happy, but you're choosing things over your life. And for some people, that's literally what it is. And I like— I want to get that serious because it's that important.

Yeah.

Like, when you're choosing, whether it's addictions or just something benign, whatever it is, over spending time focused on your healing, focused on your recovery, when you're not willing to invest And when I say invest, I mean, you know, financially or otherwise, but really what I'm talking about is time. When you're not willing to invest, you are choosing something else at the expense of your life. Yeah.

Long-term.

Long-term.

Long-term. And I think it's, it's time to get like real. It's time to think about your life and kind of this, this whole concept and bring it, bring it to you. It's like, what is one specific area that PTSD effects for you, the listener. Like, that's something that you should be thinking about right now. So for me, an example in our life, you know, if I made the decision to, you know, play video games over doing an hour of processing or an hour of journaling or an hour of releasing emotions or whatever it is, I was choosing to have the same fight with Kayleen. For the rest of my life, which would quite honestly, it would've ended in breakup or divorce if we made it that far in our relationship. It would've led in divorce. It would've led, if we had kids, it would've led to breaking those kids' hearts, having to tear our family apart and probably ruining a big chunk of our relationship with our kids. And also it meant like ruining my relationship with my family because when I still had PTSD, I would literally, literally hide away like on Thanksgiving at my parents' house, my childhood house where I grew up. When everybody was sitting around the table a few years in a row, I was up in my childhood room too scared to be around anybody. And imagine that compounded out over a lifetime. I missed so many family opportunities with my mom, with my dad, with my nephew, with my niece. And those are some of the greatest relationships that a person can have in their entire life is their family. And that is what I was sacrificing to my PTSD. So what I want you to think about is like, you can see what I did there is I extrapolated it out. years, if things don't change right now, what's going to happen? Or if I keep doing what I'm doing right now and I don't change, I don't do anything different. I don't heal. How will my life look? How will that affect the people around me? And that is such a powerful exercise. I'm like looking at Kayleen. She's like, almost, you're almost tearing up a little bit. I got tears in my eyes.

Yeah.

Whenever I talk about family, no, whenever I talk about kids, that always gets her. Um, but Yeah. You want to do it for you because, you know, everybody's different. Everybody's life is different and know that, like, again, it's like, we're here to be real with you. We're here to tell you the truth and be honest. And this is what, this is how we went through our life. And this is why I like the podcast because we can have conversations like this and we can talk to you guys the way that we talk to each other. And that is how we were able to get through this.

Right.

Was being honest with each other. And that's what we tried to do so hard. And I find myself that sometimes My kindness gets in the way of being honest because I think the honest— because sometimes I think being honest would hurt somebody, but I've worked on that a lot and we've worked on that a lot. So if you couldn't notice, we try to be very, very honest. Um, and you need to be very, very honest with yourself if you, if you want to get through this. Um, but yeah, whenever you make a choice to not heal, you're making the choice to keep things the same and you know what's going to happen. Or hopefully you can start to think about what will happen if things stay the same long-term. So you were making the decision for that long-term outcome. You were choosing that over the short-term pain of healing, which actually, if you, if you learn the processing tools, right, if you learn, cause this, it's, it's a, it's just like learning a bike. It's learned. It's like learning. I play the drums. It's like learning the drums or a musical instrument.

Yeah.

You suck in the beginning. You suck. Like, like, you're so bad at the instrument in the beginning, right? But like, no one tells you you suck. You're like, no, you're new. Well, maybe someone does.

No, no, no.

They're a dick.

I'm just remembering, like, my parents listened when I learned how to play the guitar.

Or when you had the toy guitar.

Oh, well, the toy guitar disappeared mysteriously. But when I learned how to play the guitar for real, like a couple years later when I was like finally playing out and like playing gigs and like Playing real songs, they were like, "We're so proud of you," like blah blah blah. And we're they were just like, "We're just so happy to not have to hear Smoke on the Water ever again." Like that, you know that song? Ba ba. And I was like, "Yeah, yeah." That's the first song ever because that's the first, and I just played it for years and years. And I want to take a quick step back for a second because I think that story that you shared was really really powerful. And I also, you know, for those of you listening, this is not an opportunity to beat yourself up for the things that you've missed. This is an opportunity to change your future, right? And so I don't want you to sit here right now and say, oh well, I've missed so many years or decades, or I've missed all these opportunities with my family. Like, it's okay to be in that pain for a little while. I— and I also, I don't want you to sit in it so long that you beat yourself up and you hate yourself for it. I want you to say, okay, well, that is true, that is true, I have, I have missed those opportunities, or there's been a lot of pain there. And right now I can make the choice to change the future so that that doesn't continue. So I don't want you to— like, I want you to sit there and pain is— it can be a really good thing. And I also want you to shift your focus and your emotion to, hey, I now have the opportunity. Now that I'm aware of this, I've acknowledged it, I've embraced it, I'm going to change the future. And I really want you to wear that on your sleeve and in a really good way because it's really powerful. And Excuse me, we're drinking seltzers. To be in a position of, hey, I can do something, and to find yourself and realize you're in that position of, I can do something. And one other thing I wanted to mention, you know, Brad said, you know, you have to go through the short-term pain of healing. Like, when he's saying pain, he's talking about discomfort, you know? And we have a saying like, short-term pain, long-term pleasure. And what we're talking about is instead of choosing television, choose to do processing. Instead of choosing, you know, to, to eat and watch a movie, choose to go on and watch a training video, right? That's what we're talking about. So when we're talking about pain, we're talking about like, you go to your workout and it's uncomfortable, right? That kind of pain. And what's cool, and for those of you who work out, you'll know this, you learn to really love that discomfort, right?

Mm-hmm.

Every morning I go to my workout and I'm like, I don't wanna move, it's 5:30 in the morning. And then I start moving and I love to sweat. I love to be sore. I love when my muscles are burning. burning. I love that discomfort because I know what it means. It means growth. It means longevity. It means more energy. It means better sleep. It means I'm stronger. I'm fitter. I like the way I look. Right. So like these things turn into different things. So I just wanted to kind of press on those, those points there that I thought were important.

Yeah. Yeah. And when I said pain, you know, I mean that in a very general sense, like you learn to love the process. Like quite literally, once, once you get good at healing and processing, Where if you want to learn more about processing and stuff, you can go to overcomingptsd.com, put in your email address, join our newsletter, and, you know, get all of our stuff there. But once you learn the processing tools, it's— and you, and you, and you practice it a few times. This was— this is where I was going with my analogy to like learning a musical instrument.

Oh, right, right.

In the beginning, you're bad, right? Right. You're supposed to be bad, right? But then your skill develops. And just like in processing, your skill will develop. And then at a point in time, instead of going to sit down in front of the drum set and being frustrated with every single, you know, swing of the drumstick, you, you hit your first groove, you get your first beat, and then you're like, wow, this is fun. This is easy. I want to do more of this. And the same thing happens with, with processing and healing because you like something clicks inside of you and you like, you really learn the processing tool. You learn how to. release those emotions and change your beliefs. And you're like, oh my gosh, I feel so much better. So after every processing session, it's, it becomes, it starts to become like an art. It starts to become kind of like playing a musical instrument. It becomes more, you get into like kind of more of a flow state and you're able to go through it, enjoy the process because you're loving yourself more. You're caring about yourself and you're, you're, you're taking care of yourself. And at the end of the processing session, You feel so much better. Also, side note for anybody who says they don't have enough time, little hack. If you can't sleep in the middle of the night, do some processing, right? I tell this to our clients all the time.

Mm-hmm.

Or used to on the Q&As, um, where they're like, what do you do when you have sleep problems? I'm like, get up and do some processing, right? Process those emotions. And this is why it's so essential to learn those processing tools. And there is, there is, there is a, there is a movement, and this is the movement that we're trying to really create here of, of self-healing and self-therapy. And that's why this is so important, because if you are dependent on a therapist, if you are dependent on a practitioner or counselor or whatever, blah, blah, blah, insert doctor or anything, you have to be in the room with that person. To be healing, to be processing. If you aren't taking recovery into your own hands and learning these processing tools, your life and your recovery will be in the hands of somebody else. That is just the way it is. Right.

Are you hearing that? I just paused Brad because she put her finger up.

She's like, hold on.

Hold on. Are you hearing that? Right. Because I really— would you repeat the last thing that you said?

I would. Yeah.

If you remembered. Right. So Your life is in the hands of somebody else, right? And I want to go back to what you said before that.

Thank you.

You're putting— is that what you were gonna go back to?

I don't know. We'll see.

Okay. You're putting your life in somebody else's hands, right? And I don't want to just like gloss over that. To us, like, we know how powerful and important that is, but I want to take a step back and like just hone in on that for a second. You're putting your life in somebody else's hands, and we're not saying that you shouldn't have help in this. Like, literally, that's what we're here doing, right, is, is giving you a hand and giving you the tools and the resources to be able to do all this. Yeah, but you need to be in the ultimate control. That's how you can spend more time. That's how you can spend more than an hour a week.

All of this is kind of predicated on the concept of self-therapy, of self-healing. If you don't have that, if you don't know the tools, which is like, we are the number one proponent of that. We are the number one supporter of self-therapy, of self-healing. And we push on it so hard because it's changed our lives.

Mm-hmm.

And it's changed the lives of, you know, the thousands of clients that we've had. And we believe that it is the future of healing, that if you are going to— and it like, if you, even if you look in the, in, in, in, in the past, or if you just think about it logically, even if you are going to a therapist, you need to be the one in your mind doing the work. Right? Even if somebody's guiding you, ultimately you are the person. It's just that we don't realize that we're the one doing the work. We attribute all of the success to the therapist and not to ourselves and the work that we're doing.

Therapy only works if you show up, and I'm not talking about physically, right? You need to mentally show up.

Yeah. And, and again, I'm gonna, I'm gonna touch on it again. We don't— we are not against therapy. Uh, we've had a lot of negative therapeutic experiences, but we've also had some extremely Positive ones, extremely positive ones. So we're not saying don't go to therapy, find a good therapist, do that, but also know the limitations of that. And that is what's not being talked about.

Right.

In society today. It's not talking about the limitations. Like everybody says, like the, the, the general advice nowadays is like, go to, go to therapy once a week, talk therapy, exposure therapy, EMDR, do that once a week. Maybe you'll get better. But I've talked to so many other therapists that who came in, who actually came into our program, who actually had PTSD. Mm-hmm. Um, because a lot of people who go into therapy, uh, go into it because they, they have struggled with a lot of things. They want to help people. Um, but they, they come into our program and they hear us say, you know, they, we talk about, you know, therapy and how you get dependent on it and you know, how you need to become a self-healer and do self-therapy on yourself. And they're like, oh my gosh. And we talk about full recovery, and they're like, oh my gosh, wow. I've been taught to teach people how to manage. Like, I literally— a client, a client of ours—

That's right.

Who is a therapist, he told me the story of a client of his when he was a therapist. Actually, I don't think he's a therapist anymore, but, um, he, um, He said, wow, like, that's exactly what I was doing when I was working as a therapist. And everybody in— he was in like a larger group. I forget what you call that, like, uh, like group therapy? No, no, like, uh, it's like, it's like a business that has like 15, 20 therapists underneath it. It's like a therapy group.

I'm not sure.

Whatever. Uh, you guys know what I'm talking about though. Um, but he's like, wow, everybody in my therapy group or this entire business has this belief because he—

He has this belief. Just can you reiterate the belief?

The belief that the way you deal with PTSD and trauma is to help people manage it. The goal was management, right? So they had the belief that the goal to help people was management, not healing, not recovery. And if— and This is what blew his mind. And what he would do literally is he would, he would go to somebody with PTSD, bring them to like a baseball game. It's like, okay, let's distract them. Let's give them something positive to do. And there's nothing wrong with going to a baseball game and having fun and getting out of the house. There's a lot of really good things to that. However, that was like the primary intervention, the primary intervention that he did. He's like, wow, that's, that's like what we did. And he realized the goal was off. Um, and imagine then, okay, imagine you're that guy who's putting your trust in the hands of these professionals who are taking you to a baseball game, right? That's why you need to think for yourself. That's why you need to go through this journey yourself, because the truth is you can't trust fully that whoever you're going to, like, you, you can't. There, again, there are some fantastic, amazing, incredible therapists, but there's In my experience and from what I've seen, heard time and time and time again from all of our clients, there are more bad ones than good ones, but there are good ones that can really, really help you. But imagine you're putting your hands into someone, put it, imagine you're putting your life, right? And going back to the, to what I said before about, you know, about the choices that you make. If you make the choice to watch TV, Versus the choice to heal. You are making the choice to keep your life the way it is now and into the future and how that will affect, you know, your family. And I talked about how it affected my family. Um, you are putting your family's life in the hands of this other person.

Yeah.

Right. Who may have a faulty belief system that will limit you on how far you can go. And that's really what it is when somebody has the goal of management for you. They set your goal. Hey, your goal is management, right?

Right. Yeah.

Our goal is like, there is no ceiling, right? Our first goal, our first goal is full recovery. And then from there, the sky's the limit. Cause why would you ever want to put a limit on your potential? That's something I never imagined. I never, I never, uh, I never understood. It's like, how could you put a limit on my potential? I don't even know my potential. How could you limit my potential?

Right.

How could you tell me what I'm capable of when I don't even know what I'm capable of? Nobody knows what I'm capable of. I can do so much and you're telling me that I can't. And then I leave.

I want to tell a quick story.

And then I'm out the door.

So on that same wavelength, right? You know, we're all only human, right? And this is not a dish session on therapy or anything like that. Like, again, there's so many good therapists and also a therapist is only human. We're all only human. So it's really about what you bring to the table and what they bring to the table and protecting your own interests. Because at the end of the day, you know, you're one of many clients, right? And they have to have some boundaries within their own profession and their own, you know, practice, right? So when I— Brad's fiddling with something. When I always—

Distracting her.

When there was one therapist that I went to, and I remember I had, I think, just dropped out of college, right? And I was really, really struggling. And I went to see her and I was sitting down and she was kind of like, one of the first few sessions, like, what are your goals? Right? And I was like, well, my biggest goal is, you know, I want a big family. I'd like to, you know, get married and have 5 kids. You know, and this is what I said to her and, you know, obviously make enough money to support those kids. Kids aren't cheap. Right? And to be able to, and I told her this, to be able to outprovide my parents. Now my parents had had 2 kids, me and my brother, and they did a wonderful job providing for us and then some. And they did amazing. And I wanted to out-succeed them, but I also wanted more kids. And I remember her looking at me, you know, and again, just dropped out of college. And she kind of looked at me and she said, well, you know, maybe we should work on that. It's like, okay. Like, this is my— one of my first experiences with therapy. And I was like, okay, well, like, what Okay, great. Like, I was like, I'll follow your lead. What's like, what's next? And she's like, well, you know, maybe we should set our sights on something different. Right. And, um, you know, maybe what would be good for you, you know, considering basically your PTSD is to, you know, just, just live a really simple life and not worry about out-succeeding your parents and not worry about having that many kids and just, you know, keep going to your, your minimum wage job. Again, nothing wrong with these things, but not what I wanted.

Right.

Right. And, you know, just, just focus on, you know, doing the best that you can, you know, within those parameters. And I left that session. And what I think was most scary to me about that was I was considering that, you know, after meeting this woman only a handful of times, I would— and this had been my goal for a— my goals for a long time, you know, as long as I could remember, those were my goals.

Mm-hmm.

I wanna outdo my parents. I wanna outgive them, out— Make them out, kids them.

Yeah. Well, at this point in time, you were, you were in the most desperate point in your life.

I was. Yeah.

Right. So you were, and you were putting your trust into somebody else, which is also a very scary thing to do in the beginning of your journey.

Yeah.

Right. When you, when nobody knows about your PTSD, you haven't told anybody, you haven't opened up to anybody in your entire life, which, which was the position you were in. That's, that's scary. You were very vulnerable and open to, to things like that.

Yeah. And, uh, and it was scary because I considered it, right? And then, um, we were together at the time. Brad and I were together at the time. And I think I, I had either called you on the way home or had gone home and like talked to you.

And I say, fire her.

It basically, you basically, he was like, what? He was like, no, that's nonsense. And he said it so like matter-of-factly that I was like, oh, okay. Like, I didn't know it was an option to be like, oh no, I'm— nope. Like, I'm gonna just keep doing my thing and ignore my therapist's advice. Like, I kind of thought therapist was like holy grail. Like, this is the person you need to like— no, seriously, like, this is the person you need to like, uh, take every word that they say seriously and do everything they say. And I was committed to doing anything and everything that she said. So that's, you know, that's the internal struggle I was having.

Which is an attack on mindset to a degree.

Right. Right.

Cause you, like, if you really want change, you have to, you have to, you do have to take in somebody else's input, right? But you don't take it in 100%. You take it in, but then you bounce it around and you, you, you knock it against all your other beliefs and you really stress test it to see if it makes sense. And that one just so obviously it just didn't, it did like, it just bounced off immediately for me. I'm like, that is so insane to lower somebody's goals like that. First of all. Like, okay, I can understand. Okay. That's a great goal. A first, like the first step, let's focus on step 1, right? Or Kayleen, like you're not going to get there tomorrow. Right. If you want to say that, which I wouldn't even, I wouldn't say you're not going to get there tomorrow. I would say you're going to get there someday if you do the right things and you're committed and you're going to work, right. You're going to get there someday, but let's focus on step 1. Step 1 is blank.

Right.

Right. So you don't lower the goal. You encourage the goal. You encourage the striving for that next level. You adjust the course and then you adjust the steps. Right. Like everybody's probably seen that meme. This was actually, I think Bonnie posted it in our community. Yeah.

I saw that in the community. I think it was Sharni actually.

Oh yeah.

It was Sharni.

It was Sharni. Um, of, of 2, like the image, the illustration of, you've probably seen on social media, 2 ladders. Right. One ladder's— one ladder has like a million rungs in it, like a million steps.

And the other ladder has like short, close together, close together rungs.

And the other one has much fewer rungs that are spaced much farther apart, which represents small steps versus big steps. Right. And it's the small, consistent steps that are what's going to change your behavior, your habits, your lifestyle, so that you ultimately achieve where you want to go in the future.

Right.

But I love that story. That's such a great story because it really does exemplify, and we do so much talking against therapy. Um, this was, I was, when I was fiddling on the ground before, I was thinking about, you know, it would probably be, uh, good to do an episode on the benefits of therapy.

Yeah, we should.

Because we do, because I mean, cause we've been hurt a lot and a lot of our clients, maybe not hurt, but misled. We've been misled a lot.

Yeah.

We've been. I don't like saying the word lied to because I think that just kind of, to me, it like—

It makes it really—

To me, it shouts like, oh, it's a conspiracy. I've been lied to and like whatever, like victim mentality. But like, I've been misled. I put my trust in someone.

Therapists are doing their best.

A lot of them are very well-meaning and they're just, yeah.

And, you know, in our program that we have a whole lesson on therapy and like when to do that and how to do it and what to look for and what to stay away from and stuff like that. You know, so So that I think would be a good thing because I don't wanna always paint as bad. I have a lot of friends who are therapists and they're amazing and they're amazing. And you think about people who go into the profession of therapy, like they're so selfless and they're amazing people.

Yeah.

And typically they've experienced— the reason that they do that is 'cause they know what it's like to be in pain and they know what it's like to have someone be there for you or need someone there for you and not have it. That, that's an important thing too. And so just to round out that conversation on like therapy, right? And that story, I think the most important thing to, to think about is like, okay, what am I currently doing and what do I need to do to get to my goals? Right? So if you're currently working with a therapist, ask them like, where are they taking you? What kind of goals do they have? Ask them if they can teach you the processing tools so that you can use them independently so that you can use them on your own. And so that really leaves like the pace of healing completely up to you, which is a really, really amazing thing because you can go faster or slower really based on what you're willing to do and how you're willing to approach the whole process, which is awesome. So I hope you liked today's episode. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so we can reach more people who need help. And we look forward to seeing you next time.