88: Mold & The Mind - Defeating unconscious defense mechanisms

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr, and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Foreign.

What's happening today is probably going to be a little bit shorter of an episode, but I wanted to do this one because it's not so much about, like, finding mold or proving that it's there, removing it. It's more about understanding ourselves and how we could kind of get in our own ways. In our own ways. In our own way. Yeah, in our own way of.

Actually, like, addressing a problem and almost like, stopping ourselves from even acknowledging it. All right, so I wanted to talk about this stuff because I feel like if we can understand how we think, you know, ourselves, then we can start to recognize if we're doing things that are basically downplaying issues, but, like, it's happening subconsciously, almost. We don't even know that it's happening. And so the reason that I. That I got the idea to do this topic is that I'm reading this book right now that's called Read People Like a Book. I've always thought this topic has been super interesting. I've. I've never actually, like, fully committed to really learning how to understand.

The different types of understanding how people work. Right. But I really have been interested. So whether it's like, body language or thought processes or psychology or defense mechanisms, facial expressions, like, all these things, and then being able to kind of look at someone and kind of have a feel for what's going on with them so you could better communicate your message to them, I've always thought it's super, super interesting. I just haven't ever really, like, spent the time to get into it because it's, you know, it's like a. It's an art. I feel like if you're really going to get good like that there. There was a show, like, years ago, it was called Lie to Me. It was on Fox. And that's kind of what this guy did. He was a guy who basically could, like, read someone and figure out what was really happening. So, like, they would lie to him, but he would actually know what the truth was. And that was like, the premise of the. Of the show. And he was, like, solving crimes and doing things or whatever. Right. And I always Thought it was cool. So, anyways, so I got this book. It's called Read People Like a Book. And I'm in chapter. I want to say I'm in chapter one, actually, of this book. So it's really early, and there's. It starts talking about. Well, there's a few things, but the one thing I want to talk about is defense mechanisms that people have. And it's talking about our ego and how we do things to protect our ego so we don't feel psychologically less. Right. Like, we don't feel like that we're losing or anything. It's almost like we're trying to protect ourselves from feeling like that we're not good enough for something. Right. Or that something's wrong or whatever. So I took a couple segments out of this. I wrote them down, and I was just going to kind of read through them. And why. Why I wanted to do that is because two of these in particular I see happen all the time. And as I read through them, it just kind of, like, clicked. I can think of so many individual stories of clients that were doing either one or the other. And I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, this. This is really happening, and it's happening all the time. And I don't think that even a lot of people know that it's happening. And so, like I said at the top, like, if we could try to open our mind to almost, like, look at ourselves when something is happening and trying to be aware of it. It's a lot of, like, what meditation is about. It's about, like, being aware of your thoughts so then you can actually handle them properly instead of being a slave to your thoughts. Right. So. And I'm, you know, I'm into that, too. So when I saw this, I was like, oh, this is just another form of awareness. But being aware can actually allow us the opportunity to change those things if we want to. Right. So I'm going to read you a couple. I had three segments here that I actually. Or a few more that I actually, like, wrote out. I was, like, reading and handwriting them out while I was doing it. So I'm going to do kind of this intro piece. And this is more about what I was just kind of setting up. Okay, so here we go. All right.

Defense of the ego. This is one of our most powerful motivators of why we do things. It's mostly unconscious. We act to guard our ego from anything that will make us feel psychologically less in doing so. It is so powerful that it allows us to Bend reality and lie to ourselves and others, all outside of our conscious awareness. Okay, so that's the first segment, so think about that. Basically, what's happening here is that we, as just a human, our ego is so fragile that we will literally change perception in our own mind to make something seem like it's not attacking our ego.

It allows us to bend reality and lie to ourselves all outside of our conscious awareness. So again, we're doing all this stuff, and we don't even, like, know that we're necessarily doing it, you know?

So, for example, like, this happened to me too. There are stories that I tell about my childhood that I know are not true, but I have forgotten what the true version of the story actually is. Do you guys have anything like that that's happened? Like, I definitely know that there are things that have just become part of my. Basically my history now. It's like I almost rewrote the computer memory chip in my brain on certain things that have happened in my life. And now I don't actually know what really happened. And the only reason that I know that is because I was aware that I was doing it at the time. But now I've done it so much that I actually don't remember some things the real way they actually happened. This is lying to ourselves. This is bending what reality was. I did it more purposefully, I guess, in certain cases. But then you think about, well, like, why did you do it? Well, the only reason I would do something like that is because I didn't like what the real truth was, right? So if I didn't like what the real truth was, I created this other version of the real truth that I felt more comfortable living with, right? And. Or sharing with other people. And that became, like, the truth of what happened, basically.

But so when I read that, I thought that was kind of interesting because I know that I've done that. But if I know that I've done that a couple times, like, how many other times have I done that? How many other times have I, like, remembered something differently? And this is just talking about memories. This isn't talking about something that's happening in the current time right now. This is just talking about memories, right? So I know that this has happened for me. And again, I know that there are times I've done it, but. But has it happened other times? Okay, so that was the first piece. So I read that I was like, whoa, this is crazy. Our minds and how we protect ourselves is so interesting. Like, we know of this fight or flight mechanism. Everybody's heard of that, right? Your body, you basically have this self defense mechanism that happens and you go from. If you start thinking about kind of the mode that you're in, there's sympathetic and parasympathetic response. Sympathetic response is kind of when you're always in the fight portion of it or the fight or flight portion of it. Sympathetic or parasympathetic is when you're kind of calm and you're not like on edge. Right? And if, I don't know, some of you may not have found some of these different things yet, but our body really can't heal properly if we're constantly in a sympathetic state. If we're in that fight or flight state because our cortisol levels are spiked, different things are happening. Our body's not able to recover and heal properly. We need to be in the parasympathetic state for that stuff to happen. Well, that is a physiological response to something that's happening, right? So our body. So I'm talking about a physiological response that our body is naturally doing that's unconscious, that we're not controlling, right? It's just happening. This same thing happens in our mind, right? So we have a version of that that's kind of happening in our mind. So you're talking physiological now we're talking mental. Right? You know, and.

So there are different parts of our body, but our entire body is meant to respond and act in different ways and do things that we don't even know that we're doing. I mean, think about it like you're breathing right now. You have no idea that you're breathing, except now because I just told you that you're breathing. Or do you know how many times you blinked in the last amount of time that I've been talking? No, but you're probably going to realize the next five times that you blink, because I just mentioned it, right? So the difference is that now you're aware of your breathing, now you're aware that you're blinking right now how many times you blinked, right? But now if you're aware of your breathing and you're aware that you're blinking, could you go 10 seconds without taking a breath or blinking? Sure. You could if you wanted to, right? Because you're aware of it. So you can make that change. That's kind of what I pulled from this, right? We have all of these things that our body does, whether it's internal, whether it's thinking and mental stuff, whether it's physiological stuff that just happens and we don't think about it. We are this giant computer that has all these processes running on automatic pilot that we don't think about. Okay, but we can, we can know what's going on if we want to. Right? And so when I read that first paragraph that I read a minute ago, it just made me think of all of that stuff, and I was like, oh, okay, okay, cool. This is really neat. Right. And so then what this was getting into was basically a lead into defense mechanisms that we have.

That help us basically process situations in a way that we don't hurt our ego. Right. Because our ego is very fragile. And so the two. There were several of them, but the two big ones that I wanted to talk about were denial and rationalization. Those are the two that I'm going to talk about. I actually talk about rationalizing things a lot, but this is a really cool way to kind of break it down. I. I'll get to that in a second, but let's just talk about denial. So I'm going to read this now. This is straight out of the. Out of the book of what I read. Okay? So denial is the most classic defense mechanism because it's the easiest to use. So, for example.

I stopped reading already, as you can tell. So, for example, they talked about examples that were in here. Let's say that it was like you work at an office and you had like a report or something that was done, or performance review or something that was done or whatever. And the report comes and it says something bad about you. And then the immediate response is, well, I don't believe that. Report, report's wrong. That's. It lies. Right? That's. That's what denial is. Basically. It's like, nope, I don't believe that. That's not true. That's not happening. Right. Just kind of a hard stop. So that's what they're talking about. Okay, so I'm going to get back into reading. All right. What is true is simply claimed to be false, as if that makes everything go away. Acting as if a negative fact doesn't exist. Sometimes we don't realize that we're doing this, especially in situations that are so dire, they seem fantastical to us. Okay, take that piece out. All right. Especially in situations that are so dire they seem fantastical to us, we act as if a negative fact doesn't exist. Listen, guys, if you're listening to the show, you're probably. Your health is being impacted by mold issues. That's probably why you're listening, right? That is a dire situation. Okay. So when I saw that line, I was like, oh, my gosh. This is, like, so directly related to what people are going through. It's more prevalent in situations that are dire. If we are sick and things are impacting us, and now we're talking about mold, and we're talking about things that you, you know, most of it, you can't see, and you got this invisible stuff floating around, and it's hard to wrap your head around it. The easy, easy, easy path out is just to deny that that's what's happening and that's what this is saying.

I just think that was so powerful. So let me keep going. All you have to do is say no often enough, and you might begin to believe yourself. That's the appeal of denial. You're actually changing your reality where other defense mechanisms spin it to be more acceptable. This is actually just changing your reality outright. This is the most dangerous defense mechanism because even if there is a dire problem, it's ignored and never fixed. All right, think about that. Do you think you got a mold issue in your house? Have you had water damage before? But you're not seeing mold on the surface? So you're like, oh, that can't be there. It's not true. Mold doesn't grow there if I can't see it. Done. End of story. You've now dismissed it out of your mind. And as it just said here, this is the most dangerous defense mechanism because even if there is a dire problem, you had a leak. There's stachybotryous black mold growing above the ceiling, and you can't see the growth because it's on the top side of the drywall. There's your dangerous, dire problem. It's ignored and never fixed because you've just denied that it's happening. Even though I've given hours and hours of talking and I've shown proof and I've all these things that tell you that that's actually not true. It gets denied. Okay, so that I see this happen all the time now. A lot of times, it's actually not happening with you. And when I say you, I mean actually you listening to this podcast, right? Because if it's you, if you're listening to this podcast, you kind of get this stuff, right? You're not going to deny it unless you're listening to Hate Me. I guess.

Most people that are listening are kind of on board and understand this is an issue you're trying to learn, you're trying to understand. Take action. Okay, so this denial piece is going to more often or not happen with your family or your husband or wife or partner. That's where this is most likely going to come in. Okay, so.

Let'S.

Want to. I'm trying to think of how to. How I want to talk about this. All right. I'm not going to do any more on this. I'm going to go to the next one, and then I'm going to maybe talk about some things that might be able to help.

Change the mechanism almost. And this is all just. I'm not an expert on any of this. This is just me working with a bunch of people and trying to understand how you can maybe open someone's mind to something. So that's it. Okay, so that's denial. So do we get denial? Right? Denial is, this isn't true. This is not happening. End of story. And when you write it off like that, it's never going to change. Okay, so that's denial. All right, so here's the next one. It's rationalization. Okay, I'm going to read now. Rationalization is when you explain away something negative. It's the art of making excuses. The issue remains, but it turns into something unavoidable because of circumstances out of your control. All right, I'm going to pause there. Okay, so this is different, right? So denial, you're saying there's no problem at all. Rationalization, you're saying this happens all the time, so there's nothing I can do about it. It's this external thing that is just going to happen and it's the end of the world. This is such a big thing with people when it comes to mold because, like, oh, mold is everywhere. You can't get rid of it. Okay, so here are. Here's two examples. Let's go back to the denial piece. Let's talk. Let's say it's your partner, your husband or your wife or something, right?

Denial is them saying, listen, mold isn't an issue. You're crazy. You're sick because of something else. It's not mold. You're nuts. Denial is typically them saying that they don't believe it's a problem at all and that it's in your head or something like that. Right? That's. Or it just has been misdiagnosed and they got to find someone else who knows better. That's denial. Rationalization is. Yeah, but mold is everywhere. There's nothing you can do about it because every house you go into is going to have a mold problem. They're kind of acknowledging that it's there, but they're writing it off because it happens all the time. It happens everywhere. There's nothing they could do about it. That person has a better, and this is just my opinion, that person. The person that's rationalizing has an easier path to getting to the point where they understand that there's something going on than the person who's straight denying. Okay? Because if they're rationalizing, they're at least admitting that it is a thing. They're just thinking that there's nothing they can do about it, basically. Right? So now what you have to convince them is that, no, there is something you can do about. There is a way where it's not everywhere. Right? Whereas on the denial front, you're actually having to open their mind to it in the first place. So they're two different things. Okay, so let me keep going. So I'm going to jump back in here. Okay, so I'm going to read back a little bit. Rationalization is when you explain away something negative. It's the art of making excuses. I love that line, the art of making excuses. It's so good. The issue remains because it turns into something unavoidable because the circumstances out of your control. That's what I just read. So here's the next. Here we go. Bottom line is that anything negative is not your fault and you shouldn't be held accountable for it. Now, this is interesting. Okay, this, this sentence is interesting because a lot of times when I go into someone's home and I show them that there's water damage problems, and a lot of times in areas that are common, let's say under the sink, you pull stuff out of your sink, there's water under there. Most times there is. And a lot of times there's a mole problem that is hidden in the cabinetry under the sink. So here, that line I just read, bottom line is that anything negative is not your fault and you shouldn't be held accountable for it. Okay? People think that when I tell them that, that it's like an indictment on how they keep their house or something, that I'm like, I'm mad at them because they allowed this to happen. And so then they rationalize it because they say, well, it's under a sink. Leaks happen under sinks all the time. There's nothing you could do about it. Right. They're rationalizing how often it happens and how frequent it is. Which, by the way, it is right. In order to protect themselves from, like, their, their ego, from thinking that they made a Mistake. It's not about telling someone they made a mistake. It's not about telling you that, oh, there's water damage under the sink. You really effed that up. Like, that's not what it's about. Right. It's about just understanding where the problems are so you can take action on them. It's not about placing blame. And so that line is really interesting because that's kind of what it's saying. So if we know that, then when we're trying to approach someone who is in this rationalization mode, it's almost about, okay, we get it. It's no one's. It. It's no one's fault. It's not our fault. This. This is normal. Right? If they come back to you, this is how I say it. Like, because this comes up to me all the time. Yeah, but it happens all the time. Like, so I'm like, yeah, it does. And it's not saying that you did anything wrong. It's just, it happens all the time. So really we should actually be taking it more seriously. When you think about it that way, if you know that something happens all the time that's going to cause a problem, then you should just be more aware of that thing and try to prevent that from happening. Right. So it's not that we did anything wrong. It's not an indictment on how you keep your house. Here are the things that you can do to keep an eye on that moving forward. But as of now, the problem is there. And so the goal is to get rid of the problem. So then you can maintain it moving forward. Right. And that's about. That's kind of like how I answer that. And then that helps, you know. So think about these different pieces and what's happening, like behind the scenes, like the gears turning in someone's head. And then you think about a response that is basically supporting what their thought process is, but then helping to guide them to what the answer should be. Right. Okay, so here's the next one. I'm going to keep going with this. So here we go. It's extremely convenient, and you're only limited by your imagination. Okay, so let me go back. Bottom line is that anything negative is not your fault and you shouldn't be held accountable for it. It's extremely convenient, and you're only limited by your own imagination. What it's saying is that you could come up with any excuse ever. And it's okay when it says you're only limited by your imagination. You're rationalizing stuff. You're rewriting reality. You're changing the way that you remember things. You're bending. You're lying to yourself. You're bending reality, all this stuff. So whatever you can think of to make it rational exists. It doesn't have to be something that could really happen. You could rationalize with some crazy thought, but you're rationalizing, right? Again, when you're rationalizing, you're still kind of admitting it's there. You're just coming up with an excuse for why it's not something that you can handle, right? So there are some examples here. This is about the workplace in different things. But one was you're rationalizing like your poor work performance review because your boss hates you or because people are plotting against you, or because the technology that you have to use is limiting and it's not your fault the technology sucks, or because you know what, there's traffic for my house every day and that's why I'm late every day or whatever. Right? In all those circumstances, though, you're rationalizing.

The assessment that you're not good at your job. You're not just flat saying, bullshit, I am good at my job. That's not what you're saying. You're rationalizing why you're not, right? So you see the difference between denial and rational, right? So let me end here on this piece. Rationalization is what your ego needs to protect itself. It ensures you never have to face failure, rejection, or negativity. It is always someone else's fault, right? That's the end of rationalization. So if you rationalize stuff, you've never failed, you've never failed because it was never your fault. So that's what rationalization is. So when it comes to the house, it really. It's not about someone failing if you're, if you're, if you yourself are rationalizing, which you may be. This is something that I've seen some of my clients actually do on their own. They rationalize stuff. They. They understand that it could be causing a problem, but they're. They're saying, oh, well, sinks leak. There's nothing I can do about it. There is. You just don't really know. And that's fine. You know, it's what we talk about. We help you understand different things you could do if you've listened to other episodes. I talk about specifically sink cabinets and pulling stuff out of your sinks every couple weeks or month and looking under there and having plumbing. There are things you can do as a preventative, right? But when you rationalize, well, sinks Leak. So cabinets are always gonna have a problem. What you're doing is that you're saying it's never my fault.

And this is this negative thing and there's nothing I can do about it because there's nothing I can do about it. It's never gonna get fixed. And that's not true. Right? So that's kind of what. What that's all talking about. So I thought. I thought those two things were really interesting. So there's a couple more quotes that I had here that I was going to call out. So the first one here says, denial and rationalization results in truth and honesty getting thrown out the window. What an awesome quote. What an awesome quote. So someone who's denying, someone who's rationalizing, you're being dishonest with yourself. You're literally throwing the truth out the window and replacing it with a falsehood that you like better. Like that's what you're doing, right? And.

I just really loved that quote, so I wanted to write it down. Here's another one. Intellectual honesty requires you to first defeat your natural tendencies in order to be honest. This is really cool. And this is kind of what I was getting at at the beginning. So our natural tendencies are to protect our ego. Our natural tendencies are to deny something is to rationalize something. So our subconscious basically feels better about itself. Okay? If we're not aware that this is happening, then it's never, ever going to change because it's just a natural tendency that we have. So intellectual honesty, which. I love that term too. I love a lot of stuff out of this I've been reading. Intellectual honesty requires you to defeat your natural tendencies or your natural tendencies in order to be dishonest. Like, we just need to be aware of this stuff. If you're sitting there and you start making excuses for something, sit back and think about it. Am I rationalizing this or is there really like a real excuse for why this happened? I'm not saying there's never an excuse for something. Right? Of course there is. But like, am I rationalizing what's happening? Am I kind of bending the truth a little bit just in order to say that I didn't make a mistake? Or at least to feel like I didn't make a mistake. Because listen, you could have a leak in your house. And this is another thing. There's another way you rationalize stuff. Let's say somebody had a leak, they had a remediation company come out and they just did a crap job like most of them do. And there's still a problem there, right? And then I come out and I'm like, you know, I really want to retest this area. I just know how crappy remediators are, and I want to make sure they didn't miss anything, right? And even, let's say you let me do it, they're like, cool. You know what, Brian? I dig what you're saying. Let's do it. I'm like, cool. I test it, it comes back. There's a big problem back there. Okay? So we now have data that's actually proving that there's a problem back there. So how. How do you. How do these two things work in that scenario? Let's talk about denial. Your test is wrong. I had someone remediate it. It's wrong. The test is wrong. Whatever. It's. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. It's wrong. Here's rationalizing. Well, I mean, we had it remediated already. We paid $5,000 to have this thing done. And you know what? I guess it's just never going to get better because we already tried. You know, we did what we can. It's not our fault that it's there. We even took an effort to try to fix it. But I guess. I guess it's just going to happen. And it is what it is. That's rationalizing it. The problem is there because it will never be fixed. Right? The problem is there because mold is so normal. The problem is there is because mold must be behind every wall, right? If. If it's behind this wall and I paid for it to be remediated, that must be everywhere. Even though there's specific data, there's specific historical elements, there's proof of why the problem is there. You're rationalizing it because, you know, you already did some work, and it must. It just must be everywhere. It just must be un. Unavoidable. It's unavoidable, right? It's not true. It's not unavoidable. It just means that your mediator did a crap job. That's all that it means. So.

I hope that you guys got something out of this, right? This denial and rationalization, defense mechanisms that are all meant to protect our. Which I'm now learning are even. You always heard the phrase, like, your fragile ego. Our ego is apparently very, very fragile.

And we don't really control it unless we're trying to control it. Like, think about it. I asked you 10 minutes ago, how many breaths have you taken in the last 10 seconds? How many times have you blinked? You probably thought about it for two seconds and then I kept talking and then you forgot about it. This process of being aware of our body's natural tendencies. Our body's natural tendency is to breathe. Our body's natural tendency is to blink. Our body's natural tendency is to deny things. Our body's natural tendency is to rationalize things. It is. It's just what it is. Our body's natural tendency is to go into fight or flight when something threatens us. That's why breathing and meditating and trying to understand that flow and change your state is so helpful. There are things that we can do across all of those, right? And so just because our body has a natural tendency doesn't mean there's not something that we can do to address it. Okay? So, like, when it comes to denial, and if you're dealing somebody, you know, with a partner or spouse or family member or whatever, who's just in straight denial, the process of getting them from denial to understanding is going to be a little harder and a little longer than getting somebody from rationalization to understanding. Sometimes someone in denial is never going to change. Right?

And, you know, there's only so much that you can do.

The thing that I found to be more effective in those types of situations, and even the rationalization phase, is to have hard proof of it, right? Because what people are doing right now is that they're in either of these stages.

You're bending the truth, but there's nothing super solid that they're looking at, right? It's this theory that mold is a problem. It's this is that if you actually have proof and data and you show that, yes, there's a mold problem behind this wall, there are mycotoxins. Here, here's this and this. Or you're going to your doctor and you're like, this is how mycotoxins affect the body. And they're telling me this is what's happening. The more proof that you get, the harder. This is just my opinion, definitely not a psychologist. The more proof you get, the harder it is to just straight deny. I feel like, like the way that I see this working is that the more proof that you. You kind of have to load up heavy proof in order to move out of denial. I'm literally workshopping this as we're talking. So work with me here. This is just from, you know, working with a bunch of people over the years. So the way to, in my opinion, from what I've seen, the way to get over the Denial hump is just to overload someone with proof, with undeniable proof, okay? If they're denying, then you have to give them undeniable proof. And over time.

In my opinion, I feel like the defense mechanism changes. It's like, oh, my God, they keep showing me all this proof, and I keep saying that it's not real. It's making me look dumb. And eventually maybe that switches their defense mechanism, right? Because at first the defense mechanism is saying none of this is real because they don't want to admit it and then have to deal with the financial implications and all this stuff. But what if you just keep hitting them over the head with probably proof, proof, proof. Now the denial has to change because now the battle against their ego is not about whether the mold is the problem. It's about whether they're dumb because they don't understand all this stuff. Right? And so the way I see it is that if you overload with undeniable truth, then denial can't thrive in that world, right? So.

The path to overcoming denial is to overload with undeniable truth. I like that quote. I'm probably going to use that somewhere. Guys, you literally are hearing how my brain thinks all the time when I come up with stuff. All right, so that's that one. So now let's say you get from denial and you're like, okay, well, I get it. I get it, honey, I've seen that there's stuff in the house. You've done all this testing. You've done Moldfinder's method. You know, Brian showed you exactly where to find all these problems. You found 12 problems in the house. You tested them exactly the way Brian told you to do it. We've done an urmi, we've done mycotoxins. There's problems, fine, but here comes all the rationalizing afterwards. Next, right? So you've gotten them over the denial hump with an abundance of undeniable truth. And now here starts the rationalization train and all the reasons why it's not your fault and there's nothing you can do about it. Right? And so here it's kind of what I talked about earlier in how I've worked with people who are in the rationalization phase. It's more about supporting them at that point, making them feel like it's not their fault. Right? Making them, you know, kind of taking the target off of their back and just helping understand, like, how. Why you need to be aware of it and things that you can do to fix it, you know, and then Also, you know, the other piece of rationalization is that it happens everywhere. There's nothing you can do about it, right? And so then in that case, they're not gonna think that it's their fault necessarily, but they're gonna think there's nothing they can do about it because it's everywhere. So then again, it's more of an education piece at that point. So the way that I kind of see it is that the denial piece, you have to fight with undeniable truth. The rationalization piece, you kind of have to attack with kind of support of, listen, this is not your fault. And then education of this is why it's not your fault. And this is how we can get around it, right? And if you could do those two things, I feel like that's a path to get your, you know, the people that don't believe you, like, on board, right? And then if you're one of these people, again, you're probably not the denial person, because you're listening to me. So if you're the rationalization person, think about what I just said. Like, how do you do that for yourself if you're rationalizing, there's no way around this stuff? Well, there is. There is a way around it, right? And it's not your fault. It's just. It's like secrets that nobody knows. The truth is the way homes are built and how things are done, it is kind of stacked against us. So you're totally right. When you're rationalizing stuff, you know, it doesn't mean that it can't be addressed, though, and fixed. You could be the person that has kind of figured out the secret and the key to this stuff where other people are just victims, right? And just by taking action and understanding. So it's not about, you know, it's not about that you've done something wrong up to this point. The truth is, you know, you've done what everybody else did, right? But if you want to take a step and kind of take, you know, take control back, there are things that you can actually do to get there. And so that's what you do, right? And so you take those steps and you can kind of get out of those unavoidable circumstances that do seem to exist.

So take what I just said to you and then use that and say that to somebody else, right? So that's one way you could do it. All right? This turned into longer than I thought it was going to be. So I hope you guys found this kind of helpful. I mean, I literally had this is like three pages of a book. And I sat there while I was reading it, I was like, holy crap, I'm taking notes on this whole thing, and it's gonna be an entire episode on this. I didn't think it'd last, you know, 35 minutes, but, yeah, I guess it did. So, guys, let me know in the comments if you liked this episode, all right? This one is kind of outside of the norm. It's more about us as people and interacting with each other and kind of coming to grips with the situation. Steps out a little bit from my normal how to find mold, how to prove it's there, how to remove it type of stuff that we typically talk about. I would love, love, love if you would give me a rating and a comment in the, you know, in the podcast area here. Wherever you're listening to, let me know, because I actually thought this one was really cool, so it would make me feel good if you guys liked it. Anyways, thanks, guys so much for listening. We'll talk to you next time.

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