46: Trauma, Science & God: The Breakthrough Methods Helping People Heal for Good w/ Alejandra Crisafulli

Welcome to my podcast called you Must be Out of youf Mind. My name is Dr. Don Wood. Everyone has experienced some trauma at times during their life. These traumatic events and experiences create a significant impact on how your mind works on a day to day basis. At the same time creates long term effects on your emotional and physical health. It will interfere with your ability to stay present and in the moment. After years of research, I used my knowledge of neuroscience to create what I call a memory reset. This memory reset reduces and eliminates the impact of the trauma and allows you to experience peace and clarity. My podcast will share many stories of people experiencing similar symptoms to you and how their lives have been positively impacted by our TIP program. I can't wait to share with you how the impossible is possible and why you must be out of your mind. And there it is.

So welcome to another episode of you must be out of your mind. And as you know, we always bring on great guests that actually fit in with what we always talk about. So I want to introduce Alejandra Cristofuli. I think that's how I say it and so I hope I got that right.

You did great.

Welcome.

Thank you.

So I was excited when I saw that you were coming on because you've got a lot of the stuff that we love to talk about. You know, I went to a Christian university and so really focused on Christian values and I'm not like, like in your face Christian stuff, but I sort of cross that line between Christianity and science and it works very, very well. So I'd love to hear about. And rather than me try to say what you do, why don't you just tell us what you do?

Yeah, well, I. I've been a master life coach and speaker for 21 years and 16 of those years I did not know Jesus.

Oh really?

Yes. I grew up Catholic, but I never really knew relationship with it. It was just an obligation that my parents made us do as children.

I grew up Catholic as well. It was the same thing. Yep, I. I get it, totally get it.

Yeah. So I never really knew him and. And I got really disillusioned with religion in my early 20s and completely walked away and found metaphysical sciences and this whole life coaching industry that back then was at all. So I found it very fascinating. And, and it was during a time in my life where I was experiencing a lot of hardship. You know, some of my personal story, I found myself pregnant and the father decided he didn't want to have anything to do with us. So I was alone. Having to now raise a child and figure out what I was going to do as a single mother. And that's how I actually got introduced to life coaching. I was a business consultant at the time and I had a client who said, hey, come, come check out this business seminar I'm going to. And I thought, well, sure, I'll check out the competition, so to speak. And they had a class, a breakout session called Life Works. And it was very fascinating to me because it was the thing I thought I was looking for. What they spoke about was, you are your business, so if you're not working, you're not going to work. So I just attached to that and went wholeheartedly into finding this metaphysical energy and very spiritual kind of woo wooness. And then six years ago, I had a complete breakdown in my own life. And I was brought to my knees in that moment and. And that's when I really met God.

Wow, what a story. Very interesting.

Yeah. So as a life coach, you know, coached without having the foundation of him and then had to completely. Well, I didn't have to. Well, I did because I knew the truth. And at that point I had to change my brand and how I had done everything in my business, which was a very interesting journey to walk through.

What's interesting, because a lot of times when I do the program that I work with, with people, some of them will say, well, there's a lot of science in your program. And I say, yeah, but God created science.

Yes.

So it fits in. Exactly.

Yeah. And I agree. Like I, I do walk some of that line too, of science and how the brain works and understanding of that. Because I, I also feel like people seek that and they, they want to know and, and need to know. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to what is unseen that is the most important. And having that foundation in faith. Faith matching science, as you're saying.

Yeah. And that, and what I've done is developed a four hour program that basically I can eliminate post traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, panic attacks in four hours.

Wow. Amazing.

And because of. And this is where I said my journey. It came because I had to save my daughter. And my daughter was diagnosed with two autoimmune disorders. One when she was 13, Crohn's. And they told us there's no cure for Crohn's. We don't know what causes Crohn's. And she's going to have to manage this for the rest of her life. And they took out 24 inches of her intestines over four different operations and said, she'll just eventually end up with a colostomy bag. So we had no answers, and nobody could give us any answers. And it was just, put her on steroids, you know, put her on antidepressants, anti anxiety medications. And I wasn't even doing this, Alejandra. I mean, I wasn't even in this. And then when she got the second autoimmune, we got the same thing. It was like, there's no cure for this. We don't even know what causes it. It was called idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis. And it's basically, there's too much iron in the blood, and the immune system just dumps the iron. And so she started coughing up blood and bleeding into her lungs. And again, they just said, you know, the best advice we can give you is to live close to a hospital, because her lungs could fill up in 15 minutes.

Wow.

And that's when my wife said to me, she goes, I was adopted, right. So she said, this must be your fault. This must be coming from your side of the family. Right. Because I had this perfect childhood. So looking for something wrong. Something has to be wrong with your family. Can't be that perfect. But it wasn't. It wasn't at all. What we didn't know is that she had had some sexual abuse when she was 6 that she never shared with. And what I discovered as I started to do the research is that unresolved trauma. Right. Is what was creating this. Unresolved trauma creates inflammation in the body. That's the response to trauma, whether it's physical or emotional. And then that compromises the immune system. And so the genes that regulate inflammation upregulate, the genes that regulate the immune system downregulate. It's a temporary reset because the focus is on survival. So inflammation is not a bad thing. Inflammation is basically a cell danger response. The system's under attack, and so what it's doing is trying to defend itself against any foreign invaders attacking the system. And the inflammation will show up in different areas. So for my daughter, it was her intestinal tract. And so they ended up having to cut out because nothing's getting into the cell. But nothing's getting out of the cell.

Yes.

So it dies. So that's why they had to keep going in and cutting out pieces of it. And so I'm doing a whole bunch of stuff. It's really. We're going publishing these studies at the end of the year that once we get the trauma resolved, the system resets.

Yes.

And so the genes that regulate inflammation come down. The genes that regulate the immune system come up. Same with neuroplasticity, neurotransmitters. So it's fascinating and what we're showing is we can fix it.

Yeah.

We don't have to live and manage with it.

No.

And it's going to be just a groundbreaking study and we're already seeing the results of it.

Love that. Yeah, I'm right in alignment with that. I really focus in on supporting high performing women mainly who have tried the traditional self help models and have just found themselves at a loss, kind of stuck on a hamster wheel. Nothing seems to have been working and they're just stuck in a rut or they're lacking motivation or they have poor confidence or this negative self talk patterns. There's a lack of assertiveness and just feeling isolated really. And they can't seem to get, get out of that cycle they have been stuck in. So the method that I teach is called the 180 method.

Yeah, I saw that. So tell me what that is.

Yeah, it basically again rejects traditional self help models by taking them through a process that makes you surrender your ego to God. There's an acronym that I use which is edging God out and every human being has an ego. So there's a distinction here that's important. When I say ego I don't mean egotistical because we typically think ego is that, you know, boisterous person that check me out and I'm so awesome. That's egotistical. Ego is every human being has embedded within our mind and that self talk voice that speaks in our own voice. So through surrendering that ego through this process in the 180 method you reconnect to God and it creates this.

Experience versus the short term results that self help gives. And I really hone in on healing versus dealing and I think that's. Yeah, I was thinking about that as you were sharing your story and and so much of what is out there now is about dealing with the symptoms instead of getting to the core root cause of what is creating whatever is happening in your life emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally in the first place. So that's what this 180 method does. It gets to that core root cause and we create healing at that level through the surrendering and the process of the 180 to create long lasting healing. Which is lovely because then you don't have to deal with then because it's, you're not, it's not happening in the first place.

Yep. And that. That loop is what I say. The trauma keeps looping, but keeps activating the nervous system. I never liked the word trigger. So when I went back to do this research, I went back to get my PhD, and I kept hearing people, oh, this triggers me. That triggers me. And I said, your mind and body are not negative. They're not going to attack you. They're trying to protect you. So when somebody comes in and says, oh, I have anxiety, I have depression, whatever it is, I say, well, that's a symptom. That's not what you have. That's a symptom of a problem. Yeah. So let's figure out what's. Why would your mind get anxious, doesn't wake up one day and say, well, let's just mess up Alejandra's life and start making her anxious for no reason. Drive her crazy. Yeah. She'll just keep chasing all over trying to find it out. There's a reason why I've got a very different approach, even to depression. I say, depression is a function of the brain, not a dysfunction. And people go, how could it be a function? I said, if your mind is trying to resolve a problem, and you don't resolve the problem, and you continue to loop and feel the pain. Right. Of this trauma or whatever it is you're dealing with, and your mind can't solve the problem because the problem doesn't exist anymore. It's an old event. But your mind keeps looping through it in real time. So does your mind protect you? It shuts down. It stops using the emotions that you've been experiencing to protect you from the pain. That's a function of the brain, not a dysfunction. So then they'll put you on a whole bunch of SRI things like that, because they're saying, oh, we got to boost your serotonin. No, that's not the problem. And so anyway, so it's just a very different way. And I give a lot of science and education about why our minds do what they do. It always has a purpose, and it's trying to get some sort of an action. What's the action? And a lot of times it's a glitch. It's an error message. So if you got hurt when you were younger and your mind keeps looping through that trauma, it's seeing that trauma in real time, and it's trying to get you to run or fight or do something.

Yeah, but it's.

But it's old data. It doesn't exist anymore. But your mind doesn't know that right.

Can't just distinguish the difference. Yeah.

Nope. Hollywood has made trillions of dollars from this. They can convince us in a movie theater that what's on the screen is real.

Yeah.

Memory is seen the same way. It looks real. So your mind is going to call for an action. So I always use the story of. If you're compare your conscious mind, your subconscious mind, your conscious mind as you're sitting in a movie theater goes, oh, that's Leonardo DiCaprio and he's playing in a movie called Titanic. And your subconscious survival brain goes, jack's gonna die. And it'll try to create some sort of an emotion to get you into an action save.

Jack. Yes.

Because it's not okay with it. And as long as that loop is running, creating these glitches and error messages, you're going to continue to experience the symptoms.

Right.

So all we have to do is get to that loop and reset it.

Yeah.

Reboot the system.

Reboot it.

Yep. And it was funny because when I saw that you had the 180 method, I said, that's opposed to what they do right now, which is the 360 method.

Exactly. That's exactly it.

I'm going to give you the 360 method. Oh, my gosh. I'm right back where I started. Yeah, that's it. You got it.

Which is. Yeah, yeah. It's ridiculous that we just fall into that, but there you go. There's a reason behind it.

Yep. And I always say, God designed us to heal.

Yes.

What's interfering with our healing? Right. This glitch, this error message that keeps running in the background.

Right.

And all we have to do is get to it. And it's. And it's a lot simpler than people think. As soon as I saw your 180 method, I said, oh, that's really good, because you only had to go halfway rather than take them through the whole 360. It's actually simpler.

Way more simpler. Yeah, yeah. Way more simple. But people are. And. And I think to your point of how the brain and the glitch happens, are addicted to that drama, and the conflict of it.

Well, becomes repetitive. And then we get stuck in it. And that's why people come in and they'll say to me, oh, I'm. I'm just. My anxiety is so bad. And I'll say to them, are you taking any medication for it? Oh, yeah. I'm on, like, four different medications. Okay, so you're on four different medications and your anxiety is bad. Yes. How's the Medication, what's it doing?

Yeah, what does that tell you?

And you know what they'll say if I didn't take the medication, it would be worse?

No, no.

So the medication's obviously not helping you because the medication is just trying to block that Google search of the memory that keeps activating your nervous system. But that's not the solution to the problem. That's like going into an emergency room with a broken leg and they stick a needle and put morphine in you and then send you home and you go, oh, yeah, I'm actually okay now.

I feel so much better.

I feel so much better. And then tomorrow you're like, oh, my God, I. I broke my leg again. No, it's just always been broken. They just never fixed it. They never said it.

Masked.

Yeah, Y. And I see it all the time. So I'm not saying that medication can help in times, but it shouldn't be a lifestyle.

Right. I. I often say, like you, right, you don't want to camp out there and build a home. Don't build your home or your structure there permanently.

Yep. No, because then, then that's the only way that you can manage through the day, and it really doesn't manage you through the day. And I see so many people get stuck in that kind of a thing.

So that's the dealing aspect of it. And, and people think, what? Well, the, the magic pill that's going to make it all better rather than actually doing the work to. Which can be quite simple, like in four hours. And what you're saying, and with this 180 method, it also happens very quickly, not in four hours, because there's some, some deep emotional healing that someone goes through, but it does happen a whole lot quicker than the 360 that you were in concert.

Yeah. We just did a. With a TV show and they came in and the reporter went through our program, and so she came in to interview me because she said this was, like, remarkable. And what she said to me, she says, I still can't wrap my head around how you do this in four hours. And I said, it's because we're designed to do it. It's just that they keep on keeping you, like, going over and over and over. I don't even need to know what the trauma is. I don't even need them to tell me what it is. Their mind knows what it is.

Right.

And they can talk about it if they want to. I say it's fine if you want to share it with me, but it's not Important. I said, the only reason if I insisted on knowing would be from my own curiosity. Right. And I don't need to be curious. I just need to help you and you heal yourself. I'm just guiding your system to be able to do what it does naturally and, and take care of that stuckness.

Yeah, yeah. What God has created it to do naturally. Yeah.

And it naturally does it. And again, if you've got a whole bunch of glitches and error messages, then it's, it's a computer. So I say, think of your brain. The physical brain is the computer and the mind is the software. And so if you drop your computer, it's going to physically get damaged. That can damage the way the brain operates or the computer operates. But I said, think of the mind as the software. And so you can open up your computer, you can't see the software, you don't know what it looks like. Right. But it's operating all the programs. And so if you get a glitch or an error message in the computer, there's nothing wrong with the computer or software. It's got a coding error. And so when I talk to people, we help a lot of people in addiction. I say, I don't believe addiction is a disease. I believe addiction is a code. Your brain codes. And if every time I feel this emotional pain and I pick up a drink and the pain stops, I've trained my brain to use that resource. And then somebody wants to come along and say, you can't do that, that's really bad for you. You, well, good luck trying to get somebody out of that when they don't have an alternative.

Right, right.

Oh no, you're just supposed to suffer. No, the brain won't do that. It'll try to figure out a way to stop the pain.

That's right.

And so I had one lady come in, she'd been on heroin for seven years and she said to me, she says, I've been in therapy, you know, for seven years. And she says, and when I told my therapist I was coming in to talk to you, he told me, make sure that you tell him that you have self destructive behavior. He needs to know that. And so I just smiled at her and I said, said really? What would make you think you're self destructive? Right? And she looks at me, she goes, well, I'm sticking a needle in my arm with heroin. You don't think that's self destructive? I said, no, I don't. I think you're trying to feel better. And I bet you when you stuck the needle in your arm, you felt better.

You felt better.

She goes, yeah. I says, now the substance is destructive. You're not destructive.

Exactly.

And you could see the shift in her face. Like, for the first time, somebody talked to her with respect.

Yes.

As opposed to that shaming and guilting all the time to use.

And the labels that get placed on that you hook into as an identity, and then it becomes yours. Like when people come to me who talk about anxiety or depression, and they're saying, my anxiety or my depression or my addiction, whatever that might be, it's like, why would you claim that as yours? It's not.

No, it's a symptom of something else. And your system's trying to get an action. That's why it uses emotions. Emotions are calls for actions. The first two hours is all education of what I learned. And I said, I really learned some things very different than what they wanted to teach me. They wanted to teach me how to deal with these. And I said, well, why would you want to deal with it? Why would you want to manage that? Why don't we fix it? And so that's what I figured out. And God just led me down this path that was really amazing. And the story that I tell was I grew up in this idyllic childhood, even though I was adopted. The parents who adopted me from birth right were incredible. They never argued, never fought, never raised their voice, never hit us. My brother and sister are 7 and 10 years older than me, and at no point did I ever feel fear in my home. And so that, to me, was the key, that nurture. I believe nurture is the most important part, as opposed to nature. Nature activates when nurture is interrupted. I had no interruption of my nurture. So my brain and my body were trained to stay present in the moment and focus and could heal. And so I believe that God was showing me that. And so then when I met my wife at 18, I realized very quickly she did not live in the home I grew up in. She had a very violent father and was living in fear. And so I couldn't fix it because I didn't understand it. It was looping that fear. So whatever I did, no matter how calm I was, no matter how I tried to say the things the right way, I could activate her, but it was out of context because I was like, why? Why are you crying? And she'd go, well, you're getting mad at me. And I go, I'm not getting mad at you. Right. But that's how she, she wasn't wrong. I wasn't wrong. That's the way her mind was hearing it.

Yeah.

It sound. She had a little. If I had a little tiny tension change in my vocal cords because I was tired.

Yeah.

That sounded like I was yelling at her.

Yeah.

And I would say, well, I'm, I'm really not mad, but I couldn't convince her of it. And so anyway, high functioning. Right. Didn't get into drug, alcohol. Right. Great mom, great wife, but just living in fear. And then my daughter ends up with that issue and again, no answers. Nobody could give us an answer for it until we figured out that through all the research that it was really coming from this unresolved trauma that kept turning the system on. It's not supposed to stay on. It's supposed to turn on when there's a threat and turn off when there's no threat. But the trauma loop kept running. Keep turning it on. So I give the analysis, I get into your car, stepping on the gas all the way down to the floor, but using the brakes, try to go 30. It's going to wear out something and just wore out her system.

Yeah. So how did she, how did you find out about the trauma if she hadn't shared it with you before? There must have been something that obviously allowed her to finally open up and share it.

Well, we finally, as I started doing the research, I kept running into all of these cases of all these autoimmune disorders, and there's always a connection to trauma. So at that point, she's in her 20s now and sit down and say, is there something we don't know? That's when she's living in this idyllic childhood like I was. And so she didn't want to disrupt.

It, you thought, Right? Yeah, yeah.

So she didn't want to hurt the family by bringing it up. So she's like, I got great parents, I've got a great life. I'll take care of this and I'll hold on to it. I won't let anybody know. And so. But that's very common amongst anybody with sexual abuse. Even my wife when we were married at 19, we got married at 19. I had a chance to play professional hockey. So I said, oh, good, let's get you out of this house and then you don't have to live in this house anymore. And so she agreed that she wanted to marry me. But then she said, well, before I say yes, I want you to know something because that may change your mind and you may not want to Marry me. And so I'm like, oh, you know, her father's a serial killer. Right. There's bodies in the backyard.

Right. That's a setup.

That. Yeah. And then, but then she told me that she dealt with sexual abuse as a child as well. That's the number one pandemic in the world.

It is.

It's everywhere.

I see it all the time too, with my clients. Yes.

We both talked about being raised Catholic. That was one of the reasons why I lost a lot of faith in the Catholic Church. They covered it up.

Yeah.

And you can convince me that wasn't at the highest level. And so as far as I was concerned, if at the highest level, they don't believe in God. Because if you believed in God, you would take care of the children. Children.

Yeah. You wouldn't.

Yes, because, you know, God would take care of you if you did the right thing. But it was all about power and money. And so I thought, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't abide by that. That was just the wrong thing to do. And what, I don't know how you felt about it, but that's, I just said, okay. I was raised Catholic, but I don't feel like I want to be a Catholic. I want to be a Christian.

Yeah. Well. And that is how I felt. Although I, I, I connected it to God as a whole and walked away completely.

Right. Yeah.

Or. Well, I walked away, but the, the emptiness that, knowing that he was still there obviously stayed with me.

Right.

Yeah.

So what, what was it that turned it around? What, what did you experience?

Lots of circumstances had come up. My, my husband and I also own a multi million dollar coffee company here in San Diego, and we were experiencing a class A action lawsuit at the time. My father had just passed away, the first person I'd ever lost that was truly close to me. So there was a lot of heavy, stressful things that were occurring at this time. And I ended up getting sick, had a sinus infection that then turned into something really bad. And I ended up in the hospital emergency room. And while I was in the emergency room, I had a massive panic attack. But they did not label it as an attack of panic. They thought I was having a heart attack. So I was connected to EKG machines and I got stuck in that space and that led to severe anxiety, like level 10 anxiety that led to insomnia. I had been helping people with anxiety and getting off of medications for years. So to have been faced with, Now I am having to look at, take medication, not Necessarily for the anxiety, it was more the insomnia that was, was causing. It was like a loop. You're not sleeping well, that causes more anxiety. But then the anxiety causes you to not sleep. It was just this back and forth. So I did choose to get on medication for the insomnia, which was a lorazepam and a benzo, which is highly addictive. At that point. When I was finally, when I say I was brought to my knees, I was so humbled. I was very egotistical beforehand. I thought I hit, had done the work. I had helped all these people. Like I was kind of exempt from life happening.

So God needed me to like fall to my knees for him to be able to use me in the way in which he designed me to be used. And it was after I had finally gotten on the medication. That's when I was like, okay, I'm just, I give in, like, what do I need to do? And I had this thought of, I need to come back to God and find out who is he really? Who is God? God, who is this person? What is God about? And then I had just ironic. I was in this place of just healing my body and trying to find things that would work. So I, I ended up meeting a craniosacral therapist. And at the end of our session, he says he didn't know any of my story, but you know, about not knowing God, none of that. He just knew that I was going through anxiety and insomnia, needed some help. After our very first session, he says to me, I never say this to any patient. I it's the voice is so loud. And he said, if you find God, you're going to be a happy girl.

Nice.

And that was that, that was the like, okay, that's it. I'm fully surrendering to him and I'm just going to chase after him. And as Catholic, we never really read the Bible. I never really read the Bible.

No, we did. We didn't.

Yeah. So that was my first step towards getting to know him. As I had a Bible that had been sitting on my shelf that my sister had given me like 10 years earlier. And I pulled that Bible down and I started reading and the rest is history. But I do, I feel like he reached into that deepest, darkest part and said, enough, we have work to do.

Yeah, well, great. That's a great story. I'm glad you got there because, yeah, you can help even more, right?

Exactly. It was a year long process of healing and getting off the medication. I would not trade it for Anything. That experience in the midst was so hard, but now I'm so grateful that I did go through it and. And that I am where I am right now to help others.

I had a lady, she came in, and she was a coach for women, and she did retreats. And when she sat down with me, she goes, I feel like an imposter. And I said, why? And she says, because I help these women, and I know I'm a good coach and I'm helping them, but I will never tell them my story. Oh, I've had so much trauma. And she says, if I start to talk about it, I'll break down. And she says, and nobody wants coach breaking down crying, telling them their problems, right? So she says, I hide it. I push it down. I just don't want to deal with it. And she says, but it doesn't mean I'm not a good coach. And I said, I would agree. I mean, that doesn't matter. I says, but imagine how that next level, you got another gear.

Yeah.

And I said, so let's get that trauma cleared up so that you can perform at your highest level. That's why we called our program the Inspired Performance Program. It's not about trauma, it's about performance. So let's get you to your next level. So anyway, I. I took her through the program. She had really crushing trauma. I mean, some really serious stuff. And I met her three months later, and she said to me, she says, you're going to love this story. She says, I was doing a retreat, and I was talking to all the women, and I'm going, and as I'm talking, I'm going, I'm talking about my trauma. And she says, and they were loving it. And she goes, it really made me realize how much they needed to hear that, how I started to heal. And so she says, I didn't break down. I wasn't falling apart. You know, I was able to deal with it and talk to them. And they then started to open up more. She says, so I became a much better coach.

Absolutely beautiful. I. I do a lot around communication and being able to, like that example you gave, being open to people, talk about, be your authentic self, and, you know, it. Sometimes I cringe at hearing, but it's so much of that communication and being open and vulnerable and to share and. And just effectively communicate. Like, I'm thinking about your daughter, too, and, and how much, you know, having held on to. And not communicating. So how do you. How do you look at communication and how much of that is Involved, I guess.

And, oh, it's so important. So I have a whole series of audios after they go through the program talking about how to become a better communicator. And people are like, wow, your wife's story and your daughter's story are so powerful. And I said, they're the heroes in the story. God led me to find out how to save my daughter so that we could use her story and my wife's story to share. Right. And they have no shame about it anymore. Where before, like, when Bridget said to me, my wife, she goes, you can't. After she told me what happened to her as a. As a. As a child, she swore me to see. Secrecy.

Yeah, you can't tell anyone.

Nobody. She's. I don't even want our children to know this. And now everybody knows your story. And the same thing with my daughter. You know, people look at it and go, wow, how vulnerable you are to share your stories. Oh, no, they're the vulnerable ones. They were willing to go out and help other people by sharing their story, and they have no problem with me using it to help other people. I had the model, which was, you can live a very peaceful, quiet, healthy life. Life. I've never been sick. I don't get sick because my nervous system's regulated. And that started as a child. My brother and sister, who are no genetic connection to me, have never been sick. And yet I found out. Only a few years ago, after we had our first grandchild, we got the DNA and found out that I have six siblings. Three that were born before me, three that were born after me, and this. I couldn't have created this experiment. The three that were born before me, two died of cancer. The third one has a very serious heart condition, almost died. All three of them had addiction issues, but they lived in a very violent home, a very disturbed home. My mother apparently just walked out and left the three of them with the father just disappeared, then got pregnant with me. Right. Luckily for me, Dr. Rolley, who we think is probably my father or my mother, thought he was my grandfather, but I don't think he was. I think he was a father. So delivered me in a private maternity hospital that my mother never would have been to afford, and then came to my parents and said, I have a special child. I want you to adopt. So luckily, they did, but they were a little older. At first. They said, no, and then he said, no, I really want you to adopt this child. And so then my mother went out, got married again two years later, got into an Identical kind of marriage, violence, addiction. So of the three sisters that were born after me, two have died. All three of them had addiction issues. And Alejandra. I've never had a drop of alcohol in my life, even once. Never touched a drug ever in my life. But I didn't have their pain.

Pain.

That was the difference. And so the difference between my six siblings and me was nurture. They didn't have it. I did. So I just wrote my fourth book called Don't Mess With My DNA. And the idea behind is to talk to parents. If you want to have a great life for your child, create safety in your home. And it's all about communication. How do you communicate with your children? How do you communicate with your spouse? Not only your children, your spouse.

Spouse. Because they. They observe that. And to yourself, how you communicate to your. To yourself about your body or how think.

I remember my dad. I mean, he was. He taught me so much. One, I think I was 15, 16, and obviously I never yelled at my mom or never he. That wouldn't have been allowed anyway. But I remember I said to my mom, she said something, and I made this flippant remark like, okay, yeah, whatever, right? And I didn't know my dad was right around the corner. And as I walked around, he was there. And this is what he said to me. He says, she may be your mother, but she's my wife life. And I don't allow anybody to be rude to her. Now, don't ever do that again. What a message. How to treat.

What a message. Yeah.

And then that wasn't me yelling, raising my voice, swearing. It was just rude, right? You respect your mother because she's my wife, and I don't want anybody to disrespect her. So that kind of language, always being surrounded by it and the way he treated us as children. I mean, both my mother and father would discipline us. Us if we did something wrong. But it was never an anger. It was like, you made a mistake, here's the consequences. And my dad always said, you can disagree with anything I say as long as you're respectful. If you're not respectful, the conversation's over. He would end it. So if you wanted to communicate, you better do it with respect, because you're not getting his attention unless you do. And I don't. I don't even remember ever being disrespectful to him. The only thing I ever did, and I. Oh, I felt so bad afterwards. And it was always one of those things that bothered me because my brother who was the oldest? He was 10 years older than me. He was the natural child. My sister was adopted as well. But I remember I wanted something and my parents said no. And I said. I said to my mother, I said, well, you'd probably do it for your natural son. As soon as I said it, it was just like, that was so wrong. Right. And then I heard. So my mom told my dad, and I heard my dad come in and he's going to. Going, why would he say that? We've never treated him any differently. And I was just like, did I hurt them?

Right.

That was so wrong. Right. But again, it's experiences. Right. Learning. But my dad didn't yell at me. Right. They didn't say, you know, how dare you. Right. They just took it and, you know, took that on themselves. But never blame me.

Yeah.

But again, that's that communication. Right?

Communication. So huge.

Yeah.

The key to all of it, I, I feel like, is communication. Every success, every connection, every disconnection. Yeah.

And even in. And I'm sure this is what you do in your 180 method as well. It's about how we're communicating with them so that they can hear the message.

Yes. Yeah.

And so the words you choose, everything that you're doing are so impactful.

Yes.

And just saying the wrong word can really send a. A, A different message.

Right. And to the point of, like, your. Your wife's example of her upbringing and that experience that she had, like you were communicating maybe the right words or even in a particular tone, but the perception of how she was encoding the message based upon her own experience and filter is, you know, it's like, that's another reason why it's so important that we do this healing work so that you can hear what's said versus the. What you're encoding a message to be based upon your own perception of it. Because we could. Even the word love, like, there's the content and the context of words. So the content is, you know, how you would define what love means. But there's all sorts of different types of love and the definition of it. But then you throw in the context of tone and tempo, and, you know, somebody could be saying, I love you, and it's like, well, dude, really? Versus I love you.

Right.

Like, okay, I get it. Yeah. Communication. There's so many intricacies to it. And yes, one of the fundamental pieces of the 180 is. I call it the communication solution. How to actually be able to communicate through the sender and the receiver.

I talk about the Words in the music. So the music could be saying, I love you, but the words aren't saying that. So you think you're communicating by saying I love you. But the words you chose, right, are received differently. And the words that you chose, you may have meant them one way, but if they have experience, right, that that word was hurtful, and you don't understand why, they just got upset when you said something when they had been hurt once before, many times before, with that type of language or those types of words, right? Like, for. I give an example is you could see your spouse struggling with something, and you start to laugh, and you go, oh, my gosh, you look so cute when you struggle like that. But that was an insult by a parent, right? And so now they immediately take the hurt in because they filter through what they know about that particular sentence or language. And I give an example in the book that when my wife was growing up, I mean, obviously she had very traumatic childhood with a very angry father. Lots of stuff going on in the household. So she's 6 years old, and a lot of it comes between those early ages. You know, Know four to seven.

Yeah. Yeah.

Even all the way back to zero. So she gets invited to a tea party by some of the mothers in the neighborhood. They invite all the little girls to this tea party. So her grandmother dresses her all up. She's. And she's telling me this story. She's in her 20s, and she's sobbing, telling me this story. This is before I had this program developed. And she said to me, says, I get to the party, and one of the mothers, when I come in, she looks at me and she goes, oh, my gosh, Bridget, you're going to be such a heartbreaker when you grow. And all the other mothers are like, oh, my gosh, yes, definitely. Bridget's gonna be a heartbreaker. She said she got sick to her stomach and went home. What she heard was, you're gonna hurt people. You're gonna break people's hearts. She doesn't know that they're complimenting her because she doesn't know that language. And so I talk. When I say to parents, be careful of the words you choose, because a child's growing up with no life experience, and they're gonna interpret that. And so on the funny side, I give it. When I was growing up, up, and I. I still remember this is. My mother would say she used to use this term all the time. It's difficult to make ends meet. And I honestly believe, Alejandra, that they were having a Problem with meat. I couldn't understand what this problem with meat is. Like, you can't make the meat meat. Like, how is. How's that work? And I never asked. I wouldn't question it, because I'm just like, okay, we're having a problem with meat in this house. I have no idea what the problem is. But again, it's just the language, so I don't know that she's talking about. Financially, it's tough to make, you know, the. The ends meet. So why that language is so important is if you can illustrate with the best of intentions. Now, that wasn't traumatic to me. It was just confusing. But it could have easily been traumatic if they used the wrong words.

Yeah.

Be very careful the words you choose, even with your partner.

Absolutely.

You don't know how that word could affect them.

No. And we're so programmed and used to not sharing. I'm asking a question of I'm giving some meaning, or I'm interpreting that word into this certain way. Could you explain that further for me like that, how beautiful and healthy that would be if you could just verbalize how something is being interpreted or landing instead of taking it personally and using some kind of avoiding mechanism.

Yeah. I use. When people ask me that, what do I do in that kind of situation? I say, here's some really powerful words. I say, say something like this. I can see you're upset. Can you help me to understand what I did to upset you? Because what you're saying is, I'm accepting that I've upset you. Help me understand what I did because I want to fix it. I don't want to upset you. So you're not blaming them for getting upset. You're saying, help me understand.

Right. You're taking ownership of that. That.

As opposed to, why are you upset with me? But then they become defensive.

Yes.

Right. Because it's like you're attacking me.

Yeah, yeah. The. The why question is very defense. Yeah. Driven. It really does bring out those defense modes when you ask a why question.

Or a question where you're trying to get a yes out of somebody you know. Have you heard of I'm a member of Genius Network. Have you ever heard of Genius?

I have. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. One of the members there, his name is Chris Voss. Chris Voss is the. Or was, I guess, a hostage negotiator for the FBI.

Yeah.

And he has so many great little terms. And so I was flying to the Genius Network two weeks ago, and another gentleman, a Genius member, we were both flying on the same flight and so he said, what seat are you in? And what seat am I in? We were one apart. So he said, well, maybe we can get the person in one of the seats to move. Move. So he said, let's use the Chris Voss approach. Right. And he. And it works so easily. So the approach was. He came up to the person sitting in the seat beside him, and he says, I don't know if this is a crazy idea. He starts off so immediately. What's the person thinking? They've got some crazy idea.

He says, my. My friend is sitting in this seat, and you're in the seat beside me. Would it be crazy if I asked if it's possible to switch seats? And what do they say? You're not saying yes. They just say, no, it's not crazy.

Yeah.

They're not having to say yes. They're going, oh, no, no, that's not crazy.

Yeah, but it's that kind of language, right, that it just sort of takes, you know, just. I love that kind of stuff.

I do, too. It's so great. Yeah.

That's what he always says. Never ask him a question they have to say yes to. Right?

Yeah.

It's always like, would there be an issue, you know, if I asked you this, or would it be an issue always getting them to go into the opposite as opp. Because when people say they have to say yes, they're immediately saying, how do I get hurt in this? How am I becoming, you know, vulnerable? By saying yes.

Right. How am I not safe in it? Yeah.

But when you get them to think the other way is you're just asking, would this be a problem to do?

Yeah.

With the experience you've got and the expertise you've got, you probably have, you know, a thousand ways to do it as well. It's just really good tools to learn. I'll give you another example. I had a lady. She'd been in addiction for a long time, but had been sober for 20 years. And she was a sponsor of a number of different people. The girl that was on heroin that was telling you about was one of her. She sponsored. And after she went through our program, she called me up and she goes, I want to go through that program. That's a miracle, what you've done with that girl. She goes, I'm not having addiction issues. She says, but I've had a lot of trauma. And she says, I still dealing with a lot of that trauma. So she went through the program, did amazing, loved it. Two years later, she falls, injures her wrist. They Put her on a pain medication, and she absolutely fell apart. Went into a. This dark, dark depression. And she talked about wanting to commit suicide. Her husband took her to the hospital. They put her on a whole bunch of different meds, sent her home. She goes, nope. I still feel like, you know, taking my life. Sent her back, changed all her meds, sent her home again. She goes, nope. And he said, well, why don't you talk to Dr. Wood? Because when you went to see him, everything seemed to really go well. And she goes, I don't have a problem with the. The trauma. I can talk about the trauma. She. This isn't trauma. She goes, I don't know what it is. It's a darkness. And I can't figure out why I'm feeling like this. Anyway, he convinced her. So she called me, and I said, okay, come on in. I said, but bring your husband with you, because I don't want you driving on your own if you're having those thoughts. So they both come in and they sit down. And I said to her, I so tell me what you're angry about. And she goes, well, I'm not angry. I'm depressed. And I said, yeah, depression's anger. And she goes, well, no. And I said, yeah, you're angry about something. Tell me what it is. And she looks right at her husband. I'm like, yeah, man. He doesn't pick up on it. But I tell him. I said. I said, why don't you run grab a coffee and let me just sit and talk for a little bit with her? And as soon as he went out of the room, she goes, oh, my God, it's him. And I said, what is it? And she says, he's not a bad guy. It's not physical beating me or anything like that. Says he makes me feel guilty all the time. I don't have dinner on time. I don't keep the house clean enough. I'm never ready when it's time to go out. It's guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. And I said to her, you'll love this. I said to her, is he Catholic? And she goes, yeah, but what does that have to do with it?

Oh, no.

I said, he learned that as a child.

Yeah.

So that became the way he got what he wanted, because it was probably used on him. And so anyway, we brought up him. Yep. Brought him back into the room. He was devastated. He says, oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. He goes, you're right, I do. But my mother did that to me all the time. I felt guilty about Everything. And so he just repeated the behavior and it worked. But she was so sweet, she wouldn't say anything. So she just buried it. And then when she got on the medication, her mind was not okay with it.

Right.

And so it went into a dark, dark depression because it couldn't deal with. Deal with it and shut down.

So incredible.

Next morning she sent me an email. It was so beautiful. She says, I woke up this morning and she says and I felt joy. And she says, and I was afraid to move because I thought if I move it's going to go away. So I lied there for 20 minutes before I moved. And she says, and it still lasted of course, because she resolved the problem.

Exactly. Got the root. The root.

Got to the root. Yep. Yeah. So how do you do your program? Do you do retreats? You do one on ones? How do you, how do you do it?

Great question. So I do both retreats and one on ones. I used to do groups but now I train coaches in this 180 method. So they do groups now and I, I focus in on training other coaches and then my one on one clients and, and leading retreats. So the training of coaches came from this calling that I was finding on my heart of bringing God in or back into the self help help industry. As I started reading the Bible and seeing that so much of what was been talked about or this concept or this thing that this person has developed and cloned and shared as you know, this new age kind of concept came from the Bible, a lot of the self help stuff came from the Bible and it's been extrapolated and manipulated into something that it's not, not really, but it was right there, plain as day. And as I saw so many of those things, it was just baffling to me. One, that it was right there all the time and that it had turned into something that was now being proclaimed as this law of attraction or manifestation.

Secret.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So I started to notice or recognize that well, I'm only one person and if I start, start teaching others this method, how many more people we can reach. And simultaneously I was having clients that I had coached, you know, years ago coming to me and saying I paid a lot of money for a coach training program, I don't know how to coach and I don't have a program, will you help me?

Right.

And that just felt like that's not okay because there's so many coaches out there and they either don't have a truly beautiful product that is God inspired or they don't know how to genuinely help guide others to a place of healing. So that was happening at the same time I was having this profound like, wait, it came from here. And I'm only one person. How do I get this message out to more people? And so that's why I started training coaches. So they all also have one on one coaching, group coaching, and do events as well.

Good. So you have what, about 300 coaches you said that you've trained. That's amazing.

Yeah, throughout my career. Now some of those were before I met God and this 180 method, but yes, in total.

Yeah. So I, I can't wait to ask. How did you get into coffee business? Oh, I'm like, were you just needing coffee to chill out?

No. Well, ironically I'm allergic to caffeine, so. But I didn't find out until after the second cafe we opened.

Oh my God.

Yeah. Now my husband is such a beautiful man and, and he was at a point in his life where he was just feeling very lost and purposeless. We're in Southern California, San Diego. And we lived in the first live work lofts that were built here 15 years ago in this little beach town called Encinitas. There was a hot dog place right underneath our. Our loft. And we always joked of, why is there a hot dog place? There should be a coffee shop there. Who you can only eat so many hot dogs, right. But coffee you can have a lot multiple times a day. So he started feeling like, well, maybe that's something I could do. What if we just. And maybe you'll remember this reference, but do you remember Cheers?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Okay. The younger generations don't know cheer. So it was more of just him, you know, wanting, like, what if we could create this cute little coffee shop on the corner and it would give me something to do and it would have that Cheers vibe where everybody knows your name. And so it started off like that, him just wanting to have something for himself that he felt good about. And he has this gift that many gifts can become curses too, of having a compulsive behavior. So it serves in many ways, but again, it also doesn't serve anyways because of that compulsive behavior and my, my background and knowing how to build a business, it became almost cultish. The coffee, like he found the best sourcing, the best way to roast the goods. Everything's made from scratch. Everything's organic as much as possible nowadays, but local. So it really became this place to be and it just evolved and grew from there.

That's Amazing. So what's the name of it?

Lofty. Lofty.

Lofty Coffee. Okay, very good. And so you have the, like the chain of stores throughout.

Yeah. Southern California. Yep. 7. We're going into the new airport that's opening up in San Diego, so that'll be seven here by January.

Nice.

But it's been really amazing for us because although I don't work in the business, because I have my coaching business I'm focused in on, we still work together. Very much so. And I coach a lot of couples who are high performing couples like ourselves. And it's been a really amazing gift to both be entrepreneurs and have high performing businesses and still figure out a way to not just love each other, but like each other.

Yeah. That's the key, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Very good. Well, if anybody needs to get a hold of you or talk to you or know more about you, we'll put some stuff in our, obviously in our show notes, but tell them how they can reach out to you.

Yeah. Best places through Instagram and YouTube. And you can find me at the baller coach.

Okay. Excellent. How did that come about? The baller coach? Is that basketball?

No. I mean, a little bit. Like being a baller in life is someone who's up to great things and, and does it at a high level. But I was looking for a new brand name and I was having one of those client retreats events and one of them said, gosh, Alejandra, you're such a baller.

Or.

Yeah, it just kind of stuck from there, so became the baller coach.

Awesome. And I. I always equated to sports. Right. So football, basketball, stuff like that. Excellent. Well, it was such a pleasure. It absolutely lived up to the expectations. I thought it would. I mean, you're very interesting. I love what you're doing. And if we can ever do anything together, just let me know because I.

Think I would love that.

Very interesting.

Yeah, agreed. Thank you so much. Appreciate you. And yeah, this was fun.

It was great. So once again, thanks everybody for listening to another episode of you must be out of your mind. And there it is.