S6 E19 | Post -Traumatic Growth

In this episode, we're discussing how you can find the purpose and go from victim to advocate, go from post-traumatic stress to post-traumatic growth. It is an opportunity, it is a choice, and we're gonna teach you exactly how to make that life-altering decision in this episode of Broke to Awoken. All right, you walk out, At what time was this fire?

There's no walking out. Let me, let me just back up.

Yeah, yeah, like fill me in.

The fire on the island.

Break it down.

All right, so this— How do you even wake up?

What's going on? I'm so confused. I need an inspo.

February 2020.

Man, that was a good year for you. Good year.

This is before COVID was cool, okay? I was one of the first to have it.

This is still early February.

Didn't even know what COVID was, right? It may have been January, but right around that time before it was a thing, I had just come from Florida. And if you didn't know, Florida's parting gift at the time was COVID. Here you go. Here's your COVID. Here's your COVID.

Good accent.

I like it. It's the Jersey people that moved there.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so I came from an event at Florida and I was going to stay. I just flew to the island and there was, uh, one girl that was helping me pick out design stuff. It was actually one of my biggest investors' daughters. She worked for me and she was staying there. There had just been some people there helping, but she was there by herself. I'm coming in and the Person at customs held me up for an hour. I was so annoyed. I was like, what are you doing? Like, she thought there was something wrong with my passport. And I sat there super annoyed because it's late at night now. I'm starving. I'm trying to get back to the island. It's not easy to get there from this path. And I actually thought to myself, I wonder if there could be something good about this chick holding it. Like, that's how good I've gotten at training my brain to find that seed of equal or greater opportunity in every obstacle. Like that, that is how much I'm like, what's good about the customs woman? So anyway, we go eat, go back to the island and I'm like dying again. First time having COVID, didn't know I had it. Just like, it's horrible.

Can't breathe.

The worst time. It's the first of 4 times I've had it now.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'm laying there in bed and this poor, like 20-year-old girl is just going through on her phone. Which silverware do you like? Which handkerchiefs do you like? Which, just going through selections. And I was like, the black ones, the this, the this. And, uh, she heard some noise outside. It's 11:30 at night.

Okay.

She heard some little rustling and she's like, did you hear that? And I was like, oh my gosh, you wimp. It was just me and her on the— I was like, you little wimp. I was like, it's just a cat. And I had brought over the— I got cat, 6 cats from What? I could not get rid of the rats. I could not. It was like I had electrocuted, I had poisoned, I'd done everything. So I went and got the cats that nobody wanted from the shelter. I said, give me the meanest, most like beat up, dangerous cats that nobody wants. And I brought them to the island and I released them. So I was like, it's just a cat.

Speaking of, as you're laughing about this, I still want you all to know that the number one thing that me and Brittany do Is send each other cat videos on Instagram still to this day. It's the best.

That's how you know we have a real friendship.

Only cat videos. If I pull up Instagram every morning, there's at least one cat reel.

I've tried to throw in some like funny parenting ones, but I know he doesn't appreciate them. He's like, I just want to see cat.

I don't even comment.

I know, just to punish me. How dare you send me something? Anyway, we're on it.

Just be a fat cat video.

We're on it. All right, so this little 20-year-old girl wimping out, there's a noise outside. So 2 times again, I'm dying in bed. And so I finally was like, Listen, chick, tired of hearing about it. Let me show you how brave I can be. I'm going to actually go to the window and look outside for you. Worried, like, obviously from all those Elvis videos, the monster went up in the window.

Yeah.

I look outside to see what the noise was and the entire mountain was on fire. The whole Higher Love Mountain was in blazes. And I was like, like that moment. I've never had any, I think when you've never even played out the scenario, that's why people train for things because training desensitizes you a little bit. I had never played out the scenario of a fire in my life. And when the whole mountain is on fire and the only way off the island is to jump off the cliff, that was what I was thinking about. Like, we're about to die.

Whoa.

But this girl, I'm so proud of her. I said, there's a fire, fire, fire. It was so hard for me to get the words out. And I'm not a freaked out person normally, but my soul left my body at that moment.

Yeah.

And I was so proud of her. My most proud of any employee in my entire life. We'd been filming for a future documentary I still haven't created yet for the island. We filmed everything and she goes, do you want me to film or do you want me to call someone?

Come on.

And she was already filming. I was like, call someone.

I'm, uh, I got this done. I got the film.

So I was so proud of her. She'd already—

That was amazing.

Like, like the fastest rifle in the West. She was already on it. So I run down the stairs and I remember thinking, God bless Bernie. You're going to want this video someday. I'm the person that if a plane was going down, I would film it. I really would. And so film guys laughing in the background. Anyway, so I go to the bottom of the stairs. I start filming. I don't care what I'm saying, but I at least had the camera out and I run up the stairs to see the fire. And it was so much bigger than I thought.

And I was like, oh my gosh, there's a freaking fire.

I don't know what to do. Why is there a fire up here?

Yeah.

You'll very rarely ever hear me yell. Um, it was a good yell, but I was so scared. And, and there's no fire department for private islands, guys. Like, what do you do? And so because I'd never played out this scenario, I literally was like, what do we do? And like, let's run up and down 900 sets of stairs with buckets and try to put this thing out. Anyway, between me and her and like, finally a wild revelation of using a hose came to me.

Yeah.

Uh, me and her put that That fire out on that mountain by ourselves. And it was within 6 inches of hitting a giant tank of gas, a humongous tank of gas. It was like so close to it and it was hitting the buildings and we stopped it. So I know it's a long story.

I'm listening.

But had it not been for that customs woman stopping me at the airport, we would have not been awake. To have the fire caught, we would have never been awake. We would have been an hour asleep. Wait, I had COVID. I was so tired. I was mad at this girl, but she was leaving the next morning.

Yes.

And we would have never in a million years. So we, I would have probably died. The whole island would have burned all the buildings. There had been an explosion.

Wild.

So God is in the delay.

Wild.

People, God is in the delay. So before you waste your life, shoot, what a good getting annoyed at even the person giving you a hard time, just. always ask yourself, there's probably a reason. Maybe I got stopped from a car accident. So you can start focusing on the fact that God wants to give you life and life more abundantly. Then you can stop being frustrated and live in more gratitude, even when you don't understand.

Goosebumps.

So yeah, that was a crazy, crazy, but we caught it. And so, um, miracle. Now, sadly, whatever that did to my body, I think I'm still figuring all this out, but when your body thinks that you're gonna die, that, that seriously, and like you feel like you're gonna die, many times you can develop PTSD. I'm going to call it PTSD for this episode because it's annoying to me to call it PTS and I don't want somebody to not understand it, but post-traumatic stress, many times historically called post-traumatic stress disorder.

Yeah.

Apparently I developed a version of that because for the next 3 years, I woke up at 3 AM every single night thinking God is waking me up and there's a fire. And I'd even smell it. And I'm like, there's a fire, there's a fire, there's a fire. So that inhibits your sleeping naked, obviously. It's like, dang it, now I gotta know.

Yeah, now I gotta put on clothes. Crap.

So I'd have to get up, go walk the whole island at 3 in the morning and see if there's a fire just in case God is waking me up. And it was so terrifying. And so That to this day, every time I smell smoke, it's a little bit of like you feel this rush of anxiety. And, um, and the only other thing I've had like that is we had a tornado hit our house in 1998. And so to this day, I was 10 years old.

Yeah, I was going to say, that's South Carolina.

Yeah, in South Carolina. We had a wild, um, several tornadoes hit and our house got hit. And to this day, when it rains even a little bit, I get anxiety. And people are like, wow, you have a disaster organization. How do you handle that? I'm like, I go in after. I go in right after. So, uh, yeah, it was, it's very interesting how memories are stored in your body.

Right. In the cells and the fibers.

Yes, in the cells. And they can create a physical response to something like a reminder of rain or the smell of smoke or people that have been through sexual abuse. Like there's so many things. So how do we? Let this not rob us of our entire life. And I've been really trying, you know me, I'm obsessed with redemption. I'm obsessed with taking something broken and blighted and turning into the most amazing thing, everything from houses to people. Like, I just love that redemption story. And so how do you take the worst thing that's ever happened to you and make it the best thing that's ever happened to you? There's, is there a science there?

Yeah.

What's the recurring elements? And I stumbled upon something called post-traumatic growth. And so essentially you're going along in your life, a traumatic incident happens and it's going to take you down. If not, it wouldn't be called a trauma. It's not a good thing at first glance. It takes you down. And if you can never recover, you just stay in that lower state and you become dysfunctional. That, you know, there's obviously a spectrum of PTSD. It can either be triggered or you live there.

Sure.

And so most people can go back to somewhat of a normal state with triggerable events. I would say like me with the tornadoes, but some people choose to go from victim of whatever it is that happened, car accident, sexual abuse, drug, blah, blah, blah, whatever, from victim to survivor to advocate.

Hmm.

And that, I believe, is way more powerful than the normal person. So post-traumatic growth actually says that you use the bad, quote unquote, traumatic incident and you use it to become so much greater than you ever would have had it never happened. And so an example of that is Elizabeth Smart, kidnapped out her window, forced to have sex with this nasty piece of crap old dude up in the mountains for X amount of time, finally gets rescued. And like, he made her do these horrible, horrible things, like made her believe she had a completely different identity. identity brainwasher. So sad to happen to a child. And she had a very famous story in America, but now she is speaking on stages, happily married with 4 children she birthed herself. So clearly she's gotten enough healing and now she's an advocate and that explains to people how dangerous pornography is and how that is exploitation.

Yeah.

It really is. And how that is the genesis of so many of these sexual crimes. is because pornography has been socially accepted. And we went there, people. I know it's socially accepted. I know it's a great struggle of so many people. And it's like, well, they want— I will tell you right now, no healthy female on the planet wants what you're watching, is doing that from a good place. They're not.

Well, not only that, but Brittany, generally, I would say, and again, I'm just gonna make up a statistic if it's fine, but like 80, 85% of the women and or men in these videos are on some type of drug.

Yeah.

Right. And there's generally a lot of times they're being forced to do this.

Oh, oh yeah.

Right. So these drugs are given to them sometimes forcefully, generally forcefully.

There was a recent case where this girl went missing, she's a 14-year-old girl, and she showed up in 56 Pornhub videos in the next couple weeks, just in the next couple weeks. That's how they found her.

Wow.

So very, very sad. There's so much more to go into there, but Side note, because we're talking about post-traumatic growth, is if that is a struggle for you, please take the time to deal with that and get the healing you need, because that is how so much of the trafficking, so much of the child sexual abuse, the child rape videos, is it starts out with pornography, gets weirder, weirder, younger, younger. I have to have the real thing. That's the typical cycle of a, they're called a john, which is the user of the person that's been trafficked.

Mm-hmm.

The trafficker is just the person selling them, not necessarily the person raping them. The person buying it, which is why there's trafficking in the first place, is the user, which is called a john. And it starts with that cycle. So anyway, important side note, but Elizabeth Smart has used the worst thing.

Absolutely.

So many people would have crumbled under that experience and she's become a force for good to raise awareness. And because of her story, many brothels have been shut down that were legal in Las Vegas. Uh, lots of porn sites have been getting shut down, thank God. And, um, and people are starting to actually view people not as like they want this and they're enjoying it because that's what they might look like in some of these videos, but they're humans. That's somebody's daughter. They're, they're humanizing this person versus just exploiting them.

Yeah.

And so that's actually helped people overcome the addiction as well. So she is like fighting so much darkness by using that experience. So we can all do that. I experienced a tornado at 10 and it stuck with me forever. Who showed up that next day and how long people kept helping for, because there's a lot of friends the first day, but it took us 5 to 10 years to actually fully clean that up. We were homeschooled just to clean up the tornado. It wrecked our life.

Whoa.

It was a really big deal. It sucked. And we didn't even have that much property. It was such a big deal. And so how much your whole world can be turned upside down in a matter of minutes really did stick with me. And that, I promise you, was why I responded to the hurricane the way that I did was because at 10. So always use whatever the negative thing was to help you.

Create that propulsion.

Yeah, you have a grace to know whatever you've been through, I call it the fire. Let's say you've been through the fire, you know the way out. What advice would you give yourself if you're at the beginning of that fire journey? You're gonna help people get out faster.

Right.

So, everybody has been through something, and it is your gift to be able to give that to other people.

And I love that take. I mean, because my, my question to you would be that if we are interacting with this post-traumatic growth opportunity, that there's gonna be some mental gymnastics that has to take place, right? I mean, a lot, a lot of that shifting is a choice. It's the freedom of choice, but it's also the awareness that I, am able and I get to do this. Do you think that that's going to have a huge impact to some level of mental health?

Oh yeah. You have to be able to, just like in a previous episode, I told you, you have, Jerremy Newsome, you have a mental fortitude to be able to do stock investing the way you do and at the level that you do. So with everything, we can create a mental fortitude and it's sponsored by all these truths become our building blocks. That make us stronger and be able to handle more and be able to even talk about things. And that's part of the journey. Like, know where you are in the journey. If you're still a victim, it's hard to go help a bunch of other people, but go from victim to focusing on freeing yourself.

Yeah.

To healing yourself.

Yeah.

To helping to heal others and set them free. That's the process. Know where you are in the journey and invest in that. And really understanding how mental health works. Understanding that drinking it away and shoving your problems into a box and just locking it deep down inside you is not actually a successful trait.

Right.

Fun fact. On our first date, first time going out with a Green Beret or really anybody in the military. And I was like, Seth, no, I'm not actually in your head, but I said, so what do you do? Like, how do you process all the stuff that you've seen? And my husband, my now husband Jeremy, said, "Oh, I just shove it down way deep." And I was like, "That was his actual answer. I just shove it deep down." No, that's absolutely what he said. And I was like, "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha." And he was serious. He actually thought it was a skill to just bury it in a box, in a compartment.

Yeah. It's like I have this like compartment that I just shove everything down inside and just walk away.

I was like, "Okay." I thought he was kidding. And in the next episode, we're going to give you some tips on how to manage your mental health. How do we do this? And how you can go to the next level of healing and mental health in your own life. See you there.

If at any moment during this podcast, you've been inspired, but you're thinking to yourself, dang, I sure would love someone that's already there to kind of pull me across that Finish line, I got you. I can do so much to help you radically shift and alter and expand your money, your mindset, your growth, your impact. Pop over to jerreymnewsome.com. I might update it to jeremyjmoneynewsome.com, but Jeremy with 2 Rs, jerreymnewsome.com. And reach out to me. Let's have a conversation. Let's see if I'm best suited to give you the most amount of impact, the most amount of money, the most amount of wealth. And just really change your life so that you can become a true and powerful force for good.