Brain Experts: THIS Causes Trauma Bonding! Use These Strategies To Heal!

If you are looking to find inner peace, break free and heal trauma without medication, then this is for you. Welcome to the School of Greatness. I'm Lewis Howes, and today we're diving deep into the transformational power of healing. In this special episode, we'll explore how to navigate the path to breaking free from trauma and embracing a life of resilience and empowerment. And we've curated four insightful moments with some of your favorite guests, each offering invaluable wisdom on healing from trauma. These conversations have personally resonated with me, and I'm excited to share these profound insights with you. And together, we're going to uncover actionable steps to start your healing journey and live your best life.

It's been so amazing.

Last year was just a transformative, life-changing event.

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My name is Lewis House. Thanks so much for being here. And before we dive into this special video today. I wanna remind you about the Summit of Greatness, our annual conference happening this September in Los Angeles. With David Goggins, Dr. Joe Dispenza, and many more incredible speakers and performers, there will be so many live attendees there that you can meet with, you can network with, and you can help transform your life. Make sure to click the link in the description to get your tickets, and I can't wait to see you at the Summit of Greatness here in Los Angeles. this podcast is sponsored by Northwestern Mutual. Everyone wants to feel good about their finances, right? Well, that's why I've had life insurance with Northwestern Mutual for years. Their financial professionals ask the right questions, truly listen, and help uncover opportunities most people miss. I've seen it firsthand. Northwestern Mutual has been a part of my journey from the very beginning, providing the security and peace of mind I need as a human and an entrepreneur. Find a better way to money@nm.com the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Paid testimonial by a Northwestern Mutual policy owner.

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We tend to, I think, engage in cycles of endless conflict, of endless disconnection, of endless coping strategies that we've learned. We rely on the things that we do, whether it's, you know, using substances or distracting ourselves by scrolling endlessly online. We are then the living byproduct Sometimes it's in these explosive cycles of conflict. I call this patterning that I think is pretty common in most relationships. I know Lolly and I, when we began our relationship now near a decade ago, we were very much in a dysfunctional patterning of what I call trauma bonding. Really?

Absolutely.

What is trauma bonding? So trauma bonding, again, I like to provide a more expansive definition than I think some could define it online, but it's all of those dysfunctional habits and patterns that again, once kept us safe in childhood that we continue to recreate, whether it's these cycles of explosive conflict, maybe that some of us are even defining as right love and intensity and passion and all of the things that we're looking for in chemistry, or the just dysfunctional habits and selves that we're playing where we're just one of the partners is always the caretaker of the other partner who's always in need of the care. And right, no matter what relationship you're in, you see yourself kind of engaging within that same dynamic, or for me, the most prominent one is cycles of emotional disconnection, no matter who I was with. And I was always in a relationship. I was somewhat of a serial monogamous since I started dating when I was 16 years old. I was more or less always in a romantic partnership, definitely had friendships and, you know, social engagements and things to do. But I was really the living embodiment or the feeling embodiment of alone in a crowded room. And the number one complaint that would usually end to the demise of the relationship because I would be so frustrated or resentful or so passive-aggressively acting out that before I knew it, the relationship would end was, I don't feel emotionally connected.

Your partners would say that.

I would say that.

You would say that.

I would complain about not feeling emotionally connected, though I can share a story. My first boyfriend ever in high school, to this day, it sticks with me. When we broke up, we were nearing graduation. We were going to separate colleges very far away. And so we broke up on logistics of, you know, it's college, I remember. He also lodged a statement complaint, if you will, and he labeled me as being emotionally unavailable. And I was really struck by that because I was like, me emotionally unavailable, what do you mean? I feel so loving. I fell in love with him. I was kind of devastated when he broke up with me. So I was like, that's unusual to hear. I think he's obviously wrong. Flash forward a couple years, I discovered I was attracted to women. So now I was like, oh, well it's because I'm interested in women that I'm emotionally available. Of course I am. Flash forward even a more couple years. I was in a psychoanalytic training program in Philadelphia, right before I was licensed. And one of the aspects of the training was to sit in group therapy around a room of other analysts where essentially for an hour and a half, we just analyze each other. We just analyze each other and our experiences with each other and our perceptions and how we feel interacting.

This is part of your training.

This was part of my training to get my license. It was, I selected to go into that style of training because I thought it would be beneficial. And it was, though very difficult. And one of the things that I heard from a colleague there one time in the group, she decides to share her experience of me and described me as cold and aloof. And I'm like, okay, that is so interesting. Now you're reflecting back, right, this idea of me being distant, but I didn't have any language to understand. I thought that she was a little bit inaccurate. Though now looking back, you don't really know me.

Yeah.

Looking back, I'm like, oh, this is making complete sense. The reason why I was so emotionally disconnected, that was real for me in my relationship. It was because I was emotionally disconnected from myself. So I wasn't attuned to how I was thinking or feeling. I wasn't sharing that. So of course I was creating a cycle of disconnection in my relationships. So as much as I wanted to not agree with those two assessments, I mean, a lot of ways they were quite accurate.

When did you get to a point where you said, okay, this, even though I don't think I'm emotionally disconnected, the pattern is showing up that I am. Others are letting me know, I'm in breakdown, the relationships don't work, you know, whatever disconnection I have from people, the pattern is following me. So, okay, I'm going to take a look at this seriously. What did you do to break that cycle? You know, in your book, How to Be the Love youe Seek, you talk about breaking cycles. How did you break that cycle? How did you know you had something to break and that you needed to find solutions or tools to improve that emotional connection as opposed to disconnection?

I started to look for myself, because yes, other people's feedback can be absolutely helpful, but I never would suggest that you just defer to what someone else assesses you to be or says of you. So I finally started to take it in. I started to say, okay, if I continue to hear this and feel this way from that conscious perspective, I will always kind of acknowledge consciousness or learning how to observe ourself in the context of this conversation within our relationships, to be that first point of action. So I started to look. I started to pay attention and to assess really simplistically, Nicole, how connected are you? How present are you in any given moment? And as I began to check in with myself throughout the day, whether or not you want to set an alarm on your phone to do it or put some post-it notes on, you know, wherever you walk by regularly, or maybe even set a designated time during the day, you know, over morning coffee or when I'm reading the newspaper, this is going to be my moment to check in. the more regularly I checked in with where my attention is, the more I noticed that it was a million miles away. Really? I could be in conversation with someone and while like I'm here and I'm being talked at, right, I'm thinking about maybe what I'm going to respond to next or I'm just somewhere else entirely. And the more I checked in and noticed that disconnection, the more than I built on that consciousness step and began to, because there's always two steps to change, me becoming aware that I'm, disconnect, it was only half the journey. Then I had to begin to make that choice to reconnect with myself.

Wow.

To shift that focus of attention time and time again from the thoughts that, you know, they were consumed in or even just worrying about someone else. Am I more attuned to the person across from me than to how I feel being across from the person? And the more I kind of flex that muscle, the more than I was able to reconnect with what my body was doing in any given moment.

How long do you think it took for you then to practice that? You know, because it was probably most of your life where you had this type of emotional disconnection, what it sounds like as a safety mechanism to create safety from childhood, whatever may have been that you were being safe from. So how long did it take for you to feel like, okay, I'm not having to think about this. It's more automatic. I am emotionally connected. You know, did it take months, years, or is it still something you have to focus on?

It's still a daily intention, commitment, conversation. What has become automatic is the awareness of the importance of checking in with myself consciously, even though there are still moments as my stress level goes up, as I become busy with endless obligations, that overachiever conditioned self in me likes to prioritize all of the things that I have to do to show up in service of someone else. And that begins first thing in the morning when I know I have emails that answer. I know I have a whole membership that I can tend to. I know I have a book to edit or whatever it is that I'm working on. So it's a daily commitment to instead of prioritizing all the things we do or all the things I could do, to really create time beginning in the morning to attune to my physical body, to how it feels at any given moment, to giving it what it needs, whether it's movement or stretching or rest or just a conscious moment to be with me. And there are moments when I'm not doing that, when I don't prioritize what I know I consciously, you know, and benefit it to prioritize that. I do find myself being much more detached, much more dissociated. It becomes still easy for me to travel down that older pathway.

I would love to hear your biggest takeaway in the comments below from what you heard with Dr. Nicole Opara. For me, I've gotten to connect with Nicole over the years, personally and professionally. We've had her on multiple times, but I've heard the backstory stories about how she had to really create boundaries and separate from certain family members at different times and how to really pay attention to the behaviors, the patterns that might be feeling like something's blocking you, something's holding you back, and to be aware of those patterns that are blocking you and try to create boundaries and start to heal from those patterns. For me, that's the biggest takeaway. And it's not always easy, especially when it comes with family or friends or people that you care about to notice those patterns and to break some certain unhealthy patterns. and you might be involved in that pattern and be responsible for some of those patterns as well. So it's like it could be this codependent, messy thing sometimes, and it's not always easy to break away from that. But I think creating that awareness and then making sure to create that safe space within yourself so that you can do that. That was my big takeaway. I'd love to hear your takeaway below. Moving along into this next moment, this is a powerful individual. Dr. Marielle Bouquet sheds light on the profound impact of intergenerational pain that resides within us. This has been hard for me to understand and how to really learn over the years about how your parents, their parents and their parents, if they didn't heal their traumas, how those generations could pass on trauma to you. And it's crazy to think that people you've never met in your ancestors, you've never met some of them, they might have been passing something down that now we get to take responsibility for and have these powerful awareness moments to kind of break free of those patterns. So get ready to uncover powerful strategies again to break free in your life from inherited trauma. I hope you enjoy this moment. So let's explore these insights from Dr. Mario Bouquet. What's the difference between the traumas that happened to us and the generational trauma that happened to our ancestors?

So the major difference is placed in biology. So there's a genetic component to intergenerational trauma. And so intergenerational trauma has this way in which there is a genetic transmission that happens from parent to child.

Really.

And so it creates a predisposition to vulnerability to stress.

Give me an example. What's a common example you see in your practice that is a generational story?

Well, I mean, you know, there are people that will come in and say, you know, ever since I was a child, it was like difficult to soothe. and I was, you know, I had like this hyperactivity. There's a lot of trauma survivors that also like believe that their symptoms are coincide with ADHD because there's a lot of overlap in the experience in the symptomatology. So there's a lot of that. There's like people that, you know, reflect back to their childhood and they say like, I've always had like this experience that felt like I was always anxious. when we dig into the layers and we dig deep, we start noticing, okay, especially because I do a lot of like family tree work and like really going down the lineage to know like, well, what are some of the trauma responses or what are some of the responses around also like inflammatory responses like depression or anxiety or other kind of like mental illness, you know, kind of experiences that were held in the family. And when we start going down the family line and we start exploring not only their childhood and how they responded in their childhood, what their attachment patterns were in their childhood, but also how perhaps like their mother had an inner child wound and the mother's mother had an inner child.

And they never healed it.

Never healed it. Express it as a trauma response. Yelled and screamed in the home, you know, had like emotional outbursts. What did that do that actually created a disruption in the attachment that you could have had like in your childhood? It created an insecure attachment. You then went out into the world and experienced bullying, a pandemic, like all kinds of things. And then that trauma, that trauma, you know, propensity or vulnerability got triggered out. And so now you are continuing the cycle of intergenerational trauma because it was modeled to you genetically, it was passed down. And then, you know.

Now is it genetic or is it, let's say, the mother breaks the cycle before she heals her trauma, the generational trauma before she has her child. She can. And she creates an environment of peace. Is it the environment or is it the biology, the genetic code that is passed down? Because it's like these environments are kind of passed down. You witness your parents doing it. you just follow the pattern and you follow the environment pattern.

-Yeah.

-Is that genetic? Is that environment? What is both or?

-It'S both. It's like, you know, for as long as psychology has existed, we've had like theories on nature nurture. Darwinism also kind of just started that right, like way back when. So nature being like the biological aspects of our experiences and then nurture being like the social aspects of our experiences and intergenerational trauma is really the only trauma that is situated at the intersection of both. So we have the nature side, yeah, so you know, on the nature side, the genetic expression, like we're getting a lot of information from like the field of epigenetics, which helps us understand how behavior like impacts genes. And so basically what happens is that, let's say a mother, a mother has stress and depression in her life. Let's say that this mother is actually pregnant at five months gestation. So she's pregnant, she has a baby in utero. And because she's at five months gestation, that baby also has all the precursors sex cells that they're gonna have for their lifetime, regardless of the, whether it's male or female, they already have those. So the mother, she experienced chronic trauma her entire life. And so because that became the status quo, her genes re-expressed. So her genes said, okay, this is the way that things are. We are a stressed body. And so, because her genes are now saying we are predisposed to stress, that's being handed down to the baby in utero, actually at conception.

Wow.

So the baby is conceived into genes that are predisposed to stress. And because she is already still stressed while she's having this baby, all those stress hormones, namely cortisol, those are being passed down to the baby in utero. And what's happening to the precursor cells? those are also ingesting a lot of that stress environment. So you have three generations in one body.

-Wow.

-Jen: Genetically being passed down the stress vulnerability, but also the social piece, the mother's stress, you know, like she has all her things going on. She's predisposed to trauma. She's got all these things going while she's still pregnant.

-Her environment is still stressful, yeah.

-Jen: yeah. And so everybody in that lineage of three generations in one body is experiencing stress.

Is it just three generations or is it like every generation that's had it?

Well, you know, like, I mean, I think it's a little bit of a chicken and egg kind of phenomenon when it comes to intergenerational trauma, right? Like, it's like, who started it, right? But I think I illustrate that because it's, I think, a little bit easier to see like, oh, well, maybe it started with mom. Maybe she was, you know, the person.

That- maybe she had an extreme trauma.

And there was a reaction response. Exactly, right? And so- that's interesting. Now we at least get to see where the genetic line started from the to a trauma perspective.

You think about it that way, you're like, man, I'm carrying the weight of, you know, multiple generations of trauma in my genes, like physical weight, actual weight. Yeah. That could, that could get a little dark and heavy if you really put the emphasis on that. So how do we actually break that cycle once and for all where none of that trauma stays with us and we don't pass it down to our kids?

It definitely has to be a very, like, whole system overhaul for most folks. Like it has to be, you know, an integration of holistic practices in our day-to-day lives every single day.

Like a daily practice.

Every day. Can't waver on it because we got to think about what we're undoing. We're not just undoing the decades of trauma that you experience. Yeah, you're doing, you're undoing all the.

You really need to have a rebirth. It's like a spiritual, psychological, emotional, nervous system rebirth, in my opinion. I feel like I've had a couple of them in the last decade, 10 years ago, kind of opening up about my sexual abuse trauma, and then in the last few years just dealing with all relationships in general, like all intimate relationships that I've had. I've never really faced them until a.

Couple of years ago.

And I feel like I had to re, I had to emotionally, spiritually die in a sense, psychologically, I guess.

Absolutely, yeah.

Allow it to burn, and then build from the ashes kind of psychologically. and it's a process. I'm not saying I finished it or whatever, but it's like a constant journey of going back to the different stages of childhood, healing each stage and integrating that age with my current self. So there's full integration and healing of every different memory from my life. That was a traumatic response.

Yeah.

And it's been a beautiful journey. that has allowed me to have peace and harmony on the inside, which I never had that until really 10 years ago, I didn't start feeling it. But until a couple years ago, when I started feeling more and more peace on the inside, and it allows me to, again, see the world differently. I'm not saying I'm, like, not triggered by things, but allows me to see it and say, okay, this sucks. How can I consciously communicate what I want? to change, not from a reactive, overwhelmed, stressed, traumatic state, which I feel like you can't really get much done from that state.

No, I mean, you can push things down and numb and still operate fairly well, but- you- can survive. All of that will come back because you're in survival mode still, because numbing is still survival mode.

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No, not at all. I mean, I think, you know, abundance comes from being able to get into the depths of your soul, right? So I love that you're talking about the more like psychospiritual angle, because that is definitely I operate from a holistic angle. And so like a lot of the work that I do is very mind body spirit and the spiritual piece is really essential because it's not just your connection to higher power is really just also your connection to yourself. When you're really disconnected from your true authentic self, you're not living abundantly. And if we want generational abundance, then we have to get into the depths of everything that's there, into the mud, if you may. Yeah, and I think if you're triggered.

Or have a nervous system response to a lot of things, you're constantly in a survival mode, right? And it's hard to create an abundant, it's hard to dream. from a place of survival. It's hard to create something beautiful from that place.

I mean, it makes a lot of sense even like, you know, from a biological perspective, like when we're in a nervous system response and that's, you know, survival mode, you're in a chronic nervous system overhaul, right? So our nervous system is designed to actually make it so that whenever we are in a fight, flight, freeze or fawn, any non-essential functions any non-essential, like organ functions, bodily functions, our brain, even like the cortical region of our brain, all of that is mildly shut down. So if you're talking about like alchemizing and creativity and like all these things, those things require a lot of cortical, you know, structure, like manifestation of like, you know, all the things that you want, like really requires for you to get into your creative mind. and if your cortical brain is not fully functioning in the ways that it, because it's in survival mode, then you're not really going to get to that actualization.

One of the craziest things that I learned from this moment was that it could be up to seven or some recent studies are saying even 14 generations could live in your body. The traumas, the pains, the things that held them back could be living in your body. And you can go to the show notes below to watch the full episode to see the exact tools that you can do to really start breaking free of those generational traumas. But one of the things that she talked about is humming. It's kind of getting into your body, noticing it. Humming will allow you to calm yourself. Something quick that you can do. Just hum and calm your own nervous system. Because a lot of this is going to take time. It's not going to happen overnight, but those are some self-soothing tools that you can learn from. Humming is one of them. You can check out the full interview as well in the description below for more. But I want to hear your thoughts. What was your biggest takeaway from that moment? share it in the comments below. And in this next segment, neurosurgeon Dr. Rahul Jandial shares the secrets to overcoming trauma and conquering negative thoughts. We dive deep into the power of neuroplasticity and the transformational potential of the human brain. And as you listen to this next segment, ask yourself, what's a significant memory that has contributed positively to your life or potentially a memory that has contributed in a negative way to your life as well. Let's take a look. The brain has the ability to heal from traumatic, from trauma then, physical and emotional trauma. Because I feel like the emotional hidden trauma can be more painful and harder to recover for some, the psychological, emotional trauma than the physical trauma. You can see it and you can treat the physical trauma in but depending on how intense it is, but the emotional, psychological, hidden traumas, I feel like are invisible and people don't think they need to treat it because they don't see a broken arm and say, I need to go to the doctor because my my bone is sticking out. Let me put a splint on it and heal it up. We're not trained that way.

There is no easy answer. Yeah, but what I will say is that, Trauma, these are my concepts. There's therapeutic trauma. And what I mean by that is resetting a bone after it's broken, the pain of a cancer surgery, but then you know that your cancer has been cut out. That's good pain. We're just talking about physical trauma. Then there's emotional trauma if people are attacked, that's also intimately connected to emotional trauma, right? So the people who don't have memory after certain injuries or operations, they never have PTSD because they don't remember it. So the emotional context and memories related to trauma, be it emotional, physical, or a combination, requires memory. That's cool, right? I like to think about like just as a concept. I don't have a solution for I don't, hey, don't do these three things, you'll be better. Sort of not my approach, because when people did that with me, I was like, how do you know what I'm going through, man? You look at me, you think everything's.

Good, but are you sure?

Are you sure I wasn't attacked last night? Are you sure I didn't find out that my patient didn't do well last night? Are you sure I didn't find out a loved one was diagnosed with something? You know, like, I just don't want to put people in boxes. In fact, I want people to know that they are new every day. I'm not even at the same version of myself I was before the last few years. How can I be understood as a group of people, a man or a surgeon? You know, I just want people to think as of each other as individuals and dynamic. That said, I never judge people's trauma to be better or worse. People are looking or stronger or justified. They're looking at everybody's going to have a traumatic event in their life. whether it's a car crash or hearing, it's unavoidable. It's partly because we put ourselves out there. It's partly because the way we approach the world is to be completely adaptive. If we're rigid, then there's less chances for trauma, but that's a life less well lived. So when you put yourself out there, traumatic experiences are unavoidable. That said, okay, So that said, yeah, you get a bruise.

What I'm going to hear you say is that if we don't have the memory of the traumatic event, we don't have PTSD. We don't have trauma, we don't have a trauma tale.

Right, so that's the concept that I want people to walk away and say, memory is important, but memory is the thing that determines whether the event remains traumatic in your life.

Whether it's painful still for you, but.

So let's get into that.

So we just need to heal the memory of the trauma.

That's exactly where I'm taking it. Very good. So memories are not files in a cabinet.

And actually- In the brain, how is memory categorized?

Again, there are some regions that if we remove them, you would lose memory, but memory is not only there, it relies on pulling from memories of smell to new, like for example, smell is very interesting. It's one of the five senses that we can't tamp down with our thinking. So the perfume or cologne, smell and memory are intimately intertwined. And so you're pulling from all different parts of the brain. Again, memory is a certain electrical flow in the brain. But it's not, it's malleable, it's moldable. Just because you have a certain memory today doesn't mean that that experience, good or bad, will remain good or bad. Our positive vibe right now can be made negative, our negative vibe right now can be made positive as we look back at our day to day. So when you see memory that way, then you say, okay, wait a second, I was attacked or I was hurt or something really traumatized me. And when I think of it, when I smell that smell, when I see that color, I am traumatized again.

I clench up, I have stress, fear, anxiety.

So the emotional context to a memory is what you can change. You don't want dementia. You don't want to delete the memory because that's a different problem.

You don't want to block it.

You don't want, yeah, but what you want to do is change the emotional context attached to that memory.

What happens if we, you hear this from people a lot who might have been traumatized as kids where they kind of block the memory and then They remember surfaces. Whenever surfaces... It's very raw. But they've stuffed it, they've blocked it, they've numbed it, addicted it, whatever you.

Want to call it.

Driven it to addiction.

Yeah, exactly. So what happens when... I don't know. I don't know about the kid stuff as much, because that's a different space. And I don't want to, you know, I want to stay where I feel real comfortable with what I've been reading and learning. So, emotional context of memory for adults, in the right setting with the right person through, you know, they have their techniques. You can actually work through the trauma of the memory and the experience by going to certain therapists who help you get better with that.

So process the memory.

Yeah.

Just to take, take the emotional pain, right? The emotional trauma and dampen that. so you can say, for example, yeah, I was, you know, I'm just bringing examples from my world. Yeah, when I was, I was diagnosed with cancer, that's a traumatic event. And then you see my, my patients, you see them over time through different ways. When they say, they say, I was, you know, I was diagnosed with cancer and I did this. Their face is different describing it later than it was. immediately after receiving the diagnosis. So through that, that's a real life example, right? It doesn't have to be all the stuff, you know, related to violence and all that.

Sure.

The traumatic experience of a cancer diagnosis and how patients cope with that immediately, and then you see them months later, years later, because I'd be a mess, right? I'd be like, okay, this is, I wouldn't be able to cope, but they surprisingly not some of them, most of them cope. They get dressed, they come in for their three-month scans, which to me would be a traumatic experience every time. Is this guy going to tell me it's back or it's bigger? I mean, think about like getting nothing in your mail or email. I got to go in for this news again.

Yeah.

Somehow they cope. And that's where in life on a knife's edge, I learned so much from them that it's possible to cope with traumatic experiences. I'm not saying you as an individual can. I'm not saying I can. But when you look at a group of cancer patients and most of them cope, live, move on from very traumatic emotional experiences as well as physical experience of cancer pain and cancer surgery. That's the lesson I want everybody to go through in their mind when they're dealing with their own challenge.

Wow. Again, I'm always fascinated by having different types of experts, people that understand the world in a different way. And specifically when it comes to trauma, if you can meet with someone who's done over a thousand brain surgeries, who's gotten to get inside the brain of a thousand different people, there might be some wisdom there. And here's a brain surgeon and a neuroscientist talking about how we need to be aware of these patterns. We need to be catching them, being aware of them and processing these things. We can't just be aware and just keep letting these things hurt us, keep letting the trauma, the emotions, the thoughts continue to affect us in a negative way. We have to be aware of it and then we have to process these things. We have to create emotional regulation, which is something that he talks about as well in the full interview that we did where you can check out in the show notes below. But again, what was your big takeaway from that moment with the neuroscientist and the brain surgeon. Let me know in the comments. And to wrap up this episode, we have a powerful next moment. And this is none other than Jeezy. Now, Jeezy, if you don't know who he is, his story is a powerful one. And in this segment, he shares how he redefined success as finding inner peace rather than material wealth. And here's an individual who had a very traumatic childhood, lots of different stuff. that he was dealing with. And he shares his remarkable story of triumph over adversity, from overcoming traumatic events to collaborating with music legends like Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Rihanna. And as you listen to Jeezy and his journey of overcoming trauma and finding fulfillment beyond material wealth, I want you to ask yourself, how can you redefine success in your own life to prioritize inner peace and personal growth? And again, something to think about also just because you or someone else is able to create incredible external success. It doesn't mean they have internal freedom. It doesn't mean that they feel emotional peace. It doesn't mean they have love for themselves or that they're not struggling internally. Just because you can accomplish externally doesn't mean you figured it out internally how to find that peace. And I think that's the important thing here is like, I was chasing things my whole life. to try to overcome the feeling of not feeling enough and running away from the traumas of the past. Those things, until I addressed them and processed them, kept showing up in my life. So again, just another example right here. So let's go ahead and take a look. Inner peace, emotional peace, and self-belief and self-confidence while also knowing that people that you grew up with or, you know, you're losing friends to death or jail or, and still happening today, how do you feel peace, calm, and confident.

Right.

Running a business, running your life, traveling with your wife, whatever it might be. How do you feel those things?

I feel peace because I know that when it's all said and done, my kids gonna know that their father was a great man. I feel peace in knowing that there's no better husband in the world. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm that guy. I know what I'm saying. Because this is something I strive for. Like, I wanted these things. I know that when it comes down to my culture, there's nobody that's realer than me because I'm not a rapper. Like, I'm not, I'm a prophet in my mind. I mean, I'm here to share what I've learned and to share what I know and hoping that it can change lives. Wow. Right. And save lives. because that's the only thing I can do at this point. You can give me a billion dollars, I'm gonna live the same life. Of course I want it. Right, right, right, right. But I'm gonna still be the same person. And for me, it's like I get peace in knowing that I got good friends now that I can build with. You know, I just had my homie lost one of his nephews and the other one lost his cousin. And, but it was a time where as black men, we couldn't even talk to each other about how we felt. I'm in a circle of people now. I can tell them like, man, I'm, man, I don't know how my, and we all come together, right? We talk about this and I ain't judging you. It didn't used to be like that. I used to have to keep all my feelings and everything that I was feeling balled up inside and deal with it myself, you know, which caused me to go outside of my comfort zone to find the answers, which was a great thing. But now I can call, you know, one of my brothers or somebody and say, hey, look man, well, you know, my man, I finally his nephew died, and then next day my other man's cousin died. And it's just like, now I gotta make these calls. But the calls are like they're intentional. Hey, bro, if you need to process this, you need to just sit down, like, you wanna smoke a cigar, let's just talk, you know? And that's a different type of piece, right? Because now I got an outlet. And then what gives me pieces is I started getting mentors, whether it was My, 'cause I have- TD, a mentor of yours.

And Bishop Jakes, isn't he a mentor of yours?

Bishop Jakes is one of my mentors. John Maxwell.

Oh yeah, I just had John on his current.

Robert Green.

Robert's amazing.

Tony Robbins.

Yeah, man.

You name it. You know, these are my, this is my circle. That's me, dog.

Wow.

And for me, it's like these are people that I can reach out to, to even help me process stuff I need to help process for. the people that I love. Well, I want to help, right? 'Cause now we all got this. You know what I'm saying? It's not just mine, right? And what brings me peace is knowing that, you know, my decisions can change lives, right? Because my decisions have took lives. Meaning, like, I've been a part of things that- Wow. You know, but now it's not like I just turned this new leaf and I'm just in a different space. It's like, this is who I am. This is who I was evolving to be. I just had to go through the fire. Wow. Right. Just to understand, because I can't look at you with a straight face and go, I wouldn't do that. I don't think that's good. And I never did it. I'm gonna be like, yo, I'm like, yo, man, like, I've been there. And that's why when my brothers come to me, if they going through something or whatever, I can sit down and have a intentional conversation about, you know, processing it and understanding where we at. And then we can, and here's that street sense kicks in again. oh, you ever thought about this? And you should sit down with such and such and y'all figure that out. Sure, sure. And that's how it works.

How old were you when you started to be able to open up and have these types of conversations about your emotions, about your feelings, about your thoughts, as opposed to just with yourself? Because I never spoke about any of my emotions till I was about 10 years ago when I hit 30. It's when I started to process and heal and, and be able to talk about these things that I was like, No one could ever know this stuff.

I would say when I was 40. Really? Yeah, it's less than five years ago.

Wow. That's when you started to be able to say, all right, let me start processing or opening up.

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I was living in Malibu and my music was changing. Louis Farrakhan hit me. Brother Farrakhan. He was like, Jeezy, brother Jeezy, your music is changing. The enemy is coming. I'm just like, my enemy's in my neighborhood. They ain't coming where I'm in Malibu. He's like, I'm just telling you, get off the phone with him. Next week, I'm on tour with Khalifa. Young man gets killed by my tour bus and they locked me and my crew up. So now I'm sitting in LA County Jail, $10 million in bail. you know what I'm saying? Cause there's 10 people on the bus. Oh, I didn't do anything.

First time in my life, I didn't do anything.

And I'm saying, you're on the bus. Yeah. Well, actually, I got off the bus. Oh, wow. And went to a hotel room. And then I came. But it was your bus. On the bus the next morning. They followed us to the next venue. Oh, man, that's where they got me at. Holy cow. And now I'm sitting in jail. 10 people in jail, million dollars a piece, 10 million dollars. And my team came to get me out the first day. Right? And I go, I can't leave them in LA, in jail. I cannot, you know what I'm saying? So let me figure out how to get everybody out and then we'll get out together. So I got everybody out on bail, 'cause we still had to go to court. I had to pay for all that. Flying everybody back and forth, field to court, whatever. Shout out to my lawyer, Blair, Blair Brash, she killed it. But the thing was that one last time, I was depending on the people that was my people to make sure that my family and my people were straight. And when I got home, when I finally got out, nobody did anything. Really? And I was, 'cause I've been to bed for everybody. I don't pay for things that ain't got nothing to do. It ain't even my business, right? And I was just so devastated 'cause I'm like, yo, what if this would have been it? What if I would have passed? Like, you're not gonna make sure my kids are good? Y'all not gonna check on my, dollars a month. Y'all are gonna do these things. And it's just like, I've done that for y'all, right? And I'm not pointing any fingers. I'm just saying, like, I know what I would do, right? And that's when I started to learn, I can't put my expectations on anybody, right? Right. So now I gotta do what's best for me because now I feel like I'm all alone. Wow. So I was it. I cut everything. And then that's when I went on my mission to just start. And, and, and one of my business partners, we used to always just sit down and talk, have a bottle of wine, smoke a cigar. and he's like, what do you wanna do? I was like, I wanna do real estate. He introduced me to a realtor. I started doing real estate. That did well for me. I wanna do spirits. So this is all what we did. So I'm like, why don't I just do that in life? So I, Robin Green, I call Robin Green, we go to the LA Athletic Club. So I have tea. I asked him seven questions. And he started giving me this game.

Wow.

John Maxwell, who came and married me and my wife. Wow. you- know, in my backyard. That's amazing. Right. And one of my best friends and me and John talking, he gives me, this insight and I just started to move towards the light, you know what I'm saying? Because I just wanted to get a different perspective because I didn't have anybody around me Friday to give me their perspective and TD Jake same thing. And I'm not just saying it 'cause these are established people. These are men that have done well in their lives and their community.

And their relationships.

And their relationships that want to share something with me that I didn't have any access to. Wow. And that was, that's what made me start to open up and start to understand and start to be in peace and start to do all these things because now I know it was okay.

Holy cow. Before five years ago, when you would face a challenge or a verse.

I'm gonna say this too, though. I met my wife on set when I went to do her show because she works in television to promote an album I was working on. And I told my publicist, I said, yo, I'm gonna marry that woman. But I knew that I had to do some work on myself.

Sure, sure.

So this is the five years that I would have got myself together, then I came back and I was like, yo, you know, I'm actually ready for you. Like, wait.

Holy cow.

Yeah.

So you met her right around that time, five years ago, whatever.

Wow. Yeah.

So this is fascinating because did you kind of let go of all those people in your, your life around that time that was.

I mean, I want to say let go because it wasn't that easy, but I just think we grew apart and things just started to happen differently.

They didn't want to go on the same path as you. Yeah. So naturally, they're not going to be.

Spending as much time as you. Yeah. And then it just, you know, it.

Got a little crazy for a while.

Imagine, man.

People don't like watching someone else change and doing things differently, especially if you've known for a long time.

Right. And you're used to doing certain things with them. Well, they want you to be the old you because it makes them being comfortable. Yeah. The new you makes people be uncomfortable. and for me, I just kind of felt like the hardest decision I ever made in my life, hardest decision I ever made in my life, was to walk alone. Hardest decision I ever made in my life. It was like, I meant for the first, I way, thug motivation came in. For the first three albums up until my album, the Recession, I had so much survivors remorse and I was so like, in a bad place. Like I was drinking like you wouldn't believe. Really? Oh my God. I was 260 pounds. Skin was bad. I was just like, you know, 'cause I thought I was going to prison. The whole time, I'm just 'cause everybody around me started to get indicted. So I'm like, just waiting. It's coming. Like if me and you hanging out and you get indicted, and I'm like, yeah, they got Lewis. That's my man.

Right.

You know what am I gonna do? Yeah. Right. And they were just like the whole thing. A lot of the music and why I was so strong and direct was it, 'cause I just wanted to be heard. In my mind, I'm just like, I'm gonna be gone, so this is my only chance. So I really focused on the music, put everything in the music, 'cause I was just like, I just wanna leave this behind if I'm not gonna make it out this. And I was in such a, and this is the thing, I didn't have the verbiage for all these things I was going through.

I didn't have the communication.

I didn't know what, depression was. I didn't know what anxiety was. Like, I didn't know these days. I didn't have no way. You think I can go to the next room? One of my homeboys be like, I'm feeling crazy. I think it was. I think it's anxiety. Like, yo, man, drink this, smoke this. Hey, chill out, bro. You wack it. And on top of paranoia, on top of paranoia, one of the cops coming in, one of the cops coming with a gun, everybody I would see, I would just think, you know, that the agents, they're this and that, all these.

Things were going on.

I'm trying to make music, and I was just so depressed. I was just drinking so much, and I I was, like, waiting. waiting till the day, like, I would just go to sleep sometimes and be like, okay, if it's the day, I'm prepared. And remind you, the whole time this is going on, because I'm built the way that I'm built, I'm distancing myself farther away from my family, my sisters, my cousins, my dad, my mom at the time before she passed, because I'm preparing Right. Because if I go, I don't wanna be like, I can't be a weak link. Wow. You know, 'cause I missed the outside of my mom, my family. So I'm mentally disconnecting myself from them 'cause I don't want that to affect me if I gotta go to prison. Holy cow, all that's going on. And it was one day I never forget, I started to work on the recession and I was dealing with this young lady. We had this breakup. She was public. She was a public person. We had a breakup. and I just went in the studio the same night and I didn't come out until I wrote the recession. And what I was doing was I was reading books. This is something new for me.

What year is this? This is '08.

'08, '07. '07, '08, right? Reading books. I was watching the news. I was working out. Now I'm in the gym. I don't know how to work out 'cause I don't like to be told what to do. So I ain't wanna go with a trainer. Now I'm YouTube and videos, you know what I'm saying? You know, YouTube was my best friend. And I learned how to eat clean, you know, how to stay hydrated, drinking water for like, I go months without water.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

It was Cristal. Oh my gosh, Cristal and Waffle House. That was my diet. And I was like that, and I lost 60 pounds. And I wrote the Recession, which was one of the best albums in my opinion than I've ever written life. Because it was dealing with politics, the world, the things were going on. I wrote My President is Black before Barack Obama. Wow. Right? This was before he won. This was like six months before he won. And then he won, so that made that song go even crazier. I had put on with Kanye West. This was the first verse that he did since his mom passed. And now I'm going to do shows. And when I used to do my shows, it used to be like all the gangsters and gang members and the drug dealers in the front row. Now I'm down, I'm like 190, 185, right? And I'm doing shows and it's all women in the front. Really? Yeah. And I go do my first show on the Recession Tour.

They think they're looking at our shirt.

Right? Yeah. And I'm doing the show and I come out on stage and all stuff start flying on the stage. I'm looking at my security guard, like, yo, what you gonna do with this? He said, Boss, I said, what's going on? He said his bras and stuff.

I was like, oh my God, panties and bras.

Right, you know what I mean? And from that standpoint on, I was like, oh, I can be better. I can look better, I can be better. And this is when I came into stardom. This is when I did myself. Yeah, this is the first time, my third album was the first time in my whole career where I said, you are a bona fide star. You have to go out here and you got to do what you got to do, and you can't worry about your past. You have to be what you become. and that's when I fell into like cheesy, right? Wow. That was the first time I felt like I was worthy. And then really? Yeah. 'Cause before then, I'm like, I'm thinking it's a fluke, you know? I'm like, you know, I'm selling a few records, but it ain't the type of money I'm used to. Let's talk about that, you know what I'm saying? And how long was it really gonna last? You know what I'm saying? And you're not even really an artist, so you know, you can write a hit album and be talented and can't write another one.

Right.

A lot of people did that. Right. So now I'm starting to process that 'cause I'm like, okay, I got one. What happens now? You know? So now I'm trying to stay in the studio, but I'm not living the same life that I was when I was writing right?

Right.

'Cause now I'm on the, I'm transitioning, so I'm seeing things different and, you know, nobody wants to hear that. So what are you gonna do? Right.

How many, how many People in, in the, the music business that you interact with truly believe that they're worthy of love and peace and success.

I can't really speak because I know for me, I just feel like, I just feel like I'm just a grown man and I don't group myself in that.

Sure, sure.

Not that I have any disrespect for it, right? But it's like, you know, it's like if I go to a golf club and everybody there is, you know, well off, I might wanna play golf, but I don't wanna be in their group. Right. Right. And I think that it's hard to get to know somebody when they don't know themselves. You know what I'm saying? It's hard, you know, 'cause they're living out who they think they are, who they told them they are.

A false identity.

Yeah, you know, you can't get to know them because they're going by a name that they made up and that is who they are and that's how people perceive them in the world, right? And, you know, not to say that anybody's a bad person, but it's almost like you go to a wrestling match, you gotta know the Undertaker ain't the Undertaker at home. Right, right, right, right. You know what I'm saying? You gotta know that, right? But I think that's different because I'm cheesy at home. I'm cheesy every day. Like it ain't got nothing to do with the music. The music just happened to be a.

Part of what I'm doing. so, I mean, the music, you said this earlier, you weren't never, you never trying to be an artist. You were never trying to be a musician, an artist or rapper.

You weren't trying to- I love the music though. I love that. That was the thing because I learned, and I talk about that a lot in the book, I learned a lot from like Tupac's core because he had morals and values before I knew what they were. He stood for something. You know, he was a revolutionary. I didn't know that you can even have an opinion about this stuff. You see what I'm saying? He stood on that. He died for it. He's like, what's the difference between him and anybody else that was assassinated? He died for what he believed in. And the things that he believed in gave people like myself some type of moral compass. 'Cause I knew I couldn't do that 'cause Pock said you couldn't do that. And then I knew I shouldn't do that 'cause he said somebody did this to him. And that's how I was starting to pull things out of the music. So I loved the music. So I was listening to the Pocks and the Master P's and 8Ball, MJG, I didn't listen to the music just to hear it and enjoy it. I listened to the music like servants.

Wow.

I'm trying to find the word in there. The message. The message. And that's why I love music so much. And it was like- But you weren't.

Trying to be a musician?

No, I was trying to be, honestly, I was trying to be an entrepreneur before I knew what entrepreneurship was. Because the guys that I saw that was doing it on a major level was the Master P's, and the cash monies, you know, they were living this crazy life. And I was hustling, trying to get the stuff that they was getting. Like I bought Lexuses and Rolex watches and all this stuff at that time. Like I was known for that, you know what I mean? Like I people know, if you know me, I had the latest car, I had the best watch, and this is before music. Right. But these were the entrepreneurs that I'm like, well, I can do this. I just gotta go find some talent. So I was- so you're trying to be the label.

You were trying to find the talent.

I was dealing with some guys out of Florida that I was kind of getting some money with in the streets, and they had a record company that they was building, right? And we went like to this Black Spring Break in Daytona or something. They had like the Winnebagos and the cars and stuff on their t-shirts. And I was just like, I could do that. So I went back to Georgia, bought a studio, went to the neighborhood, got some artists, There wasn't artists, there was the homies. You know what I'm saying? Got artists and put everybody down. My man was with me as well. And we put everybody in the studio and we was trying to make records and we was trying to get our name out there and it just didn't go that way. And then the charges came down, people started getting real time. So on and so forth. And now we stuck with this studio with no artists and everybody like, well, look, you really lived the life. You might as well talk about it. Wow. I was a little reserved because I'm already, again, good over here. The last thing I want to do is go over here and look corny.

Right.

Cause I don't really truly have talent. Like I'm not writing songs every day. However, when I went back to my childhood, I had to realize my wife is gonna kill me about this, but it was a girl in my class when I went to school in Hawaii, right? and she was different than this or whatever. And I was just like, wow, you know, 'cause I had never seen, this is my first time out of the hood, like I've never seen this. So I'm like, so I started writing her poems. And then the more I wrote her poems, my dad would come in like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm writing another poem. He's like, man, come on. So I wrote her poems like every day and then she ended up becoming best friends with her first girlfriend with her. But I realized that, the way I can articulate myself when I write was something special then, because you're feeling what I want you to feel.

Yeah, I'm getting the result.

Right.

I'm with you now.

Right. You know what I'm saying? I can say we're connected.

Right.

And I just remember that. Interesting. And then when I started to understand how to put my life into words, it started to be therapeutic for me, 'cause now it's like, oh, I did deal with that. Oh, that is trauma. Wow, I did go through that. How did I overcome that? And now I'm putting it in my music. And that's why my music has always been about motivation. It's been about inspiration. It's been about how can I help you with my pain? How can I prevent you from feeling what I felt? And even if you do, how do I make you feel like you're not alone in this? That's where the music came from. Because if you go back to Pac, Thug Life was a movement. But if you listen to it, you think it's about killing and robbing, it's not. It's about standing for something, right? It just made it make sense to us. 'Cause we all feel like we're living the thug life, right? Wow. So I came back and my first album was thug motivation. Because I wanted to set it up like a class. That's cool. This is something you sit down and you, and then my second album was the inspiration, right? And then my third album was the recession. So look at the, you know what I'm saying? And the crazy thing is I got the recession from being in a room with these guys. I went to this little private dinner. I'm in a room with all these guys that got all this money, and they were so concerned. They was like, yo, the recession is coming. I'm thinking about selling this and doing that, and I gotta get rid of this business. And I'm going like, you guys got a lot of money. Like, what are you worried about? And he's like, Do you know what a recession is? I'm like, yeah, but I didn't. So I went back and googled it, and I'm like, huh. So I'm asking questions now.

What happens with this? How does this happen? So when I wrote the recession, that was me running back to tell the culture what I just learned. My big takeaway from Jeezy is that inner peace, is the new rich. Again, it's nice to have money. It's nice to be able to have nice things. It's nice to be able to have flexibility with, you know, a nice car or be able to travel a certain way or have a nice home. These are nice things. These are blessings to have. But the real blessing is inner peace. That is the ultimate rich. That is the richness of life is feeling inner peace and feeling free. And again, this is Jeezy talking about this, a man who went after all the fame, the success, the wealth, the material possessions, but didn't have that inner peace. and realized on his healing journey how much incredible wealth there is with having that inner peace. Leave a comment below, share with me your biggest takeaway from all these different experts on overcoming trauma. And if you found these insights helpful or want to explore more, then I encourage you to check the full conversations below, linked in our description, wherever you're watching or listening to this conversation. And again, reflect on the concepts and questions discussed as you continue your own healing journey. As my therapist says, healing is not a destination, it is a journey. And I think every day the more you're aware of the things that have triggered or traumatized you in the past, the more you can process and heal those things, the less those things will affect you in your daily life. They'll just, you know, be little disturbances every now and then, but they won't take over your nervous system and make you react in every moment when you feel you're being triggered or traumatized. Make sure to dive into our resources below. Share a comment below if this has been helpful for you, your biggest takeaway. Subscribe here on YouTube or over on Apple or Spotify. Leave us a review if you're listening over on Apple or Spotify as well, and share your biggest takeaway in the review section. And again, I hope you enjoyed this episode and I remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus Channel exclusively on Apple podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

Hey, everybody.

Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend, and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson. It's called Where Everybody Knows yous Name, and we're back for another season. I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it. Listen to Where Everybody Knows yous Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson.

Sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts. Prices keep going up these days. It feels like being on an elevator that only goes up.

Going up.

But not at Metro. We're pushing the down button. Going down.

We've lowered prices. Get one line of 5G data for $40, period.

That's 20% lower.

And you get a free Samsung 5G.

Phone when you bring your number only at Metro.

Five-year guarantee on eligible plans.

Exclusions apply. See website for details.

Not available at Metro with T-Mobile in.

The past six months.

Tax supplies.