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 graphics 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.

Team Greatness is great.

My name is Lewis Howes. Thanks so much for being here. And before we dive into the this special video today, I want to 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.

Foreign.

Let's dive into this first moment with Dr. Nicole Lapera who talks about the powerful strategies that have the potential to revolutionize your life. We're going to explore the depths of trauma bonding, dysfunctional patterns and the keys to unlocking emotional freedom. And as you listen and watch, make sure to ask yourself how can you incorporate daily check ins and attention management techniques into your routine to deepen your self connection and foster emotional growth? I'm so excited for you to enjoy this moment in this entire episode. So let's dive into this enlightening conversation first with Dr. Nicole Lupera. When two people have traumatic nervous systems or who haven't healed their heart or their nervous system and they're in a relationship and neither of them know how to regulate their emotions, what tends to happen in that relationship if they don't know how to heal their hearts?

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 ourself by scrolling endlessly online. We are then the living Byproduct of 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 chemistry 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 monogamist 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, really. And the number one complaint that would usually end to the demise of the relationship because I would be so frustrated or, 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 or. He also lodged a statement complaint, if you will. And he labeled me as being emotionally unavailable. And I was really struck by that. Cause 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 cause 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 analyzed each other.

Analyzing each other.

We analyze each other and our experiences with each other and our perceptions and how we feel interacting.

This was part of your training?

This was part of my training to get my license. 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, what? That is so interesting. Like now you're reflecting back, right? This idea of me being distanced, but I didn't have any language to understand. I still thought that she was a little bit inaccurate, though.

Now looking back, you don't really know me.

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 relationships. 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 relationship. 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. 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. 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 you 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 saying, 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. And 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 then I built on that consciousness step and began to. Because there's always two steps to change me. Becoming aware that I'm disconnected 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 then 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, 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 to 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 of 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 in any given moment, to giving it what it needs, whether it's movement or stretching or rest or, you know, 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 Apera. 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 backstories 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. 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. Mariel 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. Marielle Buquet. What's the difference between the traumas that happen 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 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 reflect back to their childhood, and they say, I've always had 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 family tree work and really going down the lineage to know, well, what are some of the trauma responses or what are some of the responses around also inflammatory responses like depression or anxiety or other kind of, like, mental illness 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 their mother's mother had.

An inner child wound, 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.

Is it genetic or is it, let's say the mother breaks a cycle before she heals her trauma, the generational trauma, before she has her child, she can. And she creates an environment of peace, you know.

Yeah.

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 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 genesis. 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 going to 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 genesis 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 genetically being passed down. The stress vulnerability, but also the social piece, the mother stress. 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, 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.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And so now we at least get to see where the genetic line started from the, from the trauma perspective.

When 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 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. Ten 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 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 states, 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.

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 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, you know, you can push things down and numb and still operate, you know, 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, but you're not thriving.

You're not creating an abundant life for yourself when you're in a traumatic response, are we?

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, psychospirit spiritual 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, you know, just your. Your connection to higher power is really just also your connection to yourself. When you're, like, really disconnected from your true, authentic self, you're not living abundantly.

Yes.

And if we want generational abundance and we have to get into the depths of everything that's there, into the. The mud, if you may.

Yeah.

And I think if you're.

If you're triggered or have a nervous system to a lot of things, you're constantly in a survival mode, Right?

Yeah.

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, you can see it and you can treat the physical trauma in a sense, 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, this is just. These are my concepts. They're not. I'm not. Yes, 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 like that. That's good pain.

Right.

And we're just talking about physical trauma.

Yes.

Then there's emotional trauma. If people are attacked. That's also intimately connected to emotional trauma. Right. So the, 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. I like to think about, like, 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. 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 the. In, in boxes. In fact, I want people to know that they are new every day. I'm not even the same version of myself I was before the last few years. How can I be understood as a. A group of people, a man or a surgeon? You know, I just want people to think as of each other as individuals, 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 this. 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.

Right.

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, but I want 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 trouble, we don't have a trauma.

Right.

So that's the. That's the concept that people. That I want people to walk away, say, memory is important, but memory is the thing that determines whether the event remains traumatic or whether it's painful still for you. So let's get into that.

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

This is exactly where I'm taking it. Very good.

The.

So memories are not files in a cabinet 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. 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 pop. 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. Day to today. So when you see memory that way, then you. 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'm. I'm traumatized again.

I clench up. I have, like, stress, a fear, anxiety. Yeah.

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

Yeah, you don't 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 forget, they kind of block the memory, and then they resurfaces. They resurface. It's very raw, but they've stuffed it, They've blocked it, they've numbed It. Addicted. Addicted. It. Whatever you want to call it, driven.

It to addiction, but.

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 experience by going to certain therapists who help you get better with that.

To 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 diagnosed with cancer, that's a traumatic event. And then you see my patients, you see them over time through different ways. When they say, they say 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 that's a real life example. Right. It doesn't have to be all the stuff, you know, related to violence and all that. 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 an untraumatic experience. Every time is this guy gonna tell me it's back or it's bigger? I mean, think about like getting that then that thing in your mail or email. I gotta go in for this scary news again. But somehow they cope. And that's where in, 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, wow. Cope, live, move on from very traumatic emotional experiences as well as physical experience of cancer pain and cancer surgery. Right. That's the lesson I want everybody to go through in their mind when they're dealing with their own challenges.

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. 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 than me. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm that guy, you 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'm here to share what I've learned and to share what I know, hoping that it can change lives 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. More people, 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 got. 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. Yeah. It didn't used to be like that. I just had 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 found out his nephew died, and 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 know, 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, I started getting mentors. Whether it was my.

Because I have td, a mentor Yours. And Bishop Jakes isn't your mentor?

Jake's one of my mentors. John Maxwell.

Oh, yeah. I just had John on. He's great.

Robert Green.

Robert's amazing.

Tony Robbins.

Yeah, man.

You name it. You know, these. These are my. This is my circle. That's me now. And. 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. I want to help. Right. Because now we. We all got this. You know what I'm saying? 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, 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. That's when I started to process and heal 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.

Well, what happened was I was living in Malibu and my music was changing. Louis Farrakhan hit me. Brother Farrakhan. He was like, jeezy, brother gz, your music is changing. The enemy's coming. And I'm just like, my enemy's in my neighborhood. They ain't coming. Where?

I'm.

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 lock me and my crew up. So now I'm sitting in LA County Jail, $10 million in bail, you know what I'm saying? Because there's 10 people on the bus. I didn't do anything. First time in my life, I didn't do anything. And I'm sitting.

You're on the bus.

Well, actually, I got off the bus. Oh, wow. And went to a hotel room. And then I came. But it was your boss 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. Ten people in jail. Million dollars a piece. Ten 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 because we still had to go to court. I had to pay for all that. Wow. Flying everybody back and forth here to court. Whatever. Shout out to my Lord. Blair. Blair. Brad. 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. Because 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 because I'm like, yo, what if I. What if this would have been it? What if I would have passed? You're not gonna make sure my kids are good? Y' all not gonna check on my daughter's mother. Y' all are not 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 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 want to do? I was like, I want to do real estate. Introduced him to reality. I started doing real estate. That did well for me. I wanted to do spirit. So this is all what we did. So I'm like, why don't I just do that in life? So I. Robert Green. I called Robert Green. We go to the LA Athletic Club, sit down, have tea. I asked him seven questions, and he started giving me this game. 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 to give me their perspective. And T.D. jakes, same thing. And I'm not just saying it because these are established people. People. These are men that have done well in their lives, in their community 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 at peace and start to do all these things. Because now I know it's okay.

Holy cow. Before five years ago, when you would face a challenge or an adversary. Let me say this, too, though.

And 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 that I came back and I was like, yo, you know, I'm actually ready for you. Like all the cow. Yeah.

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

Yeah.

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. We grew apart.

Yeah.

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 you watching someone else change and doing things differently. Especially if you've known for a long time and you're used to doing certain things with them.

Well, they want you to be the OU 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 when I made some hard decisions, was to walk alone. Hardest decision I ever made in my life. It was like I meant for the first thug. Motivation came for the first three albums. Up until my album the recession. I had so much survivor's 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. Skin was bad. I was just like, you know. Cause I thought I was going to prison the whole time. I'm just. Because everybody around me started to get indicted. So I'm like, just waiting. It's coming. Like, if me. You hanging out and you get indicted, I'm like, they got Lewis. That's my man. Right, right. Where am I going? Right? And it was just like that whole thing. So a lot of the music. And why was so. So strong and direct. Was it because I just wanted to be heard? In my mind, I'm just like. Like, I'm gonna be gone, so this is my only chance. So I really focused on the music, put everything in the music. Because I was just like, I just want to leave this behind if. If I'm not going to 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 the language. You didn't have to communicate it.

I didn't know what depression was. I didn't know what anxiety was.

Like.

I didn't know these things. I didn't have. No. You think I can go to the next room, one of my homeboys, be like, I'm feeling crazy? I think. I think it's anxiety.

Like, yo, drink this smoke.

Be a threat, bro, if you work. And on top of paranoia. On top of paranoia, one of the.

Cops coming in, when someone come with.

A gun, everybody I would see, I would just think, you know, that they're agents, they're this and that all these things are going on. I'm trying to make music. And I was just so depressed, and 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 a day, I'm prepared. And mind you, the whole time, this is going on, because I'm built the way that I'm built. I'm distinguishing myself farther away from my family, my sisters, my cousins, my dad, my mom at the time before she passed, because I'm preparing, because if I go, I don't want to be like. I can't be a weak link.

Wow.

Because I miss the outside of my mom, my family. So I'm mentally disconnect myself from them because 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. It 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 worked in recession. And what I was doing was I was. I was reading, reading books. This is something new for me.

What year is this?

This was 0088. Okay, 07. Going to 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 because I don't like to be told what to do. So I ain't want to go with a trainer. So now I'm YouTubing 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, grabbing drinking water for, like. I go months without water. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It was Chris oh, my Gosh style and Waffle House. That was it. That was my diet. And I was like that. And. And I lost 60 pounds. And I wrote the Recession, which was one of the best albums in. In my opinion, that I've ever written. Right? 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 crazy. 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. 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 row.

Really?

Yeah. And I go do my first show on the recession tour.

They think they're looking at Usher or whatever, right?

Yeah.

And I'm doing the show and I come out on stage and all of a sudden 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 what I did. Yeah. This is the first time. My third album was the first time in my whole career where I said, you are a bonafide star. You have to go out here and you gotta do what you gotta do. And you can't worry about your past. You have to be what you've become. And that's when I fell into, like, cheesy. Right? 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, huh? 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 scriptures. Right? Because 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 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. I don't group myself in that. Sure, sure. Not that I have any Disrespect for it.

Right.

But it's just like, you know, it's like if I go to a golf club and everybody there is, you know, well off. I might want to play golf, but I don't want to 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?

Like, it's hard, you know, because they're living out who they think they are, who people told them they are.

A false identity.

Yeah. You know. 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. But I think that's the difference. Because I'm Jeezy at home. I'm Jeezy 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. You loved it. 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, so 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, you know, what's the difference between him and anybody else that was assassinated? He died for what he believed in. Right? And the things that he believed in gave people like myself some type of moral compass. Cause I knew I couldn't do that. Because Pac said you couldn't do that.

Right.

Then I knew I shouldn't do that because 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, like, the PACs and Master Ps and the eight ball MJGs. I didn't listen to the music just to Hear it and enjoy it. I listened to the music like sermons. 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 masterpiece and the cash moneys. 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, people know, if you know me, I had the latest car. I had the best wiretap. And this was before music, right? But these were the entrepreneurs. And I'm like, well, I can do this. I just got to 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 and in the streets, and they. They. 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 the 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, you know, 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? Because I don't really, truly have talent. Like, I'm not writing sorrows every day. However, when I went back to my childhood, I had to realize, my wife is going to kill me about this. But. But it was this girl in my class when I went to school in Hawaii, right? And she was. 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.

Right.

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 and close girlfriend with. But I realized that the way I can articulate myself when I write was something special there. 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 see 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 because 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, and it's not. It's about standing for something. Right. It just made it make sense to us. Sure. Because 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 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 want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And what happens if we create? Try to create from survival emotions.

It just takes a long time.

You'll just force it. Little as, as much little steps at a time.

You'll force it. You'll.

You'll force it. You'll fight for it. You'll compete for it. And you'll manipulate, you'll cheat, you'll lie.

You'Ll do anything to get what you.

Want, because that's what matter does when it's.