MASTER Emotional Regulation: 3 Simple Steps to REWIRE YOUR BRAIN & Reclaim Your LIFE!

Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in. What are the main mental health symptoms out in the world right now, would you say?

Yeah, so depression and anxiety are fast growing and their major challenges. More and more kids are being diagnosed with ADHD. More and more kids are being diagnosed with something called oppositional defiant disorder, which... What is that? Oppositional... That's when a kid is defiant and oppositional. And goes against adult values and adult expectations. But we think there's something wrong with the kid. instead of looking at the context of what makes the kids die.

The environment.

Yeah. No, are these diseases? Well, you can talk about the most diseases to some degree. And certainly, you know, I've had depression and I've taken medication for it in my forties and it really made a difference for me. You might call it a disease, but actually that's a shallow way of looking at it. Because actually, what does it go back to? It goes back to being a one-year-old infant or being a three-month-old infant. In the book, the Myth of Normal, the first chapter has a painting in it. The painting is by my wife, based on a photograph of me and my mother. This is Budapest, Hungary, 1944, and I'm three months of age. and my mother in the photograph is wearing a yellow star that Jews had to wear. My father was away in forced labor, and within two months her parents would be killed in Auschwitz. That was my first year of life.

Oh my gosh.

And the look on my face is full of terror. I was absorbing my mother's fear and my mother's anxiety.

Because she had terror in her face and you're mimicking and... She had it in her body. Her body. You're connected to her, feeding 10 times a day.

Exactly.

And you're feeling the stress.

Exactly.

There's probably now no calm in her.

There's no calm there. But she's already so stressed and she's just trying to make sure that we survive. She's not there to really receive my feelings. And then when I'm a year old, or 11 months old, she hands me to a complete stranger in the street to save my life. Because she didn't think where we were staying I would survive for a day and probably I wouldn't have.

Wow.

So I didn't see her for six weeks, five or six weeks.

And... And you're one?

I was one then.

Oh my gosh. And.

Now, what could I do as a one-year-old? I could do two things. Or was an infant going through all that? First of all, how do I deal with all that stress? I tune out. I tune out, I become absent-minded as an adaptive mechanism.

As a coping mechanism.

Exactly. 55 years later, I'm diagnosed with ADHD, which is characterized by tuning out. Is it a disease? The heck it's a disease. It started as a coping mechanism. I'm also diagnosed with depression. Why? Because in an environment, I had to push my feelings down in order to not to burden my mother who was already burdened enough.

Create more peace and more.

Yeah. So I took that on. So I pushed on my feelings. I depressed my feelings. then I have this depression. So are they diseases? Well, you can talk about them that way, but I say they began as coping mechanisms. And I'll tell you another story. I'm 78 now, so six, seven years ago, I'm in San Francisco with a therapist, and I've taken mushrooms. She works with mushrooms. And I've worked with psychedelics, and it's one of the things I write about. But this time I'm the patient, I'm the client. And I'm lying there on the mat under the influence of the psilocybin. And I know exactly who I am. I'm 71 years old. I'm a medical doctor. I'm a writer. I'm a speaker. I'm married to such, you know, my wife Ray, this is a therapist. So I'm not like hallucinating. I know exactly where I am, but at the same time, I'm experiencing myself as a one-year-old infant.

Oh, my goodness.

And this therapist did my mom is my mom. And I start crying and I say, I'm so sorry I've made your life so difficult.

Wow.

That's my one-year-old self, all of a sudden under the influence speaking up. I took it on that early that I'm responsible. Now, you talked about you.

Oh, my gosh.

In our conversation before, you told me about how you were in this relationship and you couldn't leave it even long after you realized it wasn't right for you, because you took on the responsibility of how the other person would feel if you would quote, let them down. I'm telling you, that's your one-year-old speaking, that you took responsibility for the suffering of your parents. Wow. And how you mustn't let anybody down, because it's your responsibility. We take this stuff on so early without words, actually. They just become ingrained and then we live our lives out of it until something happens, as it did for you, your body rebelled.

You have a breakdown or something happens, right? And you're like, you either keep breaking down or you wake you up and say, okay, why is this happening? What is off? What is out of alignment? What is, you know, where am I out of integrity? Whatever it might be.

Exactly.

And, I feel the challenges. I was like, I want to end this suffering. You know, I've repeated this pattern many times. I'm sick and tired of the suffering. Yeah, I'll do whatever. You know, I think when you for me, I was like, I've felt enough of this. I don't want it anymore. But it took so much courage to face these things for me. And I know other people have deeper traumas or different traumas, and it's it just seems so challenging.

I wouldn't go there. I would not compare your trauma to anybody else's.

Well, we all have our unique traumas, right? Different experiences that we face. Why is it so challenging for people to face it and start addressing it? I was telling you, you know, I've been doing pretty intensive therapy for about a year and a half now, every two weeks. Yeah. Not because I feel like something's wrong with me anymore. I'm stressed more because I want to maintain a level of peace.

Yeah.

And I want to continue to maintain peace.

Good for you.

So once I realized and started healing, I didn't say, I'm good. Yeah, I was like, I want to go to the next level of exactly peace.

Yeah.

Love, you know, environment of beauty inside of my emotions. But why is it so hard for so many people to face it and actually speak the shame, guilt, insecurity, you know, imperfection about them?

Well, I think in your own work you've touched upon very accurately on why it's so difficult. For one thing, if you just, just the words that you just use, peace and love and connection, if you had played that to your 20-year-old self, how would he have responded?

He'd be like, suck it up, or he'd been like, what are you talking about? You're fine. Yeah, don't be a little wuss or, you know, just work harder, you know?

Yeah, but where would that have come from?

I mean, just my entire conditioning growing up from sports and, you know.

Okay, so there's that. So that's one of the factors is the conditioning in this culture. Okay. I also say it would have come from intense fear.

Oh.

Because if you'd actually, it's very fearful to look at all that pain inside oneself.

It's terrifying.

Yeah, it's terrifying. So there's intense fear. so there's the conditioning, as you say, then there's the fear. It really is fear painful. You know, you know, nobody wants to have pain, you know, but that's called growing pains. And the third factor is we all develop this personality. Now, the personality, we think that's us, but it's not us.

Right.

The personality is the traits that we took on to survive our childhoods, along with some genuine traits. So the personality is kind of a an amalgam of childhood coping mechanisms and genuine qualities.

Yeah, some good stuff. Yeah, some also coping. Yeah, yeah. I remember I used to be like, I was a fun loving guy. I was like a kind, generous. But then when there was a trigger, I was angry and defensive and guarded and things like that.

Or you talk about the various masks, the sexual mask.

Or the material mask.

The aggressive mask. When I started reading a chapter on the sexual mask, you wrote about some guy whose name I forget, but who's sort of the champion picking up women. I wouldn't be in his shoes for one split second.

Right.

Poor bastard, I was thinking.

Yeah.

You know, that this is what he has to do. But what's that? It's having to prove to himself that he's lovable. Where does that come from? You know, so, but we identify with it. So we think we're the personality. I'm this sexually attractive guy, or I'm this aggressive guy, I'm this material guy who's gonna make it in the world. And so we think that we are a personality. So it comes from, I say, three sources. One is the conditioning, the other is the fear for the pain, and thirdly, the identification with the personality. We think that's who we are, and we don't know who would be without it. All of which is all based on trauma.

Yeah, it's the identity, you know, building this identity that, you know, and I talk about how the identity supported you to accomplishing certain things or protecting you from certain things by having this identity. But it's also not serving us to hold on to that identity if we want the next level of peace and freedom.

Exactly.

So it's, but it's so hard to kill an identity. It's like you've had this thing for decades maybe, and you've gotta let go of this thing.

It's really- yeah, see, I wouldn't even talk about killing. I mean, in my healing chapters of this book, I talk about, let's make friends with it. Like, for example, I have to pay, by the way, I have to be honest, I said that I would not be in this guy's shoes for a minute. That's not true. Part of me was envying him.

Right.

You know, even here, I'm 78 and married 53 years, but I read about this guy who slept with all these women. Why couldn't I be that guy, you know? I don't want to go there and I wouldn't, I've long ago chosen not to. But there's still something that... who doesn't want to be wanted that much.

Something with the ego or the desire, yeah.

But if we didn't kill those parts, but made friends with them, if somebody came to me, with that kind of pattern of I'm that sexual guy. But they realize that it's not, they might feel high for a moment, like any addict will.

It's not fulfilling.

It's not fulfilling. I wouldn't say kill that part of you. I'd say let's make friends with it. Let's find out what it's really trying to do for you. What it's trying to do for you is trying to make you feel wanted, making you feel valuable, making you feel desirable. making you feel loved temporarily, making you feel powerful. What happened to you that you don't feel lovable, that you don't feel desirable, that you don't feel powerful? You know, in other words, it's not a matter of getting rid of these parts or these aspects of ourselves. It's a question of actually getting to know them. And they all began as coping mechanisms. That man that you describe in your book, I guarantee he's a highly traumatized human being.

So when we start to ask ourselves this question that you're asking is what happened to you or when, you know, when did you feel not powerful or not lovable or not wanted? Yeah. And let's say we're able to, someone watching or listening is able to assess themselves and actually be present, really reflect on the painful moments of the past, which a lot of people aren't even willing to talk about it to themselves. Right.

That's right.

For 25 years, I had a memory of being sexually abused and thought about it almost every day, like for a moment, you know, it would come, you know, at least weekly, maybe not every day, but it was like a memory. Yeah, that's there, you know, but I never told anyone for 25 years because it was so shameful and I didn't want to be, you know, made fun of or all these things. And so someone's able to self-assess and say, okay, I had this pain, this trauma, I felt, not powerful or whatever it might be. What's the next step for them once they start to journal about it and be aware of it? And they're like, I really want to heal. What would be that next step in the process?

Well, I mean, it's not that I can prescribe, but sure, what should be for everybody. And there's many different ways of working. But one of the things I would address, first of all, is the shame. One of the impacts of trauma is shame, because children are narcissists by nature. When I say narcissist, I don't mean in a pathological negative sense. I mean they think it's all about them.

The world revolves around me.

Exactly. So if bad things are happening to me, it must be a must be a bad person. Number one. Number two, I didn't fight back.

I couldn't defend myself.

And so that makes me weak and so I'm ashamed of that. No, actually, when you look at it, the not fighting back is nature's coping mechanism. Part of your nervous system just freezes because if you fought back, what would have happened?

It just depends on what age you are.

No, but as a young child, If you fight back on... Against the sexual abuser.

Oh, right.

What would happen to you?

Who knows? I mean, it could have been even worse.

And were you in a position to run?

No, no. I was trapped in a bathroom.

So the part of your nervous system that would have you fight or run away gets inactivated.

It's protecting yourself.

You're protecting yourself. And the part of the nervous system that freezes you, just be still. and you get through this.

Wait till it passes.

Yeah, that takes over. So it's actually what you're ashamed about is actually the brilliance of your nervous system that protected you.

But you're beating yourself up in retrospect saying, I should have ran, I should have fought back, I should have done this.

Exactly. That's the first point. Man, the second point is.

If I.

Can ask you, how old were you when this happened to you?

Five.

And how long did it go on for?

It's probably 10-15 minutes, yeah.

No, but it was only one time?

One time, yeah.

Okay, who did you speak to about it?

No one.

Okay, now you don't have kids yet.

No.

But if you did have a child five years old and this happened to who would you want them to speak to?

Me.

Yeah. Now, if you found out that this happened to your child and your child never told you, how would you explain that?

How would I explain it to... How.

Would you explain to yourself why my child is not talking to me about this terrible thing that happened?

I would explain it by saying it's something I'm not doing. I'm not creating a safe environment to allow this child to speak up.

And that was your primary trauma?

Yeah.

So the sexual abuse is a secondary trauma. As a matter of fact, the abuser, like you were bullied in school, you said. And, the bullies can always sense the vulnerability.

The bullies have like a little weakness in your...

They have a laser like...

There's an insecure, weak person, yeah.

Which by the way speaks to their own trauma.

Right.

But they have a laser like the physicians who abuse their patients, the spiritual leaders who do that to their followers.

They see a weakness.

They laser like they sense it. and that's who they pick on. And the bullies do the same thing. Now, that weakness, as we call it, comes from not having the solid support and protection and confidence and security in your family of origin. So that's the primary trauma. That's the first thing that happened.

Yeah, I mean, that's the case for sure.

So to answer your question, then, if somebody comes to me with those issues, well, first of all, if somebody realizes those things, I'd say, Don't try to do this on your own.

It's so hard.

Talk to somebody.

It's so hard.

Yeah. Well, look, people with addictions, at least they have the 12-step groups where they can actually talk about it. And people ideally will not judge them.

It's a safe space to.

Safe space. Or you might have friends, or you might reach out to a professional, or you might have an intimate partner that relationship is close enough where you can actually share this, you know, but you have to bring it out of you. By the way, that just reminds me, this is one of the ancient gospels written on the same time as the other gospels. It's the Gospel of Thomas, in which Jesus says that what you shall bring out of you will save you. Oh, and what you don't bring out of yourself will doom you. he says something like that.

Right.

He was a supreme psychologist. Wow. And so you got to bring it out.

Yeah. What you suppress becomes more depressed.

Right.

It's like. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's got to start with that somewhere.

You've got to bring it out. And if, and if someone has a. What if they say, well, it wasn't that big of a deal. This thing that happened back in the day, I was a kid, and it only happened a few times, whether it's sexual abuse or. Okay, so someone's screaming at you or.

You were neglected or put in the corner, you know. I hear that all the time.

It wasn't that big of a deal.

I hear that all the time.

I shouldn't be that concerned about it. It was five. Who cares? It was like, what do we...

Okay, then that's a very simple way to answer that.

Then why are we so messed up right now?

No, no, no, no, no, not at all. If a five-year-old kid came to you and you were the uncle, Uncle Lewis, this guy, did such and such to me, and I'm really scared and hurt. Would you say to them, oh, no big deal?

No.

Think of all the other kids that worse things have happened to. Would you say that? Why wouldn't you say that?

Because I'd want to be there for my nephew and make sure he felt supported and seen and loved.

And what would be the impact if you did say that?

I feel like it probably affect him for a long time, if that was a pattern of, yeah, that was the response that he got.

But you see, that's what you're saying to yourself.

Right.

When you say that it's no big deal, you're saying to the five-year-old that was hurt, it doesn't matter. In other words, there's no self-compassion there.

Right.

What you would never say to anybody else, you're saying to yourself. And one of the impacts of trauma is lack of self-compassion. And again, if I may mention my book, the Myth of Normal, I talk about that, about this idea of self-compassion. And I see it all the time. And so when somebody says to me, no big deal, you know, I say, okay, take any other child in your position, plug them into that situation, and tell them it's no big deal. And of course, I wouldn't.

But people do. They do say these things to their kids or to their nephews or nieces. They're saying like, ah, he'll be all right, you know? And I think it's 'cause they don't have the emotional courage to handle the wide range of emotions 'cause they probably suppress the emotions themselves.

I mean, that's the whole point, is that they're not comfortable with the child's pain.

Someone crying, they're like, I can't handle it.

They can't handle it, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

You know, my daddy should be like, stop crying, you know, just stop. There was no like hugging and like, he had a lot of love and affection in other ways, but he couldn't handle the crying and the scream. the emotions?

Well, one of the, in the book I talk about the essential needs of children, and one of them is that they're given the freedom to feel all their emotions, particularly sadness and grief and pain.

And if we heal the trauma, we will be able to eliminate these symptoms or these disorders.

I think we'll be able to get rid of A lot of stuff. A lot of it. Some of it, as I mentioned, because there is that genetic loading, and we gotta think of the genetics that we talked about already, right? Like we're talking about lineages of genetic loadings. So, you know, if we start doing the work now, maybe we'll see a lot less of these disorders happening within our families and our communities. So there is a lot that we can do to actually rectify the abundance of mental illness that's out there, right? I believe that there is a lot of the mental illness that exists in the world that has an undercurrent of trauma, and we just haven't talked about that undercurrent or that possibility as much. But I don't know if we'll be able to absolve ourselves of 100% of the mental illness in the world, but I think that we can do a really good job in this generation to break cycles.

But could an individual eliminate these mental health issues on an individual level if they're willing to do the deep healing work? Because essentially, because I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong, these are like symptoms of trauma. You didn't grow up depressed. Certain things happened, an event happened, an environment continued to foster the feelings of depression. Yeah. the state of depression. And if we can heal the memory, the trauma, the event, and reconnect to our purest self, our whole human self, wouldn't those things start to go away?

That's precisely the goal. So, you know, where we started off with psychology and psychiatry is we started off with symptom management. A lot of psychiatry, you know, we're still kind of there a little bit.

Which is like, here's the drug. to manage the symptoms. -Band-Aid. -But that is not healing. -Yeah.

-That is not resolving.

That is just managing it. -Precisely. -But that does not do anything to.

Bring back to wholeness. -Yes.

And integrate the person.

-Integrating the healing, right? -Exactly. And that is the goal. That is the goal for me. That is the goal in my practice. I want full integration of that person. I want them to see, really see their authentic self. Some people have never even like, had an opportunity to see who they could be at their true core self, because it's been masked by so much of the trauma and the symptomatology that's associated with the trauma, like the depression, anxiety.

And all those things. -Yeah. So you believe that people can heal these mental health challenges as well if they integrate fully.

-Many of them, especially the ones that, you know, because I think we have bipolar disorder and we have schizophrenia that, have a different mechanism to them, but many of them absolutely.

But many of the ones that a lot of people are facing, depression, ADHD, the big ones. ADHD, depression especially.

Right.

How important is finding a meaningful purpose in life supports you in overcoming feeling depressed or depression?

It's like so critical. It's really yeah, 100%. I mean, like when we're talking about, What happens after trauma, meaning making, is at the center. It's like one of the biggest things because you have to see your life having some sort of value and that there's meaning associated with your life and with everything that's within your life in order to actually even feel motivated to do the heavy lifting that is the healing work to get yourself to the other side. So you have to have meaning in that journey. meaning making, it's alchemized in that journey, it's created in that journey, right? But I think at the very least, you have to have hope that meaning making can be possible.

Because what it sounds like to me is a lot of people attach meaning in a more negative, harmful state to events, to words, to actions that happen around them. and therefore that meaning causes more depression, ADHD or, you know, negative thoughts, all these different things that hurt us.

Yeah.

But if we created a different meaning around the event or the words or the event, the breakup or the loss of the career, created a new meaning around it and had a different intention, different purpose moving forward, we wouldn't have those mental challenges as much.

Yeah, I mean, I think people, you know, just haven't been trained to ask themselves the right questions around meaning making.

Right. And so- what's the right questions?

Well, the right questions are, you know.

Well- Someone experiences a traumatic event or big tea or little tea. What questions should we ask?

Yeah, we should be asking, you know, so questions around, well, let's talk about what was learned in that circumstance. It's a really hard question to ask because sometimes people be like, you really, you think that that needed to happen? No, it didn't need to happen. It did happen.

-It happened. -You can't change it.

-You can't. That is in your history now.

-I know.

-But what can we take from that experience? And it does not even need to be the traumatic event itself, but your response, your reaction. What can we take from that to learn how to now create a healing protocol for you? And it is about, you know, being able to ask questions that get people thinking outside of the box. Because what happens when you are in a state of trauma is that you're frozen in many ways. Your thoughts are frozen. You start thinking a lot of the same things, right? Like it's a lot of protective functions. Your feelings are frozen in time. Like people like constantly feel worry, anxiety, like a lot of things that are, you know, just them being in a protective state. And so we can start asking questions to free some of that up. That's going to be like really key. But I like that question, even though I think it can veer us in different directions, but I'm open to that whenever it comes to work with a client, because wherever we go, I'm with them. I'm going with you, and we're following that path.

If someone stays committed to their story of meaning, that it was this horrible event and it ruined my life, the divorce, the job loss, the injury, whatever it might be, what happens if they hold on to the meaning in a negative way as opposed to, that was a traumatic event. I don't wish it upon anyone, but here's what I learned from it. Here's what I gained from it. Here's what I'm gonna do with it in a positive way. What happens to those?

-Well, the way that I interpret that is that that person is, one, still in a state of fear. They're not ready to really get curious about what other definitions meaning can have in their life. They're just really stuck on the one definition that it tarnished their lives, that it got in the way, and they're just stuck there. And so if that's the case, then my role as a clinician or their role as a person that wants to get out of it, hopefully, is to work on the fear. You gotta work on where is fear trapped. Jacqueline Effa, how is the nervous system operating around fear, right? Like, where can we free them up in a bodily sense? Because the nervous system requires a lot of that body based work. And so we have to like really get curious about that and like go in that direction, versus, you know, the the questions are very mind focused, right? But we need the body based practices in order to create safety in the.

Body to release also, right? To release the fear, the pain, the trauma, and reconnect to the safety of body, is that right?

-Exactly. And so that when a person can feel that there is safety in their body, they can feel that they can actually go into the depths of their minds in a way that does not feel scary and existential.

-Right. Speaking of fear, I saw somewhere recently, I do not know if this is true, but I saw somewhere recently that human beings are born with three fears: the fear of loud noises, the fear of falling, and the fear of abandonment. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, we tend to build, add more fears as time go on. I don't know if that's true if those are the only three or we don't have fears at all, but it seems like we gather, we collect more fears through childhood and adulthood. Why do you think we gather so many fears and collect them?

Well, I think you're talking about like, primary fears, right? Like those feel like primary fears to me. Like they're like what you start off with as a baby.

Yeah.

You're gonna have that startle response as a baby. You're gonna need to feel deeply connected and attuned to a caregiver.

Otherwise you don't live.

Yeah, basically.

Right.

And so like it's basically a fear of losing life or a fear of losing safety. So it makes a lot of sense. But the accumulation of it also makes sense because we operate in mental representations in categories basically. So we have specific categories in our minds that are primarily created in our childhood. And then everything else that happens in life, we put in the different categories in the buckets of our minds, and they just start accumulating and growing. So if you have a big fear bucket, then you are going to have a lot of fears that are going to come into your life and stay there.

-So when we are thinking about a way to heal, initially. And we know that we've had some stress or maybe we were reactive in certain situations or maybe we feel tightness or just not our fullest, highest self. And we know that there's been some trauma, but we're not sure how to talk about it or how to heal it. What is something we should be thinking about with our bodies to start this process?

Well, the first thing is that we have to befriend our bodies. We have to actually engage in a relationship with our bodies and really tune in. most of us don't actually take the moments throughout the day to say, how's my body feeling right now? Where do I feel the tension? Where am I experiencing in my body this external situation, right? And if we can actually train ourselves to just do body scans for starters, right? There's so many things that we can do, but for starters, just scanning how we feel in our bodies from head to toe, and just getting a sense of how our body is taking in our environments, that's already a really good setup for understanding ourselves better and understanding ourselves when we're juxtaposing ourselves with what's happening outside of ourselves.

So if someone has experienced a level of trauma, but they have no clue if they've actually got a lot of trauma, a little trauma, or somewhere in between, how can they do a trauma assessment within their body scan? to know, oh, this is actually a big thing that I need to address right away, or this is more minor, but I still need to address it. How can they scan?

Well, you know, it's actually much simpler than what one might imagine because people can actually just remember, right? Remember what they actually do remember, and then simultaneously try and gauge what's happening in their bodies as they're remembering.

As they're thinking of the story and the scenario.

Exactly.

Are you feeling tightness in your chest or your throat? Are you clenching up? Are you sweating? Yeah.

It's like, what are these symptoms?

Yeah.

And typically some of those symptoms correlate with how the nervous system is actually internalizing the story. We typically get a knot in our stomach, for example, right? But that's really our nervous system actually shutting down specific functions of the gastrointestinal tract. Really? Because we actually don't need that for survival in a moment where we're in survival mode. And so I- so if we feel.

It in our stomach, it's almost like we're in fight or flight mode.

Exactly.

Just thinking about a re, you know, thinking about a story for 30 seconds or a couple of minutes from something that happened 10, 20, 30 years ago. That's fascinating. So something that happened that long ago can continue to harm and hurt you decades in the future until we learn to heal it.

Exactly. It continues to live in the body. It can metabolize in the body then as chronic illness when it goes on unaddressed. And of course, one of the biggest risks and repercussions of it going on unaddressed, many times because we just don't know that it's there or that it's something that needs to be addressed. But what can happen is also the possibility of transmission into the next generation. So there's a lot of consequence.

Yes, and that transmission is really you leaving a legacy. You know, do you want to leave a legacy of, peaceful, harmonious, emotional well-being, you know, humans as children or kids that carry your stress responses.

-Right.

-And kind of your nervous system responses, right?

-Yeah.

Yeah.

I always ask parents, like, look at your little one and look into their eyes and think for a moment, do I want them to hurt the way that I have hurt? And that usually is enough for a parent to say, you know what? Actually, I want to break this cycle because I don't want their little heart to then absorb the kinds of traumas that I've absorbed.

Oh, man.

And for them to then be the adult that has to then be in search of their emotions or in search of healing because they now have an inner child wound as an adult.

What's the greatest gift a parent can give their child?

The gift of understanding their emotions and understanding how to self-affirm because when we can actually know how, what our emotions even are, and what I mean by that is that we have emotions and that they're body centered, right? Like that we have a really concrete understanding of the full spectrum of our emotions and how they can manifest in our bodies, and then how we can actually do something to validate ourselves through the emotional process. I think that's a beautiful gift that parents can give their children. And when parents do that for themselves and their children, it's a beautiful generational gift.

Yeah, it's beautiful. So the first thing I'm hearing you say is kind of the ways to start healing is to first do an assessment of the stories and the memories that hurt you and see how the body reacts or response. What would be the next step after that? We notice a tightness in our stomach, a clenching in our throat, a pain in our chest. What would be the next step to starting that healing process?

Step two is relaxation. Step two is actually going into any kind of practice you choose, right? But it can be breath work, it can be meditation, it can be tai chi, it can be yoga, it can be so many. That can actually help your body to release some of that tension.

Interesting.

And so what we're doing in that very moment is that we're, of course, recognizing that there's a pain that has been there, that has been emotional, that has now a physical manifestation. and that we're also integrating a relaxation, a body relaxation practice to help release that tension, help absolve that tension from the body.

If we never release it, what happens?

It becomes disease.

Wow.

So emotional memories turn into physical pain and eventually disease in some way.

Many of the metabolic conditions that we know about Diabetes, for example, cardiac conditions, a lot of those can be mapped back to stressors in life. And there's a lot of studies that have been done around even autoimmune conditions being very deeply connected to stressors and to trauma. And more recently, there's some studies that also have some correlates to certain cancers. So when we start thinking about what the body is telling us, the body, when it's in that state of disease, it's telling us I don't feel well because I'm not being taken care of emotionally. And that, you know, it is usually like the clue for us to say, oh, I need to slow down when we needed to slow down probably 15, 20 years ago.

-Right, right, right. -So once we, you know, recall the memories and I guess really reflect on where we're feeling this pain or reaction in our bodies, The third thing I'm hearing you say is to relax through some type of therapeutic process, breath work, meditation, yoga, some type of relaxation process to release it, right? What would be the next thing? Because a lot of times most people just numb or disassociate the pain, right? We don't truly feel the pain because it's too painful. And so we'll find ways to numb, distract, disassociate, block, the memories to not feel that pain. And that can be just as harmful, right? Just to numb, block or disassociate? -It can.

You know, they're protective factors or the ways that we protect ourselves from the pain that we truly feel. And especially the depths of our pain. Some of us just don't want to understand how deeply hurt we have been. -How wrong we've been.

-How unfair, unjust, you know. -How wrong we've been. -How unfair, unjust, you know. hurtful these things are.

Yeah, and, you know, like in order to self preserve, in order to make it through another day, the mind and the body, they're just brilliant, brilliant like machines. They have mechanized a way to actually protect us from ourselves. And so they basically like structured all these coping mechanisms that albeit harmful or maladaptive or not helpful or not connecting when we're talking about relationships, right? They can still help keep you safe for another day. But the alternative to that is to then learn coping skills that actually can be adaptive, connecting, and that can actually be the better recipe for not only your ability to stay within healthy relationships with other people, but also for you to experience the type of sustainable and long-term mental and physical wellness.

What's the next step after that? Once we start applying some of these self-therapeutic experiences, you know, it might be 10 minutes of breath work or some type of release, how do we get to a place of truly healing that wound or that memory? You know, how long does it take of us doing this over and over again? Do we eventually need to process in other ways through talk therapy or more intensified therapies? What's the solution to absolute healing? And is that even a thing?

Well, there isn't really a 100% type of healing that truly exists. I mean, I think that anything that leans in the direction of perfectionism is a myth, including healing, right? However, there are ways in which we can live a life that is filled with ease and peace. more often than not, and a life in which, if triggers were ever to present themselves, that they would be just subtle and tolerable, and that we can have the actual tools, the sense of empowerment and agency over our own bodies and minds to actually release that process and move into the next thing that life has for us, rather than being stuck and frozen, which is what tends to happen with trauma. -ASHLEY: Sure. But the next step really is, you know, the way that I work is that I integrate a lot of these nervous system restoration practices for a long period of time with folks. And I have done it myself and with my family and with kind of everyone and in the book. But this actually is the lengthier part of the work, the actual grounding.

-This can take months or years. -It can take months, right?

-It can, it can. And you know, sometimes I actually like to give it a bit of context, like for people who who feel like, well, let's say that I want to do this work, but how much am I gonna have to do in order to really- Might be a lot.

It might be a lot.

And that's okay.

And it might feel exhausting and it might feel overwhelming and it might feel emotional and it might feel like it's all consuming at times.

Yeah, all of the above. And that's actually, I wouldn't even go as far as saying, maybe not might, but it will, right?

-For a period of time.

-Yeah, for a period of time. And it is survivable. And if you have the tools to actually help you to settle, once things feel like they're getting really heavy, then it's gonna make the experience more tolerable. -Right. -and you're not gonna feel like you're thrown into the abyss of your deepest, darkest emotions and have no way out. You're like in a black hole.

Yeah, there's this, I don't know who originally said this type of quote or this kind of phrase, but, you'll hear people say, what happened to you is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to overcome it, to heal it, to process it, to realize what it was and not let it consume your life.

Yes.

And I think what you mentioned about higher self, learning about our nervous systems so we can work with it to become our best, highest self, as most often as possible, right? which means having peace and harmony inside of us as frequent as possible, because that is our true nature, peace and harmony. And I think that's what it comes down to. What are you willing to do to create peace and harmony to actualize your highest self as frequently as you can? It's not about perfection. You're not gonna be this zen person all the time, but that's a beautiful life, living in peace and harmony, living in suffering and pain and agony and numbing yourself is not a beautiful life. It's a survival mechanism, which is useful for a period of time, but not for all of time. And so we just got to be aware of that. And it's going to take doing some intense, painful work for a period of time for hopefully a lifetime of freedom afterwards.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I like to always help people understand that if you're, let's say that the work needs to take a period of two years, let's just say that. You need to focus, you need to do nervous system restoration practices each and every day for a period of two years. You need to do journaling and some of the digging work and do talk therapy, and you need to, you know, engage in, you know, connections with people that help you feel at home. All of that needs to be a part of your process. Those two years, when you take into consideration the 40 that you've already lived, that have felt awful, those two years feel like they're really worth it. If you want to live the next 40 feeling more abundant, more peaceful, more grounded, more like you know yourself, your true core self, and more like that core self that is now burgeoning from within you is a reflection of your higher self.

Yes. And I'm just a big believer that flow and abundance does not come to those who are constantly in suffering or holding on to pain.

Yes.

It comes to those that have peace, who have clarity, who are relaxed in a more relaxed state. And that may seem like a nice thing to say, but if you're in your 30s and 40s and you've got three kids and you've got, you know, responsibilities and job and you're overstressed and you're thinking, I don't have two years of my life, let alone 30 minutes a day to go to the gym. How can I do this work when I have so much responsibilities When I've got, you know, a partner that I'm in a relationship with, I've got kids, I've got bills, I've got all these different weights on top of me, doing this type of work seems like impossible. What do you say to someone like that?

It isn't. It actually is really doable because the work requires for you to bake it into your life. It's not work that is a task apart from the rest of your life.

It is your life.

It is your life.

Yeah.

And, you know, the work can actually, the way that I like to structure the work is to make it very accessible. And the reason why I like to make it accessible to anyone is because I want people to do the work. And I wanna make it as easy as possible. I've gotten that statement so many times. Well, you know, I'm a mother of three and, you know, they're all really young and how am I gonna find the time? I always tell people, listen, you have 1,440 minutes in the day. If you take five of those minutes and do a breathwork practice, you're already ahead of the game.

Wow.

And if you do that for an entire year, 365 days, what we know when neuroscience is telling us is that it takes an approximate 300 to 400 repetitions of a nervous system restoration practice for our body memory to start shifting.

Really?

So if you take those 365 days, that year of those five minutes, you're already doing work that is going to be monumentally effective in you feeling more settled and like your nervous system is.

Actually.

Experiencing a lot of ease and calm that it wasn't experiencing before you did the year.

And how much is our partners in an intimate relationship picking up on our nervous system wounds and also our kids picking up Just by watching and observing us and being around us, how much do others pick up our pain?

-It'S almost instantaneous. And especially the people that are closest to us, but especially children, because children are very, very keen on picking up on nonverbal cues. We actually, when we're like infants, that's the way that we understand whether or not the world is safe or not. We actually see the assistant, facial expression of an adult that's our caregiver. And if the facial expression is one that mirrors safety, calm, and ease, then what we interpret that as is the world is safe, I can be calm. If the adult feels preoccupied, angry, right, like babies pick up on that, and their nervous system is also picking up on that. And so it's important for us to actually be more attuned to the ways in which other people also pick up our energy and, and and perhaps that can offer more motivation for people to actually do the nervous system practices that can actually be helpful for them and their families.

If a parent is watching or listening to this right now and they're thinking, wow, my kids are five or 12 or 16, and I'm just starting to realize that maybe I was too reactive based on my nervous system wounds for many years, or maybe we shouldn't have yelled at each other as parents in front of our kids. We shouldn't have been so reactive in situations that we were explosive, we didn't need to be. And they're starting to realize, oh, okay, this could have some long-term effects on kids. And they've been living that way for a decade with their kids growing up. What can they instantly tell themselves right now about how they've shown up and what are some actions they can take to start breaking the cycle for themselves and their kids who still have developing minds who maybe aren't as comfortable talking about emotions yet because they're younger still, how can they start shifting that without thinking, I've ruined my kids' lives?

You know, it's important for parents, for anyone really, to understand if I didn't know better, I couldn't do better. So if you didn't know that what you were struggling with was intergenerational trauma because you were exhibiting toxic, Relationship behaviors that were reflected in your childhood home, and you absorb those as the norm, as a status quo, then you wouldn't know to actually disrupt those and not pass those on or not, you know, exhibit those in your home. However, it's important that if you now do know better, that you take action, that you decide, okay, I know that there's a different way, and I understand that the way that I've been behaving is unhealthy. Let me shift. that is already a step in the right direction. When it comes to children, it's important to understand that children can also engage in the healing process.

-They can.

-Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of age-appropriate ways in which we can integrate the work with children. Children can meditate, children can do breath work, children can talk about their emotions, children can, you know, do dance parties with their parents that actually help them to release some of the stress and tension of the day. to heal in the moment, but also understand for the long term, for the entirety of their lives, that they can do something that can help them to heal.

That's cool. Yeah, dance party and drawing classes together, just different things, you know, going for a walk out in nature. Yeah, that's beautiful. What are some you mentioned these nervous system restoration practices. What are the couple other examples you have for that where we can start healing the nervous system?

The practice that I tend to integrate into my work the most is humming.

Humming.

Humming.

Yeah. It's so calming.

It is very calming. And most people don't know you actually have this tool that you can use whenever and it can actually help you feel calmer.

Well, how many, I mean, there's so many, you know, there's now science that's backing all this, but this has been the, you know, ancient spiritual leaders have been oming and humming for thousands of years. Yes. Because of the, you know, I think om is like God, right? It's like you're connecting yourself to God and you're speaking like source, creator, breathing it. And there's chemicals involved, there's dopamine involved, and it's calming like this feeling in your heart is starting to like get into a better rhythm. Right? So there's all these benefits to this.

Yes. And when we think about it from, you know, just integrating the nervous system perspective into that as well, there is, you know, we have like different branches of the nervous system and the branch that actually helps us to feel relaxed and calm is the ventral vagal nerve, which is what tends to be stimulated when we hum. -When we hum.

-Yes.

And so, and so, or when we hum, right? Like, typically, like, if I'm doing work with a family and, or with a child, you know, sometimes I'll pick a song that they like and we'll hum the song instead of singing it. And that already is an age-appropriate practice that we can do that integrates the practice that we understand is going to be restorative to their nervous system. But we're not necessarily like shoving mental health, you know, in your throat.

-Right, right.

-Just therapy talk all day. -Right, right. But we're doing something that can be very health promoting. Now eventually, you know, people catch on and they say, that made me feel relaxed. That made me feel more at ease. Especially when I had all these like floating thoughts that just wouldn't go away. And so when these children are then older, they have the tools. And that's what I want for us. I want for us to be able to be the generation of cycle breakers that can build the tools for ourselves and for the next generation. And even if we want to maybe like pass some of that back. My parents are 65 and 71 and I do this stuff with them. And they're open and willing and they're Dominican parents, which I would have never thought would do anything that was related to mental health, period. But they're so willing right now after a couple years of talking it through. And it's beautiful to see how they have never really had any kind of like foundational orientation around how they can feel more settled. And now they do. And that in their old age, they can actually feel more at ease in their own bodies. It's beautiful.

If someone's in a marriage and they realize they want to break the cycle and they're willing to do the work themselves, but maybe their partner isn't as open yet, And they're realizing like, oh, this person, you know, I want to do this work, I'm healing, but this person's still in a nervous system reactive state and unwilling to break their own cycle. What can they do if they're the only one trying to grow and their partner is not?

That's really empathizing with anyone that is in any kind of environment, particularly a home environment, in which they have to go back to the source of their pain, right? Or back to a place where their safety is compromised in any way, their sense of psychological safety, I mean. And so, you know, what I tend to help people reorganize in terms of like their own thinking around this is like, show up as your more healed self. Let people see how you walk and move as a more healed version of yourself. Model for them, whether it's your kids, it's your parents, it's your partner, it's friends, right? Like anyone, let them see how you're modeling how you show up differently and how you no longer feed the cycles, but you break them. And then see who is willing to join you in that process.

Right. And there may be, you know, months of resistance and challenge where you've got to keep showing up as a healed person or in the process while someone's reactive or crossing your boundaries, you've got to keep creating those boundaries, which is a challenging thing to do.

It's one of the biggest barriers to people being able to continue their cycle breaking process, which is going into the spaces where people have not actually done the work and them feeling like, what am I even doing this for?

Right.

Like, I may as well just like, you know, let it go and just play their game. Right.

It's so challenging.

It is very challenging. And it's, you know, process that also is going to require that they, in essence, like, just tolerate the distress, which is why distress tolerance skills are so important when it comes to trauma based work, because we have to train the mind and body to tolerate the guilt, tolerate the guilt of being the one that's doing the work and leaving others behind. Like that, that sometimes tends to be like how people feel about their healing. And so when we're able to reorganize the body and how it's actually internalizing that emotion, it helps them to sit with whatever guilt may still be lingering in a more settled way and not just throwing the towel.

What do you think of all the different traumas that you've worked on in your clinic and worked on with individuals, all the different types of traumas, abandonment, abuse, neglect, all these different things, bullying, being cheated on, all these different things. What one is the hardest trauma to overcome that you've seen? Or it takes the longest for people to psychologically wrap their heads around the wounds that they've received. Grieve, forgive, own, move on, process. Which one is typically the hardest to overcome?

What I have seen has been the hardest and what I have seen like people struggle with the most and has taken the most time has been abuse, childhood abuse specifically.

Them experiencing childhood abuse.

Them experiencing it, yeah, from a trusted adult, someone who either cared for them or someone who was proximal to them. And the experience of feeling almost kind of like their entire life formation was around that experience also being a part of it. And then having to extract that from all the layers of how it became a part of them is something that can be really, really hard. But also there's people that can live really abundant lives once they start doing the work in that direction.

Yes.

Usually wherever we feel the biggest triggers, that's where the work is. So when we can centralize the work there in that triggered space, it makes it so that we can experience probably the better part of our healing.

I guess in storytelling mythology, there's heroes and there's villains. And they have a similar backstory. They've both been abused or abandoned or something happened to them, right? And the villain uses that pain to hurt others. and the hero works with that pain, transforms it into making sure that others don't have that pain ever again. And I probably had both of those in my life of like, I've used the pain to try to be angry at others and dominate and win in sports. And then I've found transformation and be like, I don't want anyone to feel this pain ever again. And so I think we have a decision at different times of life of like, how are we going to use this trauma or this memory this experience for us. Are we going to live it to harm others or to help others and be in service? And I think it's really tricky, speaking from experience, as an adult mind trying to understand your 5, 7, 12, 15 year old self who is sexually abused, childhood mind that's still stored inside of you. It's hard to reflect back and recall all those moments and then think about how you carried that trauma until the adult mind is reflecting on it, process however many years that is and all the decisions you've made your entire life, why you've been reactive, relationships you've gotten in, challenges you might have, good that might come from it too, and then learn how to heal that time. It's like kind of a mind, you know, it's a mind mess, you know, it's tricky. And so I think you're, you know, you're probably right in that that's probably a painful one to overcome. I know there's lots of different traumas, but that one's definitely painful. But I know from experience that there is incredible peace and love on the other side if you're willing to do the work. Took me a couple years to really kind of feel like I could speak about it without having a nervous system response anymore. Yeah. But I think also when you realize you can overcome something like that, it gives you a lot of confidence, a lot of poise, a lot of power, a lot of peace and knowing, okay, if I can take on this as a five, seven, 10 year old, what can I take on as an adult with these tools that you're providing? So I think it's a great, you know, it's a great thing that you're sharing these tools because a lot of adults Don't have them still. And I'm still learning as many tools as possible. But why is that so challenging for adult minds to understand sexual abuse or some type of abuse as a child? Why is it hard for adult minds to understand that and overcome it?

Well, because there's been a really pervasive intrusion, you know, like a person feels like they are accessible to people. Like, people can hurt them, right? You know, they're vulnerable, and they've remained stuck in that vulnerability.

Yes.

And so the challenge in our adult lives is in the fact that that vulnerability just got carried on. And we still feel raw and open and vulnerable and, like, tender to the touch, and people can actually hurt us easily. And so that's why very often, like people also develop the coping mechanisms to try and protect themselves because they don't want to land in a similar situation where they're, you know, then there's yet another intrusion and how will they then survive that? Right. And so it, you know, it makes it, I always say, you know, when it's doubly hard to actually get through something, the reward would be double. Right.

Even more, it'll be even exponential. Right? I think so.

And I think your story, you know, which I know you've spent many years now sharing, and I think that it offers a beautiful moment for all of us to also reflect upon the fact that there is hope about abundance on the other side of healing. Because most of us think, like, when will this ever end? Will I ever heal? And we kind of get stuck in that narrative, rather than in the narrative of just do the work and trust that there will be abundance on the other side. There will be a steady version of you that is meeting you on the other side.

Yeah, I started the healing journey 10 years ago with this, with the sexual abuse that I experienced as a kid. And I thought that I had a healed a lot of it, but I still kept, and I did in certain areas, but I still kept entering relationships that proved otherwise and allowing myself to be kind of cross certain boundaries that I didn't want to, right? Because I didn't have the skills or the courage to be able to stand for the inner child inside of me and what he really needed during certain relationships. So it wasn't until about three years ago when I kind of revisited it again through intimacy. Like I was able to heal in some areas, but not every area. And that's when it took even more work. It was like an extra couple of years. So, you know, I feel like healing is a journey. It doesn't like mean, okay, I've done six months of intensive work, now I'm good. Like new things might come up in a couple of years that you have to readdress. And at least that's what's happened for me. But it, but not thinking you've got it all figured out, I think is something we need to have in mind. Be like, okay, I don't know all the answers. Even if I feel better, I'm going to keep working and processing. If we don't learn to heal our inner child as adults, what will happen to us?

Well, we can actually develop the same type of inner child wound in our children.

-Oh, yeah. -So they don't have to experience the wound. We're just passing it on, right? -Mm-.

-Yeah. And, you know, that comes up, of course, you know, we're talking about intergenerational trauma having some biological, you know, connections, right? Like, so there's already a family that perhaps is already from a nervous system perspective, from perhaps an epigenetic perspective, already having tenderness and vulnerabilities that are emotional. And then you have, you know, the, the possibility of there being like misattunement between a caregiver and their child. The caregiver may be so preoccupied with their own stress and trauma that they miss the social cues that their child is telling them, I need you. And that sense of emotional abandonment, you know, can surface or an inability to really relate to and connect with others, which is kind of like the general foundation of like attachment and attachment styles, right? A lot of those things can start to surface as a result of those initial imprints of the relationships that are primary to us, which are with our caregivers or individuals that are in essence taking care of us in the school system, any of the individuals that have proximity. And then, you know, it's going to be really important for us to also understand that whenever we're talking about like, not wanting that to carry on to the next generation, not wanting that tender little soul in front of us to then experience the pain that we have carried for so long, we have to talk about how we can also heal our own wounds. We need to reparent ourselves.

With time, I realized that, you know, everyone is fighting an unseen battle, Louis. Everyone. And we are so good at the art of concealing the pain that we are in. All of us. You know, the methodology changes. You know, there are certain ways that we conceal pain. Sometimes we share, sometimes we don't. But we all are going through something in life every day, you know, and I realize that if I think that I'm the one who's the most broken one, no. I have traveled around the world. I have met so many people and they had shared their very personal stories of how broken they are. And let me tell you, none of them were in the wheelchair. So there are so many people who are walking around who are perfectly fine. They are running their businesses. they are so broken from within. All they want is to be understood. They want someone who can understand their pain, you know, and I feel so blessed that when people look at me, when they see me in the wheelchair, maybe, you know, they just think that because she is in pain, we can talk to her because she can understand what we are going through.

Why do you think so many people are broken? in the world who maybe aren't in a wheelchair, who have able-bodied let's say, don't have a disformed body or something, but they're broken. Where do you think that brokenness is coming from for so many people?

Too many expectations from people. Too many expectations. You know, we want to get into a relationship because we want happiness. We want to feel complete, right? Soul mates. No, you are your own soul mate, period. You know, if you are not in a good relationship with yourself, you will be miserable even if you are in a relationship with someone. That's why people are broken. My happiness cannot be taken by someone because my happiness does not come from someone. Nobody is giving me my joy. I am the reason of my own joy. If we manage to understand this tiny little truth about life, we will heal. And time doesn't heal you, you heal you. You need to love yourself enough. And if you love yourself enough and you believe in self-love, no external force will ever be able to break you.

How do we learn to love ourselves if we have been telling ourselves for so long, I'm not lovable, or I had this accident, or I went through a breakup in a relationship and they left me or they abandoned me or whatever it might be. How do we not let outside factors dictate our feelings about ourselves? and, and not let the fear of abandonment of people or people's love hold us back from loving ourselves.

Yes, the fear of abandonment. We all have that. And we need to overcome this fear. You know, when I always say, when wrong people leave, right things start to happen. And we all are living a life story. You have your own story. I have my my brothers have their story, my mother has her own story and when you find yourself in the wrong story, just leave. If someone is not adding value to your life story or if you are not adding value to someone's life story, leave. Sometimes it takes letting go to realize we're holding on to nothing. We are too busy clinging on to those relationships which are not meant to be in our journey. you know, and that's why I say that these people are so toxic with time they become so toxic for you that you know what, your presence in their life is their only definition. And they will never want you to leave because they are so weak they want to stay in your shadow. So you need to pick and choose. This person is toxic leave. Liberate Yourself by setting all these extra people free who do not belong to your journey. You know, and these people will always weigh you down. And if there's something is weighing you down, how will you fly high? You know, and fear of abandonment. If you can manage to overcome this fear again, when you are on your own completely, that is where you will understand that Solitude is very powerful.

So powerful.

It's very powerful.

Yeah.

You know, because even in that silence, you're having a conversation. I mean, there is no energy vampire around me. I'm on my own and I'm manifesting the best things for myself. I would never trade my Solitude to anything because when I am alone on my own, I am the best version of myself.

Really?

Because I'm kind to myself. Yes.

You're kind to yourself?

Yes.

How much time did you spend alone after the accident?

So I have this really cool habit. I switch off. So even when I'm surrounded by a lot of people, I'm actually not there most of the times.

Really?

Yes, I'm just thinking, you know what? Recently I was thinking about something that when I was talking about that, how, you know, this beautiful balance of strength and vulnerability makes us who we are. I was thinking about it the other day that I've experienced this balance on daily basis. You know, when I see my social media, you know, when I read emails and people sending beautiful messages that, you know, how your words have empowered us and you know, because of you, we're not never going to give up. It gives me so much strength, you know, and I say to myself, oh my God, I'm so strong. And then at the nighttime when I'm thirsty, I'm unable to get up and get a glass of water for myself.

Mmm.

Right?

That's my reality. And how wonderful I am at that moment. So this strength and this vulnerability makes us who we are. So I need to have my own moment with myself where I am willing to understand myself better. That if I am vulnerable, that's okay. I'm strong too. And the perfect balance of these two things make me who I am.

I'm so fascinated by your story. And every time I see your content, it makes me smile every time I see you post a video or a photo, I'm always just rooting for you. I'm so excited for you and your life and the impact you make. And you are so much more talented than just an artist. At first you wanted to be an artist and then you thought you couldn't be. You were like, these don't look good. But now you're selling your art, your arts and galleries. It's really inspiring. But you're also a massive activist. You're a TV anchor. model, you did modeling, you sing and you're a speaker and you motivate millions of people around the world. You could have not done any of it. You could have said, I just want to be an artist and just go after that one thing, but you decided to go for more.

What.

When and why did you say, I want to start sharing this story and start putting this message out there in a bigger way? and revealing these things about yourself that maybe you were scared to do.

You know, I remember when I gave my very first talk that was TEDx. And it actually happened when I decided and I manifested that I'm going to overcome the fear of facing people. That's so ironic that a public speaker was once scared of facing people.

I was for sure, yeah.

I know.

So what happened was, I gave my very first TED talk. And after my TED talk, A girl from the audience, she came to me and she was crying and she said, Can I give you a hug? And I said, Sure. So she gave me a hug and she said, you, 10-minute TED Talk has solved 10 problems of my life. And she said, Today you made me realize that those 10 problems never existed. They were just in my head. And I was overthinking. And because of you, I'm never going to give up. You know, in that moment, in the flashback, I could hear my mother saying, one day God will show you how did he choose you out of so many for this test. And that was the moment of realization that you know what, if my words can change someone's perspective, maybe this is my true calling in life. You know, and as they say that in the end, what matters is how many lives you have touched. So art is my comfort zone, Lewis. You know, I can sit in the corner of my room in a cozy environment, have a cup of coffee and paint and sell the work, make both ends meet, pay the bills, raise my son and live. But I mean, is that enough? It's not enough because comfort zone is a good place to be, but nothing ever grows there. So if you really want to grow as a person, if you really want to learn and unlearn, We need to tap on all the abilities that we have. We are so blessed with immense potential, which remains untapped because we are too busy doing nine to five. We are too busy paying bills. And we live the same routine for so many years and then we end up calling it life. It's not life. It's not. You know, I realized later that, you know, I was labeled as the first wheelchair-bound model, the first wheelchair-bound singer, the first wheelchair-bound anchor, first wheelchair-bound, you know, and it was so much rubbed in my face that I said, you know what? I might be the first one to do all this, but I wouldn't be the last. I had to pave path for so many people who are supremely talented, who are differently abled, who are supremely talented, but maybe, maybe they were just a bit scared to take the first step.

Step.

I took the first step. I broke those barriers. At least I tried, you know, and. And I. Now I see a lot of young boys and girls doing amazing work. Why? Because now it's normal. It's normal for a wheelchair user to smile. It's normal for a wheelchair user, may it be a boy or a girl, to look good, to wear lipstick, to look nice, you know, to face the world. It's normal now. And even right now when being an anchor person, you know, I'm working for the National TV of Pakistan and when I'm doing my show, I'm always thinking about that little boy or girl, you know, sitting in a far-flung village watching my show and I think about them that, you know, they might be thinking that if a girl or a woman in a wheelchair can do this, we can do that too.

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 we 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.