Anxiety And Depression Episode one!

What we realize now through sciences like epigenetics is that our frequency is our emotions. So we know that if we're, you know, feeling good and we're grateful and everything just seems to go right. But when we're in those lower frequency emotions, like we're feeling frustrated or helpless, then everything is going wrong. And really what we want to do is, is think what the big picture is. We're going to, you know, running towards a life that really is filled with happiness and joy and fulfillment and meaning.

Anxiety and depression. You know, I used to see it as such a negative thing and a weakness about me and made me flawed or that other people didn't experience. So I think in just having a better understanding about it, I realized that I'm not alone. Also realizing it doesn't define who I am. Anxiety and excitement elicit the same physiological response in the brain. So if I'm doing something or if I'm feeling anxious or nervous, I interrupt myself and I try to change the narrative. I'm like, no, you're excited.

Me finally taking responsibility for my choices and for my life came from knowing that death is right around the corner. I get hit by a truck tomorrow. It's not like I have these grand plans anymore. I plan for each moment to take responsibility and each choice that I make, does this choice bring me another's life? You know, you have different seasons where symptoms of depression will be more prevalent. People can confuse that with depression, where it's not. It's just a season of depletion and a season of grief.

Sam.

Welcome to our new series, Anxiety and Depression. I'm Jeff Hayes. You can't spend a day without reading something about the epidemic of depression, the epidemic of anxiety. And I always think when I read something like that, it's really an epidemic of one. We know these things are happening in unprecedented numbers, but the reality is it happens to me, it happens to you. It happens to individuals. We've assembled this series and put together a symphony of voices, a symphony of stories and solutions. And I think you'll find something here that you think is uniquely yours, that's uniquely set for your situation. I'm excited for you to see it. Episode one is about to start. I can't wait for you to see some of the people that we've gathered to speak to this issue. Here we go with episode one. Natalie Ledwell has a fascinating story. You'll enjoy her accent. She's a delightful woman who's doing so much in the world. I'm excited for you to get to meet my friend, Natalie Ledworth. Well, here she is. Natalie, it is so good to have you here. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, my pleasure. Always great chatting with you, Jeff.

For people that don't know you, tell me a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do.

Yes. So I am the co founder of Mind Movies, which is a personal development company. So we help people to, you know, identify what they want in their life, how to get into a happy place, and how to create that life through goal setting, visualizing, taking action so they can create the life that they want.

So I'm guessing that when you were growing up, going to school, that wasn't the life course that you plotted out when you were 14 years old. What got you to being here?

You know, a serendipitous set of accidents. Of course, like all good things in life, I actually grew up in a family of eight kids. So I'm from a very large country family in Australia. And you know, when I was old enough, I was out of my country town, I moved to the city. And from a very young age, I was an entrepreneur. So I actually started managing fitness clubs when I was 21 years old and then met my husband when I was 25 years old. And then we had a whole string of different businesses, from nightclubs to coffee houses to, you know, property development, a whole bunch of different things. And I remember having a moment where I was so frustrated and I'm looking at my bank accounts and I'm looking at my bills and going, how am I doing all this work? And we were running four businesses at that time and not actually getting anywhere financially. This doesn't make any sense to me. I'm like, I'm missing some piece of information here. And then I watched a little movie called the Secret, which talked about the law of attraction. And not long after I saw that, I'm like, this is the missing piece. A friend approached us with this idea of creating these little movies, little slideshows that were like vision boards with affirmations and photos and music to help people or help us get very clear about what we wanted our life to look like and be able to see it in a little movie format. And so, you know, he came to us not long after that and said, let's set up a website. Which was interesting because my ex husband and I, who's now my ex husband, Glenn and I, like Glenn, couldn't turn on a computer. I hadn't even heard of YouTube. We knew nothing about the Internet. But in that time we were able to launch a website. It's now 15 years later, and we've reached 10 million people around the world. And really helping to help people live a life that they love and that's fulfilling and meaningful. And then we're also, you know, working in schools now as well. So it's been quite the adventure.

It's amazing to me, the number of people I meet, that when somebody talks about visualization, they say I can't really visualize. And, you know, I am such a visual personality, I have trouble not visualizing. And. But I run into that over and over. And I've often thought that what you guys created is perfect for helping people get a concrete image of what they want.

Well, it's actually the reason they were created in the first place. Because I had a problem visualizing. I found it really difficult in my mind to see what a future looked like, especially if it's a future that I hadn't experienced yet, like outrageous wealth and living overseas and a whole bunch of different things. And so, you know, that tool really helped me to be able to do that. But now I've even taken it, like, an extra step. And when I visualize now, it's not like I see myself as a character in a movie like I used to see. I actually put myself in a moment as if it's happening now. So, you know, I. When I was attracting my partner, one of the scenes that I would go to all the time to feel and see what it was like to already be in love and to have that relationship is I'd see myself on a beach. So I could feel the deck chair underneath my. Underneath my body, and I could feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, and I could smell the ocean, and I could hear the waves crashing, you know, and I'm holding this person's hand, and I can feel the warmth of their hand in my hand. And I'm feeling all this love and contentment in that moment. And when I met my partner, it was only like a month and a half later that I was actually on the beach. We're up in Monterey, and. And I was actually experiencing that moment that I had seen and played out in my mind so many times. It was amazing.

That's so great. And I was able to see the both of you here recently and just testify as an observer that the love that you have absolutely glows.

So thank you.

Let's talk about. For people that are suffering from depression and anxiety, even as you were talking about imagining a future, you know, one of the penalties of depression is your future. It almost disappears for a lot of people and the past becomes the focus. And then I thought with anxiety, they're really good at picturing a future, but our minds run away with us in anxiety and take us into futures that we don't want to see. Have you worked with a lot of people with depression and anxiety?

Yeah. I mean, when I'm working with people that are stuck in an environment or in a moment in their life where they have a lot of debt or if they have a lot of pain or maybe they're feeling lonely because they are looking for love and they haven't found it yet. The challenge that I find with people that are in those moments is that when you're looking at that, that's all you see. You know, if you're anxious. Normally we're anxious because we're concerned about a future event or a future moment that may not possibly happen. You know, depression is obviously a different thing as well. But the thing is, what I do is I work with people to, rather than looking at the pain and the debt and so forth, I get them just to push, look over here and go, oh, okay, well, what. What about some other possibilities here? And do things that consciously help to shift their emotions and shift their mood out of, you know, what I call a lower frequency emotion. I know that all of our emotions have a certain frequency attached to it, and, you know, misery likes company. So the more that we're feeling these lower frequency emotions, the more of those are coming in. But if we can just like shift just a little bit and go, okay, well, what is it that I have in my life that I am grateful for? You know, and sometimes it could be a struggle. I know with people I have worked with, when they do that, for the first few times, it's like, well, you know, I have a roof over my head, so I should be grateful for that. And it kind of. They shift from I should be grateful for this to, no, I am grateful for this. And then once they start to see the things that they have in their life that are a blessing, the more of that they see, the more of that that they're focusing on. And it helps to shift them out of these lower frequency emotions up into, you know, gratitude and appreciation and different, you know, higher frequency emotions.

So I want you to talk a little bit more about the frequency of emotions. And do you mean this literally, that they have a literal frequency or is it metaphoric? And how can somebody move from, you know, from one to the other and should they?

Yeah. I mean, I don't like to say emotions are positive or negative, you know, or good or bad, because they all serve a purpose. We know that if we're feeling sad, then, you know, it's give telling us something. If we're feeling anxious or depressed, it's also telling us something. It's giving us a message that we want to look at and go, well, why am I feeling this? And let me go a little bit deeper on here and figure out what this is. And so for me, I get people to create a list of anything that makes them feel good. And it could be anything. It could be eating ice cream. It could be listening to their favorite song. It could be meditation or breath work. It could be walking out in nature. It could be, you know, anything that makes them feel good so that when they're in a moment where they're, you know, not feeling great and go, okay, I need to. I need to shift my emotions here. I need to shift into something different. They can look at their list and go, okay, yeah, I could probably have. I've got time to do this one right now. I've got time to go for a walk so they can get out. And it helps to shift their mood. Now, I may not necessarily get them from depression into joy. That's a very big leap. But it definitely gets them to feel better. And if you can move up in little increments, then you'll eventually get up into those higher frequency emotions. So David Hawkins wrote a book back in the 90s called Power vs. Force, and he was able to measure the frequency of all of our different emotions. Now, when we're talking about something like the Law of Attraction, where we know that we. That everything's made up of energy that is all resonating in a different frequency. And if we want to attract the things that we want into our life, then we want to be resonating at a similar frequency to that. So then it gets attracted back to us in this infinite quantum field that we live in. And so what we realize now through sciences like epigenetics is that our frequency is our emotions. So we know that if we're feeling good and we're grateful and we're feeling happy and going through our day, everything just seems to go right. We seem to be in flow, but when we're in those lower frequency emotions, like we're feeling frustrated or helpless or whatever, that then everything is going wrong. You know, like we. It's like we have to walk through our day wearing concrete boots. So you Know, understanding or recognizing the emotional state that you're in and going, okay, well, am I happy to stay here or do I want to shift that? And how can I do that? So either through some kind of physical activity, like I said, making that list and making sure that you've got something that's going to shift you, even if it's shifting the needle just a little bit to get you into a higher frequency emotion.

So on a personal level, how important is this in your life? This visualization, this creating the future that you want and you personally, is this a daily practice? Where does this fit for you?

It's kind of who I am. You know, I was at dinner the other night with my partner and a college friend of his and his wife, and they made a comment like, you know, you're so positive. I'm like, well, I hope I am. This is what I do for a living. But I practice these and I embody this knowledge throughout my entire life, which helps me to navigate through some pretty huge goals that I set for myself. You know, the latest project I'm working on is this social emotional learning curriculum for schools. So I'm, you know, approaching the schooling system here in the US and around the world. This is something that is so far outside of my comfort zone, I can't even tell you. Like, it's like way over there. But when I understand how this works, I understand these practices. And I can sit every day in the visualization of me walking into a classroom and having all the kids screaming and laughing and coming up, and I can feel them pulling on my clothes and I'm talking to the teacher and they have tears about how much, you know, the lessons and what they've learned and taught the children has made such a massive difference in their lives. When I can sit in that visualization and come out and go, okay, well, what do I do next? You know, I left school when I was 15. I'm, I'm, you know, I don't even have children yet. You know, I could see this as something that I felt passionate about that I want to make a difference on. And even though I don't know a lot about it, I've been able to attract the right people and have the right meetings and the introductions and things that are coming in are only coming in not because I planned it, but because I am such a vibrational and in vibrational alignment with this end result that things are just coming in. I mean, I'm doing a lot of work as well. There's a lot of action that needs to happen along with that. But it's like, I don't need to do it myself. I'm actually leveraging the power of the unified field of the universe or of God to be able to help me to get the job done.

Your comments are packed with so much information. I hope people are hearing between the lines because there's. It's not just what you say, but it is the mindset that generates those thoughts. I mean, briefly, you mentioned I don't have to know how to do it. I just need to know the people that know how to do it, find the people that know how to do it. And so many times when we're in a depressed state, we start limiting ourselves. And when you talk about shifting just a little bit, we limit ourselves on what our resources are to what we can see right in front of us and forget that the world is packed full of people that would love to achieve the same goal that we secretly dream of.

Absolutely. Well, you know, like one example of that is that I was in a series of yours called the Millionaire within her and a woman saw that interview and I had spoken about the children's project. She reached out to me and she's been working with us now for the last four months. You know, she's a global strategist, she's an ex teacher. She's super passionate about this. So she's been that missing piece that I needed because I was stuck at that moment. But you know, how she came in was just randomly through, you know, a different interview that I did. So these are the kind of serendipitous things that can fall into place when you understand, you know, how energy works and how the universe works. You know, and even when we're manifesting something, you know, step one for me that I teach people is that we need to be in our happy place first. You know, we need to be in these higher frequencies because if we sit down and go, okay, I want to better my life. I want to. I want to improve what I have here. If we're still in those low frequency emotions, at best we might be able to see ourselves out of our current situation. But we don't see, you know, we don't set big audacious goals because there is no way that we believe that that will happen. So, you know, we only look at what we, you know, something that's easy, something that's just going to get us out of our current situation. And really what we want to do is think what the big picture is. And then we're going to run straight past that first little goal. We're going to be, you know, running towards a life that really is, you know, filled with happiness and joy and fulfillment and meaning.

Yeah. I used to have a mentor that said happy being happy is the most polite thing you can do. And it actually is polite to everyone around you just to be happy. But more than that, happiness is so attractive. It attracts. And I'm sure everybody has a friend or two that when they walk in the room, everybody in the room feels better for some reason. And I think that's the frequency that you're talking about, you know, so certainly even choosing who you associate with, you know, is this person lifting me to a higher frequency, or is this person pulling me down to an old familiar and unhealthy frequency for me to stay at?

Well, at the end of my marriage, my husband and I broke up about nine years ago now. But I remember thinking, you know, it's your fault that I'm not happy. You know, you're doing this to me. You're the one that's making me unhappy, you know, and once our marriage was over, I'm like, ooh, I don't have my scapegoat anymore. Maybe it's me. And it was a big lesson in going, you know, I have to be responsible for my own happiness, you know, so when I met my new partner, that was the. On our first date, that was one of the big things that came up in our conversations about how much we realize that we're responsible for our own happiness and that I don't need you to make me happy. Happiness really does come from within, and it sounds like a cliche, but it truly is true. And then when two people are whole and coming into a relationship where they both responsible for their own happiness, what you get to create is this third entity, this relationship that truly is amazing and beautiful. But it's not just romantic relationships. It's all of our relationships. When we can show up in a higher frequency and we're coming from this place of happiness and feeling great about ourselves, then that does permeate and influence the other people in our relationships as well.

If you were to assemble a toolkit for someone, we get advice. You need to learn, you know, you need to love yourself more, you know, and that's true for every human being on this planet, no matter how much they love themselves. We could all love ourselves more, but few people give us the recipe. Okay, how do I do that? Is it, you know, looking in the mirror saying, I love you, Jeff? Or, you know, what? How do I really do that? And the same thing. This happiness comes from the inside. What are some tools that people can use to excavate the happiness they have in them and bring it out?

Well, I think if you're in a place where you are consistently feeling low or consistently, you know, not happy or not loving yourself. I mean, in my 30s, I had a whole decade of where I would just mentally beat myself up because I was starting to put on weight. I wasn't happy with my image. I started comparing myself to other people and then just. Honestly just feeling really bad about myself. But I was in these mental loops. And if you're watching this right now, you may be able to identify with this. But it was exhausting how much I beat myself up mentally throughout all of my 30s. And it wasn't until I kind of sat down and went, all right, where is this coming from? I mean, I was always an athletic kid. I know that a lot of our programming comes from when we're, you know, originates from when we're children. And so I'm like, I never had any problem with my weight then. Like, I don't understand this. And I remember going home and visiting my parents, and my mom was talking about, you know, a school friend of mine that she'd seen the other day. She goes, oh, I saw Melissa the other day. She goes, she's put on a bit of weight. I'm like, ah, there it is. So I realized that my mum, you know, and it wasn't like it was malicious or anything, but that was just a way, one of her values and how she, you know, viewed other people, I'm like, oh, now I get it. So when I understand that these feelings and these thoughts aren't really even coming from me. They're coming from, you know, my environment, my programming when I was a child. I can go, great, all right, now I understand where it's coming from. So the next thing I need to do is to release that. So when I can identify all of the different thoughts, thoughts that are connected to that feeling of, you know, not worthy, not feeling good enough, not feeling pretty enough, not feeling thin enough. And I can write those thoughts down and I have them on paper and I can look at it and go, okay, these thoughts. I'm not thinking these thoughts anymore. These. These things are keeping me in a mental prison. I have to choose what I'm going to replace those thoughts with, because once I'm aware of them, I'll be able to catch myself. But unless I have already Pre organized or pre thought about what I'm going to replace those thoughts with, then I'll just go back into that default. So then I write out a little list of all the thoughts I'm going to replacing that with like, you know, I'm beautiful, I'm gorgeous, I'm worthy, you know, I love myself. And so when I catch myself, I go, cancel, cancel, cancel. Only love exists here. And then I change into the thought that I and then I just continue with the new thought that I want to think. So that little technique really helps me to stop and go, no, no, I've already chosen not to think these thoughts anymore. And this is what I'm going to replace it with.

I forgot about. I went for years doing cancel, cancel, cancel. But I love the addition to it of only love exists here because yeah, you do have to plant something in its place. So any other advice you would have for someone that is struggling with depression or anxiety and any, anything that could cause them to feel better, move in a happier direction.

Yeah, I think what I've been noticing is that especially with this pandemic, the whole world was thrown into the unknown. We didn't know what was happening with the virus, we didn't know what was happening with our jobs, with our life. Everything was put on hold. When in the unknown can be a very uncomfortable place for a lot of people, which does cause a lot of anxiety actually. I think it's the number one challenge that the world is facing right now. So when you can get comfortable with the unknown, when you go, you know what, I don't know what this is, what's coming, but I know that the universe has my back, I can influence the outcomes that I have in my life. And if I can operate from a place where I'm feeling good about myself and I'm feeling like I'm worthy and I'm feeling happy and I'm doing these little things during the day, then whatever comes along, I'll be able to handle it. And I think that's, you know, really like a huge tool that a lot of us can use right now. Because anxiety really is worrying about what could happen but probably won't happen. But if we can go, it doesn't matter what happens, it's okay. I've got this, universe has got my back. We're going to be able to get through this, then that helps to really minimize a lot of that anxiety.

That's a beautiful way to walk through the world. And when I talked earlier about we all have friends that can walk in a room and lift people up. You're one of those people. So I thank you for the light that you bring into the world and everything you do.

Thank you, Jeff. Always a pleasure chatting with you, my friend.

Once again, it's another delightful person in the series delivering really practical and usable advice. I hope you enjoyed Natalie Ledwell. Now you get to see Brittney Burgunder. She's a fascinating woman who struggled with eating disorders that were so serious. It really did jeopardize her life. As you hear the pain that she went through, there's something there that all of us can relate to. I hope you enjoy this interview. Brittany, thank you so much for being here today.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Jeff, tell me your story and we'll get people up to why. Why we wanted to talk to you.

Yeah, well, I have. I have a very long, long story. Mostly struggled with an eating disorder for about a decade of my life. You know, this I would say prior to my disorder, I really struggled with anxiety and depression when I was younger, but I was too young to know what those feelings were. I just knew that my mind would never rest. I had these thoughts in my head that I couldn't make sense of, and I didn't. You know, I didn't understand what was going on. I just internalized it to mean that there must be something wrong with me. I must be flawed or a bad person somehow. I was teased and bullied often just when I was young, and it seemed like everyone had an easy time fitting in except for me. And so I think, you know, I. Instead of. Instead of having these thoughts and feeling like, okay, I feel bad, I internalized it, that, no, I don't feel bad. I am bad. And so I took it on as my identity. I figured, you know, in an effort to hide my shortcomings, I did everything that I could to appear perfect. And I channeled my anxiety and my restless thoughts into just doing everything I could to not let others know or find out my. My flaws and shortcomings.

That's a heavy weight, isn't it?

Yes, very much. You know, sort of living this double life when I was young, just trying to, you know. Yeah. Just to make sure no one found out that I had these anxious thoughts or these bad feelings or I just felt like if I were perfect enough, no one would find out and I would fit in like they did, and maybe that would rid me of, you know, it'd make life easier and rid me of these awful feelings that I felt.

Yeah. So what Age. About what age is this?

This was more probably elementary school and middle school. And so then at this time, my anxiety and these feelings that I had, again, I did not know what they were called. You know, I didn't know that there was a name for anxiety. I didn't know there was a name for OCD or for depression. I just knew that my mind was constantly going. I was constantly beating myself up. I felt worthless. And so I, you know, it kind of got to a point where it was crippling. And I started to channel my anxiety and my feelings into kind of strange behaviors. And that started to play out with food and with exercise, and I didn't really know what I was doing. But every time I started to engage, let's say, in eating less or exercising more, my mind would temporarily rest, my anxiety would temporarily lessen, and it, you know, push my depression away, at least initially and briefly. And so I began sort of engaging in these behaviors more often. And over time, this manifested into an eating disorder and initially anorexia. And I had no idea what an eating disorder was at the time. I didn't, you know, wasn't really talked about. I just knew that when I did these behaviors, I felt better, and it kept, you know, kept my pain at a distance. And it kind of was like a band aid for, you know, the deeper problems that I didn't know how to address or talk about.

So how bad did that did that.

Get physically with the anorexia? I struggled with that for about seven years. And, you know, I got to a point where I was actually in college and I got asked to leave from the university, and I almost lost my life. I was £56 at that time, so I was not expected to live. My parents were having to plan my funeral. And I think the most interesting thing for me, looking back now in hindsight, is, you know, I absolutely was oblivious to the severity of it. I did not, you know, I didn't really grasp that I was in danger or that I was skinny or that I even had a problem at that point. You know, I was still very much in denial. And I think. I think that's really just a important thing with eating disorders, is that it's never about weight. And I could lose all the weight in the world and it would never be enough because it was. It was about keeping my anxiety and keeping my depression and keeping those thoughts far enough away. And so I had to keep escalating the eating disorder behaviors in order to keep receiving that same sort of initial numbing effect. So you know, I could lose, I could lose all the weight in the world, but it was never going to fully cure or fix my underlying problems.

So we're deep in the maze with you. How in the world did you get out of this?

Well, you know, it continued a little bit longer. So after anorexia, my eating disorder actually morphed into binge eating disorder. And I gained 165 pounds in about a year and a half. So I went to one extreme to the other. I went to £56 to £221. And I struggled with that for a little while. And again, it was sort of the same thing where I was trying to self medicate my anxiety and my depression with food, with my eating disorder, with these other behaviors to distract me from my, you know what, I didn't want to face my pain and stuff. But again, you know, that was only sort of this band aid. It wasn't really going to fix anything. So I struggled with binge eating disorder for a while and then it changed one last time to bulimia. And again, you know, my, throughout my struggle with my eating disorder, my appearance sometimes changed and that was only a result of my behavior sometimes changing. However, no matter what form, you know, my eating disorder was always driven by the same underlying issues, which was anxiety, depression, feelings of worthlessness. And so, yeah, you know, it really, even though I sometimes look different physically, they were all coming from the same root issues.

So were you in therapy during this 10 year period?

I was, I was on and off. I was also, you know, my parents were, especially when I was younger, very, very proactive in trying to get me good help. And so I did also go to certain inpatient programs, outpatient programs, specialized eating disorder programs.

And did it just not break through the barrier?

Yeah, not for a long time. You know, I think when I was earlier on in my struggle, it was still, it was still hard for me to see it as something that was serious. And I absolutely knew on some level that it was negatively affecting my life. However, I also felt that one, I deserved it. I felt, you know, I felt so wretched about myself internally that I felt like I deserved this suffering and also that, you know, maybe if I punished myself enough, it would, you know, it rid me of my flaws or maybe it would, you know, it would, I deserved it somehow. But really it was just a way to, to self medicate and to cope. And as much as I knew it was not a good thing in my life, it kind of became the only way I knew how to survive.

As I listen to you, I made some decisions when I was 11 years old that directed my life without my awareness for 50 years thereafter. 50 years that, you know, these decisions just remained intact and unexamined. And I'm just, you know, looking at this, you know, this bright face in front of me right now and picturing you as a little girl making these decisions that, you know, just extended to direct your life. So now, you know, we're 10 years in, you know, how did you get out of this?

Yeah, you know, I finally got to a point where I think, you know, I realized I wanted to live more.

Than.

Staying stuck where I was. You know, I really had to kind of hit a rock bottom in my mind, you know, because I had hit all these rock bottoms physically. And I kept surviving and it was more getting to a place where I had to really sit with myself and come to terms that, you know, I really want, I do want a better life for myself. And I, you know, I'm scared, I'm terrified. I don't know what it's going to feel like without my eating disorder. I don't know what it's going to feel like, you know, trying these new things. But it finally got to the point where I feel like I felt like that was worth giving it a shot because I was so, I would say more miserable sort of in this half living state where I kind of just felt like I was existing. And that to me, you know, it finally pushed me to a point where I realized, okay, I need to, and I want to make the choice for myself to, you know, to see if life could be better. And so, yeah, I had a very good therapist and I had a good dietitian and I committed to working with them and I committed to trying to trust them and to slowly change little things in my life. And that was a process. You know, recovery is really just the beginning. You know, you want to think that, oh, you just make a decision to recover and then, you know, you wave a magic wand and it's all gone. Your anxiety's gone, your depression's gone. You know, it's in your normal. And it really, it just doesn't go like that at all. It's just a little, you know, one tiny step at a time. But over time, it saved my life and it absolutely changed my life for the better.

From this point, I'm assuming because of your awareness of it now, that you learned to either live with or minimize depression and anxiety in your life. What, what did you learn that that enabled you to do That I think.

One of the biggest things is just how I relate to anxiety and depression. You know, I used to see it as such a negative thing and a weakness about me and something that, that made me flawed or that other people didn't experience. And so I think in just having a better understanding about it, I realized, well for sure that I'm not alone. We all experienced anxiety, depression and negative thoughts. But then also realizing it doesn't define who I am. I can have bad thoughts or anxious feelings and it doesn't mean it's not a reflection of who I am. It doesn't mean I'm worthless just because I feel worthless. And I think, you know, really I see, I see it now is something that's a strength of mine. I feel like I'm a more sensitive individual and I feel that in my healing and learning about just all the different parts of myself, I feel like I'm now better able to channel those feelings and emotions into helpful pursuits and just to be a more resourceful individual. I think it's really, it's really given me, made me just a stronger overall individual.

So do you have any daily practices or weekly practices that you do that, that you've replaced? I mean you were obviously self medicating with food and exercise and you know that self soothing is really an important skill. It's not really the best way to go about it, but learning self soothing skills are, you know, it's required.

Exactly. Yeah. And that was difficult at first sort of to find things that could replace my old, my old ways to cope and to self sufficient soothe. And so that was kind of finding little things at a time that I could try. And now, you know, I love to write, I love to journal, I love to get out in nature, spend time with my dog. But it's just, it's finding little things or, or even if it's a song that puts you in the right mood or something, you say to yourself really that it's self talk is so powerful. One thing or at least a little trick, I like to remind myself. Anxiety and excitement elicit the same physiological response in the brain. So if I'm doing something or if I'm feeling anxious or nervous, I interrupt myself and I try to change the narrative. I'm like no, you're excited and it really helps. So it's sort of, you know, just like these little. You got to get to know yourself but then find little things that really work for you or kind of change your mindset and that, you know, everyone's different so what works for me might not work for someone else, but you know, it's really kind of just like kind of getting to know yourself and your. Your thoughts and then becoming aware of, okay, when are they being. When am I feeling or my thoughts? When is it irrational versus when. Is this a helpful thought?

Yeah. I remember one time long ago I was getting ready to go on to a national TV show and I'm standing off camera and the host is sitting at a table and talking about news and I'm like, wow, millions of people are going to see that. And for some reason that thought terrified me and I could feel a little bit of panic coming up and I go, oh no, I'm nervous because I normally don't get nervous in front, like in front of a camera that I'm around them all day. But this one that thought, you know, millions of people are going to see this live. And I instantly went, wait a minute, that's not nervous. I'm excited. And it really was exciting. I'm sure there was nervousness in there also. But they're so close that I really couldn't discern between the two. You mentioned self talk and you know, in my mind we're always talking to. I should say in my mind I'm always talking to myself. And I think this is true for other people as well. How do you specifically direct your self talk?

You know, I think, and this is a practice too, it doesn't. It's not easy to just sort of go from. I was such a. I beat myself up constantly. So it, you know, I didn't just go from hating myself and beating myself up to suddenly, you know, having good self talk, but it was very much a practice of focusing on what am I doing right instead of what am I doing wrong. You know, I used to be sort of this thinker where I catastrophized everything and I just fixated on, you know, my, my. My flaws, my faults, my shortcomings and everything I was doing wrong. I could just. It could never be perfect enough, never good enough for me. And so really what I started to do and now it's, you know, just become something I'm used to doing is just focusing on what am I doing right and, and just feeding my strengths, focusing on my strengths and not giving my energy so much to my weaknesses or things that, you know, are not. That don't come as easily to me. And so I try to really just give my attention to, to what's going well, what I did well, what I'm good At and then also just really trying my best to give myself credit for the small things. I think that's probably something I know is difficult for a lot of people, but especially in recovery and in early recovery, you have to sell it. You really have to celebrate. Even the things that make you laugh because they seem so silly, but sometimes just getting out of bed, if that's hard for some per, you know, for some people, which it is, and you do it, then that's something. That's absolutely something huge to celebrate. And so sort of just, you know, really focusing on the good. And I again, just telling myself, you know, my progress, no matter how small or something that I'm changing, no matter how small it is, you know, to really try to give myself credit for it.

So you've listed a lot of things, these shifts in your thinking, and all of them are wonderful. Did you make yourself like a checklist or a rules to live by or have you compiled it? Because these are a lot of thoughts that you shifted over time. How do you manage that?

Yeah, I wish I did have a scroll that just.

Well, the next time I watch, I'll watch this interview again and I'll probably make a list and send it to you.

Give me my own notes.

Yeah, because you'll forget some of. You know, I'm constantly relearning good behaviors that I used to do and somehow over time, drop them.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of them again, I've accumulated them over the years and I think it's really with all of them and with any habit that I've learned or that someone else is learning, is the repetition of it. You know, no matter if it's a good behavior or bad behavior or any behavior, even if you're an athlete and practicing for a certain sport, whatever you repeat, you're gonna get better at. So, you know, these good thoughts and these shifts in my thinking. I wanted to get better at my self talk, but it takes a lot of practice and repeating it and it's not gonna be, you know, you're gonna screw up a lot along the way. So it was sort of just I think, over time, just incorporating new ways of thinking and new habits and then just continue, you know, committing to them until they just sort of became a new way of life for me. And things and changes that I made that initially felt really daunting and really weird and really foreign to me, you know, now they're just sort of a part of my everyday life. And I think, you know, for those who are just starting recovery or who are, you know, who feel really intimidated by it. It's really helpful, you know, to remember that. It's going to seem really scary at first. I know if I were talking to my younger self right now, you know, I remember I was so scared thinking, like, how am I going to change everything at once? How am I going to go from A to Z and what if I can't do it? And I was putting all this pressure on myself. And it really, it happens a little bit at a time and you get better a little bit at a time. You get stronger a little bit at a time. And it's not as overwhelming as you think. And I never in a million years would have thought that I would feel this way or be able to feel this way, to think this way, to act and live the way that I am now. I mean, I never saw a future for myself. I never saw a way out of my struggle. I. I never saw myself ever, ever liking myself or being okay with myself. I mean, I just hated everything about myself. And I just, you know, the fact that I laugh at that now because I just, you know, I wish I didn't believe that when I was younger because I don't believe any of it now. So it really, I think it's just a testament to. To how strong the human body is and the human mind and just what we tell ourselves matters, but also that we're never too, you know, we always have the capacity to change.

Always.

And it's just something that, you know, you really have to stick at and believe, you know, believe in yourself. And looking back at those little, small steps and little changes really do add up.

Well, your story is overflowing with hope. And I'm amazed at your resilience and ability to survive what you put yourself through. And I'm delighted to see you emerge on the other side. For someone watching this who's looking at the daunting task you survived you saw in front of you and in that despair that you were in, what would you say to them? And is it worth it?

Oh, gosh, it's a million times worth it. And I know that's, you know, it's in one ear, out the other. Yeah. You know, it's hard to believe when you're in it and when you feel so scared and, you know, you can't see the finish line. I would tell you to try, you know, just to try to trust the process. You know, having lived, experience in it, it's not comfortable. And I would say the first parts of recovery, if Anything are going to feel worse. Often, you know, you're changing. You're changing all your ways, and you're changing your ways to cope. But really, I think it's so important to give yourself that chance to have a better life and to remember that you can do it and you do have worth, you do have value. And, you know, it's a journey that really is going to give you those things that you truly do seek in ways that sustainable. And I think it just, it takes a lot, a leap of faith on your part, but there are others that have gone through the process and they believe in you and you're not alone.

Brittany, that's great. Again, thank you so much for being here with us, and it is great to see your bright shining light.

Thank you so much.

I have a friend who's in the medical field as a clinician, treats people and he talks about vitamin H. Vitamin H for him is hope, and it affects all treatment. The story, like Brittany, what it can do for me is it increases my stores of vitamin H. More hope. I hope you got as much out of that as I did. Some of these interviews are astounding, personal stories of despair and then triumph and the road that people take back is always fascinating with me up next is Angie Fletcher. This is an interview that Kat Merritt did with her. You'll see she's a fascinating woman. She was a model and really had a hard road and an amazing recovery. I'm excited for you to see this.

Angie, thank you so much for joining us.

It's my pleasure.

It's going to be really fun. There's so much going on that I want to talk about and so much that you've been through that. It's such a huge help for other people and where you've ended up. So let's go back to the beginning. Let's start with who is Angie? How did this whole journey start for you?

Oh, my goodness. That's so funny, right? Who is Angie? So this. We have a couple of days now to go through this because Angie is so much. And yeah, there's so many things, but who I was created, who I am and who I'm becoming. So I was a little girl whose dad died when she was young, who was very depressed and very depleted and not knowing that that was even a thing. I went through my younger life being. Yeah. Just under the label of depressed. My mom had. There was four of us kids. And so I think to compartmentalize, to help her, she kind of labeled all of the kids. And so I Was the weak one, very dark, very depressed. Everything happened physically to me. So I was, I had pms, you know, I was away from school for three days out of the month, just laying in the fetal position. I was just always very, very dark in my thinking and also just physically. And so that kind of carried through my adolescence and I became a model at 18. I left the, I left the house on my 18th birthday. So a couple of things. I went through some hospitalization periods because of drinking and doing different things as adolescents sometimes do, just experimenting, but more like on the darker side of things quite often. But I left the house at 18, became a model when modeling was still a thing, not like nowadays, but modeling was like an actual career. And went to Germany and you know, started my whole kind of young adult life. At 19 I got married and moved to New York. Was still a model, was kind of a model actress. And that would be, you know, as a, as a paying job or as a paying career. That would be kind of the only things that I've really done like as, as an adult was modeling, acting. And then when I moved to Los Angeles, so I had a baby in New York. I'm a young mom and I now have an 18, 19 year old. But anyway, I had a baby in New York, moved to Los Angeles and throughout this whole time, even with modeling, modeling kind of exacerbated my symptoms of depression. Not really so much anxiety because a lot of people lump depression and anxiety together. For me they were two different things. Depression for me was very dark, heavy, alone, where anxiety was more of like an upper and a fast beating heart and like shaking and anxiety attacks kind of came on later. I didn't have so much anxiety attacks as I did. The depression so moved to Los Angeles and that's where the anxiety, that's where the depression kind of flipped into anxiety. Because I feel like I just, I kind of entered more into a Hollywood world of comparison and of really of like high end productivity where it wasn't, it, it wasn't enough just to be one thing. You kind of had to be like the triple threat or you know, the multiple things. So that is my story kind of up until I hit 30, I was going through a divorce. And like I feel so stereotypical right now, telling my story in a nutshell. Like I moved to Hollywood, I got a divorce. I guess I'm like that person. But anyway, you did get married while.

You were really depressed, so there's that, right? So, you know, you carry this into your adolescence, through your modeling career, into A marriage. Did you think it was just normal to feel that way?

I did. I didn't have any tools to kind of know that there was something different. And so I, I took on that cloak of victimhood, that identity of victimhood, because my dad died when I was young and my dad was a pastor. So we had a lot of church and a lot of family around us. That, that gave me that attention of poor Angie, you know, of, oh, you shouldn't lose your dad when you're so young. So I really, I kind of, I really liked that identity. I kind of had a lot of sympathy and a lot of empathy, a lot of attention from that identity. So I carried that through. And I never really looked for the root cause, you know, I really did just band aid everything with emotional eating, with smoking, with pharmaceuticals, with things that just kind of even validated that identity of depression even more. I didn't have to take responsibility for much. Like, even when I came to Hollywood, I took acting classes and I had a lot of different opportunities, but I always kind of shut myself down because I was under that umbrella of not having to take responsibility for my success because I just, I liked to stay small and to stay depressed, you know, under that kind of identity. So, yeah, in my 30s, then going through my divorce, started smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The anxiety was really, that's the smoking helped with my anxiety because I was married so young. I also was used to holding somebody's hand and again didn't have to really step into being a woman or being, you know, a whole human person. I was able to just kind of be very, very codependent with my husband. So when I had this social life without having a hand to hold it, I didn't have the tools in order to be confident in that. So I became confident with my hands having a cigarette and a glass of wine, which again, just exacerbated the whole depletion which led to. Which helped the symptoms of depression and all that kind of came to a big stop. When I was in my early 30s. I was going to therapy every day. Couldn't afford therapy anymore because of my divorce. I was financially decided to take a road where it was not that the one stereotypical thing I didn't do was rake my ex husband over the coals. So I left. I didn't take any money and so financially was painting my best friend's baseboards for cash so that I could pay my gas. Didn't know that. I didn't know anything about having to call anyone to Turn on my electricity. I really was like this baby, this stunted woman, or the stunted child in a woman's body. And it all kind of came to a head when I was in the hospital because I had smoked and drank myself to a place where I was alone in my bathroom. We shared custody at that point. So my young son was with my ex husband. I was in the bathroom. I was. It was a tiny, tiny bathroom. So the pedestal sink was next to the toilet. And I don't know if this is maybe too much information for the viewers, but just to paint you a beautiful picture that complements what you see here, I had stuff coming out of the bottom while I was in the toilet as I was throwing up simultaneously in the sink. So that was a low point for me. That was kind of a time where I realized maybe things weren't warrants really coming together as they should. I had to call 911 because I passed out. I was naked on the floor, covered in my own everything. I had to call 911. And the only thing that I remember was they had to call in a female attendant because I was naked. So they called in a female attendant to come put clothes on me and, you know, put me in the ambulance that I couldn't afford and take me to the hospital. So I stayed overnight, and they gave me all of the things that they needed to give me to rehydrate me and to kind of bring me back to life. It wasn't a suicide attempt. It literally was just a lifestyle. It was lifestyle choices that had led me to that point of becoming so dehydrated and sick. And whatever happened was just. It was merciful, now that I look back on it, because it was a pivotal change for me to realize, like, oh, wait, I have a son. I didn't even know that I had hope because I really didn't have hope for a different life. I didn't know I was not in the wellness community at all. This was before social media, you know, this was before all of this existed. And I didn't know really that there was a life beyond kind of what I was living. But it was a pivotal moment of change for me. I couldn't afford my ambulance bill. I couldn't afford therapy anymore. It was again, just a low, low point where I couldn't take care of my son properly anymore. So by God's grace, he surrounded me with people who helped me out of the hole. And I had one friend who took the cigarette out of my hand and put me on a Bike and we started doing night rides because I couldn't be on my bike during the day because it was too bright and too positive. And it just, it really. I was like a weird vampire, like a depressed vampire. So he knew that and kind of took me out on bike rides at night. And then I had other friends who were in the triathlon world and because I couldn't afford therapy anymore, I literally got a hand me down bike from them, started riding my bike and that was my therapy. So everything that I had learned from a educator type place, I then put into experience and into practice and really used my physical body to do it instead of just my mind. And I spent then years on a bike. So all throughout my 30s I was doing triathlon and my triathlon saved my life. You know, it really took that mind, that mind body connection and connected it to where everything that I was dealing with in my brain, all the negativity, all of the thoughts, I really had to train those thoughts while simultaneously training my body. So while quitting smoking, I don't know anyone who really quit smoking on their couch, on the same couch that they started smoking. So I had to do a real complete lifestyle change. I had to change my car, I had to change my apartment, I literally had to change my car that I was driving in because of the connection of getting into my car, dropping off my kid at school and just being so excited to roll down the window and smoke my cigarette. So I had to like rewire that physically to make the mental change. And I mean, I'm giving you like the full book version. I'm sure you're.

Now, did you know you were making this change or was it sort of more under the surface?

I wouldn't say I was cognitive of the change with an end point. I was just really desperately living in the moment. There was no, again, like I said, there was no goal, there was no list, there was no big overviewing endpoint of becoming this healthy and strong person. I didn't have the energy for that. I just had the energy for what I was going to do that day and how I was going to get through that day. And just doing those things daily. I grew stronger, I was able to focus more, I was able to learn more. And then with the learning came unlearning. So it was like two steps forward, one step back. But the more I did, the more opportunities came to me and then the more life changed. So while I was doing triathlon as an age grouper, I wasn't a professional. But as an age Grouper. I had opportunities because I was a model. So I had. This is when Facebook was like when my space switched over to Facebook, really aging myself. So I was able to use a Facebook platform to be sponsored. So essentially to be a model for different companies for triathlon. So I was able to then start making money again as a model through triathlon, which opened up more opportunities for me to then speak or to have one on one connections with people or to help people go even to where I was then, which is a fraction of where I am now, health wise, mentally and physically. But just again, like wherever I was at, I was able to always have an extension of that to other people because it came from a relatable place and it came from such an authentic place of people knowing where I was to. Then I had to make a big shift because a lot of the people that I was in with, in a social circle, you know the saying that you can't heal in the same environment, that made you sick. So I did have like a little three year kind of a pause, or not a pause, but a three year shift in my friendship circle, in my social circle, even in my family. As I was going through a divorce, I didn't speak to my mom for three years, which again just created a separation of me becoming who I am separate from who people thought that I always was. You know, so it was just always kind of a creating but not ever having an endpoint, not knowing what I wanted to be or who I wanted to be. It just was like a head down, knowing out of desperation what I had to do for that day.

So literally a day at a time. So it's really difficult for me sitting here looking at you, picturing you, this dark, depressed person, really into your adulthood and your adult life because you are such a bright light as you moved out of your childhood where you got all this sympathy. The kid whose dad died and you were modeling. Did people understand you were depressed or did they treat you differently? Did they know your story? Did that start shifting for you at all?

No. It's so funny that you say that because I know that when people hear my story now, like if they're, if they're the people that knew me from church or from camp or from that time, they would completely disagree, you know, and it wasn't that I was, it wasn't that I was faking it, but my depression was probably 90% in my head and the symptoms were, were in my body, but they came out with, they had different names. So again, my period right So I had. I had cramps. And I was able to just cover that for like that week out of the month. And certain things, anniversaries or certain things, like, I don't know, I was able to. I never felt like I was faking it, but I also wasn't this kid, you know, wearing like a black trench coat and goth makeup and like just suit. Not that all those. But you know what I mean. I certainly didn't wear like this heavy cloak of depression. I was singing in the choir. I was very musical. I was in drama. I was very outgoing as. As a kid, even into my adolescence, you know, I was very outgoing, but it was all in my head. I had this, like, I had this soundtrack in my head that everything was. Was dark and every. Like, I would listen to Radiohead and I would listen to all this music. That again, just validated my. My dramatic side. And my dramatic side was always dark, melancholy, just, you know, that kind of a thing. So, no, I didn't look like a depressed person. And even now, my. My habitual or mental go to or whatever you scientifically can call it nowadays, I'm not this bright, shiny penny. Like, it's funny because my first husband and now my second husband, both are the most positive people that you could ever meet. Like, it's like they don't have a negative bone in their body. They are innately positive. Like, if they have a thought, the first thought will be positive and then they will work more positivity on that thought. Whereas for me, still in my mid-40s, after all the work that I've done when I'm at my weakest. So within my cycle, when I know that I'm at my weakest, I know exactly where I'm at in my cycle because I know that my first thought is negative. And I have to really put a lot of effort into not focusing on that negative energy and on that negative thought and create a positive which is not even like a sunshine and rainbows, but it's a grateful thought. And focusing on that grateful thought, but it doesn't come naturally to me.

That's interesting. Rather than shifting from negative and saying that's negative, I need to go positive. That key thing you said, which is switch it to a grateful thought, I think that's different than positive.

It's different for me. It affects me differently because again, in my mind, I was always very negative as a kid. And I honestly, even into my teen years and adolescence, I saw positive people as fake and shallow. And I never wanted to be that positive person, that positive Betty. Because I literally was like. I would look at her and be like, you haven't gone through anything in your life. And as a kid, I'd be like, oh, your dad didn't die. You know, nothing bad has happened to you. In my immature verbiage and in my immature brain, that's what I would think. And even now, you know, I've had experience now where I know people who are very, very positive and very light and very amazing energy. It's because they've gone through all the negative and they have gone through so much and it's not, oh, I'm just going to think a happy thought. It's like, no, the negative thought. For me again, when I think about my cycle and I think. And I think that thought, I think it takes me back to saying, okay, why am I thinking that thought? And where am I? Where am I in this cycle? Where am I in my season? What does that thought mean? And I'll. I'm able to step away from it and have that thought serve me instead of it controlling me.

So when did that start?

My mom died six years ago. So I got remarried in my 30s. I got remarried to a man that I knew 25 years ago. Just an amazing story. The love of my life. We kind of came full circle and I got married. My mom died a year later. And then my season of intense, intense learning and intense growth was through the death of my mother. I got pregnant right away, so it was a full circle of death and life. And then five months later, got pregnant again. So I had two babies back to back right after my mom died. And then there was this global pandemic that happened as well. So it was very inner, very secluded work, that very intense work that had taken place in that season in these last five years of my life. And the learning, I didn't learn a lot of lessons through my dad's death at the time because I was so young and I didn't have any tools. But after my mom died, I had gained a lot of tools through her death because I was with her all the way up until she died. Her last breath. I was there at her bedside. And it was such a spiritual, out of body experience that allowed me to tangibly know that I am not flesh and bone and there's so much more to this life. And things don't control me. I can take control over it. And that came through experience and then through practice. So me finally taking responsibility for my choices and for my life came from knowing that Death is right around the corner. Like, death is just, I can get hit by a truck tomorrow. It's not like I have these grand plans anymore. I really just. I plan for each moment to take responsibility. And each choice that I make is a choice of does this choice bring me another's life or is it a choice of death? You know, is it a choice like, does it bring me down or does it bring me up? And those choices become habits, and those habits then become a lifestyle and become who I am now. And it's all just on, like, based on really rooted in death in, like a weird way.

Well, you came face to face with that reality, right? And a new perception of what's really going on in your life. That makes sense to me. So you talk about you'd gained a lot of tools. Are these tools you're talking about, are they all circumstantial? They came in your life, like with your mom and going through stuff, or were there things that you learned along the way, specific tools you could share? So someone that's watching this that's like, well, I want some tools. I haven't been through this transformation yet. Where do they look? What do they do?

Well, I'm writing a book on it. It'll be out in 2047. Look out for it. It's gonna be really exciting. I get asked that a lot, and I think it's very different for everyone. I think it's very just like how our environmentally, everybody's different. Genetically, everybody's different, but environment and choices are really more important than your genetics. But I think I've. I really see it as like a whole. You know, a depression is a whole. And to get out of that depression, or out of like just those symptoms constantly sucking you down, you need a ladder. And you need to have these tools to help you get out of that hole. There could be another hole down the road, but you've already built that ladder. So, you know, you have different seasons where symptoms of depression will be more prevalent. So my mom dying was a big season of grief. And people can see. People can confuse that with depression or a pandemic or something, or you get really sick. People can confuse that with depression where it's not. It's just a season of depletion and a season of grief, and grief is depleting. And so those steps of those ladders will look different for everybody, for what you need. So depletion, mineral wise, vitamin wise, mobility wise. You know, someone who is really chronically ill and in bed is going to have different rungs of that ladder than someone who's 20 years old and fit and like, you know, and they're mobile and they're able to get on a bike at night. So my ladder will look different than other people's. But very general ladder rungs would be looking at what is depleting you. So looking again at mineral depletion. So looking at two different things. One depletion of what's depleting you and then also what you need to add in and then what you need to take out. And they kind of. One doesn't work without the other. You kind of have to add in and take away in different layers. You know, it's. You can't do it all overnight. You can't clean out your closet and your fridge and buy a whole new supplement routine and just be like, yeah, let's get, you know, good to go and I'll run a marathon tomorrow. It comes in these layers. And that's what's so beautiful about being on a health journey, is you can't just do one thing. You know, if you're. If you're 30 years old and you've had 30 years of toxins and mental, environmental behavior, learning things and physical things, like, you have to take the next 30 years to be able to layer and de Layer those things as well. So for me, I. If I. If I come into a season where I'm just like completely depleted or depressed, I'll do a checklist of where am I in my cycle? As a woman, I think that's key. Where am I in my cycle? Because everything, everything goes, like, very ancestral of where you're at. Right? So for me, if my cycle is off, then I know that somewhere along the line I'm depleted. Whether it's. I hate throwing out things because that's not for me to do. I'm not a doctor, but I will look at my hydration, I will look at how much sunshine have I had, how much movement have I had? So just even meaning like exercise or walking outside or like, how much have I moved my body? How stagnant have I been again? Nutrition, everything from a nutritional profile. So fat, carbohydrates, everything within that profile that my body needs, that my brain needs to function, right? How much sleep have I got? What's the quality of sleep that I have? What is affecting that quality of sleep? So there's some seasons that you really can't be at your best. You know, when you have a newborn at home. Postpartum depression. I love speaking on because I love changing the narrative around it. And like, you know, these, this bounce back thing for women who, who feel like, oh, they should be, they shouldn't be depressed. Well, postpartum depression for me is postpartum depletion. I think we've lost the art of mothering the mother. And I think that the demands on a mother, on a woman in this day and age are astronomically absurd. And so postpartum depression is, it's an absolute real thing because it's an impossible thing nowadays to raise a child on your own. And you have six weeks for your body to get back and then now you're sitting at a computer like hooked up to this breast pump because you should still breast is best. But you're like at your computer answering emails like hooked up to this breast pump and you can't even take care of your child, never mind getting enough magnesium and enough broth and enough everything inside of you to keep you alive, never mind your baby. Like, it just, we've lost the art of community and the art of taking care of each other and the art of slowing down and the art of nutrition and the art of sunshine and the art of, of just, just being where that's, where that's enough instead of like, go, go, go and the next best thing. And now the algorithm, now the algorithm's changing, so now you have to change this. And it used to be this and now it's this. And it's just like this absolutely crazy fatigue that everyone's feeling and you don't have enough time to actually go to the root of what's going on. So when I talk about the ladders and depletion and addition, like you want to look at root causes. So for me, I had to not only look at what am I depleted in, but what is depleting me. So going down, like this isn't level one ladder stuff. This isn't like take the cigarette out of your hand and then the next day you're doing a parasite cleanse. Like this is, this is like step by step. It was a 10 year period for me to go from smoking a pack of cigarettes a day to doing a coffee enema. But the coffee enema changed my life because it was dealing with a root cause of addressing the toxic liver that I had. So again, the rungs are going to look different for everybody. But one of the rungs includes coffee enemas. Another of the rungs includes a parasite cleanse. Another rung includes addressing EMFs and what that radiation is doing to your cells. Because it's not. We don't live in a world of diet and exercise anymore. You know, that's not going to be. It's not, it's not like a there's no fix it tool, there's no fix it pill. It really is a lifestyle change and almost an impossible lifestyle change without a lot of hard work to diminish the effects of the toxins that are now however many hundreds of thousands of man made chemicals there are now. Because the list grows every single day, you know. But I would say the rung is support. Get yourself some support because you can't do it alone. I had to have that person come and take the cigarette out of my hand and physically place me on a bike. I had to have support around my triathlon. I had to have someone believing in me when I couldn't believe in myself. My mom prayed for me for years when I couldn't pray myself. I had no hope. So having people that have hope surrounding you when you don't, having someone that you are being mentored by on a top rung and then you mentoring someone underneath you. So volunteering or helping, always having like that system in place of having something to live for and someone to help live as well or I guess that's the other way or having something to live for and you know what I mean. So just very. You can't do it alone. The latter is because someone else has been there and they can help you. But looking at that, everything's connected. One thing isn't going to change your life. It will connect you to something else. That will take another layer of you realizing what was going on because emotionally you'll realize something ten years down the road that you didn't know affected you. But it was that pivotal point of oh my God, that's when I started doing this or that's when I was thinking this. So then you have to go back to that 10 year place, deal with that, which will then bring up a lot of other things because for me I was dealing with my dad's death at 11. I was still dealing with it when I was 40. I just didn't know what it was called, you know. But I was dealing with that grief and then that was when I was able to deal with that. I was able to go to a deeper place of healing.

I think what you've done for us that's really important is you've given us a little something to grab onto. If I'm thinking a negative thought, I switch to a grateful thought. Right. Get someone around us that helps us take one step forward. Right. And that key question, what is depleting me? Right. And how do I help fix that depletion? I think mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, nutritionally. Right. So for someone who's in depression, your message is kind of hard to hear, and here's why. Because we just want it to go away, right? When you're depressed, you just want it to go away. But your message is very perfect in that it doesn't ever just go away. You have to start taking these steps. And so the message that there's layers, there's rungs, and you just start in one place, I think is very, very helpful.

Well, that's where the getting help comes from. Right? So I'm not preaching it anyone. I'm giving you my story of, of what helped me because I was depressed. I was depressed for 30 years. Now I don't call it. If I don't call it, I'm in depression. Because depression isn't a thing. It's not something that you can catch. It's not something that just like, has control of you. Symptoms do feel like they have control of you, but they really don't. It's just you addressing the symptoms. So if you need help, like for me, you know, I'm. I now have an Instagram page and a community that sees me as very holistic and very, you know, on a different level than what I was before. And I would never, they would think that I would never say to take a pharmaceutical drug. Whereas, you know, if you talk to me one on one, I would say, if that's a stepping stone for you, because it was for me. It was a stepping stone for me. Unfortunately, taking that drug caused suicidal tendencies and caused more, actually more symptoms, because you can read it on the side. The side effects are suicidal tendencies and depression. Depression is a symptom or a side effect of an antidepressant, which is pretty wild. But if you do need that to somehow give yourself that help that step up, but realize that that is just a band aid. It is just something. It is a crutch, but we need crutches sometimes. So don't feel bad about thinking that you're not over here where you should be, where you're doing this, because once you know better, you do better. So it's like one step at a time. This, what you see here or what you see on my Instagram page or what you see wherever, that's a 40 year span, you know, I'm speaking from 40 years of experience. Well, 40, 43. But I'm speaking from that experience where it's not. It's not about comparison, it's about or. Or competition. It's. It's having somebody help you so that then you can help yourself and then you can help somebody else because you can't. It's very, very, very difficult. I know very few people who get off the couch by themselves. It just. We weren't built for that. We weren't built to be Lone ranger. Happiness is real when shared. Health is real when shared. It takes community, it takes a tribe, it takes someone who's been there and now they're in a different season that can help you and not judge you, but help you be in a different season.

Wow.

Like my husband now, he's always been very health conscious, extremely health conscious. When I was having an anxiety attack when, when we first. Him and I first came back together, he was going out for runs, he was in triathlon in the best shape of his life. I was having an anxiety attack and he went out to the drugstore and bought me a pack of cigarettes because he knew that what would help me the most in that moment, this wasn't, you know, in the last five years, this was 10 years ago. But he knew that having that physical cigarette and having that breath, that meditative breath in and then breath out, almost like that heartbeat of just being able to follow a cadence that smokers like, cadence that you have, he knew that that would help calm me down more than anything. You know, he didn't give me a salad, he didn't give me like chlorophyll drops, even though that would have helped me more. But he knew in that moment that that's what I needed to get me through that moment, to get me stronger, to be somewhere else. So I hope that helped.

Yeah. What used to be a lifestyle became a tool short term. Right. To just move past. Yeah, that makes sense.

I want people to have hope. I want people to see me as hope, not as a far fetched, oh, you know, I could never be that. I mean, I would have thought that too. I definitely would have thought of somebody seeing somebody on this and just being like, that's gonna take way too much work. Because when you are depressed and when you are feeling the symptoms like majorly take control of you, you don't even have enough energy to get off the couch, never mind have the energy to think a positive thought. You just don't. Like I didn't have the energy to be healthy. It takes a lot of Work. So that's why you need someone to help you, to come alongside of you and to make baby, baby, baby choices. Smoke half the cigarette and then throw it out and the next one. Smoke a quarter of the cigarette or however you want to stop smoking. But it's not one or the other. Everyone's journey looks different, but it is possible. It is possible. When you think of your life as seasons and you think of it as what can you add in? What, what can you take out? What are you choosing? Are you choosing life or are you choosing death? Like that's every time you put something in your mouth, it's either medicine or poison. Right. So making those little choices, it's going to be another season where you can make, where you can build on those choices.

I think that's a great place to kind of sum it all up is it's these little choices and they lead to more choices. Right. That you start where you are and take one step in some direction.

Yeah. It's what I say daily. I say do what you can with what you have in the season you're in.

Perfect.

Because your season will constantly change. As human beings, especially as women, our seasons are constantly changing. So do what you can with what you have in the season that you're in and the season will change and you will continue to change. But then it's not this overwhelming thing, you know, it's like really breaking it down into bite sized things.

It's a great place to sum up. It's a great way to sum up what you've been talking about in your journey. Thank you for sharing it.

Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm honored, honored to be here. Thank you.

It's easy to think that we're alone, that we're the only people suffering with what we're suffering with. Some of these stories really help me to realize that we all suffer. None of us are truly alone. I really appreciate Angie being so candid and sharing what she went through. So there it is. Episode one is done. I hope you absolutely loved it. I hope you found a source for knowledge, for hope, for wanting to continue watching the rest of this series. Because tomorrow is episode two. I know what's coming up and you're going to be delighted. I look forward to seeing you on episode two. If you get a chance, think of someone who would be benefited by seeing this series and please share it with them. That's the way this message grows and we love the way that you guys help us get it out there. Thank you.

Really get clear on what your values are, get clear on the type of relationship you want to create. And, you know, there's so much of this idea and this messaging that's sent to go find the one, this perspective. That there is one person for us is in itself imprisoning because it creates a scarce mindset. Relationships are where our wounds occur, and that's where they must be healed. Relationship endings are not failures. They're actually opportunities to expand and grow and move towards something that is more aligned.

Depression kind of cycles on itself with these negative beliefs about how is this ever going to get better? If somebody's lived with depression for years, how can I possibly convince them that.

It'S going to get better?

Because hope can be really dangerous for somebody who's depressed. So the beauty of EMDR with depression is we can target the beliefs, we can target the actual experience of being depressed. We can target the different obstacles that.

Come along with depression. You feel this way and you're thinking this way, but let's also look at your reality. Look at what the things you've been through.

You didn't just get here.

We all have to ask ourselves, what happened to you? You can then understand. These are the traumas that I was exposed to that shaped the way I think this.

Anxiety is a fear, and fear is a feeling.

It is not fact, it is not truth.

I can manage this fear because it.

Is all a feeling that's not permanent. And there are tools and resources around me that can really help me regulate.