Perfect Practice Interview with Peggy Ouellette and Sachin Patel

Hello my friends, and welcome to Perfect Practice. Thank you for joining me today. I have a very special interview and conversation that I'm having with extremely unique human being in so many ways. Not just in her personality, her compassion, her empathy, her skill set, her knowledge, but also she's a very rare breed. Not many people have the designations and the trainings that and the specialty that she does and the unique gifts that she brings to the world. So today I'm interviewing Peggy Let. And Peggy actually is a family focused psychiatric nurse practitioner. Sounds like a mouthful. And I'll let her tell us what exactly that means and who she works with. But I will tell you this, that Peggy is one of the most grateful people that I know. She's always got a smile on her face. She lives life on her terms and in alignment with what it means to be truly healthy. So thank you, Peggy. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you, Satya. And it is great to be here.

Well, it is great to have you and to get the ball rolling. For those of you that don't know Peggy, I'd love for you to share. Where does your story start? Where did you or at what point did you decide rather than that you want it to be family focused and work with psychiatric patients? Because I know that that can be a very challenging field with the challenges that people come to you with. And it takes a special, you know, it takes a special person to do the work that you do. And I'm always curious as to what is your big why.

Sure. Well, it's interesting that I learned a few years ago when I was teaching nursing students that I didn't realize that not everyone enjoyed working with kids. It was quite an aha moment for me because since I was a little kid myself, I have surrounded myself with kids and, you know, part of a big family, you know, helping take care of the little ones. I was the oldest daughter and so it came very naturally for me. But I've always known that my career path would take me down the road to work with kids. And so I somehow became a nurse. I thought I was going to be a teacher at first, and I ended up in nursing school and started teaching as a nurse. And I continued my education and found myself on a psychiatric inpatient unit for teenagers. And I absolutely fell in love with working in psych. So it was like a decision between going into the medical side and the psychiatric side. And I really rode both worlds for a long time. But it was really diving deep into cases and looking at case studies and really getting, I've had some amazing teachers and mentors along the way, and they sort of inspired me to really look at the whole person and look at, you know, what's going on inside. And I started out, out of the gate, like, looking at lab tests and looking at really investigating and figuring out what could be causing a person's discomfort. So it's just kind of been who I am since early childhood. Always curious and always working with kids, and it just kind of kept me on this path, so.

Well, that definitely explains why you're so passionate about it.

Definitely.

It's like you were literally born and raised to do this, right?

Absolutely, yes.

So you said something that caught my attention, which was you had mentors that were helping you look at the whole person and looking at lab work and things like that, which is, from my perspective, at least, not the common. It's not very common that practitioners do that. So you must have been under very good tutelage and mentorship of people who are thinking way ahead of the curve, I would imagine.

I don't know why, but I've been placed. These people have been placed in my path. And also I was there to receive the information. So we can have lots of people giving us great ideas and things along the way, but we have to actually be open to it and have to integrate that information. So, you know, it's a readiness thing too, you know, so I've been very fortunate.

That's actually a really good point, you know, because there are so many teachers that are around us, people that are willing to pour into us, but we kind of have to stick our cup out and say, pour into me. Right?

Absolutely.

So. So, yeah, I love that. And I want everyone to pay attention to that, because when the student is ready, the master, or the mentor in this case appears. And, you know, when you're ready, then, you know, people want to pour into you. They want to teach you, they want to continue their work through you and share that knowledge with you. So what were some of the things that you were. Patterns that you were finding early on, perhaps, that kind of blew your mind?

Well, one of the things that I kind of want to relate a story from my mentor to kind of my own personal story that one of the things that blew my mind, you know, here I am, a young, you know, new nurse on a psychiatric unit, and one of my mentors was Barbara Kam, and she was an amazing nurse manager. And she was, like, taught me so much. But one of her first lessons to me was behavior has meaning. And so what I learned from her Is that, you know, when. When we're acting out, when we're having behaviors, it's actually a way of communicating to another person. You know, when we're frustrated and we're angry or anxious, like, that's usually an indication that our needs aren't being met. And so one of the pieces about that that I came to realize is that even though I learned this from Barbara and I could apply this to my own patients and the families that I've taken care of, one of the pieces is that I didn't per se, apply it to my own life and my own family. And so I have an adult son now. And as a. As a kiddo, you know, he was the sweetest boy ever. And he had his own sort of learning challenges. Super, super smart kid, but had trouble focusing in school and wasn't paying attention. Having trouble paying attention. And I was having. I wasn't paying attention to what he needed in a way. And, you know, he was having some depression and some anger, and I was kind of doing my own thing, working, going to school, keeping busy, and I wasn't really tuning into what he needed. And he was trying to tell me through behaviors. And so just a few years ago, I will never forget the day that he walked out the door and out of my life. And so, um, it took me some time to really, like, recover from that and really process it. And, you know, wasn't until I hired my first mentor that I came to realize that this was all happening for me and not to me. And. And I. It took some time to reflect back on that situation and say, hold on a minute. Like, I had my own blind spots. As passionate as I was about working with kids, as much as I loved what I did every day, it was really difficult, or I missed the part that I wasn't per se, applying that to my own family. And so, you know, it kind of led me down this path of transformation, essentially.

Yeah. As you're saying that, you know, my. My son is. He's 11 right now at this moment, and going on 30, as they say, growing up so fast. Right. And this is an. He's at an age where, you know, up till now, he wanted my attention and now kind of shying away from it a little bit. Right. Dad's not as cool as. As he used to be. And one of the things I realized in hindsight, like, some days were challenging. He would, you know, do things that I found annoying, and he knew that they would annoy me, but he knew. Also knew that they would get My attention.

That's right.

And my wife would always say, he's just trying to get your attention. I'm like, well, why doesn't he learn how to get it in a positive way instead of trying to get it in a negative way? Because this doesn't resonate with me. And, of course, I was putting my needs before his needs. And, you know, this story kind of reminds me of that. So thank you for sharing. I know it's probably not easy to talk about and share that. I'm curious as to how your relationship is now with your son.

It's still not healed. You know, it's really led me down a path of awakening and doing my own work and transformation. And really, I've dove deeper into this whole, like, functional medicine side of things and getting to the root cause. And, you know, I learned recently, like, I was talking to a functional medicine doctor who was like, you know, Peggy, I've treated the most, you know, amazing conditions, most complex conditions, and people got better to an extent. And he was like, you know, fast forward a year or two, and they'd show back up in my office. And it was the people who hadn't worked on their childhood trauma and their childhood problems, so to speak, that they. They couldn't fully heal and recover. And so it was really. It really helped me take a deep dive into looking at our own family stories and, you know, generational trauma, say, and how that kind of comes through our own parenting stuff. And it really taught me, like, what. What I need to be doing for the world and for, you know, families to get to that place so that they don't have these things happen in their families. You know, I trust that this. This relationship will heal. You know, there's been. It's. It's not absolutely not to a place that it's going to be in the future. You know, I have confidence in that and. But it really, really highlighted, like, what do I. What did I need to learn from this situation? It's that we really need to go back and heal childhood stuff. And, like, who's better positioned to help kids, you know, is. Are the parents? You know, we're here. We can help. We can help parent our own kids in different ways than we were parented ourselves.

Yeah, that really helps break that generational trauma of, you know, you know, just unconscious parenting is probably the best way to put it. I don't think anyone intentionally harms their family or child, but it's. They don't know any different. And how to parent was ingrained into them. You know, from their own parenting that they received, and that just gets transferred from generation to generation. You said. You said something earlier that I'd like to unpack a little bit. Because when people think of childhood trauma, there's a spectrum, right? And, you know, everyone has trauma. For some people, it could be, you know, on one end of the spectrum, which is loss or abuse. And then some people's version of trauma might be they were crying and their mom answered the phone instead of tending to their needs. And that gets encoded in a certain way. So I'd love for you to, you know, maybe highlight and unpack that a little bit, because sometimes when we say the word trauma, we think of traumatic. And while it may not seem traumatic to an adult, to an undeveloped brain who can't process what's exactly happening, something seemingly harmless as a parent could be damaging to a child's psyche. So maybe you can talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, I think a lot of people refer to that as sort of like big T trauma and little T trauma. And you're absolutely right. I come to think about trauma now in a way of feeling seen and heard. That to me, lots of reading and understanding of this, that's really what it comes down to, is having someone truly see you and feeling heard as a child. And it really is huge in terms of our developing brain and our limbic system development, which is really the thing that drives all of those emotions and the behaviors associated with those emotions and that reactivity, so to speak. And so all of these things that come from the past, you know, are the messaging, the messages that we received, and things like, you call it unconscious parenting. You know, I call it blind spots. You know, we don't even know we're doing them. We're just acting in a way that we feel like, you know, I thought it was a great parent. I thought it was well prepared. Like, I know how to change diapers. I can cook. I can, you know, take care of my child, provide, you know, stability for him. And, you know, and at the same time, I was missing the cues of him not feeling seen and heard. And that, to me is so important because we none of us know it until it's too late, essentially. And so when you think about, you know, I have a really good friend that's a substance use specialist, and I was talking to her about, like, what. What do they. What do your addicts say when they're talking about their childhood? And she says the same. They all say the same story. You know, my parents were absent. They were busy doing other things. They weren't, they weren't listening to me. They, you know, they basically weren't showing up for me. And those kids didn't feel seen and heard. And like, that's, to me, the root cause for a lot of illness.

How does, like, as, as you're saying all this, I feel like you're speaking to me in some ways. And I know that, you know, with, with some people it could be a fork in the road, right? So the same circumstance could cause some people to become overachievers and stand out in that regard. And then for some people, they could become massive underachievers. So does that make sense? Am I on the right path here?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Think about even just within a family context, you know, we're six kids and like, many times we'd be sitting around the table and we're like, you know, one of us sharing a childhood, you know, experience, and the other ones are like, that wasn't what I experienced. You know, and it's like we're talking about different sets of parents, you know, and like, you're, you're 100% on, on target with that. Like, our perceptions of what we experience, what actually happened, and our experience can be very different in our response to that situation can be very different than what, you know, a sibling raised by the same exact parents in the same exact household. You'll see different responses. It's fascinating.

Yeah, it's. It's all about perception, right? Like, even when, when I'm giving a presentation and let's say there's a hundred people there, I realize that there's a hundred different presentations going on because each person is going to interpret every word and sentence and slide in their own way and look at it through their own lens. And that's going to be based on their past experiences and such. Hello, my friend. It's Sachin here. I trust you're enjoying this content. If you haven't already, I wanted to let you know about my free book called Perfect Practice. This book is for entrepreneurial practitioners in the functional medicine space who want to help as many people as possible. I've shared some of my best tools and resources in this book and it's absolutely free. Just click on the link below and and we'll send it to you at no cost. I am curious if you've been able to identify or if this is maybe something that's being studied still. What the state of our nutrition, how much that plays a role in how we interpret a specific situation. Is that something that's been studied?

That's an interesting question. I haven't thought of that. So you're saying how. What one's nutritional status is and how we're actually interpreting, like, how our brain is receiving that information. I am sure that there's an impact of that. I'm sure. I'm not aware of studies, but that would be very interesting because we know, like, nutritional deficiencies and the effects of toxins and things change our brain and our ability to just see the world. So I am. I'm sure that that that's a thing. Absolutely.

You know, it kind of like when you think about physical trauma to the brain, this nutritional status of a person, if their brain has more chronic inflammation and they have a head injury, they're much more likely to have, you know, terrible side effects as a result. And the speed at which their brain heals is going to be much slower versus somebody who's pretty healthy. Not that a concussion or traumatic brain injury is good for anyone, but they're gonna. They're gonna have a completely different outcome than the person who has, you know, kind of a inflammatory process going on. So I'm sure maybe it's hard to study something like that, but I think you're on the right track there, that it probably does affect people. And, you know, a lot of times it.

It's.

You know, I always say it's no matter what's coming at you at life, the better your nutrition, the better your chemistry, the better your body is functioning, the more resilient you are to whatever that situation is. And, you know, some people might be, you know, already at their threshold for stress. Their allostatic load might already be high. And something that is in a resilient person may not trigger them to overflow in terms of stress or reaction could, you know, could trigger somebody who's already at that tipping point, you know, biochemically, so to speak.

100%. Like, I had an experience with within myself when I had a very high. I had, you know, multiple chemical sensitivity. I had severe brain fog. I was. I was truly inflamed. And I had, like, some emotional changes in my own body that I had never experienced before. And it was specifically related to the air I was breathing. I literally stepped outside of a room, went inside, and, like, closed the door. And my whole demeanor and mood changed. Like, I literally, like, broke down into tears. Satya. And it was the craziest thing. And so that susceptibility and just the emotional side of things, I'm sure my limbic system was on fire. But I can't imagine being in that state and how you perceive the world when you're in this inflamed state and you're just. All of your systems are inundated and flooded and so you can't perceive the world with clear lens, so to speak. If your, your brain is not clear. It's, it's, it's remarkable. I don't know if you've ever experienced anything like that, but it was very eye opening for me.

What was, what was in the room that was causing the problem?

It was, it was like at the day was I was putting my house up for sale and it was, it was a crazy dreadful like pouring rain and so all the windows were closed and there was painting and cleaning and all kinds of chemicals that were in the air and I had had previously had water damage in my home and I was like having a meltdown. I was like in tears and I was like reacting in this big way and it was not like me at all. And I walked into, in my air conditioned bedroom and I stepped inside and it was like my head cleared up and like I, I was like blown away and I stepped back out into the hallway and I like started like feeling the tears coming back and my angry thoughts came back on and I was like this is absolutely mind blowing and I've never heard of anyone sharing any kind of experience like that before. But I felt like it was like I would, I needed that information. I needed to know what it was like for people. Because people have come into my office so many times. They're like, I don't know what's going on with little Johnny. He acts differently when blankety blank and it, and it turns out environmentally like kids with brains on fire, you know, they walk into a toxic or sick building, which I had an office in a sick building building. And like they would come into my office and the little kid would just start acting odd and like pacing and like having like kind of irritable and snappy and the parents would be like I'm so embarrassed. I don't know what's going on. But it turns out those kids were like in a way, you know, a check engine light is how I like to put it, you know, for what else is going on. And so like I got to experience, experience that myself. And like I'm so grateful that's behind me, you know.

But that's so fascinating. I. You know what comes up for me as you're sharing that is how many kids like there's so many times where parents probably get a call from the school, and they say, your child's acting up, and. And then you're looking at them, you're like, what are you talking about? He's, like, sitting here perfectly calm as a cucumber. Like, I can't. They can't even probably imagine how their son or daughter is acting, because at home, they might be totally normal, and at school they might be the opposite. However, the opposite could be possible as well. Right. If they've got a home that's sick and a school that isn't, then their behavior at school might be so much better, and they might even love school because of it, not even knowing that they just feel better because of the environment that they're in. But, yeah, that's pretty remarkable insight that you just provided. Thank you for sharing that.

I just. I was on a call with a teenager a couple of weeks ago, and she. She was saying, like, I don't know what it is about, like, I get a headache every day. I'm in math class, and. And she likes math, you know, And I'm like, is there, like. I was asking her about the environment, and she said, you know, it's the only room in the building or that any of her classes that has the carpet in it. And she said, and it smells really bad in that room. And I'm like, I won, you know, and sure enough, like, it turns out there was something going on in that classroom. Like, it was. It was stinky, you know, and so she was giving her headaches and she wasn't focusing, and. But it's. Sometimes it's just the environment. You know, your kid doesn't have ADHD per se, in. You know, it's like, what else is going on?

So, yeah, we're so quick to blame the human.

Right? Yes.

Which is, you know, we are who we are, and that's difficult to change. Right. Certainly nutrition plays a role and genetics plays a role, but our environment, you know, really drives the epigenetics, which probably plays the biggest role in who we are and how we behave and who we become in the process. So, yeah, that's it. You know, it's almost. I'm imagining parents of the future. Maybe there are parents that do this, that send their kids to school with a little mold petri dish where you can collect samples, just leave the dish there for 24 hours, see if there's any spores that fall into it, and we can see if there's a mold problem in the home or also at school as well, because, you know, that's very commonly overlooked as an issue.

It's mind blowing.

Yeah. There's, you know, I. There's a whole new field of nutraceuticals called psychobiotics, and I'm curious if you've experimented with them at all or how much you know about that yet.

I'm just starting to learn about them, so it's. It's new for me.

Yeah. That'll be so interesting. I've been taking some psychobiotics from microbiome labs. They make something called Zen Biome.

Okay.

They also have one called Stress Biome, so I've been taking the one in the evening, which is a psychobiotic to help you sleep better. I'll have to report back on how I'm responding to it. Seems to be. I mean, there's a bunch of things that I do, so it's hard to say what one thing is working, but it seems like that's like a future intervention. That could be pretty neat, right? Just. Just to see, hey, take this. And, you know, we can use probiotics, healthy bacteria, if we can. If we can have mold and fungi negatively alter our mood, perhaps there's probiotics that can help us positively influence our mood as well. And that'd be kind of neat to see that taking effect.

Absolutely.

Well, I'm really enjoying our conversation. I'd love to know from a patient's perspective, a client's or a family's perspective, what would be different about coming to your office versus going to somebody else?

Well, what I'm doing, I'm not sure that anyone else is doing. What I was doing before was traditional medication management. So you came into my office and you're like, my kid's having some trouble focusing. We'll use ADHD as an example. And we might always do labs and then might do some medication trials and see often genetic testing to see what medications might work better. And so what I realized when I was doing that is I wasn't really getting to the root cause, even though I was drawing labs and doing genetic testing, which is more than my peers were doing. So what I'm doing now, Sachin, is I'm really looking at a whole family approach. And so, you know, I have. I have a family that I saw a few years ago, and they really kind of highlight, in a way, what I'm doing now. So when they came to me, their kiddo Joshua, he was like 11, I think, around the time they came to see me. And they had done all kinds of things, evaluations, and testing. And they had tried this therapy and that intervention, and they're like, peggy, like, nothing's working. He's in therapy. Like, we need to talk medications, you know, and so I ordered labs, and everything was normal for them. And, like, we started him on a medication, and he was doing better. You know, he got better. And we increased the dose a little bit over time, and. And then I hadn't heard from them in a while, and mom sent me an email, and she's like, peggy, like, something's worse. Like, I'm leaving for work, and like, he's clinging to my leg, and he's like, won't let me leave. And she's like, every evening, like, meltdown that's lasting for hours. We can't get him into bed. And she's like, it's like he's paranoid. Like, he doesn't want to be left alone. And so I had been, like, starting to study functional medicine at the time, and it sounded like I gave them this questionnaire. And it turned out like their family, their home was, like, over 100 years old and had had water damage, and the kid's brain was on fire. And so what I learned was mom and dad were both on meds for anxiety and depression. The little girl who I hadn't met before, like, she was. Had been having worsening behaviors. They were, like, ready to bring her in for something. And when I was going over the results with mom, and she was like, you know, it was the strangest thing she said. Just, like, a few months ago, she said, we started sleeping with the bedroom windows open, and it really helped a lot. And she was like, we should have known, you know? And so, in a way, that's what I'm doing now is I'm doing a whole family approach, and I'm looking at the whole system because what, you know, going back to my, you know, nurse manager on the psychiatric unit, she's like, behavior has meaning in a way. When kids come to me or when they used to come to me, we were missing the whole family system. We were missing what was going on in the family. And so dad might be on high blood pressure meds, and mom's been struggling with autoimmune issues, and the kiddo is having behaviors or having challenges. And sometimes it's easy to bring the kid to the doctor and say, fix my kid, but we're missing the boat. And so the kid doesn't get to go shopping for himself. The kid's not cooking his own meals. Who's doing that for him? You know, the parents. And so I can say like, you know, oh, it seems like little Johnny is having some trouble with dairy and it's contributing to this cluster of symptoms. And so what happens still is little Johnny is the identified patient and now Johnny has to be dairy free. But what about the rest of the family? You know, he's still singled out, he's still the patient. And so when we go at it from a family perspective and like the parents know how to feed their kids so that they're not nutritionally deficient and they know how to connect with their kids so their kids feel seen and heard, that's where we start instead of waiting until everybody's in trouble. And so I'm working at it from a whole family perspective. This is probably a really long answer to your question.

No, I love that. I love that. It definitely helps, you know, myself and our listeners understand why this is so unique. And you know, it's a much more fruitful investment, right, if because the collateral benefits are so great to the entire family. And you know, I'm big on that as well. Like I'm big on getting people to improve their environment in their home because everyone benefits from that. So an example is, hey, if we change the light bulbs in your house or we change, you know, the air quality in your house, or if we make sure we address any moisture related issues, well, it doesn't just benefit the quote, unquote patient. These are things that are affecting all of us, maybe in known and unknown ways. And of course children don't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex. So they're going to lash out whereas. And misbehave. We call it misbehavior. But it's a warning sign, right? They're trying to communicate something and thankfully they're able to do that. However, we might look at it misbehavior. And of course, if our bodies are inflamed as a result of that same environment, we're going to get frustrated, we might lash out at them because we don't know how to process what we're feeling as well. I think it only makes sense for this to be a whole family approach. And that's how you heal not just this generation, but the next generation too.

That's the big piece. Absolutely. When you're describing the kids misbehavior most of the time. And I think about your story with Devin earlier when you're like, why is he acting this way? And I just got a message from a friend and she's like, my Kid's being mean to me, you know, and I'm like, I'm like, like, dude, like seriously, like your kid is communicating. Her needs aren't being met. You know, like I just want to like reach through the phone and like strangle this mom, you know, in a way she's my close friend, but I'm like, she's missing it. You know, it's like the kid's not acting out to bother you. They're trying to communicate to you, you know, and so we have to, we have to change our mindset as parents and look at kids behaviors as opportunities and communication for us.

Right.

You know, we have to say what, what is it that I need to see in this situation? Why is my kid, you know, tugging at my leg when I'm trying to leave for work? What is he trying to tell me, you know, he's in trouble?

Yeah, that's so powerful. It's. And it's such a empowering scenario and situation to be in because we can actually do something about it. And I do feel, you know, you know, this isn't about pointing fingers necessarily, but I do feel that parents are really stretched these days. And so the units, the family unit that perhaps our grandparents and parents grew up in has completely been altered. And you know, when you have both parents at work and kids going off to daycare and school and things like that and extracurricular activities, there's not much parenting going on. And so the time that they do have with their parents, they're going to want as much attention as they possibly can get because they've missed eight hours of attention that perhaps our parents or grandparents would have received from the different parenting styles that were available to us.

Right. And so parents need to know how to show up for their family. Not depleted. Like I don't know how many times I hear, but I'm so exhausted, how am I supposed to really attend to my kids needs when my own needs aren't being met? Well, guess what, mom. We need to start with mom, right? Mom. To know how to fill her own love bucket. She is there and she's able to show up in a different way for her kids.

Yeah. This reminds me of a story of one of our clients. And you know, her name's Ariane. And one of the things that we do is we give our clients a heart math unit. At least at the time we did. And she was very diligent, so she was very meticulous, followed it every day. And within two weeks her boyfriend asked her, you know, hey, have you given. I can't remember her son's name, but have you given him something for his misbehavior? Because he's acting, like, totally different now. And she realized that it was the stress and the tension that she was carrying and internalizing that was quantumly entangled with his being. And as a result of her doing the work on herself, her son's behavior completely changed. And it was just, you know, she broke down in tears telling the story because she realized that he was an instrument of her emotions and her inability to cope with the stress that she was under. So really interesting to see that play out for people and how really, the things that we want to change start by changing ourselves or at least identifying the opportunities that we bring to the table to improve the situation.

Yes. It's incredible. It's a great story, Sachin. I love that. And most people don't know it. They can't see that connection.

Yeah. I mean, it takes an aware person. Right. And that's why conversations like this are great, because hopefully those listening, I think everyone can benefit from this, whether you're a parent or not, because you can reflect on your own childhood and if your needs were met and how that's showing up for you in life right now. You know, my friend Joe Polish talks about this. You know, we talked about that fork in the road where you can go into addiction and really negative behaviors, or you can go into extreme success, which can also be an addictive behavior. Right. You know, many entrepreneurs are workaholics. So instead of being an alcoholic, they're a workaholic, which essentially may be stemming from the same root cause where nothing's ever good enough and nothing's ever bad enough, and we're all doing it to feel loved. Right. At the end of the day, that's what we all seek and crave as human beings. And we have different ways of reaching out for that love.

Yeah.

Very good. I. I would imagine that a fly on the wall would hear some really interesting conversations in your practice.

Yes.

And there's probably tons of aha moments and light bulbs that go off for people that, you know, what's cool about it is you can apply some of these things right away. It doesn't take weeks or months or years to see the benefit. It's something that people can see an improvement on, you know, pretty immediately, I'm sure.

Yeah. One of the cool things, like, I do have a family focused approach, and so I tend to focus on moms, you know, busy moms, because they're the CEO of the family. They're the ones that do the shopping and the meal planning and like, they kind of run the culture in a lot of ways. And one of the benefits I think of going through my program is like, even like marriages, you know, are like improving. And like you talk about that when we're working on ourselves, but it's the benefits. Just, it's a ripple effect. It's so powerful. And so I just love that.

Yeah, no, this is great. So I know you mentioned earlier on that mentors have played a huge role in your life. And I'd love to talk about, you know, I'd love for you to acknowledge some of those mentors. If there's anyone else that you feel like played an instrumental role in, you know, getting to this point in your practice and seeing your vision. And as many people might know this, you're also part of our mentorship program and in our community and you've been such a valuable asset. So how about we spend a few minutes talking about some of those people that have, you know, played an instrumental role in your life?

Absolutely, yes. So it's, it's really cool. Like, I think, I think truly like the situation with my son kind of was sort of the impetus that really made me, you know, they say, hitting rock bottom, so to speak. You know, that really kind of made me say like, I need to, I need to reach out for some help and guidance. And it was like the first time that I paid for mentorship. And so since then, like I've paid for a few more mentors along the way and it has been incredible. And really the way I think of it is investing in yourself. And so it's something that people invest in their cars and they invest in their homes and the things that we deem as important. And I think that really, I don't know how and why I got this impetus to do this, but truly the best thing I ever did for myself and in, really in my family and the world was to invest in myself. So it's great to have somebody kind of guiding you and calling you out on your stuff and helping you see things in a way that you're not seeing them. I think one of the things I really enjoyed about mentorship is the group component. So I am a big fan of community and being around like minded individuals because, you know, I don't, you know, I don't know about you, Sachin, but like, my world doesn't necessarily involve people that are entrepreneurs. And like, you know, in the past, at least I don't have people in my close knit community and family and friends that are kind of on the same path as me.

Right.

And so it's really for me, connecting with people that are like minded that are on the same kind of path and trajectory has really been so powerful for me and really fueled me and my, my own growth. It's, it's, it's amazing.

Yeah. You know, you said something about investing in yourself is the best investment and you're in good company because Elon Musk actually says the same thing. You know, he doesn't invest in other companies and other organizations. He invests pretty much all of his disposable income back into himself and back into his companies because of the vision and the mission that he has. And he realizes that when he's the best functioning version of himself that he can do the best work. So mentorship is something that, you know, is so powerful for all of us. It's something that some people shy away from and they think that they can figure these things out on their own and certainly they can. But you're almost a glutton for punishment because you spend a lot of time, you spend a lot of money, you spend a lot of hours being frustrated with not knowing what to do, not knowing if something's going to work or not, where instead you could spend that same time being focused and feeling empowered and building a community of, and surrounding yourself with people that are on a similar journey and are there to cheer you on. I think that's another thing that community provides us with, is an opportunity where we can be seen, we can be heard, and we can also collectively win as well. And you're not competing, you're collaborating with others who are on a, on a similar journey. So I think that's, that's really important for people to recognize as a, as somebody who's in the psychiatric space. Is there. What do you think? Let me phrase this correctly. Do you think that there's a certain type of person who seeks mentorship versus one who doesn't? Or is this something that's ingrained in all of us to seek guidance and seek help?

That's a great question. I don't know. I don't know. That's a really good question. I'm sure that people that dive deep into studying personalities and that type of thing might have a clearer answer like the, you know, the disc inventory and. But I don't know. That's a really good question. I don't have an answer for you.

We'll have a conversation afterwards. About this, because I would love to understand the psychology of somebody who says no to mentorship, you know, that says no. I don't want community. I don't want help. I don't want guidance. I'm going to try to figure this out on my own. And I wonder if some of that actually comes from trauma. You know, as I'm sharing this, one of the things that came up for me growing up, as in my family, you know, my parents loved us as best as they could, and we had a very, very positive and great upbringing. But there were my versions of trauma, and some of those versions of trauma would be getting a 98 in algebra. And then instead of being honored and revered for that, being asked, why didn't you get a hundred? You know? And so it's like nothing's ever good enough. So I have to overachieve and overachieve and overachieve, and I never feel satisfied unless it's perfect, which in. In and of itself is a form of trauma. Right? And so I can see that. You know, I can see in my life where that serves me, but I can also see where it doesn't. And there's this one thing my dad told me that still kind of trauma, I don't want to say traumatizes me, but it holds me back in some ways. And he said, if you want it done right, you got to do it yourself. And so as an entrepreneur, especially with a growing business, you know, you're like, oh, my God, my dad said I got to do it myself. If I want it done right, I can't hire or trust anyone else to do it, you know, so, you know, so sometimes an innocent comment like that can haunt us. And he didn't mean anything by that, right? He didn't mean. He didn't mean for that ripple effect to take place and show up in my life the way it does. But it just goes to show you that innocent comments can, you know, really make a big impact over the long run in people's lives.

And at the same time, yes, innocent comments, but it can also feed. The opposite is true. Where certain types of comments and helping a child truly feel heard and seen and validated can go a long way. Studies of resilience in kids that come through adverse conditions. So when you say what types of people seek out mentorship, I think about that resilience and like someone fed them early on, you know, something that helped them believe in themselves, that maybe somebody feels worthy of investing in themselves. You know, it's interesting, the word resistance comes up a lot. So people that wouldn't seek mentorship, I think of resistance and I do think childhood trauma and that sort of I'm not worthy messaging that's somewhere ingrained in there.

Yeah. You know, it took me several years to hire a mentor myself because in hindsight, I always thought I had to do it myself. Nobody could do it better than me. And you believe that to be true until you find somebody who can. And then your whole world of possibilities opens up because you're like, wow, like somebody can do this better than me and they can do it faster than me and they actually enjoy doing it. Right. Sometimes we end up doing things even though we don't enjoy doing them because of this limiting belief that we might have.

Yeah, those blind spots, too. I mean, we don't see them.

Exactly. So, Peggy, you've been so generous with your time and knowledge. I would love for people to know how they can get a hold of you, how they can learn more information about you. Where can they follow you? Please let us know.

My. My company is. My website is www.functionalfamilypsychiatry.com and my program, you know, if you're interested in like setting up a time to talk with me and consult with me, I'm sending people right to my program called my Mind Body reset dot com. So it's my Mind Body reset dot com and so there's a. A button there to schedule with me if you're interested in seeing if I'm a good fit for. To work with you and your family. So those are probably the best ways of contacting me.

Amazing. And you work with people virtually? I just wanted to let people know.

That, yes, I work with. Yes.

And what state are you practicing in?

I'm in Maine. I'm in Maine right now. And so I haven't worked with anyone yet across street still state lines, but I'm working on that. So I've had a couple people interested in that. So, yeah.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. You've been very articulate about why you do what you do. I can see and feel and hear the passion in what you do and why you do it. And it's very encouraging to me to know that people like yourself are out there that are taking a whole family, whole health, whole picture approach to helping not only children feel their best, but also families feel their best because that's what's being unfortunately destroyed as the family unit. And so the more we can bring families together and make them each other's biggest fans and best listeners. I think that's what's going to heal our communities and our countries the same time.

100%. We have to start with the family system. 100%.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. It's been lovely having this conversation and I greatly appreciate you and I'm looking forward to your continued growth and success and helping as many families as you can.

Thank you so much. Sachin. Sachin. Have a great day.

Thank you. Talk to you soon.

Bye. Bye. Bye.