How Sibling Trauma Shapes Resilience, Healing, and Growth | With Kathleen Harnish and Karen Dickson

0:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It's really remarkable that sometimes we can grow up in the same household and have two very different experiences. [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes those experiences cross paths and lead us to this place where we come together as family members, friends, come patriots to change the world. [SPEAKER_00]: And that is exactly how today's guest, Kathleen Harnish Makuhn and Karen Dickerson has come together to change the world. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much, Michael, it's pleasure to be here. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the things that I'm really excited about, and this is never worth thousand episodes into this podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: I have never sat down with siblings to talk about this journey.

0:42 [SPEAKER_00]: My included, which I've asked multiple times, I'm like, I don't want to do this. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to be on camera. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, I get it, trust me. [SPEAKER_00]: And so for those listening, just to kind of start off, why should anyone listen to our conversation today? [SPEAKER_00]: What are they going to take away from this experience with us? [SPEAKER_01]: They're going to take away really a skill that every human needs to ensure you have a strong or you have a strong resilience as possible. [SPEAKER_01]: And that is learning how to emotionally regulate yourself and then also the power of self-care. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to go deep into that and you know obviously these are some conversations that we've had over the years on this show But one of the reasons particularly I wanted to have this conversation with you together was because I think about the reality that so many people come from these massively traumatic experiences and often I mean more often not people have a sibling [SPEAKER_00]: And you tend to see, at least in my experience, now having interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, coach thousands of people, you tend to see it really be like one person and the family kind of takes that step.

1:49 [SPEAKER_00]: While others, you see walk a very different path. [SPEAKER_00]: And we know that the impact of trauma can lead you down a litany of different avenues, but predominantly it's not good. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious for you, how, what was this process like, [SPEAKER_00]: for you to decide to go on this healing journey, both independently and together. [SPEAKER_00]: How do you get to where you are today as siblings when so many people are suffering? [SPEAKER_00]: Cause they're like, I'm listening to the podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: I read the books. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to therapy. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got the coach, I've got the mentor. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't get my brother to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't get my sister to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: What is this process in journey been like for you? [SPEAKER_02]: You know, Karen, you might share because you really started your feeling first and I think that was critical in my mind for me, I of course endured very violent sexual abuse and trafficking and [SPEAKER_02]: most of my 18 years.

2:49 [SPEAKER_02]: So when I went to college, my freshman year and came home on my spring break, I was told by my father that I would be returning home for the summer. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, getting a job, helping out my mother, and I knew exactly what that meant. [SPEAKER_02]: I would be leaving a boyfriend and I would be back in his layer again. [SPEAKER_02]: And I just couldn't tolerate that anymore. [SPEAKER_02]: Although I was definitely afraid. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I just decided at that moment that I would do either. [SPEAKER_02]: I would tell my boyfriend what had been happening. [SPEAKER_02]: I would let him know that I plan to leave college and I didn't know go where, um, I also thought about ending my life, um, and then when the conversation occurred, when I got back to college, he instantly said, well, if I marry you, he'll leave you alone.

3:47 [SPEAKER_02]: So we kind of went down that path, um, we did go ahead and get married in secret, so to speak. [SPEAKER_02]: But my mother did find out about it right before we got married and my father did try to intervene. [SPEAKER_02]: So we were forced to actually leave the state and we moved to states. [SPEAKER_02]: We moved up to Iowa from Kansas. [SPEAKER_02]: And I started my life as a married person away from my family. [SPEAKER_02]: And I literally stayed away from all [SPEAKER_02]: including my identical twin sister. [SPEAKER_02]: So for me, I needed that break. [SPEAKER_02]: I needed to call the abuse what it was and I needed to get therapy of which I did.

4:32 [SPEAKER_02]: I had four years of intense therapy in my early 20s. [SPEAKER_01]: And so to then kind of catch you up as a lot of you that have grown up in homes like we did, ours was riddled with incest to abuse and neglect. [SPEAKER_01]: Our father was very keenly manipulative. [SPEAKER_01]: He knew how to create strife between us, competition between us. [SPEAKER_01]: We really didn't have a relationship. [SPEAKER_01]: I was kind of the mom of the family. [SPEAKER_01]: I took care of things in that regard, but I was very walled off of my protective mechanism. [SPEAKER_01]: And [SPEAKER_01]: We just didn't have a relationship that was a sibling relationship.

5:12 [SPEAKER_01]: I was kind of the mom and I was really busy just doing, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Just trying to help the family survive. [SPEAKER_01]: So when Karen left the family, [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't really understand completely everything, and why, and I was still under my dad's control, and I did not know nor did any of us know. [SPEAKER_01]: Karen knew more about what was going on with each of us, but I had no idea because my dad kept telling me I was special, I was the wife of the family, the second wife, I was like the second mother. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had this very, I'm special, I'm different, and I thought I was the only one. [SPEAKER_01]: And so fast forward, we didn't talk about this with each other.

5:53 [SPEAKER_01]: And then in April of 2017, I do strategic facilitation for my for-profit work. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was facilitating the bringing together the trauma and form movement, Kansas City with the one in St. Louis. [SPEAKER_01]: And on this particular day, the folks from St. Louis said, Hey, we're going to do our trauma 101 training. [SPEAKER_01]: When you can kind of sit at the back of the room, listen and then pop up and facilitate after. [SPEAKER_01]: So I was sitting there listening and about seven or eight minutes and they bring up aces adverse childhood experiences. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm 56 years old. [SPEAKER_01]: I've never heard of this. [SPEAKER_01]: So I listen and I'm a math head and it's a zero to 10 score and I'm like, okay, we're supposed to write our ACEs down.

6:35 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking around the room assessing and I'm thinking, okay, everybody will be five or six. [SPEAKER_01]: I know I'm a nine. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to write down an eight because I don't want to be too far out of the average. [SPEAKER_01]: So they popped up the scores and almost everybody in class had zero one or two. [SPEAKER_01]: And I literally said to myself, [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, they like really lied. [SPEAKER_01]: I should have lied more. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm this outlier. [SPEAKER_01]: Then they pop up the data for Kansas and Missouri. [SPEAKER_01]: And I suddenly for the first time in my life understood that the childhood that we had had was nothing like what most people did. [SPEAKER_01]: Two and a half percent of those people in Kansas and Missouri reported having a score as high as my sisters and I.

7:17 [SPEAKER_01]: So I call Karen on the way home and I said, oh my gosh, we have to study this. [SPEAKER_01]: Karen, this is something we have to talk about. [SPEAKER_01]: The trauma that we went through is why one of us has a chronic health condition every two years. [SPEAKER_01]: There's stuff in here. [SPEAKER_01]: We need to learn it. [SPEAKER_01]: We need to understand it. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it can help us better learn how to be able to use this information, at least for me, particularly now, to learn how to heal rather than just manage my trauma. [SPEAKER_01]: So, [SPEAKER_01]: She said yes. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I said yes. [SPEAKER_02]: So it was shocking to me to hear that and I thought to myself, well, I don't think I have a score of 10.

7:57 [SPEAKER_02]: I have a score of 20. [SPEAKER_02]: Is there a score of 20? [SPEAKER_02]: And we started talking about our journeys and we had never really dipped into that, even with my identical twin sister. [SPEAKER_02]: And so we started to talk and Kathleen, [SPEAKER_02]: um, showed us the trauma, the neuroscience of trauma. [SPEAKER_02]: We read about it. [SPEAKER_02]: She did a white paper. [SPEAKER_02]: She and I in particular read more and more and more about it and started to make sense that maybe we should write down, you know, our stories and maybe we should start talking about them with other people and we brave enough to do that. [SPEAKER_02]: And so that's what we decided to do in the summer of 2019.

8:43 [SPEAKER_02]: We started our journey of writing our stories and telling each other our stories. [SPEAKER_02]: And that was very difficult because, although we were all in the same family, as trauma happens to people, it can be the same event, but we can all experience it differently. [SPEAKER_02]: And we can all have a different outcome about how our bodies and how we react to that. [SPEAKER_02]: And what we found out is that our experiences were quite different from one another [SPEAKER_02]: we had to start learning to talk about it and realize that maybe this is why we called our, my twin sister the TAS and maybe I was the quiet one and Kathleen was very organized and hyper vigilant.

9:29 [SPEAKER_02]: And we just started discovering those things about one another, but it was, it was a difficult journey because I had Kathleen was my mother and I had to essentially tell my mother [SPEAKER_02]: and very, very, very difficult for me to do. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't have a memory eraser. [SPEAKER_02]: I have everything in full vivid motion picture. [SPEAKER_02]: And so I remember things that she does not. [SPEAKER_02]: And for a long time, my twin sister and I confessed her then that we thought she just didn't care. [SPEAKER_02]: But that wasn't the case at all.

10:10 [SPEAKER_02]: She just didn't know or remember. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, first, my thought is thanks for sharing all that. [SPEAKER_00]: I resonate with so many elements of that. [SPEAKER_00]: And I've shared this public going to show many times, you know, I have a score of 10. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's growing up in a wildly abusive household. [SPEAKER_00]: My mother kept my finger off when I was a kid, just sexual abuse in the church. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the stepfather who put me in the hospital, Uncle who went to prison watching my mom get married in divorce six times. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the whole nine. [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember it's funny because that data and you know, I look at the data on the ACE score, you know, it's so old now. [SPEAKER_00]: I really wish we could get that revamped.

10:51 [SPEAKER_00]: I've tried to do some work around that over the years. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really hard to get stuff like that finance if you're not in a university, but anyway, that's not their hair nor their my point is I was. [SPEAKER_00]: It was probably 2012, 2013, and I was on YouTube, but this is the old days of YouTube. [SPEAKER_00]: And I found this video of Dr. Fuliti talking about the A survey, and literally in that moment change my life, because I was in such a dark place, and I didn't understand why. [SPEAKER_00]: And I had these moments in my own journey of like looking at, [SPEAKER_00]: What was happening in transpiring about this is not right like I got lucky in one sense because With my mother's drug addiction and then her multiple divorces, I often didn't know where I was going to end up and so I would go from house to house to house in between 8 to 12.

11:48 [SPEAKER_00]: I lived in probably 30 different houses just never knowing where I'm going to land [SPEAKER_00]: One of the really interesting things about that was I got to see families who were the poor opposite of mine. [SPEAKER_00]: So I knew actually early on that the things that were happening in my home weren't normal. [SPEAKER_00]: What I didn't understand and tell much later was that I could control in my home as an adult, all of my own behavioral patterns, because I was a fucking maniac. [SPEAKER_00]: Like, and I don't mean that lightly, it was drugs, alcohol, sex, hookups, I mean just impulsivity, like unbelievable chaos in my life.

12:30 [SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't realize that I was just like reinforcing all of the things that were my norm. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to talk about regulation here in a minute and we're going to talk about how to get our our brains and our bodies connected. [SPEAKER_00]: I know huge work that you guys do. [SPEAKER_00]: That to me became, I mean, meditation journaling, that stuff is everything for me. [SPEAKER_00]: If I don't do it, I know I don't do it impacts my life. [SPEAKER_00]: Yoga, working out, eating well, all these things. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's something that you brought up. [SPEAKER_00]: I wrote some notes as you were talking about two notes. [SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned this reality about competition between siblings, that is something I don't think of ever talked about that on this show before and I just want to dive into that for a moment because [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think people understand that this is actually happening, but the reality of vying for love, attention, sometimes food, like whatever that thing is when you have a parent or parents who are pitting you against each other, I would argue is probably the most detrimental experience that a child has.

13:32 [SPEAKER_00]: When, you know, I had multiple siblings in my house growing up and we just went to war constantly with each other. [SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, one time I put one of my brothers through the drywall. [SPEAKER_00]: I broke one of my hands on the other one's face. [SPEAKER_00]: We were always there's a scar on the top of my right hand. [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty faded now. [SPEAKER_00]: He threw a brick at me. [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_00]: It was always something crazy [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say we didn't like each other, but we had learned the language of communication, was violence and anger and fear and neglect, and we just behaved that way, very different now. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we've done a lot of work together, we've been able to walk this path a lot, but I want to sit in this for a minute because I think that it's one of those things that is maybe missed in a lot of siblings who grew up in traumatic households.

14:24 [SPEAKER_00]: What was it like for you to come to the realization of, wow, our childhood was just a pure competition? [SPEAKER_00]: And then how did you mend that bridge to begin? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you guys are sitting next to each other for God's sake. [SPEAKER_00]: Me and my brothers could never do that. [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean? [SPEAKER_00]: We talk each other, we talk to each other almost every single day now, but that was decades of work. [SPEAKER_00]: right. [SPEAKER_00]: So let's walk this path. [SPEAKER_00]: What what was it like growing up in competition? [SPEAKER_00]: What did that mean? [SPEAKER_00]: What did you witness? [SPEAKER_00]: How did you understand it as an adult? [SPEAKER_00]: And then how did you kind of mend that those relationships with each other? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'll start because my reaction to the trauma was very different than Sharon and Karen.

15:08 [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things that our father, again, abusers are very good at isolating their victims and very good at ensuring that they can control them and are doubted at that. [SPEAKER_01]: So every Sunday at dinner, Sunday dinners were not pleasant for us. [SPEAKER_01]: We were compared and contrasted. [SPEAKER_01]: We were ranked and rated and whoever was bottom of the totem pole, which often was Karen would endure. [SPEAKER_01]: We found out later a lot more abuse, but he didn't announce that because he just ranked and rated us. [SPEAKER_01]: And he didn't say anything about what he was doing to each of us because he wanted to keep us separated.

15:48 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of how it showed up. [SPEAKER_01]: For me, quite young, I was five. [SPEAKER_01]: And when I had my turning point moment in my journey of resilience, I just finished a little big screaming match. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know my 100th millionth with my father and he used to be raped me, call me every nasty thing you could call a little girl, laced with, you know, good for nothing. [SPEAKER_01]: You, you know, dirty blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_01]: It was just all very foul. [SPEAKER_01]: And luckily, I was born very defiant, and so I was a little bit of thing, and I can still see myself my turning point moment standing in our four-year-of-a-year-old little tin color at a home. [SPEAKER_01]: my little fist clenched and tears turned me down my face as I finished screaming at my father.

16:32 [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm not daddy, no, I'm not. [SPEAKER_01]: And he always wanted to get the last word in, but what he didn't know is under my breath. [SPEAKER_01]: I always said, no, I'm not daddy. [SPEAKER_01]: And that day, something happened. [SPEAKER_01]: A voice from the depths of my soul came rising up and it said to me, you will be different. [SPEAKER_01]: You are to make a difference. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was in that moment, Michael, that my world shifted. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's one of my very few full color motion picture moments. [SPEAKER_01]: But that voice suddenly gave me purpose. [SPEAKER_01]: I realized that I was, I literally felt steel walls go up around me.

17:14 [SPEAKER_01]: I walled myself off. [SPEAKER_01]: Anything from that day forward that didn't fit my perfect little world I created for myself. [SPEAKER_01]: I literally dissociated did not happen wasn't happening. [SPEAKER_01]: It was out here and my job was head down ice forward. [SPEAKER_01]: driven by purpose and just kind of get out of here. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I just started. [SPEAKER_01]: I was five. [SPEAKER_01]: I remember organizing the chaos in the home, kind of taking over, making sure we had meals. [SPEAKER_01]: And literally all the stuff that happened outside of that, it's in my memory a racer came on. [SPEAKER_01]: I have this amazing memory a racer for personal things, not for work, not for strategy, but for personal.

17:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm 65, that those were all trauma responses, and they were beautiful and protective, and they helped me survive, but they've also made me dysfunctional in times and places in my adulthood. [SPEAKER_01]: So I think for me, all that stuff that was going on, I'd hear my dad call my sisters awful names, you're no good for nothing, you're worthless, you were mistakes, we should have never had you. [SPEAKER_01]: And I took it in, but Michael, I didn't actually process it, it just went, [SPEAKER_01]: off those steel walls. [SPEAKER_01]: So I was, I think, kind of lucky. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I didn't have the violent abuse. [SPEAKER_01]: I have the loving abuse, right? [SPEAKER_01]: And so it took me a longer time to realize, but I was separated from everybody.

18:42 [SPEAKER_01]: And I have felt for a really long time until Karen and I really connected that I am alone in this world. [SPEAKER_01]: And if I don't do it, it's not gonna happen. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was very alone because the twins had each other and it was kinda me and the twins and we often battled and fought. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was super walled off. [SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't make connections with anyone. [SPEAKER_01]: I was the ice princess in high school that tells you anything you could not get close to me, if you there's no way you could not get close to me was impossible. [SPEAKER_01]: So not as a sibling, not as a parent, not as anyone. [SPEAKER_01]: I was impervious to any kind of closeness. [SPEAKER_01]: So, Karen was very different for you. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for me, for me, I was the child that wanted to save everyone.

19:28 [SPEAKER_02]: And so, my badge of honor was that I had a high pain tolerance. [SPEAKER_02]: And my badge of honor was that I could disassociate and actually leave my body. [SPEAKER_02]: and go somewhere else. [SPEAKER_02]: So I thought it was my mission and duty to protect them and by doing so put up with the things that I was putting up with. [SPEAKER_02]: But I saw my siblings as siloed off into their own space and they very much were. [SPEAKER_02]: However, what I have to say, and I've said to Kathleen, if I had not been born a twin, I would not be here.

20:13 [SPEAKER_02]: I know for certain that because I had the unconditional love of someone, which was my twin sister, we just had this bond. [SPEAKER_02]: And we knew that no matter what, and even though we were told [SPEAKER_02]: So, um, that protected me in that regard, um, and then my, my turning point happened when I was 12. [SPEAKER_02]: Again, I heard a voice, but it was because, um, I had adopted a dog for the summer to tell all my problems too. [SPEAKER_02]: And I happened to go upstairs one Sunday morning and catch my father with Kathleen and [SPEAKER_02]: For me, I had thought all along, I had put up with everything so that I would protect everyone and my world shifted right then and there because I realized I hadn't protected anyone.

21:18 [SPEAKER_02]: And so I mean, the hardest story I had to tell Kathleen was the fact that I had planned on ending my life that day and my parents' lives. [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and as I went to take the knife that night to do so, my dog came in my parents room and interrupted that and kind of snapped me out of that moment and took me out of the house. [SPEAKER_02]: He literally grabbed my arm with his mouth. [SPEAKER_02]: And I set aside the river with him and heard a voice again, some kind of knowing that said, you will continue to have this happen to you.

22:00 [SPEAKER_02]: However, you are full of love and you are meant to spread love in this world. [SPEAKER_02]: You are meant to make a difference. [SPEAKER_02]: You will survive this and you will [SPEAKER_02]: made everything better for me. [SPEAKER_02]: Although it was rough because I had the abuse of my father and my grandfather. [SPEAKER_02]: I [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it really was a turning point for me. [SPEAKER_02]: So I began to say, I'm going to be a nurse. [SPEAKER_02]: I began to say, I want to understand why my parents are like this. [SPEAKER_02]: And so that helped me survive. [SPEAKER_02]: But as far as the competition, yeah, we all were very close to one another.

22:46 [SPEAKER_02]: No. [SPEAKER_02]: Growing up, we, and we also didn't talk about anything hard. [SPEAKER_01]: No. [SPEAKER_01]: No. [SPEAKER_02]: No, but we didn't have the, you know, occasionally Sharon and I would sit on Kathleen because we were bigger than she was when we were mad at her, but we didn't have like, you know, beating each other up or anything like that. [SPEAKER_02]: We just isolated ourselves. [SPEAKER_01]: We did. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think so focused on survival, you know, me just keeping the home together and yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It was really. [SPEAKER_01]: that we we didn't direct it at each other except for normal sibling stuff but nothing like what you described Michael you had. [SPEAKER_01]: It was simply highly highly isolating. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Highly isolating.

23:27 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And we're loving. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's very true of little boys versus little girls, also having a lot of capacity to, you know, and I think when I hear stories like yours, my first thought is one like thought, this is just the most horrendous thing people go through and the other thought is to go what happened to their parents. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, because I have come to find very rarely is this a first generational thing, this this tends to go back generation after generation after generation and I think about the things that happen to my mother and my grandmother and my father and you know you you take this all the way back to whatever ship you got on to get over here right and this goes on to the beginning of time.

24:15 [SPEAKER_00]: You know what I think is really difficult about this is like they're, I don't know if this is true for you, but I had a really intensive as a kid. [SPEAKER_00]: I always had these visions like I'm going to be something like I will be rich and successful and I'll be a rock star and in some ways like I've built that into my life. [SPEAKER_00]: But there's also the complete and utter self destruction that occurred like in my 20s. [SPEAKER_00]: And something I've just every day, I've got to be cognizant of, like, I think about, like, I'm standing with a match in my hand pretty much every day, and I've got to really pay attention to my actions, my thoughts, my body, the people around conversations like this, you know, and it, and it's one of those things that over the years of really learned how to navigate my own mind through all this, not that sometimes it's not incredibly difficult.

25:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Because like you, I have these thoughts in the roominating and like oh man I go murder that guy or that person and that then I'll make it better or do this or the suicidal ideations whatever is and I think that people get so afraid to talk about those things because they feel like somehow their weak or somehow that [SPEAKER_00]: Um, if they do, then that means that the, you know, the people that hurt them have won. [SPEAKER_00]: And when I made the decision to start this show, you almost a decade ago, it was kind of to have really hard fucking conversations like this to sit in it and be like, okay, there's, there are these things that happen, but there's also the backside of it.

25:50 [SPEAKER_00]: There is a reality that there is the moment of like actual real transformation and I know you each of you have kind of shared with that look like for you. [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, it was just rock bottom at 26 years old. [SPEAKER_00]: I just had destroyed my life and everything that I built. [SPEAKER_00]: And there was a requirement on the backside. [SPEAKER_00]: It was like, all right, kill yourself or figure this shit out. [SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of where I was just in all honesty. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, all right, well, let's go fucking figure this out because like, [SPEAKER_00]: killing myself, I feel like a bitch, you know, so I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go like, work this out. [SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, and I understand why people make that decision, because I've been there on the floor with a gun in my mouth. [SPEAKER_00]: I have been there.

26:31 [SPEAKER_00]: For me, it was, I'm going to go ask for help. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what that looks like. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what that feels like. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure that story on here a million times, so I don't need to walk through all of it, but effectively, it was just like whatever it takes. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what it takes, whatever it takes, I'm gonna get there. [SPEAKER_00]: The beginning is so difficult, and I know that there are people listening right now, and they're like, I hear this, I've listened to 900 episodes of this podcast, I've read your books, I've done these things, I am so terrified of the first conversation. [SPEAKER_00]: how do we step into that? [SPEAKER_00]: I know a huge part of what you guys do is between your events, your retreats, your workbooks, your books, the things that you have put together to help people.

27:12 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure people must probably come to you with the same question. [SPEAKER_00]: What's the starting point here? [SPEAKER_01]: You know, where we decided to help the world start is when we wrote our book, remarkable resilient community matters, we identified the five hours of resilience that matched our lived experience informed by the neuroscience and neurobiology of trauma. [SPEAKER_01]: I think really understanding that neuro science and what's happening to your human stress response, what's happening to those patterns of thought is so important because you turn that question from what's wrong with me, which is how I lived 55 years of my life to know it's what happened to me.

27:58 [SPEAKER_01]: And what happened to me isn't a, well, it happened to me and now that it, you know, everybody else deal with it, know what happened to me and now I must learn how to manage that and manage that with knowledge and skills and tools and help. [SPEAKER_01]: And so we started with the are of regulation as the first one we wanted to move into action into workshops because we wish we would have known this when we left our homes because even though we've left [SPEAKER_01]: our abuse of homes, each of us after we finished high school, we were still highly disregulated and all those health impacts of that disregulation kept kept pouring into us and resulted in a lot of conditions, both mental and physical chronic health conditions.

28:45 [SPEAKER_01]: So we, and it's also the easiest step. [SPEAKER_01]: It was so beautiful about it when you were raised in the kind of home that we were raised in. [SPEAKER_01]: There's so much that you don't have control over. [SPEAKER_01]: And so much that the abuser is controlling, learning about regulation and being able to choose it and recognize when you're dysregulated in your body is you. [SPEAKER_01]: It's fully empowering. [SPEAKER_01]: You don't need anybody's permission. [SPEAKER_01]: You don't need anybody's blessing. [SPEAKER_01]: You get to decide to get in touch with your breath, your heart rate, your sweat when you can tell that your emotions are about to get the best of you, which means in a moment you're not gonna be able to get to your thinking brain, which means you're likely to do or say something if the situation is not unsafe, right?

29:35 [SPEAKER_01]: You're just triggered, you're activated by a memory. [SPEAKER_01]: Then, you know, you don't want to end up doing or saying something you later regret. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think for us, it was recognizing that that dysregulation is a trauma response. [SPEAKER_01]: For me, started at H5, I remember it quite well. [SPEAKER_01]: And now choosing instead of being the hot headed home, like I was with my father, but it kept me safe and helped me survive, but I was a hot head with anyone at home. [SPEAKER_01]: And you just need to learn to deal with it because I've been like this since I was five years old and you just deal with it, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's not fair because I don't need it.

30:16 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm safe and I can choose to do a regulating technique to get that heat turn back down that boil and I can stay in my thinking brain and have an intentional response instead of an emotional reaction. [SPEAKER_01]: So we wanted to really empower people with that kind of knowledge because had we had it at 18, we love working with youth that are [SPEAKER_01]: If they can learn to be regulated, we know because the neuroscience and our biology tells us if we can help get those cortisol and adrenaline levels down, we might be able to help in some prevention of some adult hood kinds of chronic diseases that we have had.

30:58 [SPEAKER_01]: So that was just super important. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what you would add to that. [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I would say for someone just starting out the hardest thing is the first step. [SPEAKER_02]: And I would also say you've heard the saying the truth sets you free. [SPEAKER_02]: And it's absolutely finding someone that you're able to that can be your, you can be a truth teller with. [SPEAKER_02]: So that is the first step. [SPEAKER_02]: And then looking inward, again, like Kathleen said and saying, what behaviors can I do? [SPEAKER_02]: I recognize as trauma responses, those might have helped me survive when I was young, but are they serving me well now?

31:39 [SPEAKER_02]: And I had to look at things like being [SPEAKER_02]: people pleaser and what kind of relationships did that get me into. [SPEAKER_02]: I had to look at the fact that I had no boundaries set. [SPEAKER_02]: And what did that look like? [SPEAKER_02]: And over the over time, once I've learned what my responses are and the things I can manage that I don't necessarily need now, I've changed several things in my life. [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I had to unenviate some people into my life [SPEAKER_02]: and do difficult things like that. [SPEAKER_02]: But the person that I am now is a lot different than the person who was 20 years old.

32:21 [SPEAKER_02]: But it took a, like you said, Michael, lots of therapy, both top down and bottom up, the somatic stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a rakey master healer now, and that works well for me, the rakey works on me. [SPEAKER_02]: But there's all kinds of therapies that people can. [SPEAKER_02]: um, dip their toe into to see whether it's helpful or not. [SPEAKER_02]: And I would say it's just so worth it because, um, we're all enough. [SPEAKER_02]: And we all are valuable and we all deserve love. [SPEAKER_02]: We all deserve a good life. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's important. [SPEAKER_00]: I agree. [SPEAKER_00]: And I, well, the hard part about deserve is like, you got to do the work, and that's the unfortunate side because like people will sit in the eye deserve and they'll die completely unfulfilled because they never showed up and, and that was me.

33:14 [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I mean, God, it's like a mimicking so much of what you're, each saying is so true for me. [SPEAKER_00]: I was the shut off guy, I don't, don't talk to me, don't connect with me. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a brick wall, you're not getting through no matter what. [SPEAKER_00]: to this pivot of how do I show up best for myself? [SPEAKER_00]: How do I do the really scary thing of having conversations? [SPEAKER_00]: You know, especially like, you know, it's, I think it's probably very different for men. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm six foot four, two, twenty five covered in tattoos. [SPEAKER_00]: I've done martial arts and sports my whole life to sit in a room with a therapist and be like my stepdad beat me up when I was eight. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a really hard experience, right?

33:56 [SPEAKER_00]: I encourage people to do because the truth does set you free and it's like you're going to walk around in a nightmare and tell you talk about it and it's going to come. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to show up. [SPEAKER_00]: It's going to present itself to you all the time and tell you get to this place where you go deal with it. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the regulation aspect of it is so unbelievably important. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll never forget the first time I did like soundball, healing meditation. [SPEAKER_00]: I must have been, I don't know, I've been 30. [SPEAKER_00]: It's probably it's definitely over a decade ago. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a long time ago. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a little younger. [SPEAKER_00]: And I just remember the physical response my body had was the same response that animals have when they shake off trauma and I literally went through this moment of my my body just freaking out because I was so wound up and so tight.

34:49 [SPEAKER_00]: for so long, which, again, we know when you look at the survey research around the ACE score, the higher that score is, the more likely you're going to have a really a lot of dark, bad, horrible health conditions happen. [SPEAKER_00]: And by the time I was 30, I almost died like six times, you know, and [SPEAKER_00]: And I figured out one day, I was like, oh my god, my nervous system is so disregulated. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm constantly in fight or flight. [SPEAKER_00]: I have no regulation at all to my emotions. [SPEAKER_00]: And kind of what you said, caffeine, when I was young, [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be like, this is how I am deal with it, and that's the most dangerous sentence in any language period, because that means you've already decided what your future is.

35:36 [SPEAKER_00]: And for the people who are listening, they're like, I don't really understand this idea of regulation. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm exploding all the time at my kids or my husband or my wife or my co-workers or my friends. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't seem to get out of bed. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm always depressed or anxious. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't seem to navigate life. [SPEAKER_00]: My sex is horrible. [SPEAKER_00]: My money is bad. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm blaming the world. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pointing the fingers. [SPEAKER_00]: I think the hardest part about that is like, yep, that's all valid. [SPEAKER_00]: It's all valid, you know? [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that people can get trapped in their own experience. [SPEAKER_00]: And I know that I certainly have been that way. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's something about those turning point where you actually have to choose yourself.

36:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if you guys see that with the people that you're working with. [SPEAKER_00]: But what is that like? [SPEAKER_00]: What is the experience like people are coming to you? [SPEAKER_00]: They're saying, I'm gonna choose me. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna do this dark dirty work. [SPEAKER_00]: what is that? [SPEAKER_00]: Where are they coming to you from? [SPEAKER_00]: Why does that decision happen? [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we do our work primarily with individuals that are almost have to be brought together. [SPEAKER_01]: Let me just say that because we might come in a room where we're working with children that are aging out of foster care system and they've been brought [SPEAKER_01]: We volunteer in correctional facilities because what we know is every single person in that room male or female has complex PTSD like we do and all we have to do is say one sentence because we're like what's this johnson county you know wife woman coming in here for you know well I say a sentence and they're like whoa okay you've been through shit I've been through shit I'm actually going to listen to you so folks that come to us [SPEAKER_01]: in workshops tend to come to us because they're in situations where they've already recognized that there's, you know, some things amiss, right?

37:36 [SPEAKER_01]: I think for me the most rewarding, there's so many, but the most rewarding for me is after words when someone come up to me and say, oh, wow, I always thought that I really was that person that just withdrew, that it was me, that was my personality. [SPEAKER_01]: Um, wow, I never really forgave myself for the time that I froze because I'm a fighter and I froze. [SPEAKER_01]: What was like, how did I freak? [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you don't choose your stress response. [SPEAKER_01]: It chooses you. [SPEAKER_01]: You get stuck on or your window of activation is really narrow when you grow up in the kinds of homes that we all three grew up in and many of those of you listening grew up in.

38:20 [SPEAKER_01]: When you start to realize that that is an automatic response to danger that you need to take a moment and assess, am I in danger or am I safe? [SPEAKER_01]: And if I'm safe, you can choose. [SPEAKER_01]: to re-regulate that nervous system so that you don't go into fight flight freezer piece. [SPEAKER_01]: It's extremely empowering. [SPEAKER_01]: And individuals begin to realize what you really shared Michael and I know for me, I was again, in my late 50s before I realized that I wasn't a hot head at home because that was a personality trait.

39:00 [SPEAKER_01]: I was a hot head at home because that was my trauma response. [SPEAKER_01]: And it just kind of got stuck on or end a really low window of tolerance to set me off. [SPEAKER_01]: And it felt safe because that's what I'd always done. [SPEAKER_01]: And now I could choose to look around and say, wow, it's damaging relationships. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm running through relationships like kind of crazy. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not really healthy. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't really want to be that person. [SPEAKER_01]: And it was really my son and I, you know, your children change you. [SPEAKER_01]: And my son and I learned regulation together, I was 56 to the 16 and we had gone up the explosion ladder a thousand times because you stay in that fight when you're the parent because I'm the one that's telling you what to do.

39:45 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to win this one and he's bigger than me, but I still stayed in those battles. [SPEAKER_01]: And I realized that those are a loose, loose situation. [SPEAKER_01]: This wasn't I said things. [SPEAKER_01]: I never we broke the cycling never hurt my son. [SPEAKER_01]: I never hit my son. [SPEAKER_01]: I never [SPEAKER_01]: that I wish now I could take back and so did he. [SPEAKER_01]: And we've now learned to say, we're just regulated. [SPEAKER_01]: We need to separate. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, even if we can't speak it, we move a part I need a moment, whatever that is, we re-regulate. [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes that regulation is not a poof. [SPEAKER_01]: You need to be separated for the night. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll say to you, are you safe? [SPEAKER_01]: Can you go to sleep? [SPEAKER_01]: I feel safe, I can go to sleep.

40:26 [SPEAKER_01]: We'll come back and address it noon tomorrow when we're in our thinking brains. [SPEAKER_01]: So I love that transformation, that I'll have moment, and we get a lot of those, I'll have moments. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we do. [SPEAKER_02]: And also, even if we're in a general workshop, we get a lot of people that come up and say, you know, hey, can I speak with you for a moment? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's that, [SPEAKER_02]: permission to finally tell somebody what happened, which is why we do the work as well, because we know very certainly that very few people, especially children report what has happened to them.

41:06 [SPEAKER_02]: So for us, it's rewarding that someone has taken that first step to be able to say, hey, I can relate to you, something happened to me. [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's powerful. [SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that I'm curious about here, because I think that one of the areas people don't really understand that they can get lost in is the fact that healing, like I think that sometimes and it's probably social media, honestly, like people think that it's like, oh, if I go do this, I'm healed and then I'm good to go. [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I'm, [SPEAKER_00]: 15, 16 years into just doing my own personal work now.

41:53 [SPEAKER_00]: And there's always like the next thing. [SPEAKER_00]: And you as experts and having a bit of seniority here over me, what's it like for you today to [SPEAKER_02]: I think for me, it's a realization that healing is a journey, not a destination, and that I have to give myself grace for those times when I, quote, slip back into a behavior that isn't the best for me. [SPEAKER_02]: So it's important for me to give myself grace.

42:37 [SPEAKER_02]: I was really taken a back during COVID when I put on a mask and went into a grocery store and then found myself curled up at a corner. [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely out of control and not understanding why. [SPEAKER_02]: And when I understood, [SPEAKER_02]: that I had had my mouth covered with tape and all kinds of things when I was a child. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what had triggered me. [SPEAKER_02]: I immediately went back into therapy again. [SPEAKER_02]: But but the adult in me and the person that had done years of work said, my gosh, I can't believe you have to go back into therapy again. [SPEAKER_02]: I can't believe you can't handle this on your own. [SPEAKER_02]: And I beat myself up and beat myself up.

43:19 [SPEAKER_02]: But you know what? [SPEAKER_02]: Going back into therapy with a new therapist, therapist taught me something else. [SPEAKER_02]: So I think what I would like to say to everyone is it's worth the journey. [SPEAKER_02]: But it is going to be a journey. [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to be like my EMS friends said when I was an EMT and in work to the ER. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, oh, that's a heartbeat. [SPEAKER_02]: That's life. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, what's this? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's death. [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, life is this, then. [SPEAKER_02]: And so it was a huge revelation to me that it's okay if I have to ask others for help.

43:59 [SPEAKER_02]: It's okay if I slip, but the most important thing is that I recognize, I recognize the signs and me. [SPEAKER_02]: I recognize that I'm in trouble and I need to do something different. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm, I remember I was the world off person. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a high logic brain, high logic brain. [SPEAKER_01]: You can't get through to me without information knowledge, like my therapist gives me books to read first. [SPEAKER_01]: And you know, it took a client. [SPEAKER_01]: I just, we just finished teaching and to be a correctional facility for women. [SPEAKER_01]: And this was just a couple years ago.

44:41 [SPEAKER_01]: Holly looked at me and she said, Kathleen, why when you talk with the women? [SPEAKER_01]: And we're walking through emotional regulation, self-care, and you're sharing all this, why do you just talk about managing trauma? [SPEAKER_01]: Why do you talk about healing? [SPEAKER_01]: Did I earn, I was like, I need to get back with you on that one, I don't have any other. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm driving home and I'm like, what is healing? [SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know what healing is. [SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't even delved into healing. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I went back to my therapist, and I told her this conversation, and she handed me a book, a couple books to read. [SPEAKER_01]: One of them was Stephanie Fooze, what my bones know, complex trauma survivor.

45:24 [SPEAKER_01]: And then it, she talks about discovering love and being able to learn to trust it. [SPEAKER_01]: I still didn't go completely understand, but I went back into Ian and I had the book and all marked up and all kinds of notes and I was reading to her passage, and she looked and she goes, well, let me tell you what healing is. [SPEAKER_01]: She said healing is allowing your authentic self to come through, unencumbered by your trauma responses, healing is allowing your authentic self to come through, unencumbered by your trauma response. [SPEAKER_01]: And I cannot tell you that I understood in that moment, but I read it down. [SPEAKER_01]: I may just say it again. [SPEAKER_01]: And I have really been working and as I've discovered, I have lived really almost all of my life as my trauma responses and my coping mechanisms.

46:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And I am finally trying to uncover and rediscover. [SPEAKER_01]: That authentic self, those pieces of myself I left behind in my trauma survival in my recovery. [SPEAKER_01]: and those pieces that give me joy and feed my soul. [SPEAKER_01]: And I am just now discovering. [SPEAKER_01]: And so my first one discovery, world watch out, I am a joyous dancer and I'd love to dance and I never really got to do it. [SPEAKER_01]: I was eight, I think the last time I danced, I put it in a closet, you know, and I mean, I had some dances I went to, but I now dance on the, [SPEAKER_01]: dance floor with anyone of any ability of any color creed, anything, you know, and I just bring joy.

47:06 [SPEAKER_01]: And people will say to me, you're so much fun, you're so much joy, and I'm like it's because I love to dance. [SPEAKER_01]: And I haven't got to do that for 60, you know, 60 years. [SPEAKER_02]: I loved the definition of healing when she told me that, and I'm like, look out, Kathleen, though, when you start feeling away all that, you're gonna stand naked in front of people. [SPEAKER_02]: She laughed at me and I'm like, that's what it feels like. [SPEAKER_02]: To put away those pieces of armor and say, who is that person or who is the person that I was meant to be in, what is my purpose? [SPEAKER_02]: Because so much of that gets covered up in trauma responses when you're a child that lives the life that we lived.

47:52 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: Definitely. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's so close to my definition too, because I've always said, this healing journey is getting to the point that you do what you want to do because you want to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: And you don't do what you don't want to do because you don't want to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's about off authority over an agency over your own life, because there's moments I look back on my life, and you know, being in this massive disregulation, chaos, whatever's happening in my life, and I think to myself, [SPEAKER_00]: better so unrecognizable to the person that I am today. [SPEAKER_00]: And it's not like that shit doesn't pop, trust me. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got to sit in this and be like, do, right?

48:33 [SPEAKER_00]: But most of my day-to-day life is nothing like 15, 16 years ago. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's so much of that is... [SPEAKER_00]: looking at and making the decision to have the ownership of the decision making, which can be really scary because that means now you're in control and you don't as much as we want to blame people for what happened to us. [SPEAKER_00]: The decisions we make today are our decisions. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I can't sit here and ever blame anyone for Michael's choice to do something stupid. [SPEAKER_00]: But I can look at and go, okay, well, why did I do that thing? [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: The hell is happening in my life. [SPEAKER_00]: Why, why did I act this way? [SPEAKER_00]: Why did I operate this way?

49:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Why did I blow up at this person? [SPEAKER_00]: Why did I treat it? [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pulling this way. [SPEAKER_00]: Why did I, like, stands TSA. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm pretty good at controlling my emotions. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's like, [SPEAKER_00]: You know, somebody who travels 200 days a year. [SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we can. [SPEAKER_00]: And so I look at this all and I go, okay, cool, what is required? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is my day have to be in order for me to operate as a healthy individual? [SPEAKER_00]: who has massive goals and runs multiple businesses and always on the road and has a stable relationship and as stable family and all these things happening and like it's it's really about me doing what I have to do because I realized one day.

49:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And this, this was really pivotal, it was a turning point. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm curious how this experience may have happened for you or not. [SPEAKER_00]: I realized that life has nothing to do with what you want to do. [SPEAKER_00]: And as everything about you doing what is required. [SPEAKER_00]: because I want nothing more to do than to get high and play video games and eat pizza and hook up with strangers and whatever that looks like. [SPEAKER_00]: That's just, I want, I don't know why. [SPEAKER_00]: As part of my, my nomenclature is a human being. [SPEAKER_00]: But then I look at the life that I actually want to have. [SPEAKER_00]: Not the things I want to have, but the life I want to have. [SPEAKER_00]: And the life that I want to have is this amazing conversation, speaking on stages, running a successful business, looking at myself in the mirror and being okay with the reflection, and like all of that is based in requirement for me to treat myself like somebody who gives a shit about themselves.

50:51 [SPEAKER_00]: point blank period. [SPEAKER_00]: So what does that mean? [SPEAKER_00]: I got to do yoga. [SPEAKER_00]: I got to meditate. [SPEAKER_00]: I got to write in the stupid journal for the 50th time this month. [SPEAKER_00]: I've got to go to the personal development events and show up to therapy and have a coach. [SPEAKER_00]: And I have to do all the things that I find to be either requirement and the precursor to what I actually want. [SPEAKER_00]: And then the other part of it is I have to live into being the person that I believe that I am. [SPEAKER_00]: not the person who was set up for failure who's statistically should be dead or in jail like many of his friends and most of his family is like, okay, well, how do I have to operate today? [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, you have to give a shit about yourself. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, what does that mean? [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yoga meditation don't get high, don't watch porn, don't hook up with strangers, don't do these things instead do these things over here.

51:39 [SPEAKER_00]: And it's funny because one day I took a [SPEAKER_00]: piece of paper to pan. [SPEAKER_00]: I literally just wrote a line down the middle. [SPEAKER_00]: I said, I wrote the top. [SPEAKER_00]: What fucks my life up? [SPEAKER_00]: What makes my life better? [SPEAKER_00]: There we go. [SPEAKER_00]: And I just started going for it. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm serious. [SPEAKER_00]: What are your thoughts about this idea that you have to do what is required to have the life that you want to have? [SPEAKER_00]: Like, how does that land? [SPEAKER_00]: What does that look like? [SPEAKER_00]: How do you see that in your lives? [SPEAKER_00]: How do you see that with the people that you work? [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I would say that something I said to Kathy and the other night when we were watching trauma show a trauma show and we were discussing childhoods and everything was that, you know, some people say, well, it would be easier not to learn these things and easier not to tell myself I had to do was require, but then I looked at her and said, well, ignorance is bliss true.

52:33 [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's it is easier to be in that blissful world where you get to do what you want to do and you get to do what your habits are and everything else but does that work well for your life and does that make your life easier and more and your goals more attainable? [SPEAKER_02]: No. [SPEAKER_02]: So what you have to do, I love what you said is what's required and it's hard work. [SPEAKER_02]: And you have to remind yourself on a daily basis, but it's so worth it. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm I'm still thinking about this. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a little bit like that healing question. [SPEAKER_01]: So Michael, I'm in have to think on this for a little bit.

53:14 [SPEAKER_01]: But. [SPEAKER_01]: From my, again, I just ran in this high logic. [SPEAKER_01]: We were watching something last night on the heart and I'm like, it would ever. [SPEAKER_01]: I ran in my brain and I mean, I just always do that. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a logic guy. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and I've protected my heart and I still do. [SPEAKER_01]: And so for me, when I was five, I cannot even tell you in words, there are no words. [SPEAKER_01]: how important it was for me to be told that I was going to make a difference and how much that has driven my life. [SPEAKER_01]: People will say to me and I mean I'm talking driven my life and I've given my life to making a difference on behalf of the common good on behalf of those most vulnerable in our communities, on behalf of something greater than myself.

54:01 [SPEAKER_01]: I have done that since I was five years old. [SPEAKER_01]: In this reflection, I had to ask myself, kind of what you're, you know, as I went back through and started peeling away the trauma responses and the coping mechanisms and literally seeing, I got nut and left. [SPEAKER_01]: I got nut and I'm sick of that. [SPEAKER_01]: I looked at that trauma response of driven by purpose and I said, no, I chose that some 20 years ago that I would leave the and well actually now, oh gosh. [SPEAKER_01]: Most 40 years ago, long time ago, time passes as you get older. [SPEAKER_01]: When I left the investment management world because I didn't, I was good at it.

54:42 [SPEAKER_01]: I have a finance brain, but it didn't feed my soul the way that I knew I needed, and it didn't allow me to make the difference. [SPEAKER_01]: And I knew that that voice, I call it the mystery, the universe, gave to me, that directive. [SPEAKER_01]: And I shifted my life. [SPEAKER_01]: I left that industry. [SPEAKER_01]: I started my own business. [SPEAKER_01]: joined with two people that had worked all around the world, the kind of private Peace Corps and I dedicated my life to helping organizations that serve the most vulnerable in our communities, be a strategic and effective and efficient as they could be and eventually as trauma informed as they could be. [SPEAKER_01]: And that leads me and as long as I'm doing things that allow me to do that, I have to tell you for me that is [SPEAKER_01]: what I was supposed to be doing.

55:31 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it doesn't feel required when I start to feel sorry for myself a little bit. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, oh my gosh, I haven't worked 40 days in my life. [SPEAKER_01]: For 40 years of my life, I've got to do my passion. [SPEAKER_01]: And I've got to do what I'm supposed to do. [SPEAKER_01]: So doing this work, and I do this work only in bits. [SPEAKER_01]: I do a sprint, and then I back out. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I do a sprint, and I back out. [SPEAKER_01]: I have to be careful because I want to stay where I am and stay steady and then I got to do a dive and then I've got to come back up and just steady the ship because I want to keep doing this work. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to keep doing this purpose. [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know for me, I've been so purpose driven for so long and didn't understand the full context when I was five but [SPEAKER_01]: And it, it's just as why I exist now picking up the pieces that I dropped was very on I got a little depressed when there was not in there.

56:35 [SPEAKER_01]: And I then I did this little exercise we do. [SPEAKER_01]: I did a little decades of my life and I realized, okay, [SPEAKER_01]: It's not that hard to pick up dancing, you know, I picked up a fur baby, you know, I love animals, but it can be [SPEAKER_01]: scary and lonely, and I'd just so grateful I have my sister to be in that journey. [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know if that helps, but it's kind of where my healing journey has taken me. [SPEAKER_01]: And again, I am unbelievably grateful to the universe for having rescued me when I was five.

57:15 [SPEAKER_01]: I really that for me was [SPEAKER_01]: didn't take the trauma away. [SPEAKER_01]: But it walled me off. [SPEAKER_01]: It gave me a memory eraser and it gave me purpose. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's very powerful. [SPEAKER_00]: Both of your story. [SPEAKER_00]: And again, kind of the point of where I thought we would go is to very different experiences, similar outcomes. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, and I look at my brothers and I'm, I have the ironclad memory. [SPEAKER_00]: I, even to this day, it's almost photogenic. [SPEAKER_00]: I remember literally everything. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I'll remember your blue flower shirt tell them dead, you know, it's weird. [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually quite annoying, but what is quite annoying?

57:55 [SPEAKER_02]: What I've very annoying. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm great at trivia though, so, you know, but I think about the fact, I look at the relationships. [SPEAKER_00]: with my siblings now, and I don't think they'll ever be perfect. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that anyone's sibling relationships are, but at least we don't punch each other in the face anymore. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, and we get to have amazingly deep conversations, and we've gone to personal development events together, and we've done the work together, and life is just amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, my, my thought is so often, it's like, [SPEAKER_00]: if this is what's required, this is what's required because at least I got this. [SPEAKER_00]: Before I ask you the last question, where can everyone find you, where can everyone learn more and especially where can people do work with you?

58:43 [SPEAKER_01]: We have a website remarkably hyphenrezyliant.com. [SPEAKER_01]: Lots of information there. [SPEAKER_01]: We have a place where you can buy our book. [SPEAKER_01]: where you can buy our remarkably resilient together materials and we're launching the summer a learning management system. [SPEAKER_01]: So where you can also purchase and watch online videos and PDF files. [SPEAKER_01]: So please visit. [SPEAKER_01]: We have some free resources there as well and also our contact information. [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you for that. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: And guys, remember go to think unbrokenpodcast.com for [SPEAKER_00]: My last question for you, my friends. [SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

59:28 [SPEAKER_02]: What it means for me is to continue my journey and know that it's worth it. [SPEAKER_02]: And then to be very proud of the courageous things I've done along the way to choose me. [SPEAKER_02]: um like set boundaries like put myself at a level that I'm with someone else instead of be low um the kind of things that I've learned along the way and then the other part was to know that um we broke that cycle and then I did not pass that on to my children and I was very proud of the fact that they did not experience the things that I experienced.

1:00:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I think for me, it means the journey that I've finally have stepped into and that's that healing journey, recognizing that you are not your trauma responses, you are not your unhealthy coping mechanisms, they are simply tools for survival. [SPEAKER_01]: think them be grateful they were there, but really look at can I set them aside? [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes I've been able to do that on my own and sometimes I need support and help from professionals from my sister to be able to do that. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I don't feel broken anymore. [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I understand why I had those traits, what they were necessary for, but I love [SPEAKER_01]: the empowerment of being able to choose differently and to understand how to do that.

1:01:05 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being here. [SPEAKER_00]: Unbroken nation, thank you all for listening. [SPEAKER_00]: If today's conversation was insightful and you have siblings and they grew up in the house that you grew up in and maybe you know that they need to do a little bit of work. [SPEAKER_00]: I have learned one thing to be true. [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot make anyone do anything but I can plant some seeds. [SPEAKER_00]: And this episode might just be that for them. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you send it to them and say, hey, I heard this today. [SPEAKER_00]: You might want to consider listening to it. [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe you sit on them and make them listen to it. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: You have to do what you got to do. [SPEAKER_00]: But my hope is that you understand that on the back side of all the things that you may have gone through, that there is something beautiful waiting for you if you're willing to show up and do this work, to ask for help, to look in the mirror and most importantly to say I can do this.

1:01:54 [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time my friends, take care of yourself, take care of each other, and be unbroken. [SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you.