Family Planning, Preparedness, Sickness, Small business preparedness
C’MON MAN WHAT’S YOUR STORY?
C’MON man what’s your Story is a man’s point of view with coping with grief, loss of a loved one, addictions and life’s struggles. So glad to have your on our Podcast this week Chris Robinson!
“Recovery is not a death sentence, addiction is”, Unknown
“Addiction makes good people do terrible things”, Unknown
C’MON man what’s your Story? Our interview on Talking Taboo with Tina today is one where we should embrace the man’s point of view when it comes to coping with grief, loss of a loved one, addictions, and life’s struggles. They don’t need to define you as a Man, and make you less of one, but truly make you the Man you are today! With scars and all! “For every wound there is a scar, and every scar tells a story.
A Story that says I survived”, Fr. Craig Scott
“The scars you can’t see………. are the hardest to heal”, Astrid Alauda
Check out this incredible interview with, Chris Robinson who will tell us HIS STORY!
Y’all you won’t want to miss this one!
Because there might be something in our wonderful broadcast today that resonates with you or someone else that you would like to share this with.
C’MON man what’s your Story? We have a special guest on our show today. His name is Chris Robinson. He’s from from beautiful Texas.
us, and I’m anxious to go there. Again. It’s a beautiful place. He is. Our title today is Come on, man, what’s your story, that’s for sure. And it’s perfectly perfect for the show today.
One thing that we can all count on is that we’re all going to get sick or disabled, or lose something or lose everything, or perhaps pass away from disasters, tragedies, or in the blink of an eye. And that’s what we’re all here about today. Because we want to show you that it doesn’t have to be complicated, that you can save your photos, you can save your documents. And you can save all of your information so that you and your guest user can make sure that your bills get paid, or that they know where your documents are when needed, or you know where your documents are. Or that you have your photos all saved on a backup drive. So you don’t have to worry if your house goes up and smoke you that that’s my primary concern that when you lose everything, you have lost your life. And there’s nothing else that we can do to repair that. And so we take that painful Aftermath out of that tragedy. So if you haven’t, we will also have a link below for all of the shows notes on our blog, if you would like to also read the broadcast. So welcome aboard. I’m going to bring on Chris and have him.
Hi, Chris. Hi, Tina, how are you? I’m awesome.
Today, how are you doing in Texas? Great. We’re doing great. We’re staying warm. I would love to be there right now. And I want to introduce you you deserve a great introduction with your wonderful story.
C’MON man what’s your Story? He is the author of C’Mon man. He’s a counselor, he focuses on Adult counseling, as well as marriage counseling. Now, after this wonderful journey that has put him into this place in my life now, as you know, I can’t believe you take on the challenges faced by men. And men definitely see things in a different light when things happen. And I’m so anxious to interview today to hear your story, Chris.
And I’m really looking forward to it. So where did it all start for you? Well, for me, it all started, you know, I was I was raised in a little town called Maplewood, New Jersey. And when I was 11 years old, my father’s business transferred their headquarters from New York City to Houston. It was a oil and gas company. And so when I was 11, me and my two brothers and three sisters, and our parents loaded up, moved everything down to Houston
in August in Texas, which was a shock in itself, getting off plane and feeling that hot blast that Fern Oh.
And so we made this transition in August of 1971.
And we’re adjusting we’re trying to figure out who our friends are. We’re getting into school and feeling a little bit disconnected. And it was in November of that year that a trauma hit our family and you talk about things changing in the blink of an eye. Nothing could be truer in our story because as we got settled in and we were looking forward to Thanksgiving Day, in November of 1971. And my brother had been out with some friends the evening before after work. And they went out in a car they had been drinking. There was a car wreck and my brother was killed
in the early morning hours of thanksgiving and 1971 and so were they all killed in the car, Chris?
No, no, my brother was the only one killed. Another one was injured, and the two other people in the car, you know, survived.
But my brother was in the in the front seat and that was before seatbelts were required. And you know, just to unfortunate tragedy. So that is the beginning of our story in Texas. And well, how old were you then? I was living at the time. And my brother was my brother was 15. Oh, wow, he’s so young. Yeah, right. Right. So you had that horrible knock on the door? Yeah. And actually, as an 11 year old, you know, my next oldest brother and I he was probably 13 at the time, and he and I had a room together. And we were looking forward to the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Houston. That was our plan for the morning is we were going to get up, get dressed, go down to the parade, come home, have our Thanksgiving dinner. And so, you know, when my mom came into our bedroom, man, I was I was fired up.
Just just ready to go. And we could see immediately that something was different, something was wrong. And that’s when she she told us what had happened. And it was just like a, a numbness that overcame our entire family. Like an unbelief. Like it’s it can’t be just it’s it stunned. absolutely stunned. And yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t even know how to process anything. And if we consider that in the in the 1970s.
Counseling was absolutely not a thing. Right, that if you were in counseling in the 1970s, it’s because you had some kind of a serious mental disorder. And that’s not something that anybody was going to talk about. Right? No. And you usually went to a facility somewhere. Right, right. And so we were left to all deal with it. In the best way that we knew how. And I was the youngest of the six children. My my oldest sister was actually in town, but she was in her freshman year of college at that point, and so she dealt with it far differently than I dealt with it. You know, she she did, she spoke to people about it, she spoke to my parents better. She spoke to her friends about it. She She grieved, she cried. For for me and my brother, you know, 11 and 13. We, we didn’t even know what to do. We didn’t know how to respond to this. And, and so it’s really interesting to look at how it affected each of my siblings. Yeah, differently. Especially boys, you probably weren’t given the opportunity to really cry and let it out. And you had to be tough and strong. And yeah, yeah, that was it. We just we didn’t even know what to do with it. And so for me, that’s essentially what happened is I just, I just pushed it down.
People around me people at my school that heard about what happened, it was on the news and Euston. And it was like, nobody knew what to say about it. And so since they didn’t know what to say, it was kind of like that I was avoided.
C’MON man what’s your Story? Right, like the plague because, you know, it’s just we don’t know what to say. So we’re just going to go down the other hallway, you know, and that kind of thing at school. So it was it was really interesting, as I look back on it now, and realize how I did cope with it, which was in an unhealthy way.
I pressed it down until the point where I was about 14. And then at age 14, I was in in high school and started drinking at that point. And in Houston in 1971. Nobody was checking your ID, you know, if you walked into one of the corner stores, you could get a beer, you know, that wouldn’t problem or you could give somebody money to walk in and get you a beer and then be glad to hand it to you when they came out. So I I started drinking when I was about 14. And found that, you know, I enjoyed that. And drinking, some of my friends then got their their driver’s license at age 15. And so they would take us out to two bars, in strip clubs, you know, and in all these places, like I’d say they would, they would let you in.
And when you know, when you think about what’s going to get 14 1516 year old boys going,
it’s gonna be the, you know, eroticism of strip clubs, and then there were porn bars in Houston. And so we wound up going to some of those. And that created another addiction. For me, and I tell the story in my book, that I’m fortunate that I did not become addicted to drugs or alcohol. And the only reason is because I also enjoyed sports, I was an athlete, and doing two day workouts for football in August in Texas, did not go well with being out and drinking heavily the night before. No, it kept you more on the narrow road. Yeah, so So from the the, you know, alcohol, I was able to say, Okay, I can’t do that and play my sports, but I also had this exposure to porn that I could do without any problem. And, you know, nobody knowing that nobody finding out about and that really kind of developed into an addiction that, you know, carried into adulthood.
To the point where, you know, hours would be spent viewing that you would go, you would go through the the shame and the guilt, that that, you know, a gambler goes through a shopping addict, goes through an alcoholic goes through a drug addict, goes through addiction is addiction, right? Because you have the craving to do it. And then after you do it, you’re like, why did I do it? Why did I do? Yeah. And it’s one thing, you know, to do that when you’re in college, and single and kind of living your own life. But then there’s another level of guilt that comes into play. When you get into a relationship and you get married, and you have children. And now you’re spending, you know, hours, supposedly working late. But that’s not what you’re doing. Right?
Yeah. And so you’re you’re taking away time from your family, there are some times where you’re taking away time from your employer. And so yeah, there’s there’s a lot of guilt and shame associated with that. And then oh, by the way, add on one more complicating factor, you know, if you label yourself a Christian
will now you know, there’s a whole another level of guilt that I shouldn’t be doing this, I know better. I know, I shouldn’t be doing this, this, you know, sinful behavior, and all that kind of stuff that goes along with it. And you just start heaping guilt upon guilt.
And getting to the point, you know, hopefully we’re you recognize that, why this is really, really bad for me, and I and I need to change something. And there was a point that I was kind of forced into that, to that point was, what do you think that, you know, it’s interesting, because I, I, I was always involved in the church from the time that, you know, my wife and I were married. I was involved in the church, and I happened to be, I don’t know, that’s probably, you know, 20 years ago, at a church where they were focusing on recovery from addictions. And you know, for some reason, they asked me, Hey, would you be willing to serve on this committee be a part of this group that puts this together? And I said, Yeah, sure. I’d be glad to do that. You know, they saw me as a, you know, a leader of the men’s groups in church and things of that nature.
And chronic. Back there. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like, okay, I’ll do it. And in the very first meeting, the leader of that group, who was an alcoholic in recovery, said, Hey, I think that we all have our addictions.
Things that we just can’t control.
And if we’re going to be genuine and authentic in this group, is we go into helping people in their recovery.
Maybe it would be a good idea for us to just kind of go around the table and say, Hey,
What? What is your addiction? or What was your addiction? and Tina, my heart just started pounding. I mean, I mean, I could feel myself getting good. I never talked to anybody about this. I hadn’t talked to my wife about it I nobody, right? And so here I am, at this group of table with about eight people, and the only thing that I can be thankful for that meeting is that he started on the person next to me, and went around so that I’d be the last.
C’MON man what’s your Story? God forbid that he should start with me, because I couldn’t even hear my heart was beating through my ears.
It’s like hiding in the classroom when the teacher says, who knows the answer to this question, and you’re like, can I? Where can I hide? I literally, I felt like a caged lion. I felt like a wild animal that had been trapped. And just pacing back and forth. That was feel I was looking for a way out. I was I was thinking do i do i get up and leave right now excuse myself from the meeting?
Wedding, I was everything you do everything physically that you could experience in anxiety and panic I was experiencing in that moment. And when it finally came around to me, I told him, You know, I do have something that I’ve struggled with, but I’ve never talked with anybody about it. And I just said, I can’t speak with this group about it. Before I speak to my wife about it. Good for you. So I went home that evening, how many were in the group, there were about eight of us in the group.
And so I went home that evening, and sat down with my wife and really had the toughest discussion with her that I’ve ever had, I didn’t know how she was going to react to it. And she was so overwhelmingly gracious, she just looked at me and said, You’re my knight in shining armor. And I would say, Wow, even with this, even even with this. And that really, I think is the point at which my recovery began. Right? Because when we have an addiction, and we keep it secret, we keep it in the darkness. It has complete control over us. But once we shine a little bit of light on it.
And we find out, Hey, you know what, we were safe in doing that, that there are people who want to help. And I was able to go back the next week, and let the group know what this was. And the group who has experienced addictions, looked at me and said, we understand. We get nice, that’s why we’re here. And so the experience that I had was one of encouragement and support.
Because it just so happens that I was doing it around the right people. It wasn’t my plan, you know, if you don’t want to talk about a backup plan. Now there was not for this. No, there was no plan for this at all. And what’s interesting is that
it began to change who I was right. So when I look back, and and I look at the loss of my brother in how that changed the trajectory of my life, you know, what would things have been like? had that not happened? And they’re even, you know, every Thanksgiving morning? Still today? That’s the first thing that I think about? Yeah, my brother. Yeah, right. But there There comes a time where, for me, you know, I can’t tell anybody how to grieve or what are the right stages for them. But for me, I was able to arrive at a point where tears of sorrow turned into tears of laughter in remembering our relationship and remembering the stories that we had together of our of our life together, albeit short, he was somebody that I looked up to greatly. And so, you know, seeing how that impacted me and seeing how it impacted some of my siblings as well because they had their own struggles, you know, a sister that dealt with alcoholism, and other sister that poured herself into work completely total workaholic.
And so we dealt with things differently. And it changed the trajectory of all of our lives. But what’s interesting is I never would have I don’t know that I would have been experience that level and feeling of love and forgiveness and grace.
Had I not been through that path of addiction? Right I that I went down of some sort? Yeah. Right. Right.
And so, you know, that began to change me. And then as I, you know, went on in my career and things happened professionally, then then change continued to occur unexpectedly, right in the blink of an eye.
That’s, well, hopefully, it was a good change.
What do you think would have been different if your wife had been upset and flew off the handle and not be supportive in that instance? You know, I think that it would have made me want to keep everything in the dark. I, I probably would not have gone back to the group the next week, I would not have had the courage to do that. If I had been rejected, if I had been judged, if I had been condemned in coming out about this. Why would I want to do that again, to anybody else? Right. I will just keep that my secret.
Because it hurts too much. Yeah. Yeah. It does hurt too much. And you don’t want to experience that kind of pain? More than one? Yes. Yeah. And so I think that I probably would have just kind of withdrawn a little bit.
I think that it would have changed my marital relationship.
You know, when I felt judged and condemned instead of unconditionally loved.
I think that that this actually strengthened our relationship. And I think that had that not been my wife’s response, then it probably would have served to erode the relationship, right?
In your case, it wasn’t anything that was going to hurt her or hurt you. Whereas drugs and alcohol could impact
yourself as well of those that you love. Yeah, I guess in that instance, it could be a little bit different. But just having that support is just beautiful. Yeah. And we think that and this is where I start to get into the mindset of men, right? Is that we think, well, this isn’t hurting anybody.
Well, it is it because when we look at porn, we’re we’re watching people who, in many, many cases, did not choose to be doing what they’re doing. We get into the idea of sex trafficking, you know, and when we’re watching porn, like it or not, we are more than likely supporting sex trafficking, right? When we’re watching porn, it changes our view of
the opposite sex. Right, its objective, its objectifying.
C’MON man what’s your Story? And it changes our view of healthy relationship and healthy sexuality. Right. And so I for the longest time, you know, did this with the idea that it’s not hurting anybody? Right. Right. But yeah, but it was changing me mentally.
To to an unhealthy thought pattern. And when that happens, then it was also changing my relationship with my wife. Right? How I looked at her. And so it does have an effect.
But sometimes we don’t recognize it. Yes. Right. And, and it’s predominantly a problem for men. That’s not to make a you know, a broad statement there. They’re absolutely women that that struggle with pornography as well. But it’s primarily men, because that’s, you know, we’re, we’re visually aroused. And so that, you know, that that is an automatic draw for us. And we don’t think that we’re doing ourselves or anybody else any harm. Right.
But don’t you think in the 70s I mean, porn was a lot different than it is today. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, for one thing, it was a lot less success.
All right, I told you that I, for me to to watch porn in the 70s I had to go to a porn Park. Right now I could I could get magazines, you can do that very problem. But tell me Chris, what is a porn bar? A porn words.
Are is is is a bar that you walk into. And it’s like a movie theater where they’re playing, you know, the hardcore pornography and you sit at a table and you’ve got, you know, a waitress serving you drinks and off offering other services as well. Is it all on the screen then that it’s like, the screen there? Like a sports bar? Yeah, right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s what it would be the equivalent of but it was just, you know, pornography. Is that still now? No, I don’t I don’t think so. I think number one, they became illegal. And number two, they weren’t needed because it was so much easily, much more easily accessed. You know, when the internet came along, you know, who needed it. And so now it’s become a, I think this is a $13 billion industry annually in the United States. So you have the strip, joints still. Now, you still have the strip, you know, the strip bars that people can go to?
And they probably Yeah, they do. They still have the adult video shops that, you know, you can go into you can rent movies, they’ve got private rooms, but they I don’t think that they’re allowed to serve alcohol in there. Right.
You know, we timed it, you know, 14 1516 years old. We pull up going and get a drink at the table, get served. And watch.
You talk about unhealthy coping, that was really unhealthy coping? Do you think you when you look back? Why did you go down that road?
Because she threw everything down deep inside? And? And or was it more of, of that social aspect of have been brought into this group of friends? Well, I think you’re just combination of things. One absolutely is suppressing this not knowing how to deal with it. And then looking for some escape from that, you know, we’re whether we know it or not, when our brains are traumatized.
It can, if we look at PTSD, right, the brain is traumatized. And typically what we will do in normal situations is store memories. And they can be pulled back up when needed. But there are some memories that are stored and archived in our subconscious that we’re not even aware of. Now with PTSD, what happens is the traumatic event runs on the loop. You can’t get rid of it. Right. And that’s where the nightmares, the flashbacks, the hypervigilance, the startle response comes from. And so you know, when we’re when we’re talking about trauma, and pushing it down,
it’s going to find a way back up. Right? And so the way that we want to escape from that, we want to find an escape, right? Yeah. So there’s unhealthy and there’s and there’s healthy ways of doing that. Naturally, the healthy way I know now as a counselor is the processing of trauma, which is part of what I do with people who’ve experienced trauma. The unhealthy way is to just find an escape a diversion or distraction, such as alcohol, which was where I went, right. And I found a group of friends that I enjoyed drinking with and one of those friends had a license and said, hey, let’s go down to this bar. And we were like, be okay. And once we saw what we saw on that barn, you look at the impressionable minds of 14 1516 year olds, and, man, let’s go do that again next weekend. That was awesome. Right? And so that, you know, what seems like an awesome experience turns into an addiction because the brain needs that hit. Right. You need that happiness. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It’s It’s It’s dopamine, right? Yeah. That it’s that excitement that arousal. Whether we get it from
You know, any number of sources, that’s what addiction is, it’s looking for that next hit and then never getting enough of it. Right?
When do you know you have a problem?
You know, sometimes you don’t, sometimes somebody else tells you, you’ve got a problem. Sometimes you get fired from your job. Sometimes your spouse says, either get help, or we’re done. But then there are other times where you do recognize it. You You hit what they refer to in the recovery community as rock bottom, where you just can’t sink any lower. And you recognize that either in the severest forms of addiction, I’m either going to do one of two things, I’m going to die, or I’m going to recover. And most people are going to say, I don’t want to die.
So I need to go find help. Hopefully, it doesn’t get to that point where somebody has to hit that level, on their own, that they might be surrounded by somebody that says, hey, we’ve got you get a get a sponsor, let’s, let’s, let’s work on your calmness.
I mean, you were very lucky. I was just like, it was like the universe came down and said, You know, we’re gonna put you into this group, and you’re not gonna have a choice. Basically, you weren’t really?
And yeah, I don’t know, if you would have done it on your own. You know, like, probably not. And, you know, thank thank goodness that somebody did intervene without even knowing that they were intervening.
Yeah, it was quite amazing. Really. Right. Right. Because so many people have these hidden secrets. And
sometimes they don’t know really, they do. And sometimes I think, in the, the ones that I’ve had guests for, have been given that opportunity, that epiphany moment where they realize that they need to do something, but then they don’t know what to do.
Right. Right. And so it was clear for me that weren’t good choices. You know, and I like this discussion, because one of the things that that we always need to be clear of is that people with addictions are not bad people.
Right? You would think that as somebody who had an addiction to pornography, that I had no moral compass at all. I did. You know, it’s that moral compass that created feelings of guilt and shame within me, but it’s also that moral compass that made me say, I’ve got to speak to my wife about this. Before I speak to anybody else, it’s not that I was a bad person.
I had a bad habit. I can’t imagine the feeling the courage it took you to do that. It scared the hell out of me
to sit down and tell my wife, I have a problem. It’s like and and I’ve been struggling with this for years.
And get the response. I mean, not no hesitation. Just go straight in the eye didn’t blink in said those words of encouragement to me. What did you think you were gonna get?
I don’t know. I thought I guess I thought I was gonna get you know, a, okay, we need to work on this, we need to do something about this, we need to figure out how to fix you. Nothing like that. Nothing like that. Which really reinforced my my value as a human being. Right, because this when you deal with guilt and shame, you deal with self esteem issues, as well. self worth. So in just those few words, is kind of like all of that worry. Washed away.
Right. And, and as I say, I think that that’s where that recovery process.
Began because number one, I knew I was loved. I knew I was encouraged, I knew I was supported.
And then this was followed up several years later, with me losing a job that I had for 17 years. Not because of any problems with the addiction, but because there was a managerial change. There was a new president of company brought in. And so from his own company, he brought a lot of his own people in there was just a revolving door of the existing managers and leaders of that company that left and I was one of those existing. And so it was, again in the blink of an eye.
Session, 17 years, they came in one Friday afternoon and said, You no longer work here. You know, here’s a severance for you. If you would clear your office out. And I was happy holidays. Yeah, yeah. stunned and numb once again. Right. And so drama, another trauma hits you. Yeah. And I think that any time something like this happens, it causes us to have to step back and say, Who am I?
Right? And so this was another one of those steps where, okay, I had I had moved beyond this addiction that had its its talents in me. And now let the devil Yeah, yeah. And now, I was being successful as an executive with this company. And in on one Friday afternoon, found myself out out the door.
C’MON man what’s your Story? And recognizing, over the next week or so, as I was stunned by this, that I had placed my identity
in being with this company, this was the company I’d been with since I got out of college. Yeah. And I always thought my father worked for the same company from you know, for, you know, 35 years from the time he got out of college, my grandfather worked for the same company. And I just figured this is the way we do things. Well, in the 80s, we found out No, it’s not how we do things, values changed, right, corporations were changing, and it was going to be things were based on what are the you know, what are the quarterly returns. And so there was a change that took place there. And I had to take stock of who I was, as a person and recognize that I had put my identity in poured my time, completely into who I was as an employee, who I was as a provider, right. And that was kind of how I was measuring success is income, and how I was viewed by my peers, the level of professional respect I got. And so here we go with another loss, right. So loss can occur in a lot of ways. And in this case, loss of a job that caused me to reflect on who I was, and recognize that my values had gotten totally out of whack.
And in that process, I recognized that I had to reprioritize and that family is first. But doesn’t it kind of make your stomach like go upside down and, and start pulling all that crap from down in your feet that you push down? You know, it just turns everything up again and says hello. Yeah, again. Right. Right. And it’s it does it has you when something like that happens, you reflect on everything, you don’t just reflect on the last year, a couple of years, you reflect on how you came into this circumstance? How did I arrive here?
Did it all start with moving from New Jersey to Texas? What if that hadn’t happened? is an 11 year old? Yeah, I’ve been experiencing any of this what I have had a different, you know, outlook on life, a different worldview?
We don’t know the answer to that now. But what I do know is that we have a choice in how we respond to any of these situations. And, you know, having a plan does help your response. But getting blindsided by things means that you have to be able to step back, think about these things. Talk to Somebody’s about him and determine what’s my direction from here. Right. And so I think that it was that recognition that, hey, things can change in a heartbeat professionally, and I got my values and my priorities way screwed up.
So that when I reached the age of 50, I started thinking ahead now, that seems a little late to start thinking ahead. Yeah, but but, and it is in a lot of senses. But I think that we are, we go through stages of life, where we’re focused on certain things, having a job income, climbing the corporate ladder, raising children, you know, having enough money to put kids in school, and all that kind of stuff. And so I focused on all that stuff. And it was really, when I hit the age of 15, it was by no means a midlife crisis or anything like that. But I started thinking about what does the future hold for me, because when I reach retirement, I don’t want to spend all my time playing golf, fishing, sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, I want to contribute. I want to be an active member of society, I want to be giving back to the community.
And so I, you know, being being a person of faith, I prayed about that for a few years. Literally a few years, I prayed about it for a couple years, I thought I had the answer, that I would go into counseling, and I looked up what it takes to become a licensed professional counselor.
And that was getting a master’s degree, which I didn’t have going through 3000 hour internship, which I hadn’t planned on doing a practicum. Which not.
Especially 50. Right. Right. Right. And so yeah, it’s been, you know, almost 30 years since I’ve been in school. So I shut down the laptop, literally, and just, you know, told God, there’s been a misunderstanding.
I didn’t want this to be hard. I didn’t want I really have to work for this. I can talk to people, I can listen to people. So this, how do I do that? And I went back and you know, prayed about for another year, and it became a occupying thought. Yeah, I mean, during the day, sitting at my desk, and I was in the field of construction, and an executive in the construction industry, reviewing contracts. And I would be sitting there reviewing contracts, and maybe five times a day, I will have this thought come through counseling, counseling. Oh, my gosh, I can’t get this off my mind. And I’m telling you, yeah, I go, yeah, go to bed at night, my head hit the pillow and my mind would just start working on what do I need to do to get an application in for a Master’s, you know, and I wake up in the morning, and the same thing before my feet even hit the floor, I’m thinking about counseling. And so finally, I said, Okay, you know, I give
I checked out some universities, their master’s degree programs, how can I do this while I’m still working, you know, full time in in my industry, and figure that out.
And in in a couple of years later, started into that program, actually, that year, started into the started end of the program. And complete look at you now. Yeah, right, right. So in when I started thinking about that, at age 50, it was not with the idea of early retirement, or quitting the job that I was in or anything like that it was about what am I going to do when I retired age 6567.
But as I went through this master’s program, I became so passionate about what I was learning, and so passionate about the opportunity that laid ahead of me. And the focus for me started coming into working with men, working with men who have had struggles and challenges just like I have and determining where did that come from? Let’s deal with that. Let’s deal with the root cause. Now let’s deal with whatever problems or challenges it might be presenting in your life today. I became so passionate as I went through the studies that as soon as I finished my master’s degree,
I went into counseling full time, into the profession of counseling, I needed counseling as well.
I went into the professional counseling, and now have my my own practice and wrote a book, which, you know, again, that was not part of the plan either. So sometimes it’s just by my willingness to be open to change. And to make a choice, when the right options are presented to me to move forward with those and not to be fearless, or not to be fearful in doing that. And, you know, when I go back to not being fearful, all of that goes back to that moment, when my wife said, You are my knight in shining armor.
I learned there. I didn’t have to be fearful.
But from when you were younger, it brings up that fear. Right? Yeah, yeah. And it’s interesting, because as I got into this idea of providing counseling for men, all of my professors and all the professionals that I spoke with said, that’s a great idea. It’s so badly needed. But you’ll go out of business doing that, because men don’t come to counseling. Yeah, thought, Okay, well, I’m not going to be dissuaded by that. No, I’ve been fortunate enough in my career that I didn’t, I wasn’t doing this for the money. And so I sat at my desk here in my home office
one morning, just thinking about, okay, if men will not come into counseling, how can I reach out to men, and at least give them some tools, some resources, right, for identifying their challenges for normalizing those challenges for letting them know, Hey, we none of us are immune. we all struggle with the same things. We just don’t talk about it, we step it down. That’s why we have heart attacks. That’s why we have the stress. Well, health issues. Yeah, yeah, all these health issues that come into play. So it was really interesting, I started writing down every challenge that I had faced, personally, every challenge that I knew other men had faced where I’d come in contact with, because at that point, I had been a speaker at some men’s retreats and a table leader, you know, talking with groups of men. And what I found at those retreats is that these men, really, without exception, would break down at some point over the weekend, in tears that they had held in for decades, right.
C’MON man what’s your Story? And are recognized while these problems are uncertainties, these struggles are really impacting us. So I just wrote down on the launch sheet of paper, every struggle challenge if I could think of that man had dealt with and essentially, those items became the chapters to this book. Oh, I just started writing about
values, right, because a lot of it was, you know, for me, was my values had gotten way out of whack. And I recognize that with most men, they had lost the compass for their values. And so the focus, yeah.
Right, because when you lose, well, I think, I mean, I’m not a man. But I think love comes into place somewhere in there, you know, and fear, and love will conquer. But fear sure makes the challenge difficult. And yeah, sometimes it’s just all in your head. It has nothing to do with real life.
You’re so fearful from your own past experiences that it’s coming into your real life at the moment.
Yeah, changes perception around things. And you started with a real interesting comment there, Tina, and I’m not a man. Right. The interesting thing is, is that although I wrote this book for men, taking on the challenges faced by men, these are challenges that everybody faces.
The truth is that men and women respond differently. Right? Men are taught by society or culture to handle it, right. Deal with it, deal with it, get up, move forward, quit complain. Don’t cry.
This is not about feelings. These are all the things that are messaged to us, as we’re growing up, right? And so we learn to stuff things down, we learn not to deal with it. That’s why these retreats, men would break down because they had been stuffing things for decades, right? Yeah. Now, this is generally speaking, and I hate to generalize on anything, but generally speaking, men are going to internalize feelings. And women do a much better job of externalizing feelings, women do a better a bit much better job of being in community with each other, with nurturing each other with sharing their burdens with each other. Right. And so their response to these challenges, oftentimes is much different and much more successful than it is for men. And so that’s why I titled The book the way I did. But you talked about our life experiences. You know, what, there are women who have gone through the exact same things that I have, right? loss of a loved one, dealing with an addiction, loss of a job, right, and all of these things that begin to shape, how we are who you are, right loss, loss of a fiancé can be just I’ve seen that with quite a few clients, and it’s amazing what an impact it makes in their lives. I’m not sure if it’s because of the age they are, or I’m not really sure. But
it’s, it’s just whoops, it’s just very surprising.
Yeah, and I think that our age does have a lot to do amongst many other factors. With with how we handle loss.
We, you know, we there are some people who are naturally more resilient than others.
There are some people who have more maturity. And when I say that I don’t mean it in a negative way. I mean, emotionally. Yeah, yeah. He isn’t me his 11 year old, experiencing a loss versus my sister at 19 or 20 years old. Right, experiencing the same loss was handled very differently. Do you think there could have been more love amongst in your family to kind of help with that whole?
I’m not saying your parents weren’t or the household wasn’t loving. But yeah, we Yeah, we had a very loving and a very, very tight family relationship. But when this happened, it was almost like a splintering effect. Yeah, because nobody knows what to do. Nobody knew what to do. And we were all trying to figure out how to handle it individually, including my parents. Right. One of the things that was really interesting is that this was a point in time. And it’s interesting to me because I was thinking about this just this morning. This just hit me this morning. That when this happened, it was my mom who came in and told us the news. My dad was broken. Right? He couldn’t even vocalize it emotionally broken. This, this is probably the only time that I witnessed my dad. sobbing. Right.
And I was thinking this morning, how interesting it is that it was in that moment of trauma that the roles reversed. Yeah, yeah. That the woman was brought over as the strength and I and to this day, I don’t know how she did.
I don’t know how she remained strong if she did through that. And my father was completely emotions on sleeve. Yeah. Just Just and so it’s interesting when I say that we were all trying to handle it in our own way. I think that that was part of my mom’s waves that I’ve got to stay strong. I’ve got to keep moving. I’ve just got to put the next step forward. Yeah. And, and so that’s how she dealt with it. My dad Uh, you know, broke down emotionally with this and, and, and, you know, my dad wound up dying at age 58. And a cow. Yeah. And I, and this happened when, you know, they, they would have been in their 40s. But I firmly believe that the trauma and the effect on him and the stress that that put on him, affect his immunity affect his physiological response to health and disease.
Because it broke them down. And, you know, my mom just, you know, found a way to keep moving forward. And each of us siblings, found our own ways, some successfully and healthy. But others of us not so much went through a few obstacles first. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. But But those obstacles can serve a purpose, right? Again, what are we going to do with them. And so we have a choice to make, and the choices that I’ve made, and the very fortunate circumstances that I have found myself in with the supportive tribe, if you will, both my family and my friends, the people in my community, that I hang out with, have enabled me to move forward and overcome, and now turn around and lend a hand of support, hopefully, to other men, who may be going through some of these same struggles. I’m sure.
I’m sure they all are all have their struggles. We all do. what’s right, a struggle of either a past or something job wise, or love wise, or relationship wise, or family wise, or? Yeah, and if we can just shine a little light on it, and say, Okay, this has been hidden in the dark for a long, long time. let’s recognize you’re in a safe place, a safe place. And I guess realized, what am I scared of? What am I scared of? Because maybe there doesn’t have to be anything to be scared about. But I’m making it all up in your own mind. Yeah. And I think that many times, that’s it, you know, we become paralyzed by our fear. way, when, in fact, if we will just talk about it, what we’ll find out is that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Now, it’s not to say that everything, you know, has a has a happy ending. No. But it is to say that, if it is fear that has us keeping a secret in the darkness. And it’s going to affect other areas of our life. And those who move forward. Yeah, and those other areas in our life are not good, we’re not going to be able to live to the fullness and quality of life that we that we want to. So you know, even if we have to address a problem, an addiction, and even if it results in loss of a relationship, we may individually be better off for having addressed the problem. Right, to be able to move forward. Right. Right. But But I would imagine in most instances, it doesn’t happen that way. It’s probably a very small percentage that it doesn’t really go the way you hope it goes, I think. Right? I think that most people who run their relationship are going to be very supportive of each other.
No, it’s been my that’s been my experience. For the most part, you know, obviously being in counseling, I see
everything on the spectrum, right. So that’s why I always make it a point saying that, you know, a fairytale ending is not a guaranteed here for anybody. It’s not guaranteed, but it’s only because you push forward to do it. Make it your own world. Yeah. That you wish, right? You your mind can go the opposite way too. And your world is your oyster. So yeah, you know, what I would say is that when we address our problems, whether unexpected things happen after we address those problems or not, that most times we move forward with a better quality of life. Right? I know that I’m moving forward with a better quality of life. I also know people who have identified addictions that have created loss for them.
But they are still moving forward with a better quality of life right now. Absolutely. They recognize they own their their own stuff, some of the conditions that they created. But they don’t beat themselves up with it anymore. They don’t deal with the guilt and shame they recognize that hey, yeah, it was a mistake, but I’m not going to let it define me. Know, it’s done and over with it’s right. It’s in the past. Yeah, absolutely. What kind of message do you have for the listeners? You know, I think that follow your passion. Take care of yourself. No, I say self care is not selfish.
Think about what you want for your life. Sit down and really do a deep dive into your values. That’s, that’s why I start the book with the exploration of values. Because if we haven’t done that, then everything else is just on shifting sand. Right? So I think that we we explore values, we identify our passions, and then we live into those, we lean into those and recognize that hey, if that’s gonna require change, okay, don’t be afraid of change.
Can be awesome. Oh, yeah, yeah, I look at the change that I made the shift in my careers. And I, I gave up a six figure salary to be dropping, you know, to, next to nothing. Yeah, essentially start and pretty, pretty fearful in doing that, you know, to choose to do that it, you know, age 50? and recognize that I don’t know, you know, I might have another, you know, 35 years on this rock.
You know, do I run out of money or what, and I just thought, you know, what, I’m just, I’m just gonna have faith in this, you know, I’ve prayed about it, I put the work into it, and wanted to go do it. And a year into it, I was looking back and saying, Man, why didn’t I do this? 30 years ago. It’s kind of like practicing as a golf.
In golf for sports, really? Because it, you look at that huge road ahead and think, can I achieve that? I really want it. But can I achieve that? And you have fear? You have worry. And obstacles might get in the way.
There might be less training time or, or, you know, you’re not hitting the ball like you should be doing or you’re all up in your head. I always I always seem to bring everything back to sports somehow. Yeah. But the main thing is, is that when you look at every one of those athletes, right? We look at every athlete that has been going through the Olympic trials and the Olympic athletes. They believed in themselves, they had somebody else around them, who believed in them as well. So So I would say, hey, what, whatever it is that you’re doing. Believe in yourself, surround yourself with people who believe in you. And you’re not set up boundaries, you know, because the people who are not going to be supportive of you, quite frankly, don’t need to be around you. You don’t need to allow them to influence you. So you know, believe in yourself and surround yourself with the right tribe and go do it. Don’t be Don’t be fearful. That’s for sure. Well, thank you. That’s awesome. I always think of being up at home plate trying to hit the ball. And you could have this parent that could be yelling, come on, hit the ball, and then when they don’t, the parent says, again, what’s wrong with you? Yeah, right, right. Or you could have that parent It’s okay. You know, you’re gonna get it. It’s it’s just a matter of practice or timer.
Or whatever you’re working on. Well, yeah. We’ll get it right. The first time Babe Ruth swung the bat, he didn’t hit in a park. But he got to the point where he could point to where it was going to hit it. That’s, that’s amazing, really. Amazing. You know, and I think life is like that, too. We get when we focused and passionate. The world is your oyster
within ourselves. Oh, that’s awesome. Thank you, Chris. My pleasure. It’s it’s beautiful story. I’m sorry that you’ve gone through all of that. And I only say that because I’m Canadian, and I have to apologize.
That’s okay. I’m glad you got one apology. You can breathe now. Exactly.
Sure, I’m glad to share the story. It was an honor to be with you today. Thanks for having Well, I, I I don’t even know what to say about your courage and bravery and bringing that out to the, to the forefront for people. You know, that’s truly amazing. And, and I just love your story.
Everybody, your book description, stuff is all down below. I gotta get my finger out again.
Your information is down below for the book. Come on, man taking on the challenges faced by men. I have put those links down below for everyone.
And I want to thank you for coming on our show. It was amazing. As usual, we focus on real and raw conversations with our listeners, about their journey from a life changing event in their life. That was a life changing few events in your life, Chris? Yeah. Took a lot of turns. Yes. But you’ve had the support. It’s amazing, though.
I wish your wife was right there behind you. I’d say Good for you. Because
I know she’s a part of this too. And yeah, she is spiritually. Thanks. Thanks to her, you know, of how things all went for for you. And your and your your church community and the universe for whatever that looks like for people.
It guides you if you’re listening, ignites you. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So you must have been wanting something a little bit for the universe, or God to come down and say, I’m going to put that in front of you. And you’re not going to be able to say no, right, right. Or, you know, you have a choice right. Now, I’m going to give you a choice. Yeah, you can you can choose what to do with it. Here’s your test. And when that idea, yeah, when that test was thrown out to me, I had a choice to make. I don’t like tests. I don’t like those lessons that they keep giving us.
C’MON man what’s your Story? They’re not always easy, but we grow from No, no, we always learn something from them. That’s for sure. So I would like to thank everybody, take a moment and subscribe to our channel down below. Click on that link. And I just have to sing that song, this time ring, my bell rang my bell from the 70s down below, right there. So just make sure that you click on the bell because it lets notifies YouTube, to put it in front of more people. And that you don’t miss a show that’s coming up, perhaps that you’d like to see next. We have so many cool, cool guests, each and every week, sometimes a few times a week. And just like Chris, no one is Superman. And so expect the unexpected. Because you never know what could happen tomorrow, that’s for sure. If you were thinking of someone today, in your mind right now, while listening to the show, you could reach out by Facebook by Skype by zoom, by actually picking up a phone for that matter, maybe even a text. tell that person how much you love and care about them today, because you don’t know what tomorrow may bring.
So please, I hope that we’ve inspired you and motivated you to start thinking about your unique plan. And our one year list. our one year anniversary, for our wonderful podcast talking to boo with Tina is coming up to our one year anniversary and we are expecting a huge celebration at the end of the month. For the beginning of all guests. I’m really looking forward to that. We are going to bring on 10 of our wonderful guests and we’re going to have a mystery question. And they’re all going to have time to answer that mystery question. And that’s going to be quite interesting because they don’t know what the question it’s, it’s going to be our own Hollywood Squares moment. So thank you. Thank you for sharing your time with us and watching us. I love each and every one of you You
I always end with Carol Burnett. And I know Chris knows who Carol Burnett is.
It’s our their sorrow era. Absolutely beautiful. Carol Burnett, a wonderful, beautiful person and comedian. I’m so glad we had this time together just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started. And before you know it comes a time, we have to say, so long. So long, my friends so long, stay safe. And remember that our journey is made up of a whole bunch of storms, so why not be better prepared for the unexpected? Lots of love. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for coming on our show today. Thank you. You’re welcome. Much love. Stay safe everybody. Bye for now.
Chris Robinson, M.A., LPC Summit Counseling of North Texas, PLLC www.summitcounseling.info Speaker/Author: C’MON, MAN! Taking on the Challenges Faced by Men www.cmonmanbook.com 972-822-8338
Accident, Preparedness, Small business preparedness
KIDNAPPING HIJACKING GUNPOINT OH MY……
Kidnapping Hijacking Gunpoint Oh my…. is an interview with Janine Wirth on her own experience surviving an attempted rape at gunpoint, Janine gives us the courage to fight! Y’all, this episode is WILL MOVE YOU!!
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”, Edward Murphy
“Its best to live by both Murphy’s Law and the Boy Scout’s motto, “Be Prepared”!
“The Wizard of Oz” kind of prepares us for this story with Janine!
Kidnapping Hijacking Gunpoint Oh my…. Our Interview with Janine Wirth, coming to us from Germany!
Janine is better known as the “The Trauma Whisperer, tells all about her crazy life-changing trauma that will inspire you !! She shares with us, how Trauma can impact our lives and especially as SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS, how we can overcome those obstacles. From her own experience surviving an attempted rape at gunpoint, Janine gives us the courage to fight! Y’all, this episode is WILL MOVE YOU!! Janine is a psychotherapist specializing in Trauma & PTSD, clinical hypnotherapist and No BS Business coach helping female entrepreneurs heal their emotional baggage and achieve the spectacular business success they desire.
Welcome. Janine here. Oh, come on. There we go. Hi. Hi. So this is Janine Werth. And she’s coming to us on a beautiful evening in Germany today. So thank you for coming on our show.
Janine is so excited to hear more about you. And your story. A little bit about Janine is she is known as a trauma whisperer. She’s a licensed psychotherapist, a clinical hypnotherapist and business coach specializing in helping female entrepreneurs heal from painful life experiences, because you’ve had a few yourself, Janine, and I’m so excited to get into your story. unbelievable story. And I want to say it reminds me of Wizard of Oz in so many so many ways. I feel that in your story, you had little red, glittery red shoes on that you clicked your heels and took you away from that scary, scary event that you had happened to you.
So welcome to our show. And where did it all start for you?
Well, thanks for having me. Well, I grew up I was born and raised in South Africa. And there you get your driver’s license when you’re 18 years old. And the day that I got my driver’s license, it was a Monday, I decided because I already had a card that I had bought in advance, you know, in anticipation of getting my license, I decided that I was going to go out with some friends that evening to a restaurant to celebrate the fact that now you know this huge milestone, it’s like this beginning of your freedom and your adult life. But I never made it to the restaurant because in the parking lot, two men approached the car as I bent down to get my head back to want to exit the car. I looked up and there was an armed man at each winder. And I had a friend with me and they basically forced us to climb over the seats so we didn’t exit the car at all. And instead of just taking all our belongings and the car and leaving us there they decided to take us with them. So yeah, that was I was like, Oh, those coffee good.
Were they scary? Like what was there? Were they like very aggressive or Were they very common doing it?
No. One in particular was extremely aggressive. And I mean, they were armed. So we did what they told us to. And they drove us to the next town in this very secluded beach area. And when we got there, there were looking for rope in my car. But why would an 18 year old girl have rope in her car. And I, of course, I didn’t have any. So the aggressive one was getting really agitated. And he grabbed me by the arm and started pulling me up a sand dune. So I was standing at the top of this huge sand dune looking down at his accomplice and my friend. And he then put his gun to my head and said, take off all your clothes. You know, and often people talk about the fight flight or freeze reaction, and you never know what that’s going to be until you get to that point. And my reaction was fight. You know, in that moment, I just felt this really intense rage. And I looked at him and I said, you will have to shoot me first. And I could see like the shock on his face, because that’s not how it’s supposed to go. I’m supposed to cry. Big please do whatever he tells me. And he was like, What now? Okay. It really caught him off guard. Yeah, in that moment, I use that opportunity to start speaking to his accomplice and telling him, you know, you’ve got all our belongings, take the car just got ready. Got everything. You know, back in the day, I had this huge Nakia that was like a brick. You know, you’ve got my phone. I’ve got my watch. You’ve got the money, you just take the car and go. And they were then speaking amongst themselves in their own native language, which I didn’t understand.
But like a tribe, then would it be a tribal language?
Yes, in in South Africa, we have 11 official languages, so and his a compass, which was the common one could basically convince him, okay, we’re out in the middle of nowhere here. We don’t have robe. Let’s just take the stuff and go. Which they did, thankfully, so my friend and I were stuck in the middle. You know, it was like after, I think it was around 9pm at night, Middle of Nowhere in the dark, and we started running, and we came to a road. And luckily, a fisherman came by, in his pickup, and he stopped for us and said, What are you doing out here and we told him what happened. And my friend’s brother in law was in the police. So he used the sky who stopped for us his cell phone and found his brother in law, told them what happened, gave him the description on my car.
And while all this was going on, you know, I was like, well, maybe the guns were fake, or, you know, because you try and calm yourself down and try because it’s a life threatening event. You try and convince yourself Well, it’s not as bad as, but the police did have a shootout with them. The guns were real. I did get my callback. It was a bit damaged. But I did eventually get it back. And the pivotal part, for me, happened about a week later, because I was sitting in my car on a parking lot waiting to pick a friend up. And another friend who didn’t know what had happened to me, tried to prank me by creeping up on my car and hitting his hand down on my driver window. And of course, that just created this huge reaction to me, it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had heart palpitations, I had this rush of fear. And I thought for myself, okay, this is not how I want to live my life. my adult life is basically just starting. And that led me to go and see a therapist, you know, and he obviously diagnosed PTSD, PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder.
And in that first consultation, they asked, you know what happened? They asked you about your childhood, your entire history, and when I had explained everything, my therapist said something to me, that I feel was like such a light bulb moment because he said to me, Jenny, if you had had a perfect childhood, you probably would have cried and begged and pleaded, and I don’t know if you would have survived. And if we would even be having this conversation right now.
And in that mode was not interesting. In that moment, it was like, that was the first little drop of gratitude that I’d ever felt, you know, for the events leading up to that, that I thought, okay, maybe there was a purpose, because all throughout my childhood, I was like, why is my family so different?
Why don’t I have the kind of mother that’s, you know, waiting at home with hot chocolate and freshly baked cookies, you know, because you tend to compare with your friends. And you see, well, this is a completely different scenario. And from there that basically started this passion that I have for trauma, because I was parented by a woman who had experienced trauma, and unfortunately, didn’t receive help, because back in the 70s, you know, so I know what it’s like to be parented by someone who’s experienced. I’ve experienced trauma myself. And I know for a fact that if it affects every single part of your life, how you parent, how you show up in relationships, how successful you’ll be. So for me, because it affects so many different parts of your life, I thought, this is something that I need to get all the information that I can on, and I started reading everything I could find, you know, life went on, I went into a corporate career. And it was only a few years ago, when one of my best friends was on his deathbed.
He had developed cancer. And they said to him, Well, you know, we think two to three years, and he was gone within six months, you know, and it was here in Germany, and I was visiting him at hospice. And he said something really amazing to me, he said, make sure you are doing what you love, because I thought I would have more time. It goes by so quickly. Yeah. And that sort of made me reassess my life and what I was actually doing, because
there’s this test, it sounds very morbid. It’s called the gravestone test, where basically, they say, Go forward to your death. And what would it say on your tombstone? You know, gravestone, and at that point, my would have said, she made a big corporation, a lot of money. And I wasn’t satisfied with that. So luckily, I have a very supportive husband and my children were, you know, that older?
And I said to him, I just have this feeling that I need to change direction. And he said to me, Well, I just want you to be happy. So what do you want to do? And I knew that I wanted to become a therapist, I knew that I wanted to specialize in trauma. And I knew that I wanted to work with women, because there’s one we always put ourselves last, you know, we want to make sure that everyone else is okay. And by the time we get your souls, there’s just no gas left in the tank. Now we always forget about ourselves.
Yeah. So I then started this journey of getting licensed and going, I went to England, I went to Ireland, I went wherever I thought the best mentors were, and decided to have as many tools in my toolbox as possible. Because my core belief is you don’t have to spend years in therapy. I want people to be able to shrink that timeline significantly, and not have to talk about it for 10 years and hope that something happens. I take a more dynamic approach to therapy, where this is also where I use regression hypnosis, because when we just speak, we are engaging the logical part of the mind, the part of the mind that helps you decide what are you going to wear today?
What are you going to eat for lunch? What show Are you going to watch tonight, all of these things. But when we’ll talk about trauma, and unresolved emotional wounding, that’s all part of the subconscious mind and when we talk like this, the subconscious mind does not come into play. So with regression, hypnosis, we can take the logical mind and put it to sleep and go directly to the subconscious mind and explore which emotions have not been processed properly. As you know, you can imagine as a trauma specialist, I hear the worst of the worst stories. They’ve been raped, all kinds of awful things. But I always tell them, you know, broken bones heal, cuts, bruises, with enough time the body heals. But emotional wounding doesn’t heal. By itself, you have to actively engage, to process the act. So when we go straight to the source, and we go and find out what emotions need to be process, we can take 10 years and turn it into a couple of months.
A couple things, I want to backtrack a little bit from what you’re saying. So in that moment, when, because of what you were saying, with the trauma, you didn’t have any physical inflections on you or your friend right now, but a lot of emotional trauma. And so when you think of it in your mind, and I know it’s hard to figure out, because, but I know with trauma, that you have visions of the episode, in your mind, you have visions of hearing his voice, your visions of smelling? Like, was there any smells that you can remember? Was there? Was it really hot? outside? And it just added to it? And what made you feel inclined to say, Well, no, I’m not going to take my clothes off. And you can just take my car kind of thing. You know, what do you think made? The his friend the one that wasn’t so vocal? change their mind? What What do you think happened there? And what did your friend do at the same time? Were they the opposite of you not being strong and just crying or? No.
So my friend was standing at the bottom of this June where they had parked the car.
And he, he was in a very tough position, because I’m up there with someone holding a gun to my head. He’s done here with someone having a gun pointed. So what can you really do in that situation? This is not a situation that calls for bravado because we weren’t armed, know, what were we going to do if he did anything that you’d probably get shot on the spot. So I wasn’t expecting him to do anything. You know, the things that you talk about the small the cell phones, and that this is what we refer to as PTSD triggers.
And this is the part that we need to help our clients process because when you’re small, that familiar smell, or you hear a sound that reminds you of the event, the part of the brain that processes trauma, content time, it just goes up. I know this, I recognize this being your amygdala, the part of you, which is like your alarm system freaks out, right? So for me when I got my car back, and they had some of their belongings, like a luncheon, and you know, in the radio, they had a cassette with their music. That was quite an interesting experience. Because that proved to me, this wasn’t just a bad dream, this really happened. And I was in my car with my sister, and she was sitting in the backseat, and she’s like, I just can’t try and imagine you like sitting here in the backseat, like what was going through your mind. But in that moment, it’s also surreal. You’re just like, where are they taking us? What are they going to do? You know, all of that goes through your mind. So it’s difficult to explain it to other people, because part of you is experiencing that part of you is trying to dis associate and try and be somewhere else mentally, because it’s expecting the worst case scenario, you know.
So that is the part that we need to process and figure out which are the base emotions Is it fear is it anger is a chain, there’s so many emotions that come into play, and say, okay, that’s what we need to help apply and process because that’s the part that the mind is holding on to the fact that he grabbed me on my arm. I didn’t care about that. The fact that I thought I was gonna die and had the thought It’s gonna take them forever to find my body here. That’s the part that needs to be worked on.
Well, the part that you don’t know what they’re going to do next, and what was taking off all your clothes going to be next, you know? That sounds like they really didn’t have a plan.
Like a lesson to write me, maybe kill me and leave me there in the middle of nowhere. That is the plan. Otherwise, why would they take us there? Why would he dragged me up the dune? Why would he put his gun to his head and tell me take my clothes off? They did have a man. But my reaction, I believe, was the catalyst in changing that because it went off script, it didn’t go as they imagined it would go, or maybe had gone in the past volume. I don’t know if I had been the first victim or if they had tried that, how many times wrong.
So that’s why I say that reaction for me was such a pivotal point, because that was sort of the thing that made them like, oh, what now kind of thing. And that was the point that my therapist was trying to highlight to me by saying that reaction was from resilience from your past experiences, where you decided, I’m going to stand up, if nobody has my back, I’m going to stand up for myself.
That’s so cool. Because they must have been shocked and then looking at each other. So it was really good that the other person the other guy would that was down below could change his mind also, right?
Yeah. Because at that point, they realized, okay, and like, What now? Are you going to shoot her? Like, how far are you willing to go with this? how, you know, are you laughing? I brought them to the point where they had to take some sort of action. And luckily for me at that point, I mean, I was single, I didn’t have any children. I could say that, because there was nobody that was, you know, relying on me.
What do you think would happen? Now when you have somebody that you have many people that rely on you? Well, life?
Hopefully it wouldn’t. But if it did, if it were ever a point where my children were at home, I would do something. Because I mean, I would prepare, be prepared to take a bullet for my children. So I have thought about that often. And I’m a fighter by nature. You know, I, my entire life, I’ve had to fend for myself. So I think that is my default setting. I’ve never been one to even in the height of emergency. I’m the one that is calm, and follows through and I’ll have a little breakdown later on, you know, has been sorted out. And that’s when it’s calmer. Oh, that’s awesome. No, I wanted to bring it back to that, because it brought me to what you’ve been working with clients now, too. Because it is it’s just like a car accident. I mean, you have down deep inside, and you just keep on putting more and more dirt on it until all of those feelings and thoughts and processes finally fall into your feet. But they’re still there. They don’t go away.
You know, every experience that you have in your life, create some memory and some of these memories of good, which is great. Some of them are not. And those that have emotional attachments to them are like baggage. And if you have this huge pile of baggage, nobody’s going to clear it away. You have to go in there and decide what are the good memories that I want to hold on to?
And what are the things that I need to let go off. Because you couldn’t imagine it’s like a hamster on a wheel. And your mind is trying to process stuff. And that little hamster is just running, running, running, running. And that actually takes a lot of your mental energy. Because half of your mind is trying to figure this all out. And once you actually start active lead, taking the steps to work through that. That little hamster can finally stop running and it can take a break. And immediately you have so much of your mental energy back. A lot of my clients say it’s amazing. I feel like I’m 20 again, I wake up before my alarm I feel like I’m so full of life is because that mental energy that drain isn’t happening anymore.
Yeah, the mental drain is, I think, worse than the physical drain.
That’s because when you are in this tug of war with your own mind every single day, at some point, it’s got to give, it’s like you can’t do that forever and have a really good quality life.
Absolutely. So what, what can you do for someone like yourself, say you had a client with the same situation, you have to delve deep into those feelings. And, and I think that’s where a lot of people don’t have the strength to dig up that stuff that hurt them so much.
Well, my goal is to take the emotional charge away, so that these painful life experiences can become neutral, like the sky is blue, the grass is green, I survived a hijacking, kidnapping and attempted, there’s no emotional charge to it anymore. Because I’ve processed it, it doesn’t have any power over me. So for me, it’s important to help my clients identify the emotions that need to be worked through. And a lot of people are then scared of read, you know, reliving these events. But that’s not what we do. We want to just go like to detectives and get that information.
Kidnapping Hijacking Gunpoint Oh my…. It’s not about reliving. If I have a client, for instance, that gets attacked by vicious dog, and I take them back to that event in hypnosis. They don’t feel that pain again. We’re just looking at it as if it’s a movie and saying, Okay, there you felt this. And that is what you felt. And this is why you feel these things. And if they have active PTSD symptoms, to help them to identify their triggers, and to have tools on hand when something like that happens. But that’s why I love regression, hypnosis so much, because instead of talking about it, and rummaging around in there and reliving it, we’re going straight to the record saying, Listen, listen, this needs to be processed, and we get working on it. We’re not going to sit and discuss it for 10 years, because I think it’s pointless.
Yeah. And I find Well, in the past with counseling, it seems like that’s what you keep on doing is you just keep on bringing it up and bringing it up. And it doesn’t seem to you don’t want it to get a life again, you just you want to experience it to be able to sweep it away.
Yeah, well, the thing is, you know, back in the day, I don’t even when I went for therapy, it was a good few years ago, back then that was all we had. In the meantime, so many different modalities have come into play, like neuro linguistic programming, hypnosis, you know, EFT, tapping, there’s so many things that we can now implement to help clients do that a lot quicker. And in an act of manner. Talking about it is very passive to me, because you’re actually just hashing it over and over again, you’re not doing anything to create a result. You know, talking about things until the cows come home doesn’t change anything. No, no, no, in this industry, you have to feel to heal and be able to do that, you first have to acknowledge that you have this emotional wounding because you can’t change which you’re not willing to acknowledge, and then decide, okay, how is the best way for me to get through this in a safe, effective manner, as quickly as possible. And usually, that is when you would go and seek someone to guide you on a journey.
And I think it brings me to the point of sitting with a family or friend that’s dying. And why I say that, because if you’re not, and I talked about this at many of the podcast, but if you’re not present in the moment, to experience, this journey, and and be there for that other person, whether they’re dying or whether they’re trying to recover from a tragedy, or a disability or an injury or something like that. I find that if you’re not present, which we talk about because the things that take us away from being pretty Present are our fears and all of our things that we’re stressed about at the moment. You know, I’ve had so many clients that have been calling me at that moment and saying, you know, my mom is passing away. And I don’t know where her bank accounts are. And I don’t know where her investments are. And I don’t know what she’s done with her will. And I don’t know where this is, and I don’t know where that is. And I’ll say it’s too late. You can’t worry about that right now. And you’re going to have so much regret. And it’s almost created a trauma to yourself for later. Because if you can’t be present with the person and really feel like you’ve done everything that you could, you’ve said everything you wanted to say, You’ve heard everything you’ve wanted to hear, before they are able to go, then you’re going to have trauma inflicted on yourself because you weren’t prepared. If that makes any sense, does that thing that people will certainly have regret. Because once that moment is passed, you can’t rewind back and go back. So I think that, in any experience, that moment of being prevalent is super important. And you know, time is such a precious precious resource, you can make more money. But time, that is our most valuable resource, in my opinion, and to give someone your full attention and be fully present. I think that’s one of the greatest gifts available that you can give someone.
Absolutely. I I agree with you time is up there with for me as well. But I think love is, is the number one thing for me. Because you can’t, you can’t change that. And love and time kind of go hand in hand.
Now will love last forever time unfortunately does not. It’s very
limited.
Kidnapping Hijacking Gunpoint Oh my…. Yes. Yes, it is. So what could you do you think there was any other lightbulb moment for you epiphany or moment that? You don’t you’ve been in this business a while now? Do you think it’s your you’ve changed from
I do think that I have changed and for the better. Because, you know, when we experience trauma, and I want to clarify trauma for a second. A lot of people you know, when we talk about trauma, they think horrific car accidents, miscarriages, death. Yeah. And that is that’s what we in therapy call big t traumas. But a lot of people don’t realize that having a parent that’s emotionally unavailable. Or growing up in a home where you don’t feel safe. Those things are also traumatic experiences and a lot of people, you know, I’ll have woman come to me and say, Well, I was bullied for most all my life. But at least I wasn’t raped, you know, sort of quantifying the experiences and it’s like, being bullied. For me several years, that’s a traumatic experience, but because people think it’s normal, or it happens to so many people, they don’t realize that that counts as trauma. Right?
So trauma is actually any experience where the mind feels threatened, and where there is an absence of your own power, an absence of security or safety, and the absence of love. So when you experience these things, especially as a young child, you know, if you have parents who have, you know, alcohol or drug abuse problems, or that are violent, or on the other side, just completely neglect you, or are narcissistic. A child doesn’t say what’s wrong with my parent, why are they alive? The child says, What’s wrong with me? Why does my parent treat me like this? Why don’t they love me unconditionally? What’s the world teaches us that if anyone’s going to love you unconditionally, it should be your parents. But when you grow up in a home where that is not available to you, that shows up later in life. It shows up in the kind of relationships that you’re willing to accept, and how you’re going to be treated in those relationships shows up in your boundary. Are you going to be appeased a people pleaser because you’ve been trained your entire life, it’s easier just to go along with whatever they want.
You know, it’s easier to give that drunk violin parent what they want then to try and defend yourself. So this conditions are behavior, and these show up later in life. So, I work with a lot of female entrepreneurs, they’ll come to me and say, you know, I know what I’m supposed to be doing in my business, I’ve spent 1000s of dollars, I’ve listened to all the courses, all the online gurus, but when it comes to taking action, I can’t do it, I self sabotage. And I can then go and see where that started in their life, because your mind wants to keep you safe. And if it feels that being visible as an example, which is critical, especially in an online business, if it feels that that is not safe for you, it’s gonna go out of its way to make sure that you’re not visible, you will, all of a sudden start having headaches, or lose your voice, or your technology will fail, something will happen where you cannot follow through on your plan, even though you had every intention to and then women will come to me and say, why is this happening to me? Or they have their whole life going so well, they managing everything so well.
But then they’re binge eating, eating a whole pint of ice cream 10 o’clock at night when nobody can see that,
then that sounds like fun.
To me, you know, and that is then my job to go and find out. Why is that happening to you? Why are you falling into these patterns of behavior that are actually taking you away from your goals instead of towards your goals? Because when you are fighting against yourself every single day, at some point, you get tired, and you’re like, Okay, well, obviously, I was never meant to be successful. Obviously, I this is just not for me, I’m not good enough. And that’s not true. you’re responding to a certain set of beliefs and conditioned behavior. And once you know what that pattern is, you can stop that cycle and change all of that. But you have to first go back and see where did this actually stop? Why am I behaving like this?
Well, I guess it’s recognition of what you’re actually doing. Because I think the pattern just it’s just making it somehow, especially for women. It makes you feel better. So you do it again, and it makes you feel better. Not sure why it makes you feel better. Why does that pint of ice cream tastes really good and make you feel better? I’m not sure.
Yeah, it’s so soothing. You know, I, for instance, had a client who was, you know, having struggles with emotional eating, specifically binge eating. And she said to me, I, I’ve tried to everything, this, I just cannot figure this out. I said, Okay, let’s go and have a look. And we did regression hypnosis. And in her scenario, she did have an alcoholic father, who when he was, you know, came home drunk, he would go into a rage, and he would actually physically assault my mother. And she was about four or five years old, and he came home drunk. Her mother was pregnant, he hit the mother. She tried to go in between them to protect her mother. And he said to her in that state, you’re so worthless. I wish she had never been born. Why are you even here?
So for her when the person who is supposed to protect you and love you, turns on you and becomes the scariest person in your life. As you can imagine that from her perspective as a four or five year old. From there, she started, you know, thinking that this is the truth. But what would happen after these huge fights is her mother would try and comfort her and give her sweets, put her in her lap strike her hair, give her a chocolate or ice cream say it’s all okay. It’s all going to be better. So for her when she feels overwhelmed, or her boss makes her feel like she’s not good enough or she has a fight with her husband. She wants to go back to that moment of comfort and recreate it or relive it. She can’t climb into her mother’s lap, but she can definitely eat a chocolate or grab an ice cream.
But we don’t even think about it.
That’s what’s so crazy. Yeah, totally unknown to us that, it’s like that we just do it.
Yeah. Yeah, when we could identify that pattern, I could explain it. You’re, she’s like, Oh, my daughter. And now she knows how to deal with a bad day at the office or an argument with her husband, she knows the solution does not lie at the bottom of an ice cream container. Because she knows that a worth is not connected to ice cream, you know, but you have to first be able to identify that and see how it’s playing out. Because once you do, it’s like, oh, my goodness, it’s like, when you’ve watched the end of the movie, you know how it’s going to get. And then you know, okay, I feel this, usually I would be running towards this, but I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to find a friend, I’m going to go for a walk, I’m going to journal I’m going to meditate. It’s replacing those negative autopilot behaviors with positive, helpful empowering behaviors. But you first have to know what’s going on.
I find him putting on that kitchen cupboard where you would go to or on the fridge, some little messages on little recipe cards. Something that means something to you. And that’s what I stick on the fridge or the cupboard or on the mayor or when you’re getting dressed or so that it can keep on triggering the positivity circle, instead of going to the fridge and getting ice cream and thinking that it will make you feel better.
No, no, affirmations are definitely great. The work that I do is more about reprogramming neural pathways so that you don’t have that autopilot. Because when someone is in that moment, and they just want relief so badly. At that point, a lot of times the affirmation, they won’t stop to read the card too late for them. So with that process of using hypnosis, you can actually reprogram their thinking so that they don’t get to the point where they’re actually even walking to the cupboard. But, you know, affirmations I think are definitely a good starting point for people. If they maybe can’t afford to go and work with a therapist at the moment.
Just to start the process of of the loop. Stop on that loop, somehow. Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. Did you have any final notes, messages for our listeners? Sure.
So I would like to give your community if they are interested, every heal your inner child hypnosis, which I believe is a good starting point for people who are interested in going on the healing journey. And this will show show you that it doesn’t have to be scary or intimidating. That Whatever happened to you and your past is not your fault. But healing is your responsibility. Especially if you are a parent or want to be a parent, I always tell my clients, your goal should be to give your children a childhood they don’t need to heal from and the best way to do that is to heal yourself. So that you are parenting in the moment and not from these old wounds and being triggered on a daily basis and reacting to that. It’s the reaction part.
Yeah. Because, yeah, I guess it’s the realization first of what you’re doing. And then maybe the reaction of realizing that you are triggered by certain things, and looking at what triggered you, and so that you can start that healing process.
Now, that awareness. Because as I said before, you cannot change what you’re not willing to acknowledge. And to acknowledge something you have to first become aware that this is a problem.
That’s the hardest part. That’s that first step. I always talk about it too. If you’re really suffering any listeners out there that are really really suffering out there that cannot find the light or have had something happen to them. I always go back to my car accident when when everything’s falling apart, and I go in this black room, you feel like you’re in a black, dark room, and you’re looking for a little speck of light that can, that you can feel like you’re alive again. And when I found that door handle and that you could turn that door handle and see a little sliver of light around the door, and then you can actually work on opening it and seeing the beautiful, whatever that looks like for you outside of that door that you can walk through. It’s just, it’s just amazing. But it’s such a struggle to get to that point. I find in my past anyways.
Well, I think that some people, especially people who know that they’ve experienced trauma, particularly in their childhood, they, a lot of them actively seek solutions, because they know that this could and probably is causing some sort of problem or self sabotaging behavior. It’s people who don’t realize that the years of bullying or having that parent that’s not available to you that that is actually a traumatic experience, because the trauma isn’t as obvious to them in the beginning.
Yeah, so it’s hidden little things that holiness is hidden. Yeah, it’s all those little hidden things that you don’t even know that affect you.
I am yet to meet a person who has not experienced trauma in some way shape, or form, whether they know it’s trauma or not, every single person, even if they have parents who were amazing and tried their best, it will then be in the form of a teacher that tells them you’re never going to monitor anything, or friends that bully them or someone doing something to them at some point. So I want people to realize that it’s nothing to be ashamed of every single person has experienced foma in some, some way. You know, some of us are just more vocal about it, because we want to make it normal for people to speak about it.
Well, and understand it, speak about it and really understand it because I think we don’t really understand it in the moment. I just wanted to Well, thank you, thank you for that message. That’s beautiful. And I’ll I will make sure that the link is down below in the description box for our listeners, both on our YouTube channel and our podcast. Thank you Janine, did you like to say anything to our German listeners?
You mean in German? Sure. If. So I would like to just make or not make our listeners, but have our listeners really understand what Janine is saying, because when Janine was on the top of that mountain of that sand dune, and in the moment of, of that trauma, it’s really a tragedy. It’s in the moment of a tragedy, because you could be in a wildfire. You could be in a car accident and just hit. Is that kind of that same kind of moment?
Kidnapping Hijacking Gunpoint Oh my…. Can you tell our listeners that you cannot think straight? Like, I don’t know what happens to your head in the moment. But it’s like when, when you’re in that accident, and people say, Oh, I can worry about all of my documents. I can worry about all of that stuff later. No, you can’t. Because when something happens, I don’t know what happens to your head. But it just disappears. And you go on that fear flight kind of moment. But you’re not logically thinking. You’re not like, I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know where your strength comes from. And I don’t know like you could have cried he could have cried your eyes out. You could have screamed. You could have done many things. And, and even if you were to do it all over again, Janine, I don’t think you would even maybe do the same thing. We don’t know what we’re going to do in that moment. No one can tell us.
But in that moment, it just overcomes your whole body and your mind. Doesn’t even think straight. And it’s the same thing when someone is dying. You cannot think straight and
in the moment, your only thought is here is this most of the time life threatening situation? How do I survive? It’s like this. They talk about the lizard brain that kicks in and its only job is to keep you alive in that moment. So,
right. So well, thank you. That was beautiful amount of beautiful story. I’m sorry for your experience. But look at where it’s brought you today. And I’m sure you’re happy, Happily helping healing many, many people. And I want to thank you for all that you do for helping people.
Thank you. And thank you for providing this platform where people like me can hopefully inspire other people and create awareness and give them the courage to take that first step.
Absolutely. It’s, it’s a tough step people. This is tough stuff. But it feels so good when you actually do it.
So I hope we’ve inspired each and every one of you. So please take a moment and subscribe to our channel. Maybe add a little bit of testimonial and some good reviews would be really super duper, and click on that bell. And our last guest Paul always makes me sing my song, ring my bell. Ring my bell down there, down below.
So you get notified of any upcoming podcasts or YouTube channel videos that we have coming on our channel. No one is Superman. So expect the unexpected. Stay tuned for our next podcast and our live stream on our YouTube channel. And for more great conversations just like this one with wonderful Janine Werth.
Kidnapping Hijacking Gunpoint Oh my…. You can find all of her information information down below in the description box. I hope that we’ve inspired you and motivated each and every one of our listeners to start thinking about your unique plan to get started on it today. Thank you for sharing your time with us and I love each and every one of you. I always end our show with Carol Burnett because she was just a wonderful, wonderful comedian. Do you know who Carol Burnett is Janine? Yep. Do you love her too? Yeah, I used to watch her when I was little kid. And she always had that thing with her ear.
Yes, absolutely. I’m so glad we had this time together just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started. And before you know it comes the time we have to say so long. So long. My wonderful listeners so long till the next podcast. Thank you stay safe. Stay cool over the summer. And thank you for listening. Bye Stay Safe, Be Kind.
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Accident, Disability Planning, ESTATE PLANNING, Family Planning, Preparedness, Sickness
HIT BY A SEMI-TRUCK & HERE TO TELL THE STORY
Hit by a Semi-Truck and here to tell the story is about the life changing event in “a Blink of an Eye!”
“In the blink of an eye, something happens by chance – when you least expect it – sets you on a course that you never planned, into a future you never imagined.” Nicholas Sparks
So Tracy is here to talk tell us her story. She is a corrective exercise specialist with her own company called the work pain free program, giving women the tools to eliminate pain when no other methods have worked. Well. She has two little ones, a baby and a three year old. So she’s a very, very busy mom, with her job and her job at home. It never stops for us moms. And I’m so thankful and blessed to have you come on our show today. Tracy, thank you so very much.
Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here. And yes, I am in my car right now. Because my my baby is currently in my office sleeping. It all works. We do we we are the best at changing our plans. That’s true. Yeah.
So Tracy, you have quite the story that all of us are so excited to hear about. What did it What happened? And and how did that really change your life?
And and what did you see from that point on?
Yeah, so I was driving one day in 2014. And I was driving across state, I was happy. I was listening to music. I was thinking everything was easy, breezy. And I was passing a semi truck on the freeway. And he didn’t see me. And it was one of those really big semi trucks. It’s like the three trucks that my truck Oh, and he didn’t see me and he started coming into my lane. And I just remember yelling like, Hello, no, no, don’t come into my lane. And he just, you know, basically smashed my vehicle. And when we ran a road, we went to the side of the road, I just remember him running out of his semi truck and just saying you’re alive, you’re alive. And that’s, you know, one of the most impactful moments of my life is, yeah, I was alive. And I recovered pretty quickly, about six months, it took me to recover from the injury from that accident. But then I would say a year and a half later, two weeks into my marriage with my husband, my wonderful husband, the injury relaxed and I was disabled for about a year.
Do they have reasons for that? Tracy?
How does that happen?
Where you have you work on yourself, and then it doesn’t progress continually?
Yeah, so what’s happening there is that your nervous system has a pathway that it goes down. It’s like a hiking path, right. So the more that your nervous system goes down this pathway in its relationship with your muscles, it digs deeper and deeper and deeper into that pathway. So when you are healing yourself, when you’re recovering from an injury, you’re teaching your nervous system, a new pathway with your muscles, a new pathway that doesn’t involve inflammation that doesn’t involve, you know, recurring chronic pain, but it always remembers the old pathway. So in that old pathway is pretty deep, right?
Because it’s gone down that road. So when relapses happen, basically your nervous system gets reminded of that old pathway through maybe something that you’re lifting, or you’re not listening to your body or not listening to warning signs, I call them the check engine lights. And then your nervous system goes, Oh, we’re going to the old pathway now. And it reverts back to that. And when that happens, you never know how bad the injury can be. So usually it happens because we push past the check engine lights or warning signs that our body is saying Hello, I’m having pain, I’m having tension, and then that relapse or that big injury can happen at any point when we’re in that kind of space. And that’s what happened to me. I wasn’t listening to my body at the time.
Yes. And and I think we all do that at some point even with or without an injury. But when so the truck driver was you know, running to your car and your car was did it turn and flip or did you I’m so glad that didn’t I’m so lucky it didn’t we were right next to an area where it could have flipped over. But it did not. So I just I was able to pull to the side and basically get out of my car. And at the moment, and I know you’ve been through an accident to see my relate to this at the moment, I didn’t feel my injury, because that’s what happens when we go through trauma. And when we’re in shock. So it took about two days for me to actually feel what had happened.
So they even offered me, you know, some imaging or to go to the hospital. And at the time, I said, I’m fine. I was just really shaken up. And then about two days later, it’s set in, I was like, oh, okay, my back is injured.
And this is how I’m not supposed to feel. This is not supposed to feel this way. Did you have any head injuries as well, Tracy?
You know, I’ve had had head injuries in my life, but not from this. So that’s my answer. Injured quite a bit in my life, but not a head injury from this accident now.
So you were very, very lucky. You were, you’re being watched over for this particular because it could have been any, anything. Yeah, it I very well could have died. And I remember that day, when that happened. Just being in that shock, that state of shock. And walking around, I think I drank way too much wine. When I finally I think the tow truck drove me to where I was going, you know, all the way to Colorado to visit my friends. I arrived, I knocked on the door. And she opened the door and I was just a mess. And I was just like I was just hit by a semi truck. You know, I was just so shocked. And then proceeded to drink too much wine and went to Olive Garden. You know all of this with a bad injury that I had no idea that I had. It’s so strange when a gentleman can do to us. Yes. Yeah. And but the thing that was playing around in my head just over and over again, is I have to do something with my life. Because I’m here, I have to do something important because I survived something that most people wouldn’t survive.
Absolutely. So that was a real wake up call for you.
When do you think the light bulb went on? Like immediately?
Or was just after you realized what you had to happen?
Yeah, it happened in layers, because I that was a trauma response for me was that, that just like, survivors response of, you know, I’ve survived this, I need to do something, I need to do something. And then in layers, like an onion, I think it slowly just became almost like that movie Inception where they I don’t know if you’ve seen that before, but they have to get the idea like way down deep. For it to really become something. I think that is what happened for me is that it went deeper and deeper and deeper. And now it’s pretty much the core of who I am.
That’s awesome. And it’s like nobody told you that it just came from within. Because it made you realize it’s unfortunate that it takes us sometimes these tragic moments to make us realize how precious life is. So where did it take you from that point to to realize that, did you think, Okay, I’m going to work in this area to help people
that really so once the injury relapsed, so I was in fitness, I’ve been in fitness ever since I was old enough to be in fitness, I’ve always, I’ve always loved it. And I was always a functional fitness expert, right? We’re we’re making the body feel good and feel pain. But once I was disabled, I tried going everywhere. I went to the physical therapists office, I mean, I was barely able to walk in. And I went to the chiropractor, which sometimes injured me worse. I you know, not to say anything against these types of healing, because they’re very effective.
But it did not work for me specifically. And it was a very frustrating and disheartening time, where, you know, I even remember, like we could not I could not stand up for any length of time. At a certain point, I could not even sit up for a certain length of time. And I just remember being so disheartened that nobody seemed to know how to heal my body. And I found out that I actually have something called hypermobility, which means that the body is less stable than the, you know, normal person. So that was one of the reasons why these people weren’t able to fix what was going on. So that’s when I became a CES and I determined I was determined to heal my own body because nobody else seems to know how. So I delved in and became an expert myself, and that’s when I was able to heal what was going on probably within six months. And that’s not to say that relapses don’t exist and that flare ups don’t exist because they do which is you know, a Good image for most people healing from pain that that does happen. But, you know, I’ve had two babies since then, you know, I’m living my life. It’s, it’s much, much different than it was.
That’s awesome to think. But also just to work with someone like yourself to know that if you can get better. And then, because I was wondering myself, you know, I felt really good last year, and then this year, I feel like I can’t do as much as I could last year.
So it’s strange, how sick How do I get myself back to that? Better feeling again? Yeah, yeah, there’s, I mean, there’s so much that needs to be addressed. ergonomics, how we’re sitting, how we’re standing, our repetitive motions, how we’re sleeping, and then all of the muscular imbalances throughout the body that are pulling your joints and vertebrae out of place, causing pain. So it really is a whole pain pie, where if you’re only getting one piece, you don’t correct the problem. I mean, that’s right nutrition nutrition matters, all of these things matter with how inflammation works in the body. So that’s like, my goal in life as a professional is to fill in those gaps of the pain relief industry and why people aren’t healing. That’s my mission in life. So that’s usually the people who come to me are the people who are like, Okay, what I’m doing hasn’t worked, I need something that actually works. And they might even be discouraged thinking, there is nothing that works. And I’m here to wave my flag and say, That’s not true. You just need to do the right things for your body, in a tailored approach to make it work.
For you, um, I realized that I had a concussion or brain injury from the accent accident as well. But in some cases, you know, what they teach you when you go to the clinics is, it’s just, it’s not permanent, it will gradually get better, don’t worry. But they don’t help you like you do, what you’re saying is, you could feel like it’s getting a little bit better, but it might fall backwards a little bit. And then you might go forward a bit and then fall backwards a little bit. They don’t talk about all of that. It’s a travesty. It’s a travesty. It’s so sad to me, that people are not getting educated. Because the way that you heal is to actually know your body and what’s happening in it, you don’t heal.
If a person just shows you how to do a certain movement. If you don’t know how your body is supposed to be functioning with it, or how it’s supposed to be feeling, you’re going to do it wrong nine times out of 10, you’re not going to experience that healing, you don’t heal if you don’t understand the way that inflammation works, and how to deal with it long term. So that’s another thing I’m really passionate about. We need to be educating people to really know their own bodies and what’s happening and how to deal with it. Because you’re right. If people don’t understand the inflammation cycle, if a flare up comes up, it’s very disheartening, scary, and you’re not going to know how to recover from a flare. Because no, you don’t even think that it would happen. You don’t know you don’t understand what what that looks like.
So you’re so right, that I think that it’s such a overpacked system, the pain relief industry is just so over packed and turns into this, you know, cycle of get people in the door and get them out of the door. And it’s really lacking, unfortunately, in in what it takes to have long term lifelong feeling.
Yeah, I can totally see that. Because I know with my issues, it flares up and then it brings you back down again. Because you you’re starting to recognize the good or the good or feeling.
Feel like a little kid the good or feel better.
It’s true, it isn’t good or feeling. And, and the bad, better feeling. And, and they and they really, and it’s it’s true, because it’s honestly, they push you keep saying you know, you’re improving, and you’re getting better and and you start feeling better, and then you drop down again, and I’m not really sure they don’t talk about that stuff. And they don’t assist you. With Oh, it’s you know, like, it should be a gradual? Yes. So is this gonna continue forever?
Right? That’s, I mean, are you asking me if it’s going to my members? That’s what you have, in your own mind. Like, is this going to continue? Right? Yeah.
And we really need to be setting people up with a long term plan for this. That’s one of the goals about my program is to set people up so they get to keep the program after they’re done. With you know, we do six months. be doing intensive work so that people have all of that education, they have all of that understanding they, they know how to move forward confidently, they know the risks, when they move forward, they know what’s probably going to happen with flare ups. And when that happens, they can pull back out their program, and they can use that and they can reach out for support, knowing what tools they need, after they’ve reached that point of maintenance mode and of recovery, because you’re so right, we are just constantly, you know, putting getting people into the office, giving them the immediate tools that they need, telling them, they’ll be fine and then saying goodbye.
And that’s really, that’s it. And so people are so confused, is this going to last forever? What’s happening? Why am I not healing and people just get convinced that they can’t heal, right? Usually the mindset that that brings forth and that kind of inner narrative. And if you don’t believe you can heal, then you’re probably not going to do the things required to take care of yourself. You don’t even know what those things are. It’s just it’s such an unfortunate way that things happen. Yeah. So sort of dealt with that. It’s a it’s Yeah, it’s very cyclical, for sure.
Well, I’m sure there’s lots of people out there have different strains of accidents, that’s for sure. And we just had three generations of a culture in Ontario, Canada, just get hit by us truck, a pickup truck. I think it was on Sunday. I think it happened on Sunday. They were all going for a walk together a family. And this pickup truck went and hit them. Yeah, I didn’t know if you heard that on the news. hadn’t heard about that. So yeah, that’s um, after being hit, you cannot feel bad for anybody that gets hit. That’s just not, it’s not fun. Not fun if you’re walking, and it’s not fun if you’re in a car. And that’s not fun if you’re on a motorcycle. So yes. So how did that change your life with your husband? Because you were fairly newly married at that point? Or not yet, where you weren’t married? At that moment?
We had your accident? The accident, I didn’t even know my husband. But the relapse, which really, that for me is that traumatic moment, right? Where you’re in bed for a year. That’s like the big that almost feels like the accident to me. When the relapse happened. That’s I was two weeks into my marriage when that occurred. So, you know, what do you think you did that change that I pushed past my body’s boundaries, my body was telling me Hello, this doesn’t feel good, you know, my nervous system was going to that old pathway. And then I push through it every time. And every time that I push through it, it just made it worse and worse and worse until the relapse happened. And when the relapse happened, I was doing something very simple. I was just reaching for something, you know, picking something very light up. And then it and that’s what I like to tell a lot of people is when you’re not listening to your check engine lights, it can happen at any time. And it’s you never know.
Um, yeah, China was a lot of your focus to these things can happen at any moment. And we have to be prepared, we have to be listening. So when it happened, when that relapse happened, my husband and I, we, our lives were transformed. And it was the hardest time of our lives. It really rocked every belief that we had, it rocked, you know, it really put us into this place of isolation, where I remember in the time I told people when I was talking on the phone with people, you know, I was just like, I’m just in a dark room all the time. It’s just so lonely. It was so lonely and so much pain and you know, nobody who could help me. It was so hard. What were you struggling with? So, you know, as far as mentally or physically, both, both. So physically, I was having spasms that would not heal just everywhere. And so even if I tried to sit up, the spasms would happen.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever had spasms, but they are debilitating. They It was so painful. And then degeneration in my desks, you know, where it was just this really intense pain where we were like, is this what childbirth feels like? You know, that’s kind of the question I was asking myself. And now I know No, that wasn’t quite that bad, but close. And then just yeah, loneliness, depression. You know, there’s a lot that happens to you mentally when you’re in bed, and you don’t move. You don’t get those endorphins from movement. You don’t get sunshine, you don’t get all of the things that you mean. So it was it was just so much and then you know, isolation. We were in A new area we had just moved when this happened. And so we really didn’t have anybody coming to visit us very often, we did have some who were just phenomenal. But you know, it was just very lonely, very lonely. And really, yeah, very challenging, very traumatic. But when that happened, we, I think we talked about this before, before we started recording, the mindset of this is happening for us, not to us, really became my foundation in life, you know, and that’s everything that has happened ever since when COVID hit, when everything has happened, we’ve just repeated that this is happening for us, not to us, and that has really brought our lives out of the pits, and into this amazing, blessed life where everything has been used for good, you know, this injury, now I get to heal.
So many women, I mean, and men, I’ve, I’ve seen people not be able to function, and then all of a sudden, that pain is eliminated, and they’re able to live their lives. And it’s amazing what has happened. And I think that that mindset was a really big piece of it that this is for our good. And we don’t know what that looks like yet, but we trust it. And then as life progressed, it absolutely worked out. And I think a lot of that was, you know, having wisdom and being prepared. And a lot of what you focus on, really does help bring life into that place of goodness and, and knowing moving forward that if something were to happen, we’re prepared, and we know what to do about it.
Yes, because I think with your relapse, it brings you to this dark space that you can’t explain, it doesn’t matter who comes to visit, you really, I think it gets to the point where you have to get yourself out. And in a lot of my shows I talk about when you go into that space, and you feel like you’re in a really dark room. And you just want to see the light, like literally, that that’s probably used a lot. That statement, but it’s so true, because you want you want brightness, you want happiness, and you want to see the light. And I remember feeling like you just want to walk and you’re touching the walls and you’re touching all around this dark room trying to find this door handle for this door that you know is in that room.
And all you have to do is turn it and then you see a crack in the light of of the door. That’s how I personally felt. Yeah, um, and as soon as you can see the light, it gives you some confidence and some strength to feel. Okay, now I can pull the door open further. Now, oh my goodness, when you see what’s on the other side of that door, it’s everything like you were talking about with your husband, because it gives you this rehab, feeling that Oh, my, you know, it’s everything that you wish for is on that other side of that door. You know, whatever that looks like? Is it a farm? Is it a meadow, you know, is it an ocean, a beach, whatever that looks like, for your personal experience. And I remember that feeling of, of being locked in this room of darkness. But then when I actually saw the door open with the light, it just felt like your brain brought up into oh my gosh, this is where I’m supposed to be going. That’s so good. I don’t know if that made any sense.
Good that hit home. 100%. Really, like that’s still where we’re at. Like, I feel like we are going in levels and then layers with that whole process. Because I think that’s what looks, what it looks like to come out of trauma is to, you know, you see the crack. And so you pull over the door and it’s almost like you can only pull it up and so far each time. And each time you get more hope and you get a more understanding that there’s light in that you can open the door and you get strength and you get revitalized, but I still feel like we’re opening the door. It’s just, you know, which is a wonderful process. I really, really firmly believe it’s a wonderful process. But yeah, I feel like we’re still doing that but just in such a great way where like I see a lot of the light now. Like it’s a lot of light now, but I’m still, you know, opening it further and further.
Yes, and I think jumping into it, but always feeling like oh, I might have to go back inside that door a little bit to get some more strength to to when you relapse like you know and it’s funny what hits you to relapse. You know, sometimes it might be a day. Sometimes it feels like it might just be a week. Sometimes it It feels like it’s a month. It’s very interesting how it fluctuates, and the relapse makes you feel, I can totally see where people can slide into addictions and some sort of rehabilitation of an addiction because it’s so easy to fall into anxiety and depression. Super, super easy.
Yeah. And I don’t think that people have the right tools when they’re going into an injury relapse. I don’t think they do. Because when you have the right tools, hopefully a month would not be the case. Like Yeah, matter what if you’re, if you’re recovered, and then go into an injury relapse, if you have the right tools and the right support, you know, my my general guideline, and everybody is different. But my general guideline is it takes about a week for and everybody’s different. But even for really chronic pain, it takes about a week of doing all of the right things, and it’s kind of an intensive process, but all the right things to get onto the other side of that of that flare up or of that relapse, or whatever it is.
And if it’s a more severe injury, it might take longer. But, you know, I think that before I felt very much like a victim to pain, I felt very much out of control of pain, like it could happen anytime it wanted to. And I had nothing I could do about it, except for just to do some practitioner ping pong, and maybe that would help a little bit. And what I love to tell people is you do not, you have more control than what it seems like we have more power over this inflammation cycle than it feels like, it’s just a very in depth process, to be able to mitigate what’s happening with the body. And number one, the number one thing we need to do is to listen to the warning signs, because that is telling you that a relapse is coming if you do not listen. So when you’re sitting and you feel that back pain, even if it’s like a little bit of tension, that’s a check engine light, that’s that check engine light that your nervous system is trying to jump to that old pattern that’s going to cause a relapse. Or when you feel that neck tension, we need to get up and move we need to ice and heat depending on what the age and area of the injury is we need to rest we need to you know, do something called self myofascial release, we need to, you know, shift things up so that we’re not pushing past and I think so many times when we’re busy, we just push, we just say Shush, body, I’m not listening to you, you don’t matter. That’s not what’s happening in the forefront of membranes, but that’s what we’re saying to our bodies. And then our body say, Okay, I tried to warn you, and then it happens.
Well, that’s really hard to do that to your brain. Yeah. Because, you know, I found it easier when I broke my foot in the accident and tore my meniscus in both my knees because I’m, it’s a physical thing. And so you when you get up and it’s so where you’re like, Okay, like, it’s okay, I’ll work on it. But with your head. You, you don’t feel like you work can work on your head, like you don’t realize it. And so you really have to become aware of your body, like you’re saying, to be aware of how you’re feeling and what’s triggering your head. What what are you having trouble? It’s so so hard.
I so I, I have a disease disease, I don’t know what you would call a chronic illness called postural onset technique. cardia syndrome, which affects how the blood flow can get to my brain. It’s called pots. Okay, yeah, you don’t want to say that fast too many times. Yeah. So when when this hits, like I can be in bed, you know, unable to talk unable to get up unable to do anything, because my brain is not getting enough blood flow. my nervous system isn’t flowing. And it’s the same thing. It’s the same thing where it’s, it’s a brain issue, it’s a heart issue. But my body tells me, my body gives me warning signals.
You know, it tells me Hello, this is my little warning signal to you. And when I don’t listen to it, that’s when things get bad, right? I mean, now, with so many things that we’re dealing with, with brain injuries, with musculoskeletal injuries, with chronic illnesses with all of these things are parties are always talking to us. And our bodies really want to be listened to. And it’s kind of this respect and kind of relationship that you know, it is ourselves but our bodies want to have this relationship with us where our bodies talk to us, and we listen. And then our bodies are like, oh, okay, we’re okay. And then we talk to our bodies, and our bodies.
Listen, because there’s that relationship. But when we don’t listen to our bodies, what happens? Our bodies lash out, you know, they’re like, Well, you didn’t listen. So now I got to do something more. So you listen to me. And then when we try to tell our bodies to do something, our bodies are like you didn’t listen to me. I’m not gonna listen to you. There’s no connection and relationship. And that’s when flare ups of all different shapes and sizes happen. And so that’s one of the biggest components of my coaching with people surprisingly is having a with your body again and being able to listen to your body, which is all much harder than it seems like it would be. It seems like the easiest thing in the world. But you, you know, sit in front of your computer with a million projects and a million things you need to do. And then you tell me that it’s easy.
Yeah. When your body talks to you, then you tell me, it’s easy. It’s not easy.
I wouldn’t want to be in your boat with two little kids and having all those issues. Because you? Do you take time for yourself, then do you really take moments to Oh, you, you better believe that actually, today, I dumped self care day, I dubbed it a holiday. And I actually shared it on my stories. I was like, this is a holiday everybody. Everybody do stop what you’re doing and do some self care. Because that’s the only way for me, with my body, which is so sensitive. That’s the only way. And my husband is the most incredibly supportive human being in the world. And I even told him, you know, what are you doing for self care today, cuz he’s so supportive of me doing that, I have to tell him, you know, you plan out your self care, so that you get that too, because we all need it so much. But in the mornings, I have my time for movement, I have my time for reading, I have my time for meditation, I have my time for nutrition. You know, it’s so important to me that I have that schedule in place. And I have that structure where I am taking care of myself, I’m doing corrective exercise for my body, because it will always need it. And then I set my day with a priority, which my priority is being well, first and foremost.
And then it’s taking care of my family and loving on my family. And then it’s my business and taking care of my clients, which I love so much. And they’re so such a high priority for me. But if I don’t have those priorities set, then what happens when my children start screaming or crying? Because they’re the baby and a toddler. They’re wonderful, but they have emotions. They’re human. Yeah. So what happens when they start doing that? And I’m, you know, and I’m trying to get my project done, and I’m stressed, okay, well, I need to make sure I’m well first. So I need to take a moment and breathe and determine what I need. And then my family is second. So if I need to move something, or shift something, they’re important, they are my priority, and then my project, and that helps to really clear things up so that I’m taking care of myself, my family gets taken care of, it doesn’t feel so muddled and overwhelming and complicated, right?
Because the kids can really push push those buttons, you know, for you So, and I, I like to think of it as it really helps me to think of it as they’re human beings with valid emotions. And they’re just trying their best to tell me what they need, they just don’t know how to tell me.
So that really helps me to not feel like they’re pushing my buttons so much as they’re just they have a need, and they don’t know how to explain it. And so that really helps alleviate some of that stress or even like, yeah, it’s not always there. I mean, it’s definitely I have my moments.
That’s for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz it’s hard to get away from them to to get some quiet time for you for yourself. It’s always a struggle for a mom to put themselves first, which is the toughest thing ever. It is so important. But yeah, not even after but yeah, but doable when you’ve had an injury and you have no other choice.
And now that I’m out of the injury, I know how important it is.
Yeah. Did. How did it change for your outlook? Because the trauma with your first relapse when once you got married, seemed to be the worst of the whole time? How did that make you feel about being prepared? You know, are you have you really changed your mindset? Now, because when you’re young, and beautiful, and you’re living your best life, and you have no worries in life, and I remember those days, and you just think you’re invincible, and nothing’s gonna happen to you.
Yeah. And we were talking earlier about this. But it’s such a beautiful thing to realize that we’re not invincible. It really changes the way that we make our decisions. And I think it makes our lives Fuller. And it it just, I don’t know, I think it brings in more gratitude. I think it brings in more wisdom. I think it brings in, you know, more for our children so that when you know if something happens, they’re taken care of. So absolutely. When this happened, it really affected my mindset. It showed me that and I think for me, one of the biggest pieces of being prepared for me is to always take care of my body. And that may seem like a very abstract way of being prepared, but I have to always be prepared for something happening for my body and always take care of it and that’s how I thrive but I I have a condition where it’s called Ehlers danlos Syndrome, I have all this stuff going on where you know, things can fall apart in my body.
And I always have to be prepared with that and always just be on top of it. So I’d say that’s number one for me is just always being prepared for potential of relapse potential of instability in my body potential of chronic pain, and, you know, not in a stressful way, but always taking care of myself and listening to my body so that I’m not getting to that point. And then beyond that, you know, with COVID, hit with all these things have happened, we actually had fires here in the northwest, I think you may have had, I don’t know where you may have to, but when that happened, you know, really became apparent that we’re vulnerable to whatever happens around us, we’re really, you know, at the whim of nature, with this type of stuff. So we formed plans for having our generators having you know, we’ll be moving soon, so that we have more land so that we can have our garden and be you know, more sustainable and have our chickens and have our food and, and so it really did cause us to form backup plans in so many areas of our life, so that we’re not so vulnerable, and we really can be more sustainable within ourselves.
I like how you were able to be better prepared for your family. And you also spoke about being better prepared in your business as well.
Yes, and that’s a big thing for us is we care so much about our clients than if you know, if anything were to happen to me, even with health things, or anything else, we actually hired on a full team of physical therapists or economists, corrective exercise specialists, so that it can still be a well oiled machine functioning and running. You know, if, if I have something happening with my health, it can still be just a beautiful, beautiful team, doing their job healing people. So that’s definitely always in my mind is how can I set things up to be sustainable?
We talk about that in some of the shows as well for entrepreneurs. Because if something happened to your hands, something happened to you not feeling well, if something took you down for a day, or a week, or a month, or whatever that looks like, how can your job? or How can your business continue operating? And we talk about sometimes lining up that other person that could you could work in conjunction with, like another physio therapist with another physio therapist. So if they go on holidays, or if they get sick, the other person can look after that side of things. And I don’t think we do that enough. Because we don’t think anything’s gonna happen. So the problem comes is when you don’t have something hat when you have something happen and you’re not prepared, then who are you going to rely on? You’re going to be calling your clients and saying, I’m sorry, I can’t see you this week or next week? Yeah. But you, you know, then they go off looking for their own person. And now you’ve lost them as a client. It’s like a hairdresser.
I don’t know about you. But when you want your hair done, you want your hair done. Yeah, like you can’t wait a month, you can’t wait two months. When you want your hair done. That’s an end your specific, I don’t know, most people are very particular about the physiotherapist that they see. Or their chiropractor, or hairdresser. They’ve built a relationship with them. And when you aren’t there for your customer or your client. They’re gonna find someone else. Yeah, so yeah. So that’s awesome. How you were able to implement that. So well. What about your personal stuff? What about your family stuff? Have you I’m sure it made you realize a little bit different in that field area area of things, too.
I, I am not as good at this as I should. And I, you know, we have our paperwork together. But we definitely need to do a better job of getting copies to our family, getting a copy of our key to our family members doing more of those things. So I was actually thinking when you were talking about your app, I’m kidding. Go on your app, and look at what you are talking about there and see what else we need to do. Because we’re just in this process. And I think we’re always growing in it. Especially busy life. I mean, I want to say to anybody watching, if you have a busy life, I get it. I get it. And it can be hard to be prepared when you’re busy. And so we try to take it in steps as realistic as we can. And so I’d say that’s probably the next step for sure is yes. delving more into that because we have some we have some of that taken care of, but we need more.
Yes. And sometimes we just need the education like you offer in your business. To understand why do I need that? Yeah. So and then it becomes easier to do it when you Know why, absolutely. But if you don’t know why everything’s like, Oh, I don’t want to do that. It’s like income tax. I don’t want to do that. And can I do it? Like, well, it is what it is like, Oh, well, but it’s not that way. When it happens, it’s like, why didn’t I do that?
Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. And knowing your why is so important. Absolutely. And knowing that these things can happen. And I don’t think it’s a scary thing, it’s not something to be scared with. It’s not something to be stressed or worried or anxious about, because I, you know, I don’t think that that always leads to positive, change your behaviors, either. I think it’s just having the wisdom of knowing we’re not invincible. That’s a good thing. You know, we just have to be wise about it. And we have to be prepared as much as we can be. And, and Dave Ramsey, I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to him. But he always says, you know, it’s funny how the people who have the emergency fund don’t often need to use it, because something just tends to happen when we’re, when we’re prepared.
It’s Dugard, but things tend to be, you know, less emergency-ish. Yes, things tend to happen when we’re prepared. Absolutely odd thing.
Yeah. And and some people say, well, we’re, I don’t want to do that, because that’s like setting it up. Right happen. But it doesn’t. Yeah, I think, you know, and that’s, I do believe that mindset has so much to do with how our lives form. And I don’t want to go whoo poopoo with that, but I do think that our mindsets do help us create circumstances. And so that’s why I’m just so adamant about you know, it’s not a fear based thing, this is no being afraid that things are just going to constantly happen to us.
This is just knowing that you want to have the best life possible. So how can you form that? How can you make your life just so bulletproof and so solid, and it’s really just such a positive way of life, knowing that you’re taking care of your children or taking care of, you don’t believe that that’s the case, and that that will happen, but you’re ready for anything, I think it’s just a great way of living well, and it feels good, and it feels empowering. Just like what you would empower, you’re giving the tools in a toolbox to someone to empower them to take over their own life. And that’s super, super important when you’re injured, as well as mental and mental injury of some sort, as well as a physical, but also for planning planning gives you that empowerment. Because if you like I was so sorry to hear this morning, that your mom had a stroke, lots of love and prayers out to her. But it also makes you remind you that you could be prepared in your own life, in your own between your partner in you. But maybe you should start having those family conversations with your mom, or your dad, or your brother or your sister to find out.
Do they have their stuff organized? Do they have a plan? Because I’m going to be the one having to look after that point. And time when something does occur? Yeah, yeah. So it makes it more sensible to have a worksheet to be able to have that conversation. And, and find out what their wishes are, you know, whatever that looks like and help them get their stuff together as well. So it helps everybody all around. really does, what kind of final messages Would you like to give our listeners today?
I think that anybody listening in who thinks they have pink doesn’t think who has pain, who has this ongoing, you know, chronic pain or any type of pain, what I want to leave behind is just, you know, you don’t have to live that way. That isn’t life, that even if you’ve tried multiple things, and it hasn’t worked, that’s not the way that life has to be. And you know, the biggest thing that I would say to do is to listen to your body to start listening to your body. And then as far as pain goes, as far as injury relapse goes, as far as all of those things, even you know if you have never had an injury but you have pain that could lead to a really big injury. That’s typically how it happens. So without all of that the biggest way that you can be prepared is to listen to your body when it talks to you and do not push past those check engine lights, do what you need to to listen to your body and respond to it and that relieves pain and protects you to such a high level.
Thank you That’s that’s really beautiful because it could be fiber mile myalgia or it could be all sorts of different things that are causing you the pain in whatever area that is. And it’s, it’s understanding your body and knowing the signs? And is that what you really help with this, to help people understand the signs, we help with everything. I mean, our program really is built to fill in the reasons why people haven’t been able to heal, and the reasons why people keep having pain. So a part of that is coaching them through understanding what is happening with their bodies and how to stop it. That’s a big part of the coaching. But then we also do ergonomic evaluations, creating a pain free workspace, right, because that’s a big root of the problems. Or if people sit in their cars or sit on the couch, we do ergonomic coaching for those things. We do physical therapy, we do corrective exercise where we’re correcting every pain point head to toe, because so often people can only get one pain point covered in a physical therapist or a physiotherapy office.
So we make sure that we’re correcting everything happening from head to toe. And then we also give that video tutorial program where people can keep that for the rest of their lives to fix all it’s happening from head to toe in a really specialized process. And then we also ship massage tools to them so they can do self massage, they can release those angry muscles. And we do a lot of a lot of coaching around the mental, the mental issue of you know, just not listening to our bodies and not being able to respond the way we need to. So it’s very comprehensive, but it’s wonderful and and we love the process of seeing our people.
That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s really awesome. Well, thank you listeners. I’m Thank you, Tracy for coming on today. From beautiful Vancouver, Washington. You’re only a hop, skip and a jump away from me today. No, we’re close by. Yes, absolutely. And we’re both in Vancouver, but a different country. Different Vancouver. So funny. Oh, thank you. And listeners, please like, share and subscribe. Take that moment and really think about maybe you could be sending this video to somebody that you know that struggling. Tracy’s information I have made sure that we’ve put down below in the description box. Because as you know, as we’ve talked about in our show today, nobody’s Superman, and no one is getting out of this life alive. And I hate to say that, I did want to say one thing really quickly I was interrupt, you know, anyone is having pain, you can join my facebook group where I share tutorials, free education resources, like the whole goal there is that no matter what you have a path forward and you have education, you have resources. So that’s on Facebook, the work pain free community, feel free to join everybody’s welcome. So that’s a really great resource.
So I wanted to add that in.
Awesome. Okay, I’m sure I have that link as well down below for everybody. So that might be a start for everyone to join and then get the feeling of the community and, and pursue it from there. That’s awesome. Thank you so much. Stay tuned for for the next podcast or live video that your backup plan and talking taboo with Tina. That sounds a lot of tease. And that’s what we’re all about. We talk about the real raw conversations, the taboo subjects that we don’t normally speak about. And that’s what we’re all about. So I really appreciate Tracy you coming on our show. Thank you, our listeners as well for listening. And I always end our show with Carol Burnett because she’s just a wonderful, wonderful person. So I’m so glad we had this time together just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started. And before you know it comes a time we have to say so long. So so long listeners.
Thank you, Tracy. Much love to you and your mom sent her love lots of love and wishes from us. And all our listeners send out prayers to Tracy’s mom for her struggle with her stroke. I hear she’s doing well. So let’s keep that road going there for her. And for our COVID people. I hope you’re recovering well and stay safe. Lots of love. And if you are listening to the show today, and you are thinking about someone special in your life, please send out a message. Pick up the phone, send them a text, tell them how much you love them. Because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. You don’t know how that might change tomorrow. So do that today. Stay Safe Be Kind till next time
TRACY RODRIGUEZ WITH WORK PAINFREE COMMUNITY
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