Permission to Heal Episode #62 - A Conversation with Lindsey Lockett about Healing Our Nervous System

Lindsey Lockett is a trauma educator, coach, and host of the Holistic Trauma Healing Podcast. In 2018, after deconstructing from the dogmas of fundamentalist religion and toxic wellness culture, Lindsey experienced her own dark night of the soul.

During the healing journey that followed, she realized that trauma affects us as WHOLE people and therefore, we need to heal as WHOLE people.

She set out to find an affordable and accessible approach that integrates the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and ancestral parts of our being… and discovered the magic of the nervous system! Now, she blends consciousness and spirituality with nervous system work to help transform lives. 

Lindsey lives in Northeastern Minnesota with her partner of 20 years, 2 teenagers, and 2 dogs. She enjoys cooking with friends, spending time in the woods, foraging for food and plant medicine, and cold plunging in Lake Superior.

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HOLISTIC TRAUMA HEALING PODCAST on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify
Her website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Lindsey's links, coaching, Nervous System Workshop, Trauma Healer's Circle, Nervous System Hygiene (group coaching).

 
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·       Permission to Land: Personal Transformation Through Writing

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Transcript

PTH 62 Lindsey Lockett 
 

It's all about like busy-ness and keeping her husband happy and very old world patriarchal idea. so that's the like water I was in at that time. And I mean, I didn't know if there's anything wrong with it, so I, like, I was happy, I also didn't realize that I was. Had an anxiety disorder, you know, like, I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't sit still. I didn't know how to just hold my babies. Like I always had to be cleaning or cooking. Like it's just like tons of perfectionism and, and measuring my worth by my productivity and like all of that. And just to the point that I just completely exhausted myself. 

Hello, welcome to permission to heal. I am Marci Brockman, and I am really thrilled that you are here today I have a wonderful conversation to share with you with a very inspiring woman named Lindsay Lockett. Lindsay is a trauma educator, a coach, and the host of a podcast called holistic trauma healing 

 in 2018. After deconstructing from the dogmas, a fundamentalist, religion, and toxic wellness culture. Lindsey experienced her own dark night of the soul during the healing journey that followed, she realized that trauma affects. As whole people and therefore we need to heal as whole people.  

Although Lindsay has benefited tremendously from her therapy and psychiatry. These modalities never totally resonated with her because she found they forced her to fragment herself rather than heal holistically. She set out to find an affordable and accessible approach. Integrates the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and ancestral parts of our being and discovered the magic of the nervous system. Now she blends consciousness and spirituality with the nervous system to work, to help transform our lives.  

Lindsay lives in Northeastern, Minnesota in a very rural, beautiful part of Minnesota with her partner of 20 years, two teenagers and two dogs. She enjoys cooking with friends, spending time in the woods, foraging for food and plant medicine and cold plunge. 

 In lake superior. Who's very interesting having a conversation with her. We talked about her roots and fundamental Christianity. And we talked about how she and her husband broke away from that and discovered their own paths to finding their own joy and their own paths to. Discovering their own authentic individuality and their own cosmology and rebuilt themselves rebuilt for themselves. 

 Have a beautiful fulfilled, meaningful life. Lindsey talked, we talked a lot about hacking our autonomic nervous system and how that is the connection between our brain and our bodies. And really the clue to the whole body and the whole mind healing from, from trauma and experiences that have rocked our world and so on. 

[00:02:14] Neuroplasticity and the limbic system and, and a whole lot of books that she felt found were foundational to. Her own growth and her own knowledge and so on. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. We had a really great time and I think we became friends, which is super great.  

[00:02:32] So here's the conversation with Lindsay Lockett and if you really like what you've heard as I'm sure you will please like, please subscribe, please leave us a five star rating, please. Consider leaving us a review, please share with your friends and family. Please share it on social media and tag me in it. And please go forth in your life, realizing that you have the permission to create the life of joy, meaning connection, abundance, and fabulousness that you so richly deserve. 

[00:03:05] It's all up to you. You only need your own permission to begin. Thanks very much for being here. I really appreciate it. 

[00:00:00] Welcome Lindsey. How are you today? Hi, Marci. I'm just lovely. It's been snowing at my house all day long. Really? Yeah. Like, I don't know. Five, six inches today. You're Midwest, correct? Yes. Northeastern Minnesota, Northeastern, Minnesota, Minnesota. 

[00:00:20] Never heard of that one before. 

[00:00:26] Do you have a lot of snow? Oh yeah, we have over a foot on the ground already. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. We usually get between seven to 14 feet, you know, depending on the year. I bet you have the best snow blower on the block. Well, we have two snowblowers and my husband has a truck with a plow on the. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:00:53] Serious, serious snowbirds. We have some serious snow moving to do. We live on, we live on six acres, so we have like, quite a lot of snow. We have a big driveway that basically has like a parking lot at the top of it. So we have a lot of snow to move. We have to, we have to snow blow paths, like to our woodshed, to our sauna. 

[00:01:12] Like we have a whole operation. We have a fleet of snow moving equipment. That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah. I got up for school this morning and it was still dark out. And as it usually has no winter and my windshield wipers were frozen to my oh, that's the worst. And I couldn't find the scraper cause I hadn't needed it yet this year. 

[00:01:36] And. Well, if you were in Minnesota, you would have, you would know where your scraper was and you'd have, you would have a backup scraper. Yes. I probably would have several backups. Yeah. And I would have a car with heated seats and I don't know. So yes, it would be a necessity. So, so let's begin with the six quick questions and then we'll, we'll get into everything. 

[00:01:58] So what six words would you use to describe yourself? Oh my gosh. Okay. It can be any part of speech. They don't have to be adjectives, even though I'm saying describe. Okay. I don't even have to remember you sent me these questions earlier, too, so I would know, and I don't even remember what I put. I would say I am very authentic. 

[00:02:15] I am very funny. I am very generous. That's three words. Can I can you, can I cheat? And you can tell me what I wrote down. Can I ask the teacher for the answers? I don't have it. So you don't have in front of you. Oh, hilarious. Okay. Authentic, funny, generous, tenacious. Truth-telling I would add for you. 

[00:02:40] Yes. Very very. Truth-telling very honest. And Hm. A nature lover. Nice. Yeah. What's your favorite way to spend a day? Ooh, home alone by myself. Like no one in the house, husbands gone, kids are gone. Maybe even preferably the dogs are gone and I could just do whatever I wanted. And it would be a summer day, like probably early August. 

[00:03:11] And I would lay on a blanket in my yard and just soak up the sun and then probably go skinny to. That's very specific, very specific. I like that specifics. Good. Yeah. Specifics. Could you have your own pool obviously? Excuse me. Dipping. No, no, no, no, no. We don't have our own pool. I just, I just go to the river or the lake near me, like, whoa, Minnesota has a few lakes. 

[00:03:35] Maybe you've heard the land of 10,000 lakes. So I just, I just go to a lake or a river and I actually live I'm like, as the Crow flies, I live about two miles from lake superior. Oh. So while you have so much snow. Yes. Yes. So I like love to go plunge in lake superior. It's always cold. So I do cold plunges and lake superior. 

[00:03:57] But if I'm just like swimming for fun, like, I wouldn't say it is fun, but it's like not something that you go and do for hours and you just float water. No, no, no. But if I'm like swimming for fun, I just go to. There's some secrets, swimming holes near my house that tourists don't know about and we keep them on the down low and I'll just go to one of those and then I just get butt-naked and get in the water. 

[00:04:18] And it's the best literally. Yeah. Yeah. My daughter, she goes to college in Massachusetts and her college is right on the Atlantic ocean and they've she has, I don't share much to the chagrin of her friends, I think are the th the surprise of their, her friends. She's just like stripped down to her underwear and gone into the Atlantic ocean in February. 

[00:04:41] And then what the hell is wrong with you? She's like, it's the most exhilarating. Yeah. It makes you feel really amazing, like Tingley and this like high, I mean, it's, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, just don't stay in too long. You'll wind up with hypothermia. That's true. However, if you're familiar with the work of Wim Hoff, I don't know if you know who that guy is. 

[00:05:04] Um, okay. So he's like, his nickname is the ice man and he's so crazy. Like he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in like shorts and bare feet and he's like run a marathon in the Arctic in shorts. Like he's, he pushes his body to the edge of the extremes of cold temperatures. And so, from learning from his work and from his books and other things, like I've learned how to train my body to keep my temperature up even in really cold water. 

[00:05:38] So it's like we really have more control over our bodies than we realize. I'm sure I've, I've heard a lot about. Cold plunges being really a wonderful antidote to anxiety and depression. Yeah. Cold plunges are one of my favorite ways to work with the autonomic nervous system. So maybe we'll get into that in today's interview, but yeah. 

[00:06:04] Yeah, if your listeners are interested, I actually have a free training on how to hack your nervous system with cold plunges. If you wanted to link that in the show notes, usually we'll send it in the show notes. Absolutely. Sure, absolutely. Okay. Let's get to question three. What is your favorite childhood memory? 

[00:06:19] So when I was a little girl, I grew up on a horse ranch in the Texas panhandle and my younger brother. And I would, we had this brown duffel bag and in the brown duffle bag, we would pack like snacks and. Pocket knives and extra Bebe's for the BB gun. And we had this brown blanket that we like carted around with us everywhere. 

[00:06:46] And we would take all of these things out to like the middle of our pasture as far away from our house as we could get. And there was like a little Creek down there and it kind of went into a valley. So you couldn't even see the house if you were down there, which meant no one from the house could see you. 

[00:07:00] And we just played and played down there. I mean, like we, we played, like we were settlers on the Prairie. We were like Cowboys on the, in the wilderness and the wild west. Like we, we talk bad about our parents cause we knew that they wouldn't hear us. So that's probably my favorite childhood memory. 

[00:07:18] That's cool. Are you close with him? Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. What's your favorite meal? Okay, so there's a restaurant about an hour away from me called Duluth grill and they have an item on the menu called Beba. Which is a Korean dish and this restaurant and Duluth girl is very big on like sourcing ingredients as locally as possible. 

[00:07:47] And like, they grow a lot of their own produce in their parking lot and they get eggs and maple syrup and beef and pork and all that from local farmers. And so the beef and Bob is locally pasture raised ground beef and pork mixed together and seasoned with locally harvested wild rice fermented kimchi, fermented chilies, a sunny side up pastured, local egg. 

[00:08:15] Wow. Sauteed mushrooms that were either forged locally or grown on their premises. Kale harvested from their parking lot. That's like sauteed and like ginger and soy sauce. And then there's an half of an avocado on top. And then the whole thing is covered in like Korean barbecue sauce that they make homemade there. 

[00:08:35] Wow. And every time we go to that restaurant, which is, I mean, we went a lot less during COVID, but before COVID I was going like at least once a month and every single time, that's what I ordered to the point that I would go in there and we would have a server and they would be like, oh, I know you, I know what you want. 

[00:08:53] You know? And, and I've said many times that like, if I ever knew that I was going to die, like the next day, that would be my last meal. Wow. Yeah. It's that good? That it's that good? Well, you know it very well. Yes. Yes. I'm. I'm putting a shameless plug in for Duluth grill. If any of your listeners are ever in Duluth, Minnesota, they should definitely eat there. 

[00:09:15] Wow. Well, it sounds very interesting. I would like to try it. It's so good. Excellent. All right. Number five. What one piece of advice would you like to give your younger self? 

[00:09:32] Always listen to your intuition. Don't let anybody else be more of an authority over what you should do than you. Yes, definitely. Yeah. Intuition never lies. It's always leading you in the right direction. Yeah. Yeah. Too many of us don't trust our intuition, our inner voices. We think that everyone else outside of us knows better. 

[00:09:51] And yeah, don't outsource your don't outsource your, your inner knowing. Yeah. Yeah. Amen. That's fabulous. Number six, what is one thing you would most like to change about the world? I know, right? There's so many things. That's a little, I w I wish that everybody in the world would read a book called Ubuntu. 

[00:10:14] And it's about contribution ism. And I wish people would understand that, like this very like capitalistic nuclear families living in single homes not, not raising children with a village. Like not bartering and trading with each other, but everything is like, has monetary value, not knowing a lot of skills. 

[00:10:37] I wish I wish that could change because that's honestly the only thing that's going to get us through the apocalypse, which by the way, we're already in, in case people don't realize that we're already in the apocalypse. It's it doesn't look anything like Hollywood said it would, it's not an asteroid. 

[00:10:51] That's about to hit the earth, like yeah. Yeah, we can totally just nuke those. Yeah, it would be contribution ism. I would love to see contribution ism and community and collaboration over competition and capitalism. Yeah. I agree with you. I, for, for a long time, I've been talking to my students. I actually haven't in the last couple of years because I've gotten waylaid, but it's probably more important now than ever about the concept of who'd been to, which I had read through Jasmine to two years ago. 

[00:11:21] And. I think that I think you're right. I think you're absolutely right, but I mean, that's how we, that's how we were before, before we call organization. Yeah. Before industrialization and capitalism and colonialism and all that, like that's, that's how we were. And if people are interested in learning more, not about a boon to, but specifically these like other side concepts that I'm talking about two really good books are the long descent by John Michael Greer. 

[00:11:48] And, the beautiful world our hearts know is possible by Charles Eisenstein. Okay. I'm writing them down. Yeah, they're great. Okay. Very cool. I'm always looking for new books. And then one other question, that's not really on the six quicks, but okay. I'm adding for season two is what TV shows might you be? 

[00:12:12] Oh, that's easy. So I have, I have to just like top favorite TV shows. They never disappoint me if I can't find anything else to watch, I just go back and watch them again. And they are the office and Outlander. Oh, awesome. Yes. So I guess if I'm not bingeing those, I love to binge the great British baking show. 

[00:12:34] Okay. Yeah, I love, I love haven't seen it. Oh, it's good. It's so good. I love period dramas. I love period drama. So that's why I love Outlander so much. My husband and I just recently finished watching, a very well done show on PBS called Victoria. It's like it's it was so well done. And I was Googling and fact checking the whole time. 

[00:12:59] And other than her sister, they stayed pretty close to historical accuracy, which I really, really appreciate. Yeah, I wish they were making more, but I know, I know. I, yeah, but I guess Victoria is life after prince Albert died, but she's not very fun anymore. I suppose she was a drag, you know? 

[00:13:22] Nice. And she was way funner when Albert was still alive. Well, you know, yeah. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I love those period dramas and I love a good period drama. It's fabulous. All right. So, so let's get down to the nitty gritty. I know you mostly through Instagram. And, I love your Instagram, the things that you post every single time, I look at your post and I'm like, yes, absolute fucking lutely. 

[00:14:00] That's just the way it is. You know, I'm so excited and there's so much of what you say that just speaks to my own experience and my own thoughts and so on about things. And you say things in such a succinct way that you're welcome that I think, that, that, that you, that's why you have the following that you have because you speak to so many people. 

[00:14:21] So I was hoping that maybe you could tell us all a little bit more about like where, well, w you said Texas panhandle, but like where little Lindsey was from and, and who she was and how you got to do what it is that you do now. Okay. So you basically want the CliffsNotes of my whole life. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:14:40] Okay. All right. I can do that. So I was raised in the Texas panhandle. My biological parents were divorced before I was two years old, so I have no memory of my biological parents living together or being in their house together. But I also don't have any memories of them like fighting and divorcing. 

[00:14:57] My mom raised me mostly as a single mom. I did visitation with my dad like every other weekend, every other holiday kind of thing. When I was seven, my mom met and married my stepfather and we moved from central Texas where I was born to the Texas panhandle. So I was seven when that happened, started at a new school. 

[00:15:17] I had this new dad, he had a son who was my new brother. That was the brother that I would go out into the pasture with and we, you know, play. Yeah, and we had a great relationship, my stepbrother and I desperately wanted my stepfather to love me. And we did grow to love each other, but it took a long time. 

[00:15:37] Initially he was pretty, he was pretty volatile. He was, he was a recovering alcoholic who wasn't in any kind of program. So he ended up leaving AA. And when we moved his answer to AA was for us to start going to the first Southern Baptist church. And so that's when evangelical fundamentalist Christianity made its way into my life. 

[00:16:01] And at home, our family was not very well off financially. I wouldn't say we were in poverty, but like, I definitely remember. My mom putting groceries on a credit card. Or like, I definitely remember I used to play office with my mom and she would get all the bills out and I would get the envelopes and the stamps and the checkbook and all the things. 

[00:16:20] And like, I would play pretend office. Right. And she would let me write the checks and address the envelopes, put the stamps on and put the stub in the envelope. Like I did all those things. And I remember a lot of times doing that with my mom on like a Saturday morning. There being many instances where she would be like, oh, we don't have enough to pay that whole bill. 

[00:16:38] Just pay this much of it. So really early on in life, I got this message that like, we don't have enough. And so going to church, I found a lot of solace in church because my home environment was so volatile. So my stepfather being a recovering alcoholic, who wasn't in a program was physically, emotionally and verbally abusive. 

[00:17:00] He really loved like the sound of his belt, whenever it would go through the belt loops and he would just like, pull it off and just like go to town on us. Yeah, there was, there was okay with that. Or she was being brutalized too. No, she wasn't being physically abused, but I think, I think my mom was just really disempowered and they, she, she was a stay at home mom and. 

[00:17:24] They had a baby very shortly after they got married. So she was like home with the baby and my stepbrother and me. And I think she just didn't feel like she had a way out. And I know that my mom and my stepdad fought about me specifically a lot because my mom did want to defend me. I just think she was really disempowered, which I know, like that was her own choice. 

[00:17:45] Right? Like she, she had a choice. So church became like a solace for me. And that was like a place that I could go to get away from my family. And it wasn't as volatile as my home life was. So it became like a Haven. And I really latched on to the message of the church, that if I accepted Jesus into my heart and pray the center of prayer and read my Bible and did devotionals and went to church and like was a good Christian girl that like, that would make God really, really happy. 

[00:18:15] And so combine that with like my stepfather. Being the way that he was. And he always like being afraid of him and wanting to do whatever I could to keep myself safe. That morphed me into like a pretty hardcore people pleaser. So also growing up in the church, even though it was a solace for me, and like, I didn't realize how toxic it was until about eight years ago when I started deconstructing my faith. 

[00:18:41] Because it was in the south, in the nineties and early two thousands. That's when a movement called the purity purity movement or purity culture was like sweeping through. America really, but it was really prominent in the Bible belt. So this was this like movement where the emphasis was like true love waits. 

[00:18:59] So it was like abstinence only sex education, and there was a lot of emphasis placed on like girls, especially remaining virgins until they're married and like keeping their bodies and their minds pure for their future husband. And like I remember going to church camps where like the boys were allowed to go swimming in the church camp pool in a swimsuit with no shirt, but the girls weren't allowed to wear bikinis. 

[00:19:23] You know, it was like all of these mixed messages around modesty. And like, I was taught that if a boy looked at me and had lust in his heart that I was causing him to sin just a lot of, yeah. A lot of, oh yeah. But it's so common in the south. Like it's so common. So, ability to control someone else's fault, correct? 

[00:19:43] It's not, but that's not what the evangelical church was telling me. Circa 1997, you know? So, that, that was very confusing for me because I was a very normal, healthy developing teenager with curiosity and hormones, and like curious about my sexuality and I never had a problem having a boyfriend. And so there, I got into this cycle in high school of like dating a lot and messing around with my boyfriends. 

[00:20:08] And then after we would mess around, I would be like, oh my gosh, we have to pray and ask God to forgive us. And we can never ever do this again. Granted, we weren't having sex. We were like making out and like dry humping, you know, like what normal teenagers do, of course, because, because there was this Jesus and church and sin element to it, it made all of that like completely full of shame. 

[00:20:29] so that was the water I was swimming in as a kid. It was like very unsafe at home. And I found safety in church and didn't realize until 30 years later how unsafe it actually. Was, and how traumatizing it actually was. So, I got married when I was 19. , we met right after high school and I got married at 19. 

[00:20:52] We had our first baby before I was 21. We had our second baby before, or right after I turned 22. We, we met at church. So I was an intern for the youth group that I had just graduated from. And he, my husband now is, was a youth pastor. And so we met, started dating. It was love at first sight, like totally fell in love. 

[00:21:15] Got married 16 months after we married or met. And we were always involved in ministry together either part-time or full-time ministry. And my husband is a really, really talented acoustic guitar player. So he was a worship leader. and I would sing with him and we were kind of this like powerhouse. 

[00:21:32] Worship leading duo in the Texas panhandle at that time. And we would get invited to different churches and church camps to go lead worship for an event or to fill in when their worship leader was out of town or something like that. So our whole lives revolved around ministry and church. And because I was raised the way that I was raised, I was taught that my only purpose as a girl woman was to grow up, get married, have babies, be a keeper of the home, be a Proverbs 31 woman honor. 

[00:22:02] My husband's 31. What does that mean? Oh, okay. So Proverbs 31 is a chapter from the Bible. That it's basically like 26 verses that. So the first nine verses are not really. Women it's like verse 10 and on is about basically like what a godly woman is supposed to do. So like, it's all about like busy-ness and keeping her husband happy and very old world patriarchal idea. 

[00:22:32] Oh, very yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's the like water I was in at that time. And I mean, I didn't know if there's anything wrong with it, so I, like, I was happy, you know, like I'm happy and it provides meaning in your life. And then at this probably is nothing rolling. It did at the time, but like, I also didn't realize that I was. 

[00:22:51] Had an anxiety disorder, you know, like, oh, well, there's that? I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't sit still. I didn't know how to just hold my babies. Like I always had to be cleaning or cooking. Like it's just like tons of perfectionism and, and measuring my worth by my productivity and like all of that. And just to the point that I just completely exhausted myself. 

[00:23:10] So that, and I didn't grow up in the church. I'm a nice Jewish girl from long island and I still have that go. It's just everywhere. It's just everywhere. So yeah, then let's see. We, we were in ministry for, for 12 years together. By the time my husband was in like a full time, like senior staff position at a church. 

[00:23:31] I w we were 30 and We thought like this is where we're going to be forever. Like we had the cutest house on this adorable street and our church was growing like crazy because we were the new worship leaders and everybody wanted to come hear us. And like, it was, it was great. You would have, like, you would have never wanted to leave that. 

[00:23:51] Except I was, you know, doing my stay at home mom thing. I was homeschooling our children because we had to keep them out of the secular world and protect them from the devil. You know, so we were Christian homeschoolers and one day I was folding laundry and I decided to watch some Netflix while I was folding laundry. 

[00:24:10] And I happened to turn on. I don't even know if I found it, but I happened to turn on this documentary called for the Bible, tells me, so I think is the name of it. And it was about either Lutheran or Episcopalian. I can never remember. Ministers who were gay. And I thought it was just going to confirm what I already believed, which was that being gay was a sin. 

[00:24:32] And it was an abomination, like I was raised to be very homophobic and racist. So like I thought this show was going to confirm my homophobic beliefs. And instead it completely unraveled my homophobic beliefs. And like, it's a shift that was the fastest shift I've ever experienced in my life. Like I turned that documentary on as a homophobic person. 

[00:24:58] And two hours later, I turned that documentary off and I was no longer homophobic. And I was just like, That was just bullshit. Like, yeah. And my husband got home from the church that day and we put the kids to bed that night and I was like, you have to watch this movie. And he was, I showed him what it was. 

[00:25:13] And he was like, Ugh, I don't need to watch that. Like I already know what I believe about that. And I was like, no, babe, really? You need to watch this movie. So for the second time, that day I watched it with him and it was his first time. And at the end of it, his jaw was like on the floor and he had that immediate shift as well. 

[00:25:30] So here we were 30 years old and we were raised, you don't question the Bible. You don't question God. God's ways are higher than our ways who could even pretend to understand like God's mind or, or the rules or his commandments or whatever. And here we were 30 years old and it was the first time in our lives that either one of us had the guts to be like, if what we were taught about gay people is wrong. 

[00:25:54] What else have we been taught? That's wrong. Right. And so we, that, that began our deconstruction. We didn't have the word deconstruction on our vocabulary at the time, but that's what it was. And we spent else, can we find the truth about, yeah, exactly. So we spent the next several months just going down the rabbit hole of documentaries and YouTube videos and reading different books. 

[00:26:16] One book that was really, really influential on us was called pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola. And that one was like, once we finished reading that book, David and I were both like, okay, we can't continue to receive a paycheck from the church and stay in our integrity because like, we don't. 

[00:26:35] I believe a lot of it anymore, but we show up every Sunday and we have our face on like we do, right. Because that's what you do. So I'm really proud of the way we left that church. Actually, we did it without scandal. We did it without causing any kind of scene. Nobody knew what we were doing at home in private. 

[00:26:52] Thankfully David is also a very talented technology person, so he was able to find a job as a network administrator for a school. And we moved eight hours away, which ended up being one of the best decisions we've ever made because both of our families who are also evangelical Christians and his side of the family actually you're may not believe this. 

[00:27:13] Every male member of my husband's family, his dad, his brothers, his uncles, and all of his male cousins are all evangelical pastors. Talk about a family business. Yeah. So we are literally the black sheep. So when we moved, we moved eight hours away from all of. And while it would be hard to be an island in the middle of all of that. 

[00:27:38] Oh my gosh. It would have been impossible. And, and like, we didn't know it at the time, but it was just, again, listening to our intuition right. Of just like, this is the next step that we need to take. And we don't know what's going to happen next, but we just know this is the next thing. So we moved to a town in Texas about eight hours away. 

[00:27:55] It was in east Texas. It's called Tyler. We lived there for about a year. We didn't go to church. Well, we've never been to church since since 2014. But 13, yeah, 2013 was the last time we were in church. So yeah, we, we moved to east Texas and we made some really amazing non church-y friends. They're still some of our best friends to this day. 

[00:28:15] We, yeah, we. It was like a, it was like a full body sigh of relief to live there because we didn't know anybody and people weren't judging us. We weren't in, yeah, we could totally start over. And it was like the first time ever that we had, had ever been able to determine what our identity as a family was outside of that Christian pastor lifestyle. 

[00:28:39] How did the kids take to this change? The kids were really surprisingly very open to it. They were like eight and nine at the time. And so. I don't think they were really even old enough for it to be like a core part of their identity, you know? It was mostly just totally. Yeah. So it was like, they asked, like, why aren't we going to church anymore? 

[00:29:05] And we were just like, because we don't want to go to church anymore. And I remember our son being like, good. I didn't like it. Anyway. They repeat the songs repeat too much. Okay. So yeah. So during all this time, something I haven't shared is like for the whole time my husband had been married at this point. 

[00:29:22] At this point it was 12 years. I had wanted to move back out to the country. I grew up on a horse ranch and like living rural is in my roots. My dad's side of the family have all been landowners for as far back as we know, and have been farmers and ranchers. And it's just like in my blood to live rural and the whole time we've been married, we'd sort of been looking for rural property and hadn't found what we wanted. 

[00:29:46] And so of course, when we moved to Tyler, we continued our search for something rural and, just weren't finding it. Like, I, I just wanted a three bedroom, two bathroom house on at least five acres and everything we looked at was either like, The house is falling apart, right? Yeah. Or it was really expensive or like the house next door had a bunch of old cars parked in the front yard or, you know, like it was just not what we were looking for. 

[00:30:12] And so finally, one day I just told my husband, you know what, I'll live anywhere. I don't have to live in Texas all live anywhere. And he was like, so you're saying I can look anywhere. And I was like, no, you can't look in California, Oregon, or California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona. Like nowhere in the Southwest, nowhere in the Southeast Vermont would be fine. 

[00:30:33] I would be fine with Vermont. I would be fine with Washington state. Like the Midwest didn't even come up. Like, I think people forget that the Midwest even been exists didn't even come up. But one day he was like, okay, I found this company, they're looking for a director of technology. I just sent them my resume there in Minnesota. 

[00:30:50] And I was like, fuck that. I'm not going to live in Minnesota. Like it's too cold. They're going to see that you're from Texas. They're not going to want to move somebody from Texas. They're going to want somebody more local. Two weeks later, we were on an airplane. They were flying us up to talk to him, to let him tour the facility. 

[00:31:11] It was an organic food company. So they wanted to let them tour the facility. They hooked us up with a realtor. Before we got on the plane to go there, of course I was like on realtor.com going, okay, this is a possibility, I got to find a place to live. And I found a three bedroom, two bath house on almost six acres. 

[00:31:29] And there were no photos of the outside, those only photos of the inside. And it was just like 1970, like rectangle. That was a time capsule and had not been updated since 1970. And it was like the only one that was my three bedroom, two bathroom, five acres, and that we could afford. And so, we hooked up with a realtor and she took us to look at two other properties that day. 

[00:31:55] And then the last property was this one. And this one I'm saying this one because we ended up buying it. I figured. Yeah. And so like the second we pulled up the driveway, I just felt like deep with a knee. This is it like this, this is it. This is what you've been waiting for. So it doesn't look like a 1970s rectangle anymore. 

[00:32:16] We've done so much to it. We moved up here in 2015, so we've been here for six and a half years now. We are officially deconstructed and deconverted from Christianity. Art. We don't see our families as nearly as much anymore, which whatever you want to make of that is fine. And yeah, we've just, we've really like carved out an identity for ourselves, like as individuals, as a family, as a couple. 

[00:32:42] But of course, like no big change, like that happened. Without some difficulty as well. So we started to have some difficulty in 2018. Basically everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Like everything from things in our house, breaking, leaking our cars, breaking. We had a chimney fire and our house in February of 2018. 

[00:33:04] And then on black Friday 2018, we had a fire in our Finnish sauna that like did like 20 grand worth of damage to our sauna. So we book-ended 2018 with two fires. And then like everything in between was basically a dumpster fire. So our marriage was on thin ice. Like I was having incredible anxiety. My husband was going through some kind of like attachment disorder or not attachment adjustment disorder. 

[00:33:31] Like it was just bonkers Marcy. It was so bonkers. Well, if you could get through that, you can get through, oh my God. Yeah. So by the fall of 2018, though, like my husband was doing better, we'd fix the house, we'd fix the cars. Like our finances were in better shape. Like everything was, was feeling better. 

[00:33:52] And it was like, my body finally had a time to just be like, oh, like sigh of relief. Right. Right. And we had about six weeks in the fall of 2018 that were very nice, very peaceful. And then in late October of 2018, that's when. I mean, the only way I know how to describe it is like I was trying to hold everything together for the whole year and I didn't have to hold everything together anymore. 

[00:34:16] And my body was like, okay, now, now you're going to pay for that. Like, and I don't mean that in like, my body was punishing me. I don't believe our bodies punish us. I just believe it had had enough. It had enough. Yeah, exactly. So I started having a lot of pelvic issues. It started as a urinary tract infection, and then when the infection was gone, my urethra was still spasming for like five months. 

[00:34:39] Yeah, I was, I was diagnosed with pelvic congestion syndrome in January of 2019, which is varicose veins in the pelvis. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. So, and then the spasm and urethra, I ended. That was a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction. So I started pelvic floor physical therapy, but I wasn't sleeping. 

[00:35:00] I hadn't slept in months. I was having constant panic attacks, like pacing, the floor, ringing my hands basically unable to function. Like I lost, I lost my ability to get out of bed. I couldn't cook. I couldn't run my kids around places. I wasn't. At the time I was a food blogger and I had a really successful food blog and I wasn't able to do anything on my website and thank God I had ads on my website and I was generating passive income from that because otherwise we would have been so screwed. 

[00:35:25] It was, it was just a whole mess. And on March 7th, 2019, I attempted suicide. Lindsay. Yeah. Yeah. I can talk to her about it. It's totally not a trigger at all. Yeah, no, I have no shame about it whatsoever. And like, oh, I shouldn't do no. Fuck. No, I shouldn't. I have really, really strong opinions about suicide prevention though. 

[00:35:49] I think suicide prevention is bullshit. Like I do. I think efforts at preventing people from killing themselves are complete bullshit because I had all the support in the world, you know, like I had people, I had security in my life. I was like, I wasn't homeless. I wasn't, we weren't jobless. Like we weren't broke. 

[00:36:10] Right. We weren't unhealthy, like, but yeah, I just liked you to think you had no other alternative, because the insomnia and the anxiety went on for so long that I was basically, so if you're familiar with like polyvagal theory and nervous system states, like at the, at the very bottom of the polyvagal ladder, Shut down. 

[00:36:33] Right? That's like, you can't move. Some people like faint, like that's the, that's the state that, some animals go into, like they can make themselves play dead. Like that's a shutdown state. Okay. But there's a combined state where you're in that like shutdown and you have really anxious, buzzy fight flight energy at the same time. 

[00:36:57] So it's like, it's almost like if you thought about like, you know, on the Flintstones when Fred and Barney are like in the car and they're like peddling with their feet. Right. But when they're like pedaling really fast, but the car is not moving, you know, like that's what it felt like. So it was, it was, it was like, I couldn't get out of it. 

[00:37:15] I just couldn't get out of it. And I could not see any way out. I could not see that my life would be better. I mean, when I say insomnia, I'm talking like five months of no more than two hours of sleep of sleep at night. Like every night does something terribly drastic to your brain? Oh my God. I know now where they use sleep deprivation as a form of torture. 

[00:37:35] Like really? Yeah. So, yeah, I just couldn't see a way out of that and, I, I was bedridden at the time because laying down was the only thing that made my pelvic floor feel better. Pelvic congestion syndrome is a condition that is very, very effected by gravity. So when you're upright, all the blood pools in your vein, which causes like abdominal distension, bloating pressure and your pelvic floor, like it feels like something's going to fall out of your pelvic floor. 

[00:38:05] Yeah, it's just terrible. Like a lot of pain cramping. It's just terrible, but lying down helps because then the gravity isn't. So I was just in bed, like all the time. And in early March, we called my mother-in-law, who is one of my favorite people on the, on the planet, even though she's an evangelical pastor's wife she's so generous and giving and so helpful. 

[00:38:25] And we called her up like basically like, Hey, Lindsay is dysfunctional and we need some help. And she showed up and like, she became my. Like she was cooking, cleaning, doing our laundry, running the kids wherever they needed to go, like going grocery shopping for us. Oh yeah. She was freaking amazing. And, I wasn't consciously thinking this at the time, but now that I look back, I'm like, that's why I did it. 

[00:38:48] Then I attempted suicide while she was here. And I, I realized later it was because I knew my family wouldn't be on their own. She'd be there. Right. Like, I didn't have that conscious thought, but I realized it later. So, yeah, after I attempted suicide on March 7th, obviously I failed and I checked myself in, yeah. 

[00:39:05] I talked myself into inpatient mental health. Stay there for five days, got on a really strong but needed cocktail of psych meds. And check myself out after five days. And I've been. Building my life back ever since. And so I'm no longer blogger. Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm no longer a food blogger, as you can see, I'm a trauma educator and a coach. 

[00:39:29] And my, my current line of work comes directly out of that experience of just realizing that like when I got out of the hospital and I was on those meds, and I don't have a problem with meds now, I used to have a lot of stigma against psych meds. And I said that I would never take them and all that kind of stuff. 

[00:39:47] And the universe is like, ha ha hold my beer. You know, so I, I very quickly learned some very humbling lessons and, but I was like, you know, I'm not ashamed to have these psych meds. I'm really thankful for them because they were helping me sleep. They, they were helping me not have panic attacks. 

[00:40:04] Like they were a lifesaver, but deep down in my core, again, listening to my intuition, like I knew that psych meds were not a forever thing for me. I knew that they were going to be a temporary thing. And I was, I made a commitment to myself that, I was going to do whatever it took to excavate, whatever caused me to need the psych meds in the first place. 

[00:40:27] So like, I'm gonna like get I, so that's what I did. I started excavating trauma and like just. Learning how to feel my feelings, learning how to be in my body and not check out of my body and not overthink everything, learning how to discharge the stored energy of trauma, learning how to move my body. 

[00:40:45] Pelvic floor physical therapy was extremely helpful with that because when you're doing like very minute pelvic floor exercises, it takes a lot of focus and it forces you deep into your body. So I'm so grateful. Yeah, literally. Yeah, literally. So I'm really grateful for that. I, I started learning cold punches and that's when I started learning about the autonomic nervous system and implementing cold plunges and then learning how to hack my nervous system. 

[00:41:14] I just learned so many things so rapidly and. I am so grateful that I already worked from home. I already had this food blog with passive income set up. So I basically got to take like a year and a half and just focus on myself. And it was the greatest gift I ever could have had. And honestly, I don't know how people with full-time jobs outside the home and little kids and like, I, I don't know how people like that carve out time for themselves to heal. 

[00:41:45] I really don't. It's hard. And I'm so grateful that I had the ability to do what I was doing. Okay. Yeah. In the summer of 2020 the, the phrase holistic trauma healing dropped into my awareness. I knew that that was going to be the next thing that I did. I didn't know what it was going to look like or, or what it was going to be. 

[00:42:03] Then I did an acid trip on July 31st, 2020. And that's when it all like came in to do it on your own or were you guided by a professional? No, no, no. I've never done psychedelics with a professional. Unfortunately I would love to, but no, I was just with my husband. It was just he and I. So yeah, th the magic of LSD and of that psychedelic experience, like cracked me open and what I wasn't receiving in my normal state of consciousness, I like received very quickly as a download from the universe and that state I've been hearing a lot about stuff. 

[00:42:38] Yeah, it's really cool. It's like a delicacy and MTMA, and, and, and the, the very quick. Intensely therapeutic results that come from even one experience. Yeah. Yeah. I've had several experiences now and they've all, they've all been profound. Some of them pre like in 2018 and before those experiences were like very anxiety inducing, but since I've done all of this healing work on myself, like now whenever I have a psychedelic experience, it's always just incredibly beautiful and gentle and very healing. 

[00:43:16] So, so yeah, I started the podcast in October of 2020, and I opened my first round of coaching clients in September of this year. And, in a few months I know it and it's crazy. Like I get referrals from therapists. I get therapists who want me to coach them. I have amazing guests on my podcast. My podcast is an amazing free resource and. 

[00:43:42] Yeah, I, I just, this is what I was born to do. Like, this has been my purpose all along and I'm, it's so fulfilling and I love it so much. So that was the cliff notes. I know that was like 30 minutes, but that's the cliff notes of my life story. Wow. Oh, it's very intense. Thank you for sharing all of that. 

[00:43:58] It's a vulnerable thing to do. I appreciate that for sure. Very cool. How you got from one thing to another. So, so now you have, all this expertise you've mentioned several times about hacking your autonomic. Autumn. Let me say that again, hacking your autonomic nervous system. Say that five times fast. 

[00:44:18] How, how did you find this and what do you do? And that's a great question. So I, I initially learned about the autonomic nervous system. Where did I initially learn about it? So I learned about neuroplasticity. Yeah. First from a woman named Annie hopper, who has a program called the dynamic neural retraining system, or D N R S. 

[00:44:44] And the retraining system is, is focusing on the brain and the limbic system specifically. Right? So after I bought her course, I watched all the videos and I started practicing the DNRs, the science of everything she shared, like made so much sense to me, it felt like a yes and my body. But then as I was practicing her program, it felt very forced. 

[00:45:09] And I was like, this is not sustainable. Like it was taking over an hour a day sometimes. Like it was a lot of work. There's part of her program where you're supposed to have. Like there's these like steps on the floor and you like do these steps every day on the floor. And one of the steps was to, bring up like happy memories from childhood and, and to describe them in detail to put yourself in that elevated emotional state. 

[00:45:38] Okay. And, then the next step of the process is to, create or envision something that you want to do in the future. That's also very happy. So then you're still in that elevated emotional state. Well, I found it very difficult to access positive memories from my past. And so I was like recycling the same memories over and over. 

[00:46:00] And after a few days of that, it was just like, they're not even exciting anymore, you know? Like how many times can I, can I describe making pies with my MIMO and feel an elevated emotional state before it just gets stale? Like you said. Sure. So I dropped that, but I took the knowledge of the limbic system and neuroplasticity with me. 

[00:46:22] And then that's when I started learning about the autonomic nervous system. And I started studying like Joe Dispenza. Then I found a protocol called the Nemetschek protocol and it's written by a doctor named Dr. Patrick Nemetschek. I read that book and that's where I learned the majority of what I know about the autonomic nervous system. 

[00:46:39] And it was just like, okay, this makes so much sense. Wim Hoff also talks a lot about the autonomic nervous system. So I just was pulling from different places and like piecing something together. And I was only doing it for myself. Like I never. Had the idea that one day I'm going to coach people and do this. 

[00:46:59] Like never, this was all just for myself, but of course I'm a very open, transparent person. And so I was talking about what I was doing on my food blog, Instagram account at the time. And I just was getting all of this positive response and feedback. And I came to realize that so many of the like chronic and mysterious health symptoms that I had had for most of my twenties and thirties, that couldn't be explained and lab work, couldn't be explained by a doctor couldn't really be diagnosed as this or that, but they're always there. 

[00:47:31] I, I was like, it's, it's the autonomic nervous system. That's the thing that connects everything together and all of these chronic and mysterious symptoms that aren't diagnosable as any one specific thing are the red flags that my body is giving me to let me know that my nervous system is not in a good. 

[00:47:50] Regulated safe state. Sure. So that's when the nervous system packing began. And, I use a, like, I'm very, very much a believer in the bottom up approaches. That's like the somatic experiencing shaking, dancing, embodiment, bodywork, like all the breath work, all the bottom-up stuff. But what I found was that trauma also causes a lot of inflammation in your brain. 

[00:48:22] And so you can do all the breath work and cold punches and, and, you know, body work and all of that that you want. And that's great, but. You're going to hit a ceiling because you're not addressing the brain inflammation piece. And that's where the Nemetschek protocol came in because it's a brain inflammation protocol. 

[00:48:40] It's very, very simple. You should definitely link the book in the show notes. Oh, I will. Okay. But yeah, so that, then I was like, oh, here's this top down approach. Like I'm already doing the body stuff. Now I can do the brain stuff. And coming from the food blogging world that I was in, I was in the health and wellness niche of food blogging. 

[00:49:01] So I had done all kinds of restrictive diets and gluten-free and dairy-free and paleo and keto and restricting sugar and restricting carbs and like buying everything organic and local and non-GMO and pasture raised. And like I was into Weston, a price stuff for a long time. I was fermenting and soaking everything and sprouting things. 

[00:49:20] And like all of that. And I had been in this. Diet culture for so long. And that culture of us gets stuck in there. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And that's like, actually one of the reasons that I think, people come to me for coaching is because they've seen me get out of that and like, they, they see that it's possible and they want that too. 

[00:49:43] And so, a lot of my work is like helping people deconstruct from that health and wellness culture, like toxic health and wellness culture. But that culture places, a lot of emphasis on the gut. And it's always talking about, like, if you heal your gut, you heal your body and the gut brain connection, all of that, and it's not wrong, but it all focuses on the gut. 

[00:50:04] Nobody's talking about the brain, you know, they're like just take more probiotics and drink more bone broth. And for eliminate for me, the problem is it's my adrenal gland, not my gut. My gut is fine. I've been addressing that for decades. That's fine. But, well, your autonomic nervous system controls your, your hormone production. 

[00:50:23] Right? And after my hysterectomy, I no longer own ovaries. My, my thyroid and my adrenal gland were like, you want us to do what now? You know? So the metabolism got shot and they went in the crapper and you know, I'm now addressing it with supplements from a nutritionist. That's I think helping, but, Yeah. 

[00:50:44] Yeah. It's a long, I mean, I was on that. I was on the hamster wheel of wellness for over a decade. Yeah. And it just wasn't working. So I started openly speaking out against like the gut is the holy grail of health. And I was like, we need, we need to be paying attention to the brain. Like, like, like trauma causes, brain inflammation and like brain inflammation, primes, microglia, and the brain and microglia when they're not primed, are these amazing anti-inflammatory soothing lubricating, white blood cells. 

[00:51:12] But when microglia are primed, it's like Mr. Hyde and they become very pro-inflammatory and like they increase inflammatory cytokines. You know, that trickles down and it causes dysfunction in the autonomic nervous system because the autonomic nervous system is the highway from the body to the brain and back. 

[00:51:29] Right. So, yeah, so my approach is, and consciousness and awareness and spirituality has been a big part of this journey too. Like part of, of my story is that after I was deconstructed and deconverted from Christianity, I thought about maybe identifying as an atheist for a minute. And that just never felt right for me. 

[00:51:46] And being able to reclaim and reconstruct a spirituality, that's like just mine and that isn't following rules of patriarchy or funding or fundamentalism, whatever your own cosmology is. Exactly. Yeah. So, so I operate in the realm of like, I have a soul that's lived many lifetimes and like that soul is my highest self. 

[00:52:08] My intuition is my body's connection to the spirit realm, like into my highest self and like. I believe my soul is here to learn lessons and to elevate and level up. And that, you know, I, I don't think the universe is punitive. I don't think God is punitive. I think the universe is wise and loving and it wants us to be well. 

[00:52:33] And it's even going to allow us to go through some really difficult things in order for us to be well. And I believe in love and compassion and empathy, and I want everything I do to be in service of love. And, yeah, it's so, so awareness and consciousness is a foundation of my work as, as the nervous system. 

[00:52:51] And then I want to help people reduce brain inflammation. And then I also, this is a term that I coined, but I also helped my clients reduce lifestyle inflammation life. So. Inflammation. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like, that's like all the things in your lifestyle that aren't supporting what you want for yourself. 

[00:53:13] You know, like the job you hate the job, you hate the boundaries, you won't set the relationship. That's not fulfilling working to pay for things. You don't have the time to enjoy. Keeping up with the Joneses, like being in the rat race, like hustling, like that kind of shit. So I'm really into like helping my clients identify that kind of stuff and, and shift it because you're not going to heal in the same lifestyle that you got sick in. 

[00:53:39] You know, a lot of people think, oh, I'll just, I'll just figure out how to hack my brain and my body. But nothing about my life has to change. I'm like, no, that's bullshit. It doesn't work that way. Yeah. There's a lot of behavioral shifts that have to happen, you know, eliminating. Toxic people and toxic situations and chronic toxic experiences, like you said, like jobs that you hate or you know, that the people who just get in your way all the time. 

[00:54:03] But some of it is, is teaching ourselves how to not get in our own way. You know, I know we have to get rid of the, we have to get rid of the people pleasing thing. You have to get rid of the being afraid to stand up for your own boundaries thing, know, and learn how to say no to stuff. Amen to that. 

[00:54:24] You know, I I'm constantly fighting. I'm pretty good with the saying no thing. I'm pretty good with not, not allowing too many other people's agenda into my daily or weekly life, but. I still have not yet learned that there are really only 24 hours in a day. And I fancy myself super woman, you know? And, and like, I can, you know, not that my house is perfect and all the dishes are done cause there's still three days of dishes in my kitchen sink, but I still am going to bed too late because I'm reading or I'm being creative or I'm learning something new or I'm taking on another like podcast related education related project or something, but it's all stuff I keep on my own plate. 

[00:55:14] You know? So keeping your own plate, I'm overheating my own plate. Can I tell you the question that I ask? All my clients? Yeah. What purpose is that serving for you? I think it's slowly incrementally getting me. The answers that I want for my own curiosity, I think it's sort of slowly getting me the knowledge that I want, but it's also very quickly unraveling my mental capacity and my patients and my ability to focus for more period for a longer period of time. 

[00:55:52] So I do know that I need to schedule. I need to anticipate doing or expect to do less each day and which will allow me to really, if you look at it from the inside, do more. So yeah, I know, I know what to do, and I know why I just. Oh, no, always implement, you know, so, you know, okay, I'll take my coach hat off and I will put my podcast guests hat back on. 

[00:56:25] No, no, no, it's totally fine. Totally fine. You know, and it, you know, it, it rolls into a crappy morning on the next day. So, so last night I was writing and working and thinking too late and I was staying up well past what I knew my bedtime should be. And then pushed snooze for 45 minutes. This morning woke up. 

[00:56:46] The first word out of my mouth was a big old fuck. And, you know, and then had a frozen windshield on my car. And I was like six minutes late for school, which, you know, it was a regular desk job, six minutes, what? Six minutes doesn't really matter. But I had a class of 26. 12th graders waiting for me. So I had to call into school, you know, can someone babysit my class? 

[00:57:07] You know, whatever. They don't mind. It doesn't happen often, but it was all because I went to bed too late the night before all of it. Yeah. So, you know, this work is not all love and light. This work is, it takes a lot of self discipline and it takes like, like my, my main objective, however we get there, my main objective is always, always to point people back to themselves, back to a place of self responsibility, back to a place of realizing that they, whether you realize it or not, you, you always are choosing, you're always making choices. 

[00:57:41] Most of our choices are unconscious, but when you start to shift that and you make more conscious choices, like then you can start creating the reality that you really want. And you're no longer a victim of the reality that you have. That was the unconscious reality. So it's not love and light and like toxic positivity, for sure. 

[00:58:02] Like there's a lot of, you know, wailing and gnashing of teeth involved. But I learned that years ago, I was, I've been in therapy for on and off for most of my adult life. And I got to say about 2000, no, yeah. About 2012 ish. Maybe I was, I was faced with a situation, a financial, emotional relationship situation that I didn't think there was an answer to. 

[00:58:28] I said, I'm stuck. You know, I'm going to have to put up with this situation in perpetuity because I can't afford financially to make another decision. And my therapist said, well, you do have a choice. I'm like, what do you mean? I have a choice. I don't have a choice. She's like, you might not like the choice. 

[00:58:47] You might not like the option. But you have a choice and it took me probably a good hot minute to sit there and think about it. And I was like, well, I could do nothing and stay where I am and have everything be shitty and have me feel like crap all the time. And that's a choice too, and that's a choice to stay and do nothing. 

[00:59:10] Or I can get out of my current living situation and, you know, deal with the financial fallout, but at least emotionally be safe and, and, and extricate myself and my children from this toxic bullshit. And so that's what I did. And I found myself a lawyer to handle the bankruptcy and just fucking dealt with it, you know, and, and it sucked and it was blissful and heavenly at the same time. 

[00:59:40] Yeah. I totally know that. You know, but, but I just, I needed somebody to sort of shake me up and say that. Yeah. And, and that most people do. Like most people, they, they, they come to a place where they realize like the life I have is not the life I want. And if I don't do anything to change it, it's going to continue to be the life I don't want. 

[01:00:06] And I'm going to look up, I'm going to look up when I'm 50, 60, 70 years old and I'm going to have regrets and I will have not pursued my dreams and I will have not followed my heart. And I will have listen to other people over my own voice. And like, yeah. And that like, that's a recipe for dis-ease. 

[01:00:24] Yeah. And you know, and the only I talk about this all the time on the podcast, the only person who has the capacity, the agency, the ability, the power to do anything about anything in our lives. And that you don't need anybody else's damn permission to make the decision in your life or to make a choice in your life or to change your behavior, or, you know, change your address or change your job or change your relationship. 

[01:00:50] But people don't, but people don't because of y'all starter. Right? Well, well, the nervous system feels safe and whatever's familiar. Like our nervous systems love familiar, and that's where they feel safe. Even if safe or even a familiar is unhealthy, dysfunctional, chaotic. Right. If that's what we're used to, that our nervous system is like, I'm, I'm safe here, but you logically know this isn't right, right. 

[01:01:18] But you can't logic your way out of disfunction and chaos and. Lack of health. Like you have to do it in your body as well because your body is what is feeling safe in that familiar, but dysfunctional environment or in that safe, but are in that yeah. Familiar but dysfunctional relationship or job or whatever. 

[01:01:40] So, so the work is, not to just like quit the job, leave the husband, like do all that, like that, that may be part of the work for sure. But you're going to fall right back into the same old patterns. Unless you realize that you've got to train your body to feel safe in something that is actually safe and healthy and functional. 

[01:02:01] Exactly. Exactly. Get yourself used to being treated well or demanding to be treated well and treating yourself well, not just from other people, but demanding to treat yourself well, you know, and, and I, I don't think it, it took me not only therapy. It took me. Doing research and a ton of reading on my own. 

[01:02:21] It took me dating in my forties, which was a disaster, but yet wonderful at the same time, because each disaster taught me something else that for me to finally figure out that, you know, the only thing that really mattered was how I felt about me and whatever situation that I have myself in. It's important to like the city to like me in it. 

[01:02:47] Right. You know, and I had to do whatever I could to make sure that I really was comfortable with myself. Yeah. Metaphorically standing naked in the sunshine. I was comfortable with myself. Yeah. Yeah. And that took a lot of work and a lot of digging deep and a lot of journaling, which I've been doing for 30 years and, and just get out and get your own way, you know? 

[01:03:11] Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people don't even know they're in their own. I think it's everyone else's fault. Yeah. But ultimately you're the only person who's responsible for you. And when you, when you take that radical self responsibility where you are, where you're like, I mean, because let's be honest, chances are whatever happened to you was not your, your choice, right? 

[01:03:36] Like chances are like, whatever happened, especially if you were a kid, you couldn't leave, you couldn't say no, you couldn't fight back. Like your autonomy was not respected. That was not your choice. And that certainly was not your fault. Right. But as it a fully adult sovereign autonomous beings, What you choose to do with that? 

[01:03:57] Absolutely. Is your responsibility. Yeah. And you can live in victim hood forever and be like, oh, it wasn't my fault. Well, I didn't choose this. Like, oh, it was done to me. I mean, you can live like that and it's true. You didn't choose it. And it wasn't fair for sure. While, you know, you're 30 years old. Right. 

[01:04:14] It happened to me when I was a kid. I didn't choose this doesn't fly anymore. Exactly. Yeah. And it's two years old and you woke up this morning and you did that same thing that you've done for 30, 30 years. Yeah. Now your choice. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, what I find is people who have those like sudden wake up calls or the like, fuck, I've got to take some responsibility for myself. 

[01:04:35] They take the responsibility for themselves, but then it's a process of coming back to, or discovering for the first time, how to trust themselves. Because they've been so used to outsourcing their power, their decision-making, their beliefs, their feelings, their like everything to things and people outside of themselves. 

[01:04:57] And so you can't just tell somebody we'll just take responsibility for yourself without also helping them, giving them that sense of self-trust, you know, because once you trust yourself, like, fuck that it's limitless. Yeah. You know, there isn't anything now that I wouldn't try or do, if I felt like it was in my own best interest to do you know, and then it wasn't a healthy thing. 

[01:05:20] I, there was a movie a bunch of years ago called letters to Juliet with I can't think of a single name of any of the actors haven't seen it. It's so good. Basically you don't even need to know the premise, but the there's a scene where they're talking about the phrase. What if. You know, this, this one woman allowed what if to scare her, but what if it was a disaster? 

[01:05:47] What if my parents disowned me? What if the relationship combusts? What if, what if, what if, what if and used it as a way to limit herself? Yeah. And it really spoke to me because it was really a hundred percent the way my mother lived her life and why she was always so miserable. And it really was part of the, the template that she was trying to raise me. 

[01:06:15] Yeah, this, this fear and anxiety and, you know, will nothing works out and nothing worked out everything's against you. And everything's horrible. And what if the sky falls, you know, and what if, what if the, the earth swallows you up? You know, like none of the things that would happen. And even if half of them happened, we'd be fine. 

[01:06:34] You know, we could figure it out a way to be resourceful enough to figure it out. But for me, I saw what if, as an option as a, as a, an optimistic thing, well, what if it worked out? What if I learned something great? What if I tried it? And I loved it? What if I was really good at it? What if me doing that thing or going to that place or talking to that person? 

[01:06:58] What if that opened up a whole new conduit to something that I'd never even imagined before? And what if I tried it and I hated it. So what would happen? So what do it again? And I changed my mind and I try something. Yeah. And it sort of hearkened back to a lesson that I taught myself when I was 14, I had grown up sort of being painfully shy. 

[01:07:22] And my mom who had been shy was like limited her whole life because she was afraid of what other people would think about her. So she didn't open her mouth and say anything, and she didn't go anywhere and she was miserable about it. And yet didn't see that it was when her, within her power to change. 

[01:07:43] And at 14 I was like, well, that's just bullshit. I don't want to live my life that way. Nice. No, I want to try out for the school musical. I want to be friends with those kids over there. I want to, you know, whatever. And, and I wrote in my journal, I actually remember looking at myself in the mirror and saying, okay, so if you talk to those kids on the other side of the cafeteria, what is going on. 

[01:08:03] Will the earth crack open and swallow. You whole will a fiery bolt of lightning from the sky, come down and burn you to request. No, nothing will happen. The worst that will happen is that they don't want to talk to you. And they spurned you in some way. Could you live with that? Yes, because it can't be worse than being ignored. 

[01:08:21] Right. So I got up the courage and I went over and I talked to them and they laughed at the thing I said, which was supposed to be a joke. So it was fine. And, and it was great. And I can't say that we became the best of friends because I don't even know who they were. I have no recollection of what they look like or who, you know, what their names were. 

[01:08:40] I just know that they existed and that the event happened. And it made me feel like, all right, well, I can do that. I can trust myself to survive that. What else can I do? You know? It was just like, yeah, that's huge. I don't even know. I don't even know if my 17 year old could do that. I just, I just turned myself on that way. 

[01:09:02] You know, like, this is what I have to do. And then I'm like, I really, you know, I want to be on stage with the show at school, the musical. I don't want to just do publicity. I don't want to just build sets or whatever I wanted. And I knew I could sing if I would ever get the gumption to actually sing in from another, in front of another human being. 

[01:09:22] And so I used that same. What if, what if it went well, then I'd be in the show. What if it went really badly? What would happen? Yeah, not a goddamn thing. It's a closed audition. None of my friends would see me. No one else would hear and the worst comes to worst. I don't get in the show and I go back to the publicity committee like, wow, there was no downside. 

[01:09:45] That's incredible that you had that thought process at such a young age, that's really, really brave. And I don't think you and I don't. I mean, cause that's way before the movie thing. But, but, but I don't, I don't know what, what triggered it. I can't, I mean, I think it was just not wanting to be like the way my mother. 

[01:10:05] Yeah. Yeah. I think sometimes seeing the, the trajectory that we could be on, if we, if we stayed in the familiar, you know, in what is safe, air quotes, what's safe, but maybe not functional or healthy or is chaotic. Like it's like a Christmas story, you know, like, yeah. And you're just like, well, I'm fuck that. 

[01:10:26] Like that's not an option for me. I'm going to do whatever I can to learn how to be something else to do the exact opposite of that. That's exactly what I did. Whenever I got to the psych hospital, I'm going to do whatever I can to figure out what got me to this. And then I, and then I'm going to heal it. 

[01:10:49] a lot of people think it's like a one and done thing the whole, but it's not it's okay. I feel this now, what else do I heal? And then you may have to go back and still excavate something that you thought you were done with, but maybe you weren't, you know? Yeah. It's sort of a never-ending process, but, but it's not daunting. 

[01:11:05] I think once you start and you start to feel better and you start to recover, some are your own personal agency and your own faith in yourself and, and, and, and feel that connection to the, to the spiritual realm or whatever you call that. I think when you start living into your own power, I think it's, it's addicting in a good way. 

[01:11:27] You know? How do you, how do you eat. One bite at a fricking time. I mean, and we're, we're so used to either living in the past or projecting into the future. What if, what if, what if right. That's all future projection, right. You know, and then we limit ourselves because of our past. So it's like, well, this didn't work out in the past, therefore I'm not going to try it again. 

[01:11:49] So, okay. That's a great recipe for stuckness, right? That's a great recipe for a sickness, but you don't have to look in the future or in the past you can literally just one moment at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time, that's how I got and then the next right thing, and then the next right thing to do the next right thing. 

[01:12:10] You don't have to plan 10 steps down the road. You just have to take the next step. Yeah. Um, mindfulness puts you right in the moment. Baby steps are still steps. Yeah. I tell my students that all the time, baby steps are still steps. Yeah. Yeah. I bet you're a great teacher. I try, I try today, this year, I'm looking at everything, you know, w w w 1820 months into a pandemic. 

[01:12:36] I'm looking at all the literature that I teach, that we read together from a mental health standpoint, you know, not just, this is a dynamic character and he changed because of the, but why, you know, what was it about what happened to him, his experience, the way he grew up, the times that he lived in, he that made this character make this choice. 

[01:13:00] And, and what were the ramifications of that? And how did that, you know, how did he feel in that moment? How do you know how he felt in that moment? And then it's, it's close reading and it's emotional literacy. And I'm hoping so far, the kids are taking to it very well. And, and some of them more than others, because you know, everything is a lovely bell curve. 

[01:13:24] But some of the kids are, are really, their writing is starting to develop more of a sense of their own understanding of their own brains, which is the ultimate goal of every freaking thing I ever do. Yeah. So it's heavenly. Well, this has been a lovely conversation to answer all your questions. You answered all my questions, you know, for, for the first time, in a while, I didn't, pre-prepare a whole list of stuff, a list of questions, because I knew that it would just happen organically and be great. 

[01:14:06] So amazing. That's my favorite. Awesome. So I will link all of your contact information, you know, your website and your Instagram and your socials and all of that stuff to you. The show notes, as well as the links to some of the books that you have recommended. so if you're not driving, you can scroll down and look at the show notes. 

[01:14:27] If you are driving while you're listening to this or walking in traffic, please don't look at the show notes. Yeah, I, you know, I wasn't, I was in a coffee shop the other day and I literally saw someone on a bicycle, like looking at their phone while they were riding a bike. And I was just a recipe for death. 

[01:14:45] How do you even do that? Like, I don't even think I would have the coordination to be able to do that. No. Well, that's gotta be worse than looking at your phone while you're driving. I, yeah, I think that looking at your phone while you're riding a bike is probably worse than looking at your phone while you're driving. 

[01:15:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These stupid phones. And yet mine's never more than five feet away from me, right? Mine is right here in front of me. Totally. I had to, I had to text my husband while we were talking to tell him to put the chicken in the oven for dinner. Okay. There you go. How are we cooking the chicken? 

[01:15:25] I mean, baking it, but with what? Okay. So we have a seasoning mix that my husband made up. We call it the season, anything spice blend. But it's like paprika has a lot of paprika in it. Paprika, salt, pepper, garlic powder. I think there's some oregano in there. Anyway, he, he makes it in like court size jars. 

[01:15:45] He like makes his big batches of it. And then we just have the jar and I buy a skin on bone in chicken thighs, and we generously sprinkle that seasoning mix over the chicken thighs and just bake it at 3 75 for like 40, 45 minutes. The skin gets super crispy and it has that crispy spice coating on it. 

[01:16:08] And then the juices mixed with the spice coating. So it makes this sound like a gravy or a sauce, but it's like, it's delicious. It's one of our favorite things to make. I mean, we love to make chicken buys with the season, anything spice mix on it. So that's what's for dinner and he can make it on his own. 

[01:16:31] Yes. Praise the gods when my husband makes dinner it's takeout or reservations. So yeah, usually, usually my husband will like go to, cause we live pretty far out in the woods. So you don't. Go get, take out. Like if that's, doesn't take some thought 

[01:16:49] grub hub don't deliver to your home. No, no Instacart does not exist here. Yeah, you don't just get takeout. Like you drive 45 minutes for takeout if you want. But at that point, if you just like stay in the restaurant eat, but it would be old by the time you got home. Anyway. So he normally like, he will go to the local little general store that we have and he'll get like frozen pizza or that's usually his idea of cooking, which I appreciate. 

[01:17:13] Yeah, that's not ideally how I would love to eat, but beggars can't be choosers. And so, but tonight he can make the chicken and then I have, you know, broccoli or parsnips or like something that I can go throw into and then we can have dinner sounds heavenly. I'm kind of hungry now. Same. Well, I hope you enjoy your dinner. 

[01:17:37] Thank you so much for being on permission to heal. It's been really a delight to chat with you. Thank you, Marcy. I've loved it.