EPISODE 56: TYLER

We're here. He is here. Mm-hmm. Foot tapping through the floor. I didn't drink mine because I thought I might.

maybe want to wait until after I do the intro to have that massive espresso. So I'm waiting. It smells good though. Um I want to answer a question someone sent me this week, not even in a QA, just as a DM, about intermittent fasting. And I said I would answer it in the intro, so that is what I am doing. Uh, I think a lot of things about intermittent fasting. I think that there is a very fine line between

a healthy practice of intermittent fasting and an eating disorder. So I think it's a fine line. I think that it gets excessive. And I also do it every night, twelve hours. I don't think that's excessive. And my experience has been that it makes an enormous difference in

how my gut operates, how my GI system functions, and therefore how I feel in general. Like a massive difference. And I've talked about this either in episodes or in other intros about the migrating motor refect The migrating motor reflex reflex. Blah blah blah. I am not going to do it again here. One because I can't even pronounce it, but two because I know that I've talked about it before. So

Um, I mean I don't mind talking about it again. I just imagine you don't want to hear it again if you already have. If you haven't, you want me to explain it to you, shoot me a DM and I will do a mini episode about it. But for now Twelve hours, migrating motor reflex. It gives that reflex several chances to run and I find that makes a huge difference in how I feel.

More than that, and I feel hungry and dysregulated in the morning. So twelve hours. I mean, I've done 14 by accident. That's fine. That's just an intuitive thing when I've waited longer in the day before I started consuming calories. But not on purpose. But on purpose I always do twelve hours.

That's what I do. What you do should be what works for your body with the understanding that our we don't want to be starving ourselves ever and that intuitive eating should always be the principle. With that said. There is one exception for me, and that is when I've had infections that won't resolve. Like this was a really big part of getting rid of a very long standing candida overgrowth I had. It has worked for me a few times with persistent viruses, those low level ones that hang around.

Such that you're not sick enough to stay home from work, but sick enough to feel shitty at work. High capitalism. Um, that that kind of thing. I have only under those circumstances done fasts between twenty-four and thirty-six hours, not dry, with water and um non caffeinated herbal teas, but nothing else, no calories, for twenty four to thirty six hours so that my body can get into autophagy.

Which is a word, the pronunciation of which I looked up right before we taped this intro because I knew I was going to talk about it and I have been saying it to myself as autophagy for the few years that I have known what it is. I've only known what the word was. I've only known the word existed for a couple of years and have been saying it knowing I was saying it incorrectly to myself,'cause autophagy is obviously not how you say it. That seems obvious, but

never really was compelled to look it up until I knew I'd be saying it to lots of people. And it is, in fact, autophagy. Auto Fage sounds like. Yes. It does. It does. What autophagy or autophagy if you're cool, what that is is it's a metabolic process. Autophagy means like eat yourself or kill yourself. I can't remember which, whatever phage that sounds more like eat. So eat itself. Your your body

Metabolizes, eats its own tissue basically, gets rid of cells in a good way to get rid of disease, to help your metabolism for things like that. So I have found it does infect. speed up the healing process. And that might be because I think it will. Who knows? I don't know what the reason is, but the correlation for me has been if I fast for twenty four to thirty-six hours, a persistent infection result.

Again, I'm not a doctor, even though I play one in these conversations. So, you know, talk to your doctor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just don't make a habit of it, right? You don't need to starve your body. That's not necessary for optimum health. There are situations in which it can be helpful in healing and like I said, the shorter fasts, 12 hours. I personally believe that those are helpful for optimum gut health. And I definitely recommend them to all of the clients.

with whom I work on nutrition. So thanks for coming to my TED Talk. The other thing I wanted to talk about, it was Malia's birthday this week. If you have been listening to the podcast from the beginning, you know who Malia is. If you don't, you're going to have to listen to the podcast from the beginning. Um But it was Malia's birthday on Wednesday. Happy birthday, Malia. And check this Aries shit out. This is some hardcore Aries shit right here.

So until the beginning of February, Malia worked in clinical research and she had lots of job offers in clinical research here and even started one here. I'm not going to get into why she left it, but it sucked and fucked them and she left it. and then Malia was making all this crazy food for her cat and she got into making

raw pet food. And then she got into pet nutrition. And then, as luck would have it, My dog, my soulmate Chili, developed an allergy that we assumed was food based and Malia basically fixed her in twenty-four hours with this wonder prescription she thought of a couple of weeks ago before She became the new manager at SF Raw as a result of just sort of falling into this thing that she's really interested and passionate about.

pet nutrition and raw food for pets, she then on her birthday becomes the manager of this really rad. raw pet food place in San Francisco that only San Francisco would have. And it does occur to me when I say S F raw that given the San Francisco profile that could mean a lot of things. It's raw pet food. And that's not a euphemism. And it's actual pets that are animals, not other people who have collars and leashes. It's just raw pet food, right?

But anyway, only an Aries moves here in the beginning of February in one career and then ascends immediately to managing this very niche specialized business in San Francisco. Like that is airy shit. And congratulations to S F Raw because Malia done Fix My Dog. So now she works for you, lucky you. And I just looked at their website and the place seems awesome. So

So there's that. Happy birthday, Malia. Okay, we have a fascinating guest. This is a doozy of the story. I am very grateful he shared it with us. So let's do that. Let's talk to Tyler.

So I did get from my assistant a little bit of information. I think she told you I like to go in cold, but she did mention to me that there's some pretty intense content for you around your divorce and the custody of your children. So I know that that's that's the the big topic. Before we get to that, if it's okay with you, I just want to get a little background information. Does that work? Yeah, that's fine. Okay. Tyler, how old are you? 28, Tyler. Okay, when's your birthday?

August fifteenth, nineteen ninety five. Oh, m forty percent of my clients are Leos. I know you people well. Okay, so you are a Leo and you are twenty eight years old. Are you're divorced, is that right? Uh in the process. In the process. Taking yeah, it's taking the government forever and a day. Oh yeah, shocking. And how many children do you have? I have three. Three kids. And how old are they? Uh seven, five, and four.

Okay, so you started young. You were twenty one when you had your first kid. That is young these days, right? That's how old my parents were when I was born. Yeah, I actually uh my oldest boy was uh born about a little under a month uh before I turned twenty one. So Oh yeah, okay. All right. I was just I was born like a week after both of my parents turned twenty one. So back then it wasn't as unusual. These days it's a little less common. But are your parents alive, Tyler?

Are they married to each other? No they are not. Okay, how old were you when they split? I was. Fifteen or sixteen? Okay. And do you have siblings? Yes, I have to do that. Biological siblings. Whoa. Yeah. Where are you in the birth order? Second to last. Second to last. Okay. That's a lot of kids. Is uh did you grow up in a religious family? My dad was very much a bible thumper. Yeah. I I fell out of the Christian faith when I was sixteen.

As one does. Okay. Okay. Um so you were raised then in a in in what you would call definitely a Christian household. Those values were parent. Yeah. Yeah. You have six sibs, it's usually a giveaway. That's usually what's going on, right? So can what would you like to tell me or what are you comfortable sharing with me about your childhood up until the time your parents divorced? Was it was there a lot of conflict? Did they fight a lot? What was it like at home?

It was an active war zone in my household almost all the time. I'm so sorry. Okay. And tell me what that means specifically. A lot of verbal abuse, uh, a lot of physical abuse. There are some spots in my memory that I'm a little hazy on, uh due to the fact that trauma, trauma does that to you.

It does. That's exactly right. It's the the having um elevated levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, blocks memory formation. So a lot of times we don't make the memories around the stressful events. And then there's of course the chance that we've stuffed them because they're painful. But one way or another, like you said, yes, it is very common in a traumatic childhood for there to be big spots of haziness, right? So verbal abuse perpetrated by both parents.

Yeah. My mother's A big Contributor to that. She is. So both of them. Okay. And were they abusive toward each other as well, or just the parents to the children? They were definitely verbally abusive to each other. I never saw either one of my parents ever harm each other. Okay. Okay. Okay. But they were physically abusive to the kids. Yeah. Okay. Are you close with your siblings now or any of them? I am close to one of them. Others still are the others still um in in the church?

No. Uh they are either floating around in prison or they have just cut off all communication. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Okay, so you are closest to the you said the eldest? Yeah. Okay. All right. And is that a brother or a sister? Uh that'd be my sister Brandy. Okay. Okay, so you and Brandy are still close. So, um, how was school for you? And just to do a quick overview, we'll look first at like elementary school. Did you go to a public school or did you go to a Christian school?

I went to uh a public school. Uh I'm originally from Michigan. So uh yeah, I went to a public community school which was K through twelve. Oh, it was K through twelve. Okay. And how was it for you? Did you have friends? Were you successful in school in general? What was your school experience like? Uh I was bullied a little bit uh in elementary school. But once middle school hit, uh, and I finally grew into my body a little bit better. Yeah. Became wiser to myself uh bullying kind of stuff.

Okay. And so in m when you got into middle school, were you interested in girls? Did you start to have Oh yeah. Yeah. Did you d have girlfriends in middle school and high school? Did you date? Yeah. Yeah. And how did you do in school? Well enough? Did you feel successful in school or was that um a place where you did not? I've really struggled for a long time, uh, till probably about sophomore year.

What changed besides your parents getting divorced,'cause that would've been right when they split is when you're still Yeah, yeah. Mr. Augenstein. Who was just like, You've got a talent for writing, uh you you need to use it. Nice. It's always the English teachers.

Yeah. Yeah, that'll that definitely can do it. All it takes actually for a child to build resilience in um difficult circumstances is to have one positive, consistent adult. So sometimes these teachers can really be the difference for those of us with shitty

shitty lives at home between ha you know, surviving them and not surviving them, right? So you so somebody was able to see you, right, completely and see that you had this talent and that changed your relationship with school. That's Basically how that went down. I ended up graduating uh About a year later early. Oh wow. Good for you. Okay, so you graduated early and then what did you do?

I uh enrolled in a uh program uh at uh it's called a career tech center. Yep. Uh that was equivalent to college classes because I was still considered a minor. Okay. Um and got a bachelor's degree in filming technologies and network programming. Wow. All right. So you were you really sort of plowed through that, right? Through school and through learning, um, a skill almost like a a a trade, but from an academic perspective. That's so you were busy.

You were busy. Yeah. Okay. And I know that you had your first child when you were twenty one. So sometime during all of this work you must have met your wife. When did you meet your ex wife? I met her When I was eighteen I had decided I was just gonna move down to Florida for a year and then move out to California and start my Filming dreams and that that did not go that way. No it didn't did. No. Uh I I met her my literally three hours after I got off the Greyhound bus.

She was my server at a restaurant and I I turned to my brother in law, I was like, She's really cute. I'm gonna marry her one day and then I courted her for two years and then we got married and then about a year into our marriage after our little one was born, uh her abusive behavior started becoming very apparent.

Okay. And so before we get into that, I wanna backtrack for a moment and just um Your and go back for a second to your childhood. And you did say that your mom was both physically and verbally abusive. Is that right? She was uh more like verbally abusive than physically abuse more she She was ab physically abusive maybe once or twice, but her mental abuse is just still dealing with it today.

I bet you are. I bet you are. So this is things that she would say to you, is that what you mean? Like Yeah. Yeah. She straight up told me when I was twelve that the only reason why I was born was because my grandfather wanted more grandchildren. Oh, Tyler, I'm really sorry. That's fucking cruel. Yeah. Okay. So the reason I w popped back to that is just to set the stage for what is a very almost predictable but definitely understandable pattern that you would

fall into without even knowing it of finding a partner who could recreate this dynamic for you, right? Of being with a female attachment figure who's abusive. So you said it was about a year uh into the uh into the marriage when your wife's abusive behavior came to the surface and what did that look like? How did that start? slapped me across the face while I was driving at about forty five miles an hour. What did you do?

I slammed on the brakes instinctively. Yeah. Pulled the car over and I was like, Don't ever hit me again or me and that boy will be gone. Yeah. Did not stick to my words on that. Most of us don't. Most of us don't, Tyler. So that was the first time. And then did it d did it become slowly more frequent? Was it infrequent? How did that pattern of abuse develop after that?

It was almost uh a night and day type of situation. It was Very much uh I if I woke up and she woke up and happened to be in a good mood, I had a good day and I wasn't getting screamed and yelled at. Or hit, or things thrown at me. So we talk about this with a lot of guests on the show, this idea of of an what's called, um what's called in some parts of psychology a an open gestalt, which is that when you have an experience as a kid

that doesn't end well, right? So you uh what we're looking at here is you have this relationship with your parents in which they're abusive, right? And so as a kid, we don't have that many ways to deal with that. We can't really

push back or fight back when we're young. And so the psyche develops this idea or d or holds this experience as not having ended right, right? You never had the chance to stand up for yourself or protect yourself. And so we carry that into our adult relationships and our psyche is real tricky in that it can sniff out.

the people we meet, like when that that reaction you had to your wife when you met her, when as soon as you met her you were like really intensely drawn to her, that is often what happens for those of us with a trauma dynamic that hasn't been resolved. Our psyche will create this in Hang.

attraction to someone who is likely to recreate that dynamic for us. And we don't even realize that it isn't a conscious process, right? But what our psyche is hoping, and just spoiler alert, this is never how it goes, but what our psyche's hoping will happen

is we will re-engage with an abuser. So it's sort of like you're repeating the pattern you had with your parents, but your psyche thinks this time you're going to be able to stand up for yourself and fix it and protect yourself and then everything's going to feel better. But as you've experienced, what really happens is

We get triggered, we're being re-traumatized, and we generally will respond the same way we did, which is that, yeah, we think you say, like, if that ever happens again, I'm leaving, but it's definitely not that easy and not that simple, right? Our nervous system tends to have a different response.

and we're more likely to stay in the situation. Again, with our psyche still hoping somehow we're gonna work ourselves out of it. Right. So you're in I know that you have you said you have three kids, right? And so this behavior From your wife started shortly after the first was born and you were unable to extricate yourself such that there were two more kids, right? So there were yeah.

Two more kids are born and and so this Jekyll and Hyde thing of, you know, depending on which version of her you woke up with, that would determine how the day was going to go and how you were treated. Did that persist throughout the relationship and throughout the the births of the other children or did it sort of were there times when it stopped and came back or was it consistent?

It was consistent up until probably about three years ago. Okay. Okay, and what happened three years ago that changed it? Three years ago, uh we had um become homeless in the state of Michigan. Oh. Uh due to circumstances outside of at the time my control and we ended up losing custody of our kids and putting our kids in a guardianship with my mother. Oh. God'cause at the time she had claimed that she had changed and I was unfortunately foolish enough to believe her.

Well, I mean foolish is one way to look at it and the other way to look at it is you need somebody to take care of your kids, right? And so I think it would be pretty easy for any of us to believe That mom's going to be different and our kids are going to be safe'cause you don't have that many other options. And certainly someone you know is always gonna feel like a safer option than a stranger for your kids, right?

So it would make sense that that'd be the option you'd choose. But I'm guessing from the way that you just told that to me that mom had not in fact changed. Was she abusive to your children? Uh she uh surprisingly being exp like the perfect grandma to my children, um, but it's still very cruel and malicious to me. Yeah. Um Yep, yep, yep. So your mom takes your kids in because you two got into financial circumstances. This was post pandemic or during the pandemic?

Literally uh three months to the day before the pandemic struck. Oh Oh shit, this was right before the pandemic is when you two became unhoused. So then the pandemic hits, which is unlikely to better anybody's circumstances. So did that were did you were you h homeless throughout the pandemic? We were homeless for exactly ten months uh and fourteen days. You know not that anybody was counting, right? Ten months and fourteen days. That's a long time. How did you guys survive? What did you do?

We were lucky enough to meet with a uh organization in Michigan that helps with how getting people reunified with their families and getting back up on their feet. So they were able to help us by having us in a hotel. And, you know, helping us get transportation when we needed it. And they were a great company. They really helped. So what's the name of that company? If they're great, we should probably name them. I I don't remember. That's okay. That's all right.

Uh Yeah. So you so and then how were you able to get out of the hotel and into a home again? I just kind of put my nose to the grindstone, uh, started working three jobs at a time. Damn. What about your wife? Was she working? Yeah, she was working one job. She had points of, Oh, well, we're never gonna get them back and then she'll have points of, Well, we just gotta keep going. Would you see? Particularly during that time that they were with your mom?

We tried our best to. Um they didn't uh my mother and her life partner decided to make it as difficult as possible. Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So when the ten months were up and you were in a home again, did you get your kids back from your mom? Took us uh all the way up until twenty twenty two to get my children back from my mother. Yeah, she they Did you have to go through legal channels to get them back? Yeah, we had to go through the court system there in Michigan and it

was very biased. Uh Judge was very not willing to listen at all. It made things extremely hard. Yeah. Family court tends to be really corrupt and problematic. This is definitely Something I've heard from many people. So but the the it wasn't an easy process, but you did get they they did give you your the children back to you and your wife?

The court did. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And so at this point you've gotten your kids back. It's twenty twenty two. You're working, your wife's working. You have your kids back. How much longer was it before you and your wife broke up? It was Just about a year. Okay. Um I came home to find uh another man and his boxers in my kitchen at three in the morning eating my food. Mm.

Cyclic side breathing. I think it was then, or rather now, so let's do some. But first I implore you to rewind by 15 seconds and listen to the sound that Josh makes. When Tyler announces finding that man in his kitchen, because we've listened to it about 15 times to desensitize me to it, because every time I heard it, I would. have to bend over laughing. Just now gotten to the point that I can hear it without crying, so It's just like the visual is is so many layers of dis So many.

Picture him eating like a bowl of cereal in his boxers in the middle of the kitchen. Yeah. It if any of you like me is a little curious as to how and why Josh so quickly gets a picture of the most like horrifying image possible in that situation, that's it. Good job. Um, as I was saying, this seems like a really good time to do some cyclic side breathing. So let's do that. You know how it goes. Inhale, hold. I'm not saying do it. I'm just reminding you how it goes. Inhale, hold.

Inhale, full, exhale, two, three, four, five, six. Right? You are inhaling through your nose and exhaling out of your mouth, emptying your lungs all the way, trying to get that first breath only into your belly and the top off breath, whatever you have to do to get more air in. Do it. Ready? Sorry. Yikes. We might not edit that out because that's how we roll. Let's do some cyclic side breathing. Get ready to inhale and inhale. Hold. Inhale full. Exhale two, three, four.

Inhale, hold. Inhale, full. Exhale, two, three, four. Six. Inhale, hold. Inhale, full. Exhale two. Five. Inhale, hold. Inhale full. Exhale, two, three, four, Five, six, but you're not actually done. I'm stopping for a moment to tell those of you who are not doing the breath work right now to stop what you're doing and do the breath work. We'll do three more. Come on, please just do it. Ready? Inhale, hold. Inhale, full. Exhale, two, three, four, five. Inhale full. Exhale. Two, three, four, five.

Inhale, hold. Inhale, full. Exhale, two, three, four, five. Now we're done. Let's get back to Tyler.

I'm a Zen Buddhist now, so um Okay. I bet you are. Yeah. Well I I have been a Zen Buddhist since I was sixteen and fell out of a Christian church. Yeah. So part of our faith practice is to have a physical manifestation our hair as a promise not to cause harm. And I shaved my head completely bald after that night. Yeah. Okay. So did you and your wife break up immediately after that? Yeah, I told her to she's got until August to pack her stuff and get out of my house. And did she? Did she get out?

Uh she left june twenty fifth and never returned. No idea where she went. Oh really? And she left the kids with you? Or she took the kids? No, uh during this time period we had moved all the way out here to the West Coast for a job for a career for me. I am now a wildlands firefighter up here in Oregon. Wow. Up near Spokane and Walla Walla area. Okay, so the whole family had moved out here out to the west coast. You were up in Oregon and your wife leaves June twenty fifth and where are the kids?

At that point when she had left, unknown to me, she had sold my children to my mother. Wait sold? Yeah. She sold my children. They were my children left. Uh last time I saw them in person and held my children was June seventh at four forty five in the afternoon. My mother and her life partner came out here under the guise of, Oh, we're just taking the kids for a vacation and then I never saw them again.

Holy shit. What your mom and her life partner come out to visit, say that they're taking the kids on a vacation and take the kids back. Take m move them. Yep, they move back to Michigan. And then when I found out this was what was going on, I left Oregon on July tenth.

Landed uh July fifteenth in Michigan uh because my truck broke down twice on the side of the highway on the way there. Um and exactly Six hours before I landed in the town where they were supposed to be, they had done basically an expedited judge order to put my kids into a guardianship with my mother again, and then they promptly disappeared with the kids. Wow. Yeah. And do you have any idea what what information they were wielding to get the court to give them that emergency order?

I actually do. I have all seventy eight pages of information in front of me. So they I'm imagining that they were making things up or what happened? They said that I was extremely abusive to my children, which I never was. They claimed that my daughter wanted me, who was four at the time. to go kill myself and that I was a very cruel and mean person. I also said Continued negligence on the part of the parents in caring for the children, CPS continuously called and involved. They hadn't

learned or changed his parents regardless of system health, mentally unstable of the father. He's diagnosed with psychosis, paranoid, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety. Which all of those except for two are incorrect. Yeah, I was gonna say, have you been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia? Nope. I was misdiagnosed um after experiencing three very traumatic uh events back to back, uh, when I was sixteen.

The first girl I ever fell in love with was killed in a car accident. And then my uncle died uh three months later of colon cancer. And then on Christmas morning my mom told me she was a lesbian and is divorcing my father. Oh So you were d misdiagnosed with psychosis after that because you were having some sort of probably appropriate response to all of that happening. Is that what you're telling me? Yeah. I I I had realized that the fastest way for me to get

emotional help because I was very uh at times suicidal. I just hadn't said anything to anybody because of everything. Right. And I was like, well I know the fastest way according to T V to get people to listen to me is tell them I hear voices and that's what I did. And Oh interesting. So you were suicidal, wanted help.

and figured out that you would you would get so in other words, actually let me back up and say this differently. You were suicidal and you were trying to figure out how to let the people around you know how badly you felt. And decided that if you said you were hearing voices, that that would adequately communicate to them the intensity of your destabilization, right? That they'd see that you were really suffering. And instead what happened is that you got slapped with a psychosis.

definition and the actual problems of your depression did not get addressed. It eventually did many, many years later. Meaning like recently or When I was twenty five I was like I I need better help than what I'm getting. Yeah, you sure did. When you were twenty five, I'm trying to get myself oriented on the timeline here. How long ago was it that your mom stole your kids? June. Of dispatch.

Sure. Okay, so it was before that that you went and got better help. What was the better help that you got? I actually got with a therapist and was like, Look, this is this is what I'm experiencing. This is what has happened to me. I don't know what to do with my life. other than work, work, work and try to be a parent. Yeah. But I know what I'm doing right now isn't wor isn't working.

Isn't working. And has at any point more recently in in therapy, has anyone talked to you about complex post-traumatic stress? Because that's definitely something you seem to be dealing with. Oh yeah. I was recently uh this past year I was diagnosed with autism. Yep. High functioning autism and PTSD. Yeah.

Yes, you defin I would yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. It's interesting that you bring up those two things together. I was just having this conversation with somebody yesterday who was t asking me why I think there are so many autism diagnoses coming up now. And when I say autism, I'm talking likely about the kind you're referencing, which is also the kind my son has diagnosed me with, which is um

Level one or two autism, which isn't the autism that people my age, I'm 53. I'm old enough to be your mama. Um, in fact, how old is your mom? Bye. I think she was born in eighty four. Oh my God. Are you kidding me? Or seven no seventy four.

Jesus Christ, I was gonna say, I was born in 70. Your mom's younger than I am. I knew it. I knew it. I just have to ask because I'm obsessed with my age. But anyway, my point is: back when I was your age, When we talked about autism, we were talking really about level three autism, kids who are nonverbal, who do a lot of self stimulating behavior.

This higher functioning autism that we're hearing a lot and a lot about these days, level one and two autism, there certainly is a remarkable increase in the diagnoses. And when people bring this up with me,

Obviously I don't well not obviously, but I will tell you this is not like a hard piece of research. This is my own this is my own theory based on, you know, the anecdotal evidence I have of working with people, but I think That we have been bottlenecking trauma down into generations after generations after generations for hundreds, thousands of years. And one thing that therapists know is that sometimes it's impossible to tell the difference between a complex

Stress response and autism. A lot of times someone will develop. Behaviors, a behavior repertoire, and um a way of being in the world that is easily assessed as autism that is the result of trauma. And I am convinced. That the reason we have so much level one and two autism now is that we've been stuffing trauma down into generations, into people's genetic material that a lot of us now are being born

with nervous systems that behave in this autistic way as the result of intergenerational trauma. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. But the point is However it's happening, you now have a diagnosis of CPTSD and autism that is likely more accurate than paranoid schizophrenia, which is the diagnosis you were given as a teen.

Right. That's how it's gone down. Okay. So your mom is leveraging the old diagnosis in order to manipulate an already corrupt court system to get your kids away from you. That's And I know how family court works and it's a fucking janky disaster. And there's a lot of people on the dole. from the psychologists who do the um assessments on kids and on parents to the attorneys to the judges who's being paid by who and in cahoots with whom.

There's a lot of that. There's a lot of that in family court. It is incredibly corrupt. And so it is easy for me to believe when I hear from anybody that. that something like this has gone down. And certainly people who are more resourced, if your mom and her partner have more money

have access to more social currency than you do, it's going to be even easier for them to get a ruling against you. And it sounds like your ex-wife was in cahoots with your mom and her partner, is that right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. So it's sort of like your wife couldn't take care of the kids herself, so she wanted your mom to do it rather than leave them with you. Is that what happened? Yeah. Uh in their f one of the final anecdotes.

of the the paperwork here. They've claimed that child should remain with us because parents cannot keep jobs, cannot keep a home. Uh and the mother, Elizabeth Reiner, my ex wife, uh has verbally told us she is open to get to us getting full guardianship of the children for the well being and safety of from their father.

Oh gosh, Tyler. Yeah, that's brutal. And so that's what has happened. So right now your kids are with your mom and her partner in Michigan, is that right? Yes. And you are likely scraping together all of the resources you have to get legal representation on your side, is that right? Yep, I have gone to the public defenders. I have tried to communicate with lawyers all over the place.

Nobody was willing to help me. So as my uncle Kurt used to say, I decided to go to the nuclear option and I went and pounded on the FBI store and explained my situation to them. And it has been since September and I still have not heard any word from them. Okay. Okay. So this is an absolute nightmare, Tyler. I don't have to tell you that because you're living with it, um, or living in it.

And despite the fact that I talk a big game, I am not a lawyer, um, and I'm not a judge, and I'm not an FBI agent. So I'm not going to be able to help you sort any of that out, but I can imagine what you're dealing with both physically and emotionally going through all of this. So I hopefully can help you with some of that. Why don't you tell me what it's like for you on the day to day these days?

Wow. Since uh a week after Christmas this year, um life has been a little bit better. My former roommate brought me home uh a puppy that she had found. Oh it had a rough start just like I did. Just gonna say just like you. Yeah. But by the way, just for just because I need to say this, rough start is a gross understatement, but go ahead. Yeah. Little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. I try to be optimistic with it.

Yeah, no, I I would uh volunteer all the time at the animal shelter to try to just Keep from going insane. Yeah, get that oxytocin where you can. Yeah, my house used to be full of laughter and children and it became very quiet and I Yeah. Wasn't a fan of that. No, I bet you weren't. I bet you weren't, Leo. I bet you weren't. Yeah. Yeah, no. Um so I started volunteering. Uh I then was uh called to dispatch to a fire uh on the Hawaiian Islands there uh this past year.

Squad mate and I were driving up there. Uh he was driving, he rolled the truck, we were riding in, crushed my hands, I was not able to go. Wait, what what r rolled the truck you were riding in, crushed your hands so you didn't go fight the fire, okay? Nope. And then I sat at my house for three months not able to do or two months not able to do anything.

Holy depression, Batman. So I started volunteering because I got back into therapy'cause I was like, I'm going down a dark path and I know it and I know I don't have the skills to do it by myself because Volunteering was a brilliant idea. Did you come up with that yourself? Did your therapist suggest it? Yeah, no my my therapist was like, It sounds like you like miss having a dog and I'm like, Yeah, I do and she's like, Well Go volunteer at the local animal shelter. Really and I did.

Because it is we get so much oxytocin from dogs. I think the research says that when A human and a dog are interacting, you're playing, they're licking your face, you're petting them. Both you and the dog make like it was either fifty six or fifty seven percent more oxytocin. Incidentally with cats it's only fifteen percent more, but any of us who has both knows that already. Um And the oxytocin is the attachment hormone that you're not getting anymore from the interaction with your kid.

So not just on an experiential level, but on an actual hormonal level, it is in fact really therapeutic to have that interaction with dogs, right, when you're suffering the loss. of your kid. So and then you ended up with an actual puppy that is yours now. Yeah? Yep. Yep. What's his what's his name? Apollo.

The emotional support animal thing is so r I I mean, all dogs are emotional support animals, whether they're intended to be or not. So I know how transformative this is and I'm really happy to hear that you two found each other'cause you fucking need it, Jesus. Tyler, something, you know? Some love. Yeah, a lot of people are like so like are you like curse and I jokingly say, No, my name is just Murphy in reality. Is it is it really No, let me tell you what you might be though.

You might be the cycle breaker, right? The cycle breaker gets the worst of all of the shit in the system, right? Like a cycle breaker is born into an intergenerational system to stop.

The transmission of dysfunction that happens down through generations. And one thing about being the cycle breaker is that if you are charged with being the cycle breaker, and again, we're born into the position, we don't have to choose it though. We can choose addiction instead. Those are usually our only two options.

do the work or find a way to numb out the forces that are trying to get us to do the work, right? And it sounds to me like you've chosen to do the work. You're back in therapy. You've found another spiritual path. You're finding ways to soothe yourself that are healthy, like having a pet and things like that. You're doing the work, but for and not but for cycle breakers the work is massive. And it does seem like we're sort of cursed. We get all the shit, right?

So I hear your optimism in there and I will say It could be tied to a lot of things, but Leos are at their core very optimistic. And I hear that Leo optimism in there that you're still finding ways to make things okay for yourself and that's really, really beautiful. To the extent that you are getting support from the dog and from your own optimism and hope, what are the things that are most challenging for you right now? What are you struggling with?

Making connections anymore. Like uh my ex wife and my mother have really put me off of people like Jesus, Tyler. Your ex-wife and your mother have put me off of people, so I can imagine. Yeah. Jesus. Well, it's hard to trust, right? And we're talking about the two women with whom you had the strongest oxytocin body. Right, the two women to whom you were hormonally and experientially most attached. Both turned on you in pretty dramatic ways and both were abusive to you in pretty dramatic ways.

So I can understand that, you know, especially around like dating, that would seem a little that'd be a hard that'd be a hard sell. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it it was for a really long time, um, but I've met a really uh fantastic human being. Uh that just kinda As a friend and now we've been together for almost three months. Oh wow. Okay. So you are making a connection there. What is it about that relationship or about this person that was able to break through? the mistrust you would have developed.

around your mom and your ex wife? What allowed you to be vulnerable with her? Tell me more. Like she she has taken our relationship very slowly. She would sit here and listen to me ramble on and on and on about my kids and She just she took her time Helping me break down those walls so I could be close to her. No, it's smooth sailing. Sometimes I'm like having a really hard time. What's it like when you're having a really hard time?

Lots and lots of weed. Lots and lots of weed, is that what you said? Yes.

Oh hi. It's time for another mindfulness moment. Do alternate nostril breathing. You should know this one by now. You're going to use your thumb and your forefinger to alternate. Alternate blocking your right nostril and your left nostril. You are inhaling and exhaling only through your nose with this one. And so I will count in a

Always at that spot. I garble my words. I will count inhale and exhale, and I will also say switch when it is time to switch nostrils and fingers, and that is always after the inhale. So it's inhale, switch, exhale, inhale, switch, exhale, inhale, switch like that. Okay, so we start with an inhale and then a switch and then it's exhale, inhale, switch.

If that was confusing, just follow along because I'm going to call it out for you. All you have to do is block your nostrils and breathe. So starting with your right thumb, blocking your right nostril, you'll start with an inhale through your left nostril and then we will stretch. Oh my gosh. Wow. See, here's the thing. I'm not high. That this is why we talk about how I always get high before we do editing for this very reason. And I will do that after this mindfulness moment.

Ready? Block your right nostril and inhale. Two, three, four, five, six. Switch exhale. Six inhale, two, three, four, five, six switch exhale. Five, six inhale, two, three, four, five, six, switch, exhale, two, three, four, five, six inhale, Three, four, five, six, switch exhale. Three, four, five, six, inhale, two, three, four, five, six, switch, exhale. Four, five, six, inhale. two, three, four, five, six, switch exhale.

four, five, six, inhale, two, three, four, five, six, switch, exhale, two, Three, four, five, six.

Back to Tyler. When you're having a really hard time, what is it that you're feeling? What do you feel? What's the experience like of having a hard time? A lot of anger towards myself because I um as you know with Leos, we are a very prideful body. Oh gosh, you guys are the you're the your own worst enemies always. So hard on yourselves. Yep. Yeah.

Like I needed to drive for perfection. Yep. Because I mean, I was like, Oh, so I must be a bad kid, so I need to try harder and do better and become more so my parents will eventually love me. And when that didn't really necessarily turn out to be the case It just was too late and now my drive for perfection and to be perfect has really been a negative part in my life. So Yeah, yeah. I mean yeah, this would be I would think anybody with your history.

could develop this idea that they needed to somehow be better to get love. I mean, for children especially, it sounds like based on what you're telling me about your parents, correct me if I'm wrong. I would imagine that the their behavior was abusive as far back as you can remember, right? Like even when you were very young, is that true?

Yeah. Yeah. So a very young child who has a black and white mind, right? Your thinking is entirely concrete when you're little. Either something is good or it's bad, it's black or it's white, right? There isn't any gray. The brain doesn't have the structure.

to think in terms of gray until, you know, five, six, seven we start to get a little of it and then it continues to develop. But very young children are entirely concrete. So what happens often to children is that When the environment is abusive or painful or harmful in some other way. The options for the kid are if we're talking about you and mom, for example, when mom's being abusive and you are that in that situation as a child, you have two options. Either mom's bad or I'm bad.

No kid chooses mom's bad. That's just not how it works. If mom's bad, the whole world falls apart. Mom can't be bad, the adults can't be bad, and so we're bad, right? So any kid

in that situation could very understandably develop the idea that they needed to somehow be better or do better to get love. Add to that that you're a Leo and you're right. That takes it to the next level because as I said, forty percent of my clients are Leos, in fact, It was Leo's who made me believe in astrology because when I realized how many of you were on caseload one day when I just sat down and wrote down everybody's birthdays for fun and saw it and started to notice

the things that were consistent among my clients who were Leo sons, that's what got me thinking more seriously about astrology and got me really interested in it. And one of the first things I noticed about the Leos that I work with is that You guys are so intense in terms of what you expect from yourselves that it doesn't even occur to Leos that you can't be good at everything. So when you're not, you take it really hard. Really, really hard.

I mean I had a I had a Leo client once in her mid twenties crying in a session because she had gone skiing with her boyfriend.

the weekend prior and of all of their friends, she was the worst skier. And days later she was still really upset about it. And the reason I always remember it is because I said to her, At one point in the conversation, after which I had said many more interesting and eloquent things than this, I said to her, you know, you're not going to be really good at everything you try. And she sat with that for a full 60 to 90 seconds. I watched her spin on that. And she looked up at me and she said,

Oh, I guess you're right. Like it had never occurred to her before. That was the first time it really occurred to her that she needed to let herself off the hook that she wasn't gonna be really good at everything. So you definitely have a double whammy where the perfectionism is concerned, and I would imagine it.

it dies hard in you. And so I'm happy to hear you recognize that it's not serving you, right? And I'm also really happy to hear you recognize that you developed this idea that that's what you had to do to get love. And you know now that that doesn't work, right?

Yeah. I it took my wonderful partner to really open up my eyes to that. So she allows you to be imperfect and you s and she still loves you, right? Yeah. And this is what we call a corrective emotional experience. I'm so glad we finally have one. You know, Tyler, we talk about this on the podcast all the time that There are three ways to deal with the symptoms of trauma, and you have so many of them, I would imagine. And one way

is with medication, right? Medication will keep those symptoms quiet. It won't resolve them, but it will quiet them. Another way is with trauma work, right? With EMDR or somatic experiencing or um, you know, a very regimented mindfulness practice. The other way, the most potent way to resolve trauma symptoms is actually with corrective emotional experiences, but we have to wait for those. They have to be organic. We can't generate them. We can only be open to them. And it sounds like

You are getting to have a corrective emotional experience in this relationship in that you get love even when you're not perfect. And that's a really big one for you. Yeah. Yeah, she... I I she's probably gonna listen to this episode and be completely ver embarrassed, but I mean she she really helped me come back from the edge. Like Right be f literally the same day that my dog showed up in my life, um I talked to her about some things and I was dead set on just

ending my existence that day when I was on my way home. I was just like, you know, I I've been told that at that point I had been told that there was no updates on my kids. Whatsoever and that there wasn't probably going to be any for a while. So it like really kicked my brain into a negative spot. I bet. Like that. And my therapist unfortunately was out sick, so I wasn't able to meet with her. Oof. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, which I mean I don't blame her. She gets to get sick. Yeah.

Yeah, like she she's human. Um And I was at work and She had texted me, she was like uh I I know you're not in a great spot and I know me telling you this is probably just gonna go in one ear out the other. But you need to stick around not just for your kids but for yourself because How pissed would you be if you found out you were supposed to have a great future and you squandled it all away because of one bad moment? It's just a bad day, not a bad life.

Wow. And was this when you two were already dating or before you were dating? We were actually just really good friends at that point. Uh It was like January third ish? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow, that's really powerful. So that and that really you heard that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh my roommate texted me, she's like, Don't be mad, but there are four puppies in your house. I'm like, Why are there four puppies in my house? And what did she say?

Sh we have a um we have a a hiking trail that goes along the river here in our Uh and she had found my puppy Apollo here and his siblings wrapped up in a tarp, wandering very closely to the water and were just drenched and Oh. So. Oh so she I see. Okay. And then did you guys find homes for three and keep one? Is that how it went down? Yep. Yep. Beautiful. Beautiful. Oh yeah, those puppy that puppy was meant for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so on the day-to-day now, how does it go for you? How do you feel on a daily basis? Because there is this always this giant cloud, right? Of your kids not being with you that you have to that you have to walk with every day. How are you managing? One moment at a time.

That's right. Yep. My uh adoptive grandmother uh who was kinda like she kinda adopted me into her family uh as I mean I was well into adulthood, but she uh s told me a quote that I've been just preaching to myself every day and it It was it's not about whether or not you walked that mile in those shoes that day. What matters is the fact that you put them on. Okay. You at least try it. Yup, yup, yup.

And tell me how that helps you. What d how how how how do you work that into the day when you're difficult and draw support from it? I don't have to sit here and try to be Superman. I don't have to sit here and try to be like, Oh, well, I'm just gonna power through this because I know I can be better and I know eventually when it it's just uh Yep, I know I'm not in a good spot, but it's just for today. There's always tomorrow.

Good. And so um is it correct that you have not had any contact with your children? I have not had any contact whatsoever. Wow. Okay. So that's really painful. That's a lot of grief. How do you manage that? Weed, video games and walking my dog. Yeah, yeah. I I know those aren't exact and some of those aren't exactly healthy.

You know what? You know what, Tyler? Listen. They don't all have to be healthy all the time. Like I hear you d I hear that you're outside a lot, right? You have a job that has you outside. You live in a part of the country where people are really, um, really about being out in nature all the time. you've have a dog, you have a therapist, you're doing a lot of the things that are the functional ways of coping. And it's okay

that you need to numb out sometimes. I'm here to tell you like this that your history, right? Like this is a lot of trauma, Tyler. I don't have to tell you. Again, you're living it. It's a lot. And That's just the emotional trauma. Uh right. Like it's only one part of it. It it there's this thing now that has happened to everybody because social media is there's so much about mental health on social media and about wellness that I think

There is this pressure that people feel to always be working on everything and always be doing things the healthy way and always, and you know what? That's ridiculous.

Right. That's part of this perfectionism that you don't need to engage in anymore. Sometimes it's okay just to do the numbing as long as you know that's what you're doing and it isn't your primary coping strategy. But when it's something like you have to carry around this awful searing pain of not having your children with you and you are relatively powerless to do anything about it.

You are doing all of these things to manage it and you know what? Sometimes you just need to numb it out. And what you're not doing is heroin or, you know, like gambling all your money away or doing something super dysfunctional. Sure.

Video games are a way to get extra dopamine and zone out, but it I'm not really worried about you doing things that give you a little extra feel-good chemical and allow you to zone out now and then. Like there's only so much time you can spend actually dealing with all of this pain.

Right. You need a break from that. And I think it's totally appropriate for you to get one. If you listen to the podcast, you know that we are pro cannabis here. So I've got, you know, weed great. I mean, yeah, whatever you gotta do with the weed you gotta do.

Certainly a more functional choice than a lot of other substances that people use. And I say more functional from a harm reduction perspective. You know, smoking weed every day is both physically and emotionally less perilous than drinking every day. And so again If you need a little subs if you want a little support from a substance to help make things not feel so bad.

That's definitely the right choice. And that brings me you just said emotional and that reminds me with all of this trauma that you had as a child and all of this trauma that's ongoing.

Wha what is your what is your physical experience like? What is it like in your body right now? Do you have chronic pain? Do you have GI issues? I have broken a hundred and twelve bones in my body. I have been hit by a car twice. I have fallen off a ferris wheel. I have been shot and I have been stabbed. Tyler, I'm just gonna need to take a minute. Hold on. I feel like we gotta dive into A hundred twelve Okay, wait. How many bones are in the middle?

How many phones are there? Right, but wait, you fell off a Ferris wheel? Yeah. How did you do that? So I used to break down uh uh an event called the Northwest Michigan Fair in Michigan. I used to break down all the carnival rides. at the end of the event. So I was taking the seats off of the Ferris wheel.

And my wrist, uh, that had my watch got caught on a bolt and the three gentlemen who were standing in front of me let go of the counterweight and it just slung me up halfway and then it jerked to a stop and then I just went crashing down. Oh my god. How many bones did you break when you fell off the Ferris wheel? I broke all of my ribs on my right side and broke off the top part of my head. Fuck. Okay. And you've been twice hit by a car. All right. So so how is your chronic pain?

Uh a lot. A lot. Um And it's you know, those of us those of us who have had intense emotional pain generally tolerate more physical pain than the average person. So I know you probably have a really high pain threshold, but this is fucking bananas, to be fair. This is banana. Oh yeah. I yeah, I I mean it my my body has unfortunately been put through the ringer. Uh a lot of it was, well, stupid choices or I just happened to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

Well here here's the thing. It is very difficult to develop the instinct to keep yourself alive as a child when your parents don't have that instinct, right? I mean, in a really primitive way. Our survival is about. our parents love. Yeah. Having a parent's love and care feels like life and death. And it used to be and sometimes it still is. And even when it isn't actual life and death, it feels like that, right? Like we really do. And so if you aren't getting

that very primal safety of your parents' love. And if you didn't learn as a young child that the world is a safe place, all of these things contribute to it m being much easier. To go through the world in a way where you're not taking care of yourself and not being careful, right? Those patterns haven't been established for you.

So it is those of us whose parents aren't paying attention find ourselves very often in harm's way. And sometimes what that looks like is You know children whose parents aren't paying attention are more likely to be you know, have abuses perpetrated against them by other people because abusers know the kids whose parents aren't paying attention, but also in this way where you're just in more dangerous situations, not only because there isn't someone right there paying attention.

But because there hasn't been someone paying attention that you don't learn to pay attention to yourself, right?

So you're just likely to get hurt a lot more. Like it makes perfect sense to me, not that you'd have broken 112 bones, because that's just next level shit, but that you would have been Especially as someone, you know, like as as a male identified person in the world, often in harm's way and in dangerous situations. But one hundred twelve bones hit by a car twice. What ages were you when you were hit by cars? Nineteen and twenty three. So how did those happen? I'm just curious.

I was wearing a black sweatshirt um and I'd walked behind a car that my uh wife was driving um and she didn't see me. And she just backed up and I went bounce. Okay, wait, Tyler. So in addition to all of the abuse that your wife perpetrated deliberately, she also accidentally ran you over with a car. Is that what you just told me? That's cool. She's not a great human being. I also try not to speak too ill of her.

I mean I'm imagining she has her own story, yeah? I mean her childhood must have been pretty gruesome herself. I'm not excusing any of her behavior. I'm just imagining that she has a story, yeah? Yeah. She has an interesting story that I'm sure if you were to try to reach out to her you would hear probably hear an interesting story, so

Yeah, I'm not gonna do that, but I do believe that she has one because people don't come to abusive behaviors just on their own like that, right? Someone taught her. to treat you the way that she did. And again, this is not an excuse, but it is a reason. Right? So we can hold both realities at the same time. And one is that she did a whole bunch of hurtful stuff and continues to do.

things that are tremendously hurtful to you. And she's a human being who is doing the best she can and unfortunately the best she can do is still really damaging to other people. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I appreciate you trying not to speak ill of her and when we are speaking negatively about her, we're speaking negatively about her behaviors, not about her.

Right. Like these are the choices that she makes are problematic. I don't really believe in bad people, but I do believe in, you know, behaviors that are bad and that's that she's still stuck in that space.

y you mentioned something before I get back to this physical pain piece that I don't want to abandon just yet. You mentioned earlier that your mom, while she's still a terrible mother to you, you had witnessed her being a good grandparent to your kids. So while this is not the comfort that I want to try to harness, it is a small one to take in the process of getting you to a place that is less painful. What it You can imagine that the kids are okay with her, is that true?

Yeah. Uh I have my I have my little birdies out You do. Okay, good. Uh who have been able to keep an eye on things for me from a distance. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. So you do at least have the comfort of knowing that they're okay. Yeah. That makes a big difference, right? So there's at least that piece. I mean, it's still incredibly sad and I can't as a parent, I honestly can't even I mean, I can imagine, but I don't know because it hasn't happened to me.

But as a parent, I can't imagine anything being more painful than having my k than than not having my kid, right? So tie and you have it times three. So you're so you're moving through the world carrying with you all the time tremendous emotional pain and we just learned tremendous physical pain and You don't take is it am I right that you don't take any pharmaceuticals for the pain? Nope. I just simply take weed and breathe through the pain. Damn son.

Speaking of breathing, it is time again for our mindfulness moment. Let's do a heart chakra meditation. You know these by now. You are going first to open up that heart chakra, which is right in the center of your chest. Dial it nice and wide open, make that circular portal very wide. You'll focus there as you inhale through your nose and exhale out of your mouth. Imagine that the air is going in and out of that spot. That will keep you focused.

on having that chakra wide open and you are going to hold in your mind an image of you either giving or receiving love, care, generosity, compassion, anything in that family. So pull up an image. Of you on either side, giving or receiving love, open up that heart chakra and get ready to inhale through your nose. Ready? Inhale to Six exhale, two, three, four, five. Six inhale, two, three, four, five, six exhale.

Five, six, inhale, two, three, four, five, six, exhale, two, three, four, five, six, inhale, Four five six exhale two three four five six inhale Four, five, six, exhale, two, three, four, five, six. Inhale, two, three, four, five, six, and exhale all that air out.

Let's get back to Tyler. How's your sleep? Do you sleep? Uh uh four hours and twenty five minutes a day. Wait, how is it is it one of those things where you always wake up after four hours and twenty-five minutes, or is it because that's how much sleep you give yourself? How do you know that it's that much? That's how much uh sleep I usually end up giving myself because I uh

I tend to get really hyper focused on certain tasks. Um and then when my watch beeps at me that it is time for me to go to bed, um, I'll go to bed and then the nightmares usually start and then Right, right, right. Yep. So I'm gonna tell you something you already know, so it's just gonna be annoying to hear, but I want the other people who are listening to hear this.

Sleeping only four and a half hours a night is gonna make everything worse. All of your symptoms. Your ph I know I know you know. Like I said, it's annoying for me to even say it to you'cause you're like, bitch, I know. I know you know, right? So

This the nightmares, of course, I would have guessed if I had gotten far enough that you had terrible nightmares because you have so much trauma content and there's this thing that our brain does. D when we talk about, I don't know, do you know what EMDR is?

The trauma just. I've heard about it. Okay, well when we talk about EMDR, when I'm explaining it to people, I often explain that our brain tries to do EMDR while we're sleeping. And I'm gonna tell you how this works a little bit because I'm sure it applies to these dreams.

You we have two different memories. We have a memory in our right brain and we have a memory in our left brain. And in our left brain is where we store all of our memories that are not traumatic, which doesn't mean they're positive. It just means they aren't trauma. In fact

What makes something trauma is that it goes to the right brain memory. How our nervous system interacts with the experience and how our nervous system stores the memory is what decides what is traumatic and what isn't, right? Not It isn't the event that decides it's going to be traumatic. It's how the individual system processes it. So over in the left brain are all of our memories that are not traumatic.

Over in our right brain is where we store our trauma memories, but these memories have very different presentations. representations rather in these memory stores. Left brain memories are full stories. It's like because I'm old, I think of like a VHS tape for each memory, right? The story has a beginning and a middle and an end. And also its date stamp. So when we interact with our left brain memories, we know our brain knows this is a thing that happened and it's over.

So we might remember that we were sad in a memory, but we aren't actually going to re-experience the sadness. We're just going to experience the memory of it, right? That's how left brain memories work. Also, those memories are organized. So we take them out and put them back at will. I'm remembering this and then I'm gonna put it away and stop thinking about it. When we go over to the right brain memory, those memories

are not organized and they are not full stories. They're like Polaroids. They're snapshots. And on each trauma memory, each little Polaroid that's flying around in our right brain, there's a sensory memory. A sight, a smell, a sound, whatever, and an emotion. And that's it. So if you think, you know they have those things at Chuck E. Cheese that you stand in and the dollar bills fly around, you gotta drop grab the dollar bills out of the air. That's what it's like over there in the right brain.

All these Polaroids flying around, and your right brain doesn't know how to organize any of it. It's just like, I don't know what to do with this. And this is why we get triggered. Let's say this is not true, but let's say. My dad used to beat me with a belt. And I'm walking down the street and some guy walks by me and he's got the same belt buckle or the same look on his face or the same cologne or something that pings.

one of my trauma sensory memories, one of the Polaroids flying around in my right brain has the same sensory stimuli, stimulus rather, as what I'm encountering in my present environment. Well then what happens is my right brain matches it. Like, wait. I've got a Polaroid up here that matches it and now whatever emotion

is on that Polaroid I'm going to be flooded with and there's no date stamp on the Polaroid. So I don't know that it isn't happening now. And that's how being triggered works. We have this emotional experience that's tied to a trauma memory that matches a piece of stimuli in the current environment and now we are flooded with that emotion and our brain thinks it's happening now. So when we're sleeping

The left brain wants to go over and help the right brain sort all those memories out. Because when we're awake, the right brain memories closed. The left brain can't get in. The only time the left brain can get into the right brain memory is when we're in EMDR, we generate the circumstances that allow it, and when we're in REM sleep. So when you get to the dream state,

The door to the right brain opens up and your left brain, because your left brain knows how to organize stuff, your left brain has this great idea. And the idea is, I know what we'll do. If we go get all of the pieces of each of these trauma stories, we go find all the Polaroids that go together. And we put them into the full story and convert them to film, we can send them over to the left brain memory and then they won't get triggered anymore. That's what your brain wants to do.

So when you're sleeping, your left brain goes into the right brain. It grabs all of these Polaroids of trauma memories and it tries to put them into a story. And this is why our dreams are so janky sometimes. You know when you have a dream and it's like, I was at the beach but it was snowing and my mom was my teacher and none of the pieces go together. It's because the Polaroids don't go together. So it doesn't work. So in our dreams a lot of times

Our brain is putting together these mishmash stories made up of little trauma pieces in an attempt to reprocess them and send them to the left brain, but it doesn't work. What EMDR does is give your left brain the instructions to go in and do that effectively, to find the pieces that go together so they can be put into their stories and put over into the left brain. So when someone has a bunch of unresolved trauma

the f it is never going to surprise me to hear that they're having a lot of nightmares, especially for you with a system that's working really hard on healing. Your brain's trying to help you out. So this is all to say One thing you and I can talk about when we follow up after the podcast, because I follow up with everybody, is how if your if your current therapist doesn't do EMDR, it's really common for people to just go to someone for EMDR without leaving their

talk therapist that maybe you could find somebody to do some EMDR with you and that would go a huge way towards stopping those nightmares, which would be one way to get you more sleep. Because getting you more sleep is gonna be a really important goal. to managing these symptoms, right? But it's not gonna be as simple as like

Make sure you put down your phone before you go to sleep and make sure it's cool and dark in your room. Those things are really important, but you've got a bigger fish to fry here, which is all of that trauma content that your brain's trying to sort out while you're sleeping. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean I can't I can't s I don't know about you, but I can't sleep in a silent I can't sleep in I can't do anything inside. Sleep in the cold. No. I am like a lizard. Like Same, dude. Same. I have a heater pointed on me while I'm sleeping. Like a space heater pointed on me, blasting me with heat all night long, and I fall asleep with the TV on. It's the ADHD thing in the brain, right, where I can't be calm if there isn't noise in the background. Is it like that for you? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, I have that too. I have that too. And so while I know that those sleep hygiene things are important for having really sound sleep, there is this thing that happens to a lot of us where we have to sort of f you know, there's falling asleep and there's staying asleep.

And part of the problem with leaving the T V on is then it's gonna be more likely to wake me up because of that light. But without it I can't fall asleep. And this is why I have a timer on it now, right? So it goes off after I fall asleep and allows me to stay asleep.

But for you, I've worked through a lot of this trauma stuff. I'm not being disrupted by the nightmares, but I would imagine that your brain's working so hard while you're sleeping to try to sort this stuff out that the imagery is probably really, really disturbed. Right. That's the yeah. Yeah. But there my point is that there are ways To work through that in an awake state such that it won't distress you so much in your sleep. And again, you and I can talk about that.

when we follow up.'Cause the yeah, trying to manage physical pain. I have a chronic pain condition. My kid and I both do have uh we have Ellers Danlos, the hypermobile type, which is a connective tissue disorder and does cause a lot of chronic pain. And when if I sleep fewer than six hours, and for me that's the tipping point to the to the extent that like six hours, one minute, I'm good.

Five hours, fifty-eight minutes, I'm fucked. It's like this exact six hour thing for my body where if I have less than six hours of sleep, I am guaranteed to be in pain all day. So I'm talking six and you're only sleeping four and a half. Granted everybody's body is different, but of it's gotta be making it so much worse. Like I'm I'm feeling pain in my body just thinking about it. for Yeah, I I I I do I I I I do smoke weed when I get up in the morning and I do smoke weed before I go to bed.

Takes the edge of Jane. Yeah. No, it is I used to be on ninety milligrams of Vicanin a day to manage my pain before they figured out what was causing it. And then figuring out what was causing it got it down to the place where like It's usually manageable and then maybe like f anywhere from one time a month to fifteen times a month, depending on what else is going on, it won't be manageable. And while I do still have Tramadol, which is a lower level pain med for like emergencies, I mostly manage

the pain that breaks through my lifestyle controls, you know, getting enough sleep, eating well, extra all the things that help me manage the pain. People with chronic pain know none of those things really is ever going to do it completely.

And weed is huge in taking the edge off for me. It has absolutely been like a survival strategy for me on certain days, which is part of the reason I'm such a proponent of it because After being on ninety milligrams of Vican in a day for years, I can promise anyone who's worried about it that those pharmaceuticals caused infinitely more harm to my body and to my relationships than the weed ever will, right?

So more power to you. I'm glad there's something that works and that you're in a state where they're where it's legal. And mushrooms are legal in Oregon too, correct? Yes. They're 'Cause that's what I was going to ask you next, if you've ever done any psychedelic healing. Um so I went to a concert with my friend once. Uh a and did uh Did mushrooms uh before the concert, uh and that's about as much psychedelics as I've ever done. Okay.

Well psyched therapeutic mushroom trips happen very differently than taking mushrooms before a concert in the sense that the dose is usually higher, which at first freaks people out, but in fact makes it easier to engage with the content and you're generally not in well not just generally, you're not. You're not in public, right? You're in a different environment. But one thing that could also be really helpful to you in the same way that EMDR is.

would be psychedelic healing is another thing to explore, s especially since the substances are legal where you live. I mean, I did the I did all of my really intense trauma work with mushrooms because I didn't have EMDR wasn't accessible to me at the time. My brain wouldn't allow me to do it. I've done it since. But and I I was having trouble finding therapists.

I got a lot of my healing done that way. And when you get to Jackie's episode, she'll talk about her own experiences with uh therapeutic mushrooms. And it's funny to have it come from Jackie because when she and I met, she never would have gone near mushrooms. But after a few years of working um together, she developed an interest in it and had a staggering amount of success. And she'll talk you'll hear about that in her episode. But

That's another thing to think about in terms of that unresolved trauma content. Mushrooms are magnificent. They will do the same thing that EMDR does. The difference is that with EMDR, we target what we're going to work on. We go after certain content. The mushrooms, when you're doing it with mushrooms, the mushrooms choose the content. And the way that it usually looks is that

The plant is really smart and it will titrate the content for you, by which I mean it doesn't start with the most intense stuff. And in fact your brain does this with EMDR too. But the mushrooms will Go after whatever you need to resolve first. They have their own titration, their own trajectory, their own order.

The difference is just like I said that you have to surrender to the mushrooms and then let let them choose rather than choosing it yourself. But both EMDR m EMDR and mushrooms will really get you to the same place, which is managing.

And reprocessing that trauma reprocessing that trauma content in your right brain, which for you, in addition to taking out the trauma roots that that live underneath our thoughts and behaviors and make it hard for us to have healthy thoughts and behaviors in addition to

fixing up that space. The other thing that it would do would be to let you sleep better. Right. And that feels really important talking to you right now because yeah, you're dealing with a lot of pain. And again, I'm glad you have the weed. To help, but I imagine as someone who uses weed for chronic pain that it works at like it's like thirty percent, right? Thirty to forty percent.

is what you get relief from. Which is enough to sometimes to make the difference for us between functioning and not functioning, but it isn't taking it all away. Right. Yeah. How's your gut? My gut is like okay. Okay. That's very surprising and I'm very glad to hear that. Yeah. Your body's like he's got enough problems. Yeah, I try not to put too much uh not prepped by myself, my own hands, food in my and my body as much as I can. Good man, good man. That's the secret. That is the secret. Yeah.

Yeah. I yes, my parents um and I were very much not having a great time when I was a child. Um But my mom did teach me how to bake, she did teach me how to cook, she taught me how to essentially win a girl by Yep, that'll do it. At least it blew my mother's And and you know, my dad taught me my my mechanic skills that I have, my my woods my carpentry skills that I've got. I

Yeah, growing up well below the poverty line, you know, we didn't really have much choice. It was either survive or and and learn everything that you needed to learn to survive or Okay, so you grew up below the poverty line and and that's an important variable in the story of your homelessness as an older person because there was no safety net for you. Right. There was no backup. There was no right. Right. It's very easy to get to that place when you don't

have any backup, any family support, you don't have, you know, resources from your community to support you. That definitely, yeah, predisposes us to get into that situation. And and as as and as terrible as homelessness is, um I am also very thankful for for when I was homeless because one, it was very much Uh my kick in the ass. I don't know if I could swear or not, but I'm not sure. Oh you don't know if you haven't listened to enough episodes. Please swear. It's our first language.

Okay. So yeah, no. Uh becoming homeless, uh, it was my first real kick in the ass. Like, okay, there are real life consequences here that are very dangerous. Um it it taught me, you know, how to really plan, prep and peep and prepare and then plan and prep again. Just in case plan A fails. Right. Not that we're hoping it fails, but I hope for the best but expect the worst is usually not too bad of a way to go.

Right, right, right. When I'm curious about this because I'm thinking about, you know, homelessness. A big part of that's just gonna be capitalism. The system was rigged against you. But what was it when you said there are consequences? What was it that you were able to reflect on and decide were th the it sounds like you're saying there were ways that that choices that you made that led to that financial disaster. Is that what you're telling me?

Yeah, more or less. Uh I I had made some work related choices that were not exactly the smartest to do.

Yeah. And it sounds like this is another thing that you weren't really you were taught how to cook and how to do some mechanical stuff and you learned these skills from your parents, but that managing money and career and things like that, those weren't skills that they were able to teach or model to you or for you is Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean my mom did and dad didn't get into their now careers.

um and their financial ish stability. Uh until I was well out of the house and like well into my own fuckery of the life. Right, right, right, right.

So we've talked about your mom and her life partner and her having your kids. Where's your dad? He currently lives in Michigan, not too far from where I grew up, and he he lives with my alcoholic sister because of his grandchildren that live in the home. So you have a sister who has an alcohol problem and her own children and she lives with your dad. Uh yeah, more or less. Like he rents a room from her, but out of the responsibility of people, uh my dad is the one that's responsible.

I got you, I got you. Okay. And do you have a relationship with him? Yeah. I we we had we had patched things up when I I came home uh out of the blue uh with pregnant uh wife yeah uh that he had never met and nor had any idea about uh until I showed up uh back home in Michigan uh and stayed with him for a little bit. We we worked through a lot of our problems. Uh we're

Not great, but we're not terrible. Uh we we talk and call each other once a week. Um my d out of the relationship In my life my dad and I are really the only ones that have been work done because we both wanted a healthier relationship because we both realized we fucked each other up really bad. You think you fucked your father up? Uh I in a in a sense of I was very mentally abusive back to him.

Uh because, you know, uh my dad it wasn't until after our big fight when I was eighteen, uh he wasn't really job. Correct. Like he would work a job, leave a couple of months in or get fired. Not really responsible like an adult should be at his age and I just got really tired of trying to be the best child and just we kind of snapped, yelled at each other. Um

He went to he went to hit me. Uh I stopped him and head butted him Ah in the chin. Gotcha. And I said, You will never lay a hand on me again and How old were you when that happened? I was eighteen. It was exactly three days before I left for Florida.

It is interesting, Tyler, how locked in you are to like timelines and dates and things like that. Like it was this many days and it was exactly this day and it was exactly Do you notice that about yourself? Yeah. It's almost like there there's this like safety or security, some order that you can that you can uh like uh some order that you can lay over all of this chaos by having timelines down. Is it that?

Yeah, I I I also uh I journal a lot. Uh I've been journaling for as long as I can remember. Good. Like since I could write I was journaling. I also have a photographic memory, so like things are just kinda constantly permanent. My friend the other day, he's just like, You keep posting random facts on your Snapchat. Well where do you come up with this stuff? I'm like Autistic brain. I I pick up a book and then I just get sucked into that.

This this external order on top of the internal chaos is is often a strategy for self soothing for those of us who had really chaotic childhood. Right. Yeah. Anything we can. Are you very orderly at home as well? Are you neat? I try to be uh with a six month old puppy that is sixty-five pounds and a little chaotic. Wait sixty five pounds at six months? Yeah, he's a Rottweiler mixed with a Mastiff. Oh, he's a big boy. He's a big boy.

Yeah. My the dog that I adopted at um Thanksgiving Chili is um she was uh eleven months when I got her, so figure she was a year in December and she is fully grown at fourteen pounds. She was twelve point nine pounds when I got her from being at a rescue.

And I took her to the vet the other day and she got fucking body shamed by the vet. I was all excited because she was twelve point nine when I got her. She was fourteen point seven at the vet the other day and the vet came in the room and I was said You see how much weight she gained? And I'm thinking like it's all muscle'cause we walk so much and she eats so well and then went white. It was all titty. It was all titty weight. Did you wait?

Josh just said, Teddy, wait, we have to take a break now. Oh my goodness. You're welcome everybody. This is the quality content you come here for. Canine titty weight jokes. I can't believe you just used the phrase titty. This is not minefall. Okay. Ha ha ha. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Seriously, mindfully.

Let's do some stretching and releasing. We will do head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees. No, we'll do head, shoulders, ribs. Remember on the head rolls and the shoulder rolls to exaggerate them. Try to drop your head all the way forward and back and likewise try to get your ear to your shoulder when you go to the sides. And with your shoulders, really push them forward, pull them up.

Stretch them really far back when you push them backwards, push them down. You get it, you get it. Okay, so let's start with head rolls. We're going to do three to the right and then three to the left. So you will start with your chin dropped down to your chest and now start to roll to the right, go side, back, side, down, keep rolling, right side. Side down one more to the right. Side. Side down. Now switch directions and Side down to the left side. Down one more to the left side. Side.

Good, head straight. Now pull your shoulders all the way up to your ears. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, and release. And now we're going to do shoulder rolls. You're going to start by pushing your shoulders forward and then rolling to the back three times. Ready? And up, back, down, forward, up. Down, forward, up, back, down, forward, now reverse, starting down, back, up, forward, down, back. Forward, one more, down, back, up, forward.

Stretch your spine by pushing your chest forward as if someone is sticking a pencil into your spine. Forward, stretch, stretch, shoulders go back, chest goes forward. Use as much force to push your shoulders back as you do to stretch your chest forward. Keep pushing, pushing, let it burn a little. Collapse.

Now go the other way and make a C with your spine as if you're trying to push your belly button all the way to your spine. Push, keep stretching, stretching. You're trying to collapse more, more, more, more, stretch. Good. Give your arms a little shake, loosen up your neck and

Let's get back to Tyler. So Tyler, we've gone through a lot of this story and we found some pressure points, but I'm curious what is there something specific I can help you with? Like is there something that really stands out to you lately as I mean, I can think of a million things that would make, you know, your day to day easier given what you're dealing with. But from your perspective, like

What's what's really getting in your way on a day-to-day basis? What's interfering with you feeling the best you can feel under the circumstances? Um I would have to say my inner hatred well yourself. Or of other yeah. Myself. I I I blame myself for a lot of the stuff that has happened in my life. Um I it just A lot of self hate. Um I I I have um I have scars on my hand uh from when I uh got really mad at myself uh earlier uh about July.

Uh it was my son's birthday actually. Um and I just punched uh um my mirror until I Yeah. So I I I don't I don't look at myself in the mirror like when I go to Walmart, like I'm looking at feet. Yep. And I have music on. Okay. And I'm just tired of hating myself and I don't know how to not hate myself.

All right, so let's talk about that because I can imagine you're tired of it. Um the first thing I want to say before we get into the deeper places that this might inhabit is that self-love. Okay, so I have this thing about the phrase self-love. It makes me like cringe every time. It sounds like a euphemism for masturbation. But the self-love project, part of what so makes it so elusive

Is that I think the instinct around self-love is that it's an inside job, that somehow if I do enough therapy or whatever, that I'm just going to develop this love for myself from the inside out. And in my experience, It is surprisingly the opposite, which is that self-love starts as a set of practices. It starts with behavior and then makes its way inside. And so the first The first item on the list for me when I'm talking to someone about developing self-love is bound.

Right. How do you think you are at setting or holding boundaries with other people? Saying no when you need to say no, things like that. How does that go for you? About fifty fifty. About fifty fifty. So one place to look is to keep an eye on on that, on am I saying yes when I really want to say no? Am I speaking up for myself when it's appropriate and when I need to? That's a really important place to look, right? Another another piece of this in terms of the practice around self love.

Is going to be tied more to your childhood trauma experiences and it's going to be the reparenting process. So the place where self, the self love, issue comes up most glaringly from your history for me is obviously from your childhood and not having

Parents who loved you the right way such that you had a model for how to love yourself. Right. And that's uh what the reparenting process and trauma work is about. It's about going back and giving to yourself The things that you were supposed to get from your parents that you did not get. And the best place to start with reparenting is with a morning routine. And what the morning routine is really about is about you making a promise to yourself that you keep every day.

So it's choosing something that is good for you that takes fewer than fifteen minutes that you will do every day as soon as you wake up. First thing you gotta do is let the dog out, right? But then Before you look at your phone or do anything for anybody else, taking five, 10, 15 minutes. It could be breath work or a meditation, but it could also be just going and sitting outside and breathing.

For five minutes, right? It could be stretching, it could be journaling, it could be anything. The magic is in the repetition, not even in the specific act. So the idea is just to get into the habit. As soon as Apollo comes inside, you have this thing that you're doing every day. And like I said, it doesn't really matter so much what it is as long as it's good for you and that it doesn't take longer than 15 minutes.

Yeah. So that would be the first place I would start. Does that sound like something you could do? Yeah. Yeah. I would start there. I hear that you already make your own food, and that is often the next place I go with people is around cooking your own food is tremendously healing for those of us with childhood trauma because

Food is love, right? In this culture. And so many things about food are associated with mom that learning how to feed yourself is really, really restorative. And you're already doing that. So you've already got some really great practices dialed in that'll fit right into this.

And then the other thing about you hating yourself is I was just talking about how so many of us with childhood trauma carry these. Negative beliefs about ourselves, like I'm unlovable or I'm not good enough or I'm bad. And I can only imagine how many of those you have, right? There's gotta be a bunch of. And so that's that's when something like EMDR or therapeutic mushroom trips comes in because the other thing that would be necessary

for you to cultivate a solid sense of love for yourself would be to uproot and rewrite those negative I ams. So that would be the other component of this in addition to it sounds like you're doing talk therapy, is that right? Talk therapy is gonna be really important, as you know. Hugely important and

Talk therapy is never going to resolve these trauma bits for you ever because they live in your nervous system. So your nervous system's going to need some rehab and your nervous system's going to need to be involved in the healing, right? So just adding something to the talk therapy, adding another layer.

Because it's Tyler, you have enough to walk around with. You're carrying enough. We do not need you carrying hatred toward yourself too. That is way too fucking heavy of a load. Like that I can't that's not we can't do that. That can't Yeah. It's one of the few things my girlfriend and I actually argue about a lot. She's like, You keeps talking so negatively about yourself all the time and I'm like, Well, that's all I see. And she's like, Well, this is what I see.

Yeah. Well I'm glad she's there to reflect something back to you that's different. And those corrective emotional experiences with her are really potent parts of this healing. They won't be sufficient, but they're gonna be huge. in making a difference and sustaining the healing, right? And so it might be helpful for her to understand that until you do some of the deeper healing These I ams that live in you. So traumatic experiences form negative core beliefs. And then this is what happens.

The trauma the traumatic experience forms the negative core belief, but then we use our brains, which brains are just not helpful when it comes to healing. They generally just really get in the way. Then what our brains do is they adopt These negative beliefs as lenses, right? So let's say young Tyler decides because of his interactions with mom that he's bad. So now you're carrying I'm bad.

Right. You you come to believe that because as a young child you have these terrible experiences with mom and where your system goes with it is, well, I must be bad. Now these things happen in your life. You lose your kid. where somebody else would be able to just stay in the space of I allowed myself or I I you know, b not even allowed myself, but I got into a relationship

With someone who has really toxic behaviors and I wasn't able to protect myself against this. For you, it's real easy to go, these things are happening because I'm bad. I'm just a bad person and I deserve it. Right. And so that we use those I am as a lens through which we interpret our experiences. So they just gain what we think is more proof. There's like more data to support it. And so they become really entrenched.

So even if you don't want to believe them, you have this material in your core that is just constantly feeding you these messages over and over. Like that happened because you're bad. It happened because you're not good enough. It happened because you're unlovable. Whatever those IAMs are that you're carrying, and those are probably among them, right? That's just this constant source.

of negative information about yourself. And we can't change the thoughts and behaviors until we pull the trauma root out.

Even if you did like some really intense CBT work where every day, all day, first of all, this would be impossible, but for the sake of the conversation, if all day, every day, every single time you had a negative thought about yourself. You employed thought stopping and cognitive restructuring, which are two C B T techniques, right? So it's thought stopping real creative name is just actually yelling stop at yourself in your brain when you have the negative thought.

And then restructuring it, replacing it with something positive. Like so you think to yourself you're a piece of shit and you go, all right, brain, stop. I'm valuable. I'm a good person. Here's the thing about that. You're just gaslighting yourself. If you don't actually believe that, repeating it over and over, what it can do, absolutely, is teach your brain

When you think I'm a piece of shit, your brain will go, no, no, no, you're good and you're worth it. You might actually teach your brain to have a different response, but it you still won't believe. You'll know that you're just saying it, right? Once you pull the trauma roots out, once we pull out the source. Of this constant just running faucet.

of negative information about yourself, then those new beliefs can root. Then those corrective Americ uh emotional experiences get in there and that's the information you have about yourself. But as long as those I am's are still kicking around in there. It's going to be really hard to stop thinking those things about yourself. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh I it's a lot of my IMs that are negative uh lately has been Damn, I f I must be really fucking stupid because I could have seen this coming a mile away, like This is like And they said they were going they they threatened that they were going to find a way to get those kids back front. Yeah, but why would you believe that's possible? It's so hard to believe any of this could even happen, right? Right. Like you you you would think that like and you would think after all the CPF

You know, them calling all the time. I I I kid you not, I have uh my record and s in Michigan is s from November thirtieth. till I left in August to move out here. There was ninety something Phone calls to CPS about my children. From whom? My mother and her wife and her friends. Right. There are uh there are screenshots that I have the terrible conversations they would have about me and my now ex-wife and how terrible we are to the children all over the place, all over Facebook.

And like so like my brain should have been like, No, do not give them an olive branch. They are mean Right, right, right. This is bad. Uh but you I think that I understand that the felt sense around this is going to differ, but if you l if you go just into your actual like cognition, just into your intellect, just into your brain for a moment, you can imagine, right, that If you had any reason to believe that this would actually happen, you would not allow it to happen. Right.

You know that. So it, you know, hindsight's 2020 and all that, sure, you can see in retrospect. that maybe it was the wrong choice to extend that olive branch. But I don't know that it's a great idea to fault yourself for choosing the loving option, right? Like you tried to do the thing that was more positive. And it backfired and that doesn't make it the wrong choice.

It just means that that something really bad happened anyway, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you did the wrong thing. Right? There was no way to know. Yeah, I mean um a lot of it boiled down to Uh my my selfish desire to give my children the healthy relationship that they ha uh with their grandparents like I did. Yeah. Yes, my parents were around, but my grandparents were really the ones that taught me how to be a kind human being. They're the ones that taught me right from wrong.

Yep. Yep. And so it wasn't misguided. It was it was a well intended and it's uh easy to support choice, right?

I'm curious, your your eldest sister, the one whom you have a relationship with, what is what's her take on all of this? Oh, she has hated my mother since the get go. Right. Absolutely. Um I So my older si uh all but my youngest sibling um are all half siblings. Uh my dad kinda got around. Don't hate the player, hate the game. Yep. Like any good Christian does, just spreading his seed wherever he can. That's the Jesus' way. Yeah. Bye. Yeah.

Uh so like most of us kids have a different mom. Um and my sister absolutely hated my mother because my mom Different mom. Okay. Right. All right. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Where does d does that eldest sister live in Michigan? Uh no, she currently lives I think in Ohio. Okay. So you don't get to see her regularly, but you have contact. No. Yeah. No, I haven't seen her and Her twelve year old was two. Oh wow. Yeah. But you do you talk regularly?

Okay. Okay. And do you have I you have a girlfriend and I hear you have roommates, do you have a support system in your life? Do you feel like you have people other than your girlfriend whom you can count on? Yeah. Um I actually Um I actually called them my magnificent seven. Nice. So you do. You've got a posse. That's good. That's critical.

So that brings me to the next thing I'm thinking about, th which is why I asked about the support system, which is grief, right? There's so much grief in this story. And I'm wondering what your experience is or what your familiarity is with grief. Like, do you feel it? Have you been through some sort of grief process? When I say grief, what comes up for you? Hope, I guess. Oh wow. When I say grief, what comes up for you is hope. Keep talking, Tyler. Tell me more. There's a quote.

Uh that goes I sat with my anger long enough to find out her name was grief. Oh my god, that's so interesting because the shtick I always unroll on everybody is that the healing process when you're dealing with Trauma childhood trauma goes first anger, then grief, then freedom. So yeah, I can totally get behind that. I sat with my anger long enough to realize your name is grief. Okay.

Okay. So yes, we have to feel the anger first so that we can address the boundary problems, but once that is in place. That's what opens up the state, uh opens up the space rather for the grief to come to the surface. And it sounds from talking to you. that you have worked through a lot of the anger. Not that you aren't still angry, but it isn't driving. The anger isn't driving, which would open up the space for grief. So how have you addressed the grief?

I've cried a lot. Yeah. I I I I am man enough to say when um when I got the letter to that denied me to be uh heard from the judge uh in Michigan, uh I I cried and I called uh The first member of my magnificent seven, uh my best friend Andrew. who lives on the opposite side of the town. I called him crying and screaming and he's a war vet and he sped through town. Uh and then at my house within two minutes. Oh, Andrew, you're making me cry, Andrew. I love you.

Okay, this is I have goosebumps and this is exactly what I was getting to that I don't need to get to because you've already got it, which is that grief needs community. You can't grieve alone. Right. Yeah. And the other thing that grief needs is ritual. Right. So having some sort of practice that allows you to honor the grief in a concrete way.

right to allow you to release it. That's something to think about. And that's even better when it's done in community. Right. So the fact that you have people to support you, um, is Huge and that your instinct was to reach out to him. That's really strong evidence for me that your life force is still intact, right? That you're That you have these instincts that go toward healing and toward survival, like reaching out to someone who can actually support you. Yeah.

Yeah. Um I've definitely like my my mindset About seven out of ten times. Um isn't necessarily in my in my sadness and my despair. It's in my My drive. It's in my you know, I have I have walked through death and death is tempted many times to get me, but she hasn't earned me yet, so I can't stop.

Nope, you can't. Good. What's your relationship with rest? Takes too long. Yeah. That might be a really good place for us to focus, right?'Cause you need Yeah. I understand. You just explained to me why it would be hard for you, right? Like you have to keep going to make things better, right? It would feel like rest could feel like complacency given the circumstances of your life.

And it's going to be critical to keeping you healthy. The all of the physical and psychological repair that happens from all of this work that you're doing on yourself consolidates while you're resting and sleeping. You know? And so keeping the energy and the focus and the life force going, you have to have some rest. And we know you're not getting enough sleep. So maybe this is a good place for your girlfriend to intervene. How is she at

Oh yeah, she's uh she's a teacher, former teacher, so she knows all about the rest and the relaxation. She also got very into psychology and she's all about, you know, taking the time and rest and Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok Thank you. Well yeah, but imagine most people slay way but sleep way better than you do, Tyler. I'm gonna just say. Um yeah, so letting her sort of push you.

into, you know, lazy days. And I hate the word lazy. I don't even believe in laziness. It's a capitalist value. But having her push you into days that feel lazy, that are really resting is something that you're doing. Rest is an activity.

But we've been misled by capitalism to believe what you just said, like we don't have time for it. If we're resting things are things aren't getting done. Really important things are actually getting done when we're resting, like healing. It doesn't happen without rest. So

Trying to find ways to give yourself more space to rest and again, not a Leo specialty. Leos are not good at rest in my experience. You guys like to do, you know, and again because you're hard on yourself too, that that doesn't make it any easier. Um, but trying to find ways that you can harness rest, even if it means leveraging the weed a little extra to get it to slow you down, right? Um, that's going to be really important. Really, really important. Cause this is just a lot all the time.

What can we talk about that we haven't talked about yet? Uh yeah, those are the only things that I mean Oh just that. That's it. Just those few little things. Like I feel like a lot of what I uh A lot of what we've discussed already is what's going to lead me to be able to craft the tools that I need to fix the rest of my issues. That's right. I agree with you. I just wanna be I want my story to be out there, not to you know be oh poor me, poor me, but a reminder of

At the center, at the end of it all, there's all you've always gotta have hope. And there's always hope for a better tomorrow. Thank you so much. Thanks, man. For sharing this. Tremendous. You guys I mean I I was just kind of scrolling through my Instagram and I came across your guys' post and I was like, Yeah, I'll just go for you. See where it goes. And here's where we're going to be able to do Bye, bye, bye.