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I encourage people to be doing the healing work that they need, but don't forget about how that healing work is also a part of a larger system, which is the community that we live in, and even this world that we complain about this world that's full of so much oppression, this world that's full of so much hate and chaos. Well, guess who makes the world function?
People, Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good way. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mina Bee,
a former psychotherapist specializing in anxiety, depression, and trauma. Mina has worked in several mental health industries, including early childhood in New York City's early head Start programs, private practice, and community mental health. In this episode, Eric, Jenny and Mina discuss her book Owning Our Struggles, A Path to healing and finding community in a Broken World.
Hi Mina, Welcome to the show.
Hi Eric and Jinny, thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk with you. We're going to be discussing your book, Owning Our Struggles, a Path to Healing and Finding Community in a Broken World. But before we jump into that, we'll start like we always do. And I forgot to welcome Ginny, who's sitting next to me, so welcome about me, Welcome me. I'll let you do the parable.
All right.
I mean it goes like this. A grandparent was talking with their grandchild and they said, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and one is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents and says, well, which one wins?
And the grandparents said, the one you feed. So I'd like to ask you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.
I think the first thing that comes to mind is this idea that two things can coexist, two opposing things can coexist. We have the capacity to harness goodness, purity, joy, but I think I think it's important to remember that we also have the capacity to harm, to hurt, and to
cause pain. And it is up to us to hold ourselves accountable by being cognizant of the parts of ourselves that we feed, of the parts of ourselves that we tune into, the parts of ourselves that we heal, because healing is a choice, and the things that you feed yourself is a choice. And so that's what comes to mind when I hear that powable.
That's really beautiful. And one of the things I love about your work is you are holding two things in your work a lot at the same time, right, And it is this idea that we are a result of the circumstances that we are grown up in our childhoods, the communities that we're in, the privilege we do or don't have, the abuse we do or don't suffer. So you're holding that, but you're holding equally this idea that we are not powerless people, that we have a great
deal of our our own innate power. And I love that balance because we often see people with one or the other of those. But I find that holding both is really what's required for.
Healing, absolutely, and I think when we make space for both, we can deal with the intricacies that come with life. You know, I think in the mental health field as a therapist, I practiced for nine years up until twenty twenty, and that is when I pivoted to corporate wellness work. But I think our current climate around mental health is how can I feel good all the time? And when we don't take the time to explore our emotions, the story behind our emotions, I think sometimes we forget that
pain can also have a purpose, right. I think that when we look in the cracks and crevices of our pain and our hurt and our traumas, we can realize, yes, there are things that happen to us that we can't control. We can't change his way, we can't change our paths, but we do harness a power within to be able to overcome the difficulties that we've experienced in life. And sometimes that's going to be hard. Sometimes that's going to
make me sad. Sometimes that will make me want to cry, But that doesn't mean I'm not healing, right, It just means I'm human. And that is what this work really speaks to, allowing two opposing things to coexist and know that pain is hard to deal with, but there is also power that I hold as a person where I don't have to allow that pain to control me or even dictate the type of future I see for myself.
It's funny my mom had back surgery a few weeks ago and she's still in the hospital. She's had a number of setbacks, but that very idea when you were saying that, it just hit me. She thinks the fact that she's in pain is a sign that this went badly, whereas it's not. I mean, it could be, but it's part of what she needs to overcome. And if she's waiting and looking for there not to be pain in the healing process, she's not going to engage in the healing.
And so this applies on so many different levels.
Yeah, I connected with it too.
It just made me think about even recently, I've caught myself in this mindset, which is if I'm not careful, like if I wake up one day and am in a low mood, or feel low, or feel heavy, or feel just I don't know if sad. Maybe sad's too far. It's just I don't feel great. My first inclination is to think.
Like, what am I doing wrong? You know, what am I doing wrong in this day?
What could I do differently so that I'd be doing it better so I'd feel better? But I can remind myself in those moments, like you just reminded us that it's part of the human experience. It doesn't mean we're doing something wrong. Or even more importantly, to remember it's not that we are wrong for feeling those emotions, right. You talk about the inability to cope with our emotions
can often come from judging them. Judging our emotions, you know, Labeling emotions is bad and then assuming we are bad people for feeling them, instead of learning to accept and embrace them, that they exist because we're human.
I just find that such a powerful thing to remember.
You know, it's funny that you bring that story up about your mother, Eric, because my mother had knee replacement surgery two weeks ago, which is a very extensive surgery. If you know anyone who's ever dealt with it, and I am her primary caretaker through all of this. Oh wow, Yeah, it's very interesting because while taking care of her, you know,
the first week was extremely hard. As we moved into the second week, she had moments where I saw in her face she looked like she was really sad and depressed, and I would ask her what's wrong, and she's just like, I feel really bad that you have to do all of this for me. She had a lot of guilt and she's just like, you're sacrificing so much of your time. And I said to her, Mama, can sacrifice two to three weeks of my life to take care of you.
Remember the way you feel right now is not your forever. I know you're going to heal. You're in pain for two to three weeks. The healing for a surgery like this, the immediate healing process takes about three to four weeks. I can sacrifice that. But I had to remind her. I'm like, see, the issue is your mindset right now? Is this is your forever? And remember, if I have hope that you're going to heal, I need you to
have that same level of hope for yourself too. And I think sometimes when we're in pain, we go into forever mode? Am I ever getting out of this?
Almost always, I would say, and I don't use that word often, but like I find myself almost always that's my first thought is like, well, this is how it's just.
Going to be.
But I like the word hope that you just dropped in there, that you held hope she's going to get better, and so she can also perhaps kind of share in your hope for her exactly, and we maybe benefit from that.
That brings me back to the power of community care.
And that's why that's so central to my work, because I always say, if I can have hope for myself, I can extend it to you, and I can hope that you would have hope for your own situation, And if you can't have it, I'll have it for you because I'm believing something better for you, so that one moments when I look at your face and I see sadness sketched in your eyes and I see you watering up with tears in your eyes, I can look at you and be hopeful for you in moments when you
feel like you can't think of joy or cultivate happiness, I'll be that person for you because I know you will heal. You're making progress so already, and that goes to anything in life. And I think this is why having people is so important in the work that I practice as a therapist, but just also in life, because I think sometimes we're in that dark tunnel and you know how they have that metaphor you're looking for a light,
and sometimes I think people are our light. Even if the both of us are in that dark tunnel together and we don't see the light that we're looking for, that person can be the light that you need in that moment. And that's just why I think it's important for us to bring people into our experiences as we journey, because sometimes our suffering can become so magnified that we need someone else to remind us. If I'm going to be hopeful in this moment, I encourage you to be
hopeful as well. But if you can't do that, I'll do it for you.
Oh MENA, that is so beautiful.
Yeah.
I was interviewed last week for an addiction summit. I have a background with addiction, and the person said like, well, what one thing do you believe to be true about addiction? And I said, well, in general, I'm going to say addiction is too complex to boil it down to one thing. But if I was forced to say one true statement about addiction, it would be that people don't recover by themselves. It doesn't mean you have to go to twelve step groups, but doing it alone for the vast, vast majority of
people isn't going to work. And it's partially what you just said. It's in the grips of addiction, it feels completely hopeless. And I know for me being in meetings where I saw other people who said I felt just like that, but look at me now was what got me through many many days when I didn't have any hope that I could get better. But I saw that they did, and that was enough to sort of carry me through.
You know, Eric, that's so funny the parallel that's happening between us right now, totally because people often ask me what made me center community care in my work, and I went to NYU to study social work in my graduate program, and my second year placement was at hazeldin
Betty Ford Foundation. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, yes, And in hazeldin our core way of working with our clients is through group therapy and that practice of sitting with people, letting them listen to each other's stories, teaching them to manage conflict in the room, helping them practice compassion and empathy in a room of twelve strangers who
had to go on a six month journey together. They're in that program that to me modeled what community care looks like, and that is why I made community care at the center of my work being an intern at Hezelden.
Yeah. Wow, Yeah, it's such a beautiful thing to see. I mean, I went through a six month halfway house and it was the same sort of thing.
It was groups.
And I always say to people like I've done a lot of healing on my own through meditation and spiritual practices and therapy and all that, but equally important and equally powerful to me, if not more so, has been all the group work that I've done of different types over the years. It's so so powerful.
The quote that you put at the beginning of your book really struck both of us.
You say, self care is the bridge.
To community care, and community care is the bridge to community healing, and that really is a foundational theme in your book. Which I think is so important that we just talked about.
Yeah, it speaks to this concept of what Eric just said. Right, you can do all this healing work and that's beautiful. You can meditate, you can go on retreats, you can even go to therapy and do that one on one work. But in my book, I always go back to this focus of but we heal to integrate into community. Heal because relationships are at the center of our well being. Heal because being a part of a community helps us to combat loneliness, It boosts our self esteem, it increases
feelings of confidence. That plays a critical role going back to early childhood, infancy, the importance of a child developing attachment with a caregiver. Why do we think attachment and building bonds stops once we turn eighteen?
Right?
You know this is a journey, which is why from infancy it's important we develop it. But the goal is
for that to move with us through life. I encourage people to be doing the healing work that they need, but don't forget about how that healing work is also a part of a larger system, which is the community that we live in and even this world that we ca complain about this world that's full of so much oppression, this world that's full of so much hate and chaos, Well, guess who makes the world function people.
Indeed, as healing as community can be, it can also be a source of great pain and trauma, right that the systems that enjure and oppress on various levels. And that's another I found just really compelling theme in your book. And I wonder if you would feel comfortable sharing a story with us that you share in the book about something that happened to you when you were ten years
old in home depot. And I think it's an important and really powerful story if you're comfortable sharing it here, because I think it illustrates so many different points that maybe we'll touch on through our conversation.
Yeah, I can absolutely share it. I will start off by saying that I had to record the audio book recently, and when I started sharing this story, I started to tear up. So in case that happens in this moment and people hear my voice cracking, it's it's a very deeply emotional story for me to revisit, but I do want to share it because I think it's important. So
when I was ten years old. I was in a home depot, specifically in Fort Myers, Florida, and the state of Florida in our current climate, shouldn't be shocking that
this happened to me. And so what ended up happening is I was walking in an aisle with my uncle, and my uncle is deaf, and my parents were in a different part of the store, and me and my uncle we were in the aisle by ourselves, and I saw these two white male police officers coming down the aisle making eye contact with me and looking at me very firmly. So here I am in my body ten years old. Grew up with the belief that my parents shared with me. If a cop ever approaches you, it
means you did something bad. Just keep your cool, keep your calm. So that's what's playing in my head because I see them making eye contact walking toward me, and I just feel so frozen in my body. My trauma response is kicking in, especially also because I knew I would have to be doing most of the communicating. And so they come and approach me and they're like, ma'am,
can we please see your ID? And so I'm like, ma'am, like I know I look older than I typically am, Like, you know, not ten people mistaken me as a teenager, but to be called ma'am was just so off putting, and it was just so strange, you know. So I'm staring at him and he's like, well, how old are you?
And I said, I'm ten years old. So at that point I start communicating with my uncle to find my parents in the store somewhere because I could tell they needed to have a conversation that I wasn't equipped to have. He finds them, My parents come and they approach the officers and they're like, can you tell us what's going on? And the officer responds and says, a woman identified your daughter and said she stole her purse then proceeded to
steal her wallet out of her purse. And as I heard that story, literally the little ten year old me, who was frozen in fear, instantly was like, what, I didn't do that. And I even write in a book I felt like I had an alibi already at ten years old, where I'm like, I was doing this and I was doing that, and I was with my uncle and what are you talking about. I didn't steal anything,
So the officers didn't believe me. They kept having rebuttals, well, this is what the woman said, and so my parents intervened, and I just remember listening to my parents defending me. But there was one particular thing that they said in that moment that I had never forgotten. And I heard
them say, it's because we're black, isn't it. And I remember as a child thinking to myself, they approached me because I'm black, and I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood, went to predominantly black schools, so I never really thought of being othered, you know, because I was always amongst my own people. And when my parents said that, I heard a negative connotation in their voice, though, so I thought, well, who cares if they're white, Why does
it matter that we're black? And they continued on arguing with each other. My parents refused to back down, and all of a sudden, the officers were like, you know, not forget it. We're gonna leave it alone. And I remember walking out of that store in at ten. I know I was young, but I was a little emotionally mature at my age because of some of the things that I've gone through, And I just remember thinking so They're not gonna, like look for footage to see if
I did this. They're not going to see if there are any key witnesses to see if I did this. And then I remember my parents saying, who is this woman?
Where is she?
She's hiding and she's being protected. Meanwhile, this child is being blamed for a crime she did not do. And so that story was the beginning of me having to reconcile with what it meant to be black in America.
And I remember going home home, sitting with my parents who who said to me, because of the color of your skin, there are going to be things that you endure and things that you face in this country simply because you are black, And there are going to be some things that we may not be able to equip you to now help you navigate these situations because they're so complex and they're going to be so deep, but they're going to travel with you everywhere you go. And so this is why you have to.
Be this particular person.
You have to show up in the world this particular way, which kind of creates this idea of the strong black woman trope. You can't cry, you can't be weak, you can't show certain parts of yourself because people will say you're ghetto, people will say you're uneducated, people will say you're not good enough, and that it's unfortunate. But the things that they said came to fruition, and I had to learn how to navigate those things as an adult
in this country. But that would be the story that shaped how I see myself in this world.
I want to sort of hold a moment for the power and the real grief that's there still.
I can just yeah, see that and hear that in your voice.
I'm wondering, as you mentioned in your book, so if some of this grief, you say that reading words around being black being exhausting, that those words can fill you with grief, because yes, you were exhausted, but it had nothing to do with being black. It had everything to do with the power of white supremacy and how those
roots run deep with an American soil. Can you tell me a bit about the grief that you still hold, the sadness that this story still kind of evokes in you, and what that is connected to specifically.
Now, I think it's connected to the grief of knowing that you can exist in a world we're simply because of your race, people will literally want you dead. The fact that if I knock on the wrong door, someone will shoot me. The fact that if I enter a particular neighborhood because of the color of my skin, someone would demand identification from me. The fact that I could be walking in a grocery store and someone will just say I want to kill black people today, and I
could be a victim of that. And I share those examples because those are not just opinions. Those are facts of things that have happened in American society. And every time a black and brown person is murdered simply because of their race, I can think to myself, that could have been me. And that is deeply hard to reconcile with.
To know that you're doing something as small as looking through an aisle to pick up dinner for your children, and someone could murder you in a supermarket because you are black.
I could be.
Pulled over, which I have many times, and because I'm black, someone will have a bias about me. And because of the bias that they refuse to check, the wilful ignorance they refuse to work on, they will aim to shoot before they listen. And I feel like, what's sad is that I felt this way at ten. My parents felt this way, my grandparents felt this way, and my ancestors
have felt this way. So it has never changed. When I look in our current climate and I think about the racial injustices and the thought leaders and the activists, I think to myself, when are we going to stop having this conversation? Because when you look through the history books, from the moment slavery came to America, we have been asking people to see us as more than one fourth
human and it is hard to live like that. But I have to make an active choice daily to see myself as a valuable member of my society, because if I don't, those thoughts will kill me. Those thoughts will leave me depressed, those thoughts will leave me anxious, because I have to leave my house if I want to enjoy life right. And so I think that is why that pain still deeply resonates, because white supremacy, being exhausting, still exists, and all of these systems of oppression they
just keep manifesting with new faces. Before it was in shackles and chains and having slave masters, and now it's just embedded in systems. It's embedded in a jail system. It's embedded in adultification bias, which is why, at ten years old, a police officer called me ma'am and expected me to have identification. So it just has a new face and it has a new name, but it's still a system that is intended to harm us and to kill us. I want to be very explicit with the killing.
It is intended to kill, and that is what is deeply hard. And when I think about that story twenty three years later, I can still feel the grief and the pain of that, because you would think ten years, twenty three years later, things would have changed enough, and they haven't. And I have to reconcile with that daily.
It's just I find myself at a loss for words and struck by your power in how you then respond by saying, and I'll read your words here. You're telling someone that you're very much aware that there are people in this world who hate me for being black. But I love myself and how I see myself trumps the opinion of others. I cannot allow the judgments of others
to rule and define how I live my life. And I stand in awe of that power that you have claimed, and that you have to choose that response and then begin a healing journey from there.
I have to My life depends on that. My happiness depends on that. So I wrote that because I know black and round people are tired, hence that narrative in the book being black is exhausting. It's not exhausting, it's beautiful, it's wonderful. Systems are exhausting. They are, but I want to be happy, and I know I deserve to be happy. And despite the judgments that people have about me, my race, my gender, those things coexisting, I have to ask myself, how do I see me? Because that is really all
that matters. There's going to be hate everywhere I go, and it may not even be because of the color of my skin. It could be because I'm a woman. It could be because I'm successful. It could be because of so many things, right when we even take it under the microscope of race, it could be for so many things. That there are people in this world who just won't like you, who will hate you, who will have judgments, and if I let their ideologies be my compass,
I will not move anywhere in this world. So I wake up every day saying to myself, what do I think I deserve and let me live in alignment with that.
And that is.
How knowing that deep pain that I just shared, I can also make space remember the power of two things coexisting.
I can own and recognize the hurt, the pain, the trauma around race and still celebrate who I am as a black woman and be happy about the fact that I exist in black skin and be happy about my cultural roots that go back to Panama and Colombia and what it means to be an American woman and what it means to be in black skin and own that and be happy about that and revel in the joy around that, because I too deserve good things, and so
I make it a habit to take up space. And people are really going to hate me for that, and that makes me feel good to know that despite knowing that all of this hap exists around me, the things that I cannot control the judgments of people, guess what. I have wonderful friends in my life, friends who are white, black, Asian of all races, not just black friends, you know. So there are people who want to be in community with me, and that is where I give my energy.
That is where I invest in. Those are the people that I show up for because of how they show up for me. And I think that is the beauty of just being able to own who you are and own your struggles and again allow those two opposing things to coexist. But find your people, Find your people, And that's the message I really want people to take away
from here, especially black and brown people. Find your people and live in alignment with the truth you have over yourself, but also allow others to be that light for you, right. And I think that is what helps me just move through life being a joyful mean and be that I am.
I wanted to pivot just a slight bit. There's a line that you have. You say that our core beliefs are like the soil of the earth, and our thoughts are the seeds that we plant. And I wanted to ask you to expand upon that. But I also wanted to ask you to expand upon that in light of everything we just were talking about with an idea of internalized oppression, and talk a little bit about what that is.
And I think it applies as you said, it applies from a race perspective, It applies from a female perspective. It applies from being a poor perspective. Right, There's so many different ways that this process of internalized depression can happen, and so then maybe from there broadened out to the seeds in the soil.
Yeah, so you know, internalized oppression is this inward battle. And what I mean by that is people who experience internalized oppression, they start to believe the negative ideologies they've heard about themselves. And for black and brown people in particular, this actually dates back to historical trauma.
If you are enslaved, you.
Are told you are only considered one fourth human, You are perceived as an animal. Hence the term coon in black culture. Right, coon is short for raccoon, and that is what people used to call Black people as a way to refer to us as animals. So if you're told you're an animal, you're told you're not good enough and for centuries, right, I say this all the time, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but to be truthful, in our current climate, a lot of
us can't even handle one bad day. Okay, let ourselves here, like, oh my god, yeah, you can't even handle one bad day. We can't handle being burnt out for two weeks. Okay, imagine four hundred years though of slavery and oppression, and what that does to your state of mind When you look in the mirror, what do you think about yourself?
If you have been enslaved, your mother was enslaved, your grandparent was enslaved, your whole lineage has been enslaved, you have no marker for what it means to be whole. And so if you are being taught all of these negative ideologies about yourself, then what do you teach your children? And so internalized oppression is when we literally start to believe the negative concepts and stereotypes that oppressive people have
told us about ourselves. And so if you have been told that you're not smart, you're not educated, not only will you believe it, you won't work toward anything. So now it shows in your actions, right, because our thoughts inform our behaviors. And that is what I mean when I talk about our beliefs and our values. And this concept of the soil is the foundation.
Everything needs a foundation.
You can't build a house with no foundation, and even if you have one, if that foundation is rocky. When I watch HGTV, when they go into the basement and they're ripping up the floors.
Oh, we see cracks.
We can't keep building.
Imagine when that crack is in your spirit, and when that crack is in the way you think about yourself, how do you build on top of that when already the system you're building on is broken. And so the thoughts those seeds, Now, you're already have a rocky foundation, and those seeds that you're planting in that rocky foundation are your thoughts. But if the foundation is rocky, it's to cycle. What do I think about myself? How do
I view myself? And on a larger scale, but thinking of historical trauma, because it is trauma that happens to a particular race or ethnic group, how do I see people who look like me? Because even as you see outlined in my book, when I'm talking about white supremact ideologies, I even name it, there are people of color who
also harness white supremaict ideologies. Right, Because if you've been hearing these things about yourself over and over and over again, you might start to work toward leaning into the white gaze, which is what I share in my book where I thought to myself, well, I remember having an experience where I used to feel very shy about communicating because I didn't feel like I spoke correctly. I didn't think that I spoke well, and I didn't think I sounded intelligent
when I would speak. But then I had to check myself and say, but who do you have those concerns about when you're around what group of people? When are you thinking that? And I had to admit to myself and say, well, specifically, when it's around white people, I'm more cognizant about how I speak. But when I'm around black people, I don't care. I don't care what they think about me and how I talk. And that's because
I'm performing for the white gads, you know. And so all of those things are blended together where one of the things we have to remember is our beliefs are going to dictate the life we think we deserve, and that often is a thing that strips people of their power. You are the person who's in charge of harnessing that power, and so if you're telling yourself you're not good enough, that is a foundation that you're already setting.
How do you build on that?
Right?
The things you tend to build on that are negative I don't think people can be trusted. I don't think people from certain groups can be trusted. And so it continues to spread and trickle in different domains of your life. And that is how we end up in this constant state of what feels like brokenness because the foundation is
already broken. I feel broken, and how am I allowing people in if I'm not trusting the people around me, and I have broken perceptions and ideologies of them too, And so that is what it looks like when you bridge that concept to this concept of internalized oppression aka internalized racism.
And so what is the process that you've seen work with people for beginning to change those underlying beliefs? Because the word belief, I think is actually really important because we actually believe it very much to be true and usually will come up with evidence to justify that it's true. Those things don't just change because I'm like, well, I guess maybe you know those are deep patterns, and so what is the process of changing long held, deeply held beliefs.
I like that you used what is the process because it is indeed a process, right. I think sometimes people want a specific formula. So if I write out six affirmations Mina, will I be better at.
Having better movie systems?
And I'm like, well, you might have to write some affirmations out on top of doing this and the exploring your childhood trauma and also exploring the where you got those beliefs from. It's complex, I'm going to be honest, it is so complex. But I often find getting to the root, sometimes breaking up the concrete so that we can get to the soil, is where the starting place is, because we first have to ask ourselves. I always challenge people and say, well, where did you hear that from?
Where did you get this concept from? For some people it might look like going back to childhood. It might look like exploring their parent dynamics and saying, well, I grew up around emotionally immature parents who told me I was ugly, who told me I was stupid, who told me in order for me to be beautiful or be in a relationship, I had to be thin. You know,
it's sometimes it starts in your childhood. For other groups of people, it might be understanding the way because again, these different systems around oppression and racism and how it's not just in individual acts, it's also a system that infiltrates in our media, it infiltrates in our education system.
And so what does it look like when you turn on the TV and your whole entire life all you saw was white family and the black families you saw were single parent homes, and the white families had two parents, had a two parent household. Right, some of those things, some of those beliefs are deeply ingrained in us because of what we're exposed to, right, And so I think
it absolutely looks different for everyone. But I think it goes back to that concept of again breaking through the concrete and saying, I need to dig through the soil and ask myself who planted this seed here? Where did this concept come from? And now I have to start doing inner work of challenging those ideologies. And then I also have to do this extra work of asking myself, well what do I deserve? Because I often work with people too, and when they have these negative concepts, I say,
and how are these beliefs making you happy? And they'll do some self reflection and say, actually, consistently thinking about myself in this way makes me miserable. It's making me depressed. Right, And you see that link between mental health and our thoughts. It's actually not increasing my self esteem. It's not increasing my confidence. It's actually linked to me feeling even worse about myself. So, now, what are some things that I need to start doing to rewire the way I think
and thinking of that rewiring system. It's not just on you. Now, we need to call in people. This is the part of community care. I need to call in people who can help me look at myself in a way that is valuable. I have to start reconciling with the fact that my parents are not healthy people. I have to start reconciling with the fact that the person I married this is touchy.
The person I married is.
Not healthy for me.
They have to look inward and reconcile with the fact that those friendships I've had since childhood, they're not healthy for me because I am linked to people with toxic tendency and I'm linked to people with abusive patterns, which is keeping my belief about myself stuck because often abusers manipulators, those types of people want to benefit from you being broken, so they keep you in that state of being, you know, and so it is a whole system that honestly needs
to be dug up from the ground. And after you're doing this in a work of self exploration, that is where you're calling people, and you might realize I have to get rid of some people, and I ast need to make space for people who can see me in my fullness and start to help me reframe my beliefs
about myself. And I also have to reconcile with the fact that they are going to be people in my life who I love and I want them around, but I can't listen to the things they say about me because they're stuck in a place of trauma and they only know how to spew trauma towards me. They only know hurt, they only know judgment, they only know to chastise, And so I want to call them a talk on the phone, but I can't anymore. I want to run to my mom or run to me my dad, but
I can't anymore. And so that is what the process looks like. It is a huge process that requires inner work but also out of.
Work around the people that we coexist with in this world.
I'm repeatedly struck by just how powerful it can be to like in your metaphor actually find the crack like to see it and to see it as a thing, like in this context, it would be like beginning to name these things, name these beliefs, name these wounds. In your book, you talk about turning into the voice of your inner child when it comes to what your trauma
response might be. And so like for me, when I read how people might engage in behaviors that are not hostile but passive and started to go through that list, I started having language in words and naming what those responses look like. I began to see them in myself, and I thought, oh, like it's all of a sudden,
Now it's a thing I can begin to examine. I can begin to see if I'd like to do it that way or try to different way, you know, see is it something that's innately harmful or somehow it can be not a harmful thing in my life, Like just I can examine it, you know.
And then act on it. And in the action.
The sentence just kind of really struck me around boundaries, because I think setting boundaries is one way we can and like you say, boundaries teach us that we are not powerless people. I never thought of it that way before. I love that as boundaries are a way of claiming our power, taking an action towards that, not just saying it.
You know, but doing it, And that our window.
Of tolerance right can alert us to when it's time to set a boundary for the sake of your nervous system and your emotional health. That is a real active way to begin the healing, I think, don't you.
Yeah, absolutely, you know. I always tell people boundaries is something that is always ebbing and flowing because we experience new things all the time that we might say I never had a boundary for this. Now I need to
figure out what to implement here, you know. And so often our window of tolerance between hyper arousal and hypo arousal where you find yourself constantly fluctuating between anxiety fight flight panic mode anxiousness, but then also ebbing to the other end of the spectrum where you feel depressed, you're understimulated, you feel numb, you want to detach, you want to isolate,
and your window of tolerance will help you understand. Listen, we're starting to get exhausted swinging back and forth between these two spaces, so you have to step in and do something to regulate yourself here so that you can get back to your center, get back to your state of equilibrium, and also gets back to a state of calm, that area that is healthy for you, where you can function as an adult. And so our boundaries help us to see that, oh, I'm not as powerless as I
think I am. And the reason why I share that is because often when we're interacting with people, I think we have a tendency to want the other person to know better. We want the other person to do the work of changing or being self aware or just recognizing the things that they're doing to us, instead of us being the one to name it and say, listen, there's no reason for you to be calling my phone five
times in a row, right. And that's a simple boundary or a larger boundary where it's like, I really don't appreciate when you speak to me like this. It's very judgmental, and it can be so powerful to own that you have the ability to stand up for yourself, you have the ability to protect yourself. I think safety is at the root of any relationship in life, and safety is what also helps us navigate through the world.
As we know.
Talking about trauma responses and inertrvous system. A disregulated nervous system is searching for safety, and so hence we have mood imbalances. We also might have those somatic symptoms where we're having migraines, gut imbalances. Our body is alerting us that we don't feel safe and we're being exposed to
something that is impacting our safety. But sometimes I think a lot of people have this concept that in order to feel safe, the people around us have to adjust and engage in certain behaviors, instead of us recognizing we have power to name and call out the things we do not like and the things we're no longer willing
to tolerate to be safe. I think sometimes too, when we feel threatened by something, we expect the person imposing the threat to pull back from threatening us, instead of us saying this is where I draw a line, because I see you have some issues around boundaries, you have issues around how you speak to people, You have some sort of issue guarding this circumstance we're in. So I have to be the one to draw the line here
because I see you may not know better. And sometimes it boils down to that, It boils down to people acting in their own trauma responses. It boils down to people thinking they're doing something that is okay because other people tolerate it, so they think you will tolerate it. And we have to understand that in order to be in relationships, we have to communicate it's okay to express your desires and needs to someone and take a step
back to see if they can meet those needs. And if they can't, there's going to be some grief with that. But you're still not powerless in that process. You can decide how close do I want to be with you? Do I need to adjust the degree of closeness, or do I need to just become estranged? Do I need to cut this relationship off altogether?
You know?
And so it's really all about us recognizing and owning the power that we hold to. Once again, you're always gonna hear me say this, give ourselves the life we feel we deserve.
I had a question around these sort of passive coping strategies, right that we use things like chronic niceness, or putting other people's needs before your own, or.
Feeling responsible for other people's feelings and trying to fix or control their emotions.
Yeah, that one's a little bit clear. But this is where I personally find myself challenged because some of those things, the outward behavior might be the same. Right. So for example, you might be a nice person and be kind to people because it's something you value. You also might be chronically over nice because you're afraid if you're not, no one will like you. Right, these things are very close
to each other and the way they appear. And one of the things that I struggle with is that internal discernment. I get that it's all about what my intention is in doing it right, So I mean, I think that's
the first place is to try and do that. But I find that sort of even when I'm doing that, it's still kind of tricky to tell, like am I reacting out of a conditioned, habitual response to say childhood events that I don't want to or am I sort of responding because I'm a person who values taking care of others and helping other people. And it's an area of discernment that I often find challenging.
I love that you say that one.
I love that you're using the word discernment because I think that wisdom is what a lot of us need to be able to help us understand what are our intentions. The other thing to it is the thing about relationships is no relationship is equal, and so I think it's also important to remember how our discernment and our intentions can ebb and flow. Because in this relationship, I want to be nice, I want to do this thing, but maybe there's a different relationship in my life where I
feel obligated to do it. I'm afraid to speak up, I'm afraid to say no. So I'm just acting out of condition but as a result, right, And I always tell people, after you act on something, do some inner work to self reflect about how that action impacted your life, because sometimes prior to doing something it can be hard to discern what the intention is, but the aftermath can sometimes help us understand.
The why what led me to do this thing?
I find some people will say yeah, I'll go to the party, or yeah, i'll pick up your workload, and then when they do it, or even in the midst of doing it, they're frustrated, they're angry, and it's like, well, who are you angry? Act right, the person who made the request or the person who agreed to doing the
thing that they did, not one to do right. And I think sometimes this is where trial and error comes in, and I think we need to make space as humans for trial and error, because when you are trying to do this work right, this work of being whole, of being healthy, there are going to be moments where you just do something and you realize, oh, man, that didn't feel good.
I said yes to it.
Or I did this particular thing out of the act of being nice. I thought it was being nice and now I'm in the middle of doing it, or the aftermath of it makes me realize, ah, man, I shouldn't
have done this thing. I feel resentful, I feel regretful about it, And that is just an opportunity for you to learn and put that nugget into your bag of life and say, you know what, next time this opportunity comes my way, I'll resist urgency and I'll practice the power of pause so that I can give myself more room to think about, well, what are my intentions here? Because last time the scenario came up, I thought I wanted to do this, thinking it was a nice thing
and thinking I was just being a nice person. But the aftermath of it really drained me. It really impacted me deeply. It made me miserable. I was frustrated even doing it. So do I really want to do this thing again? Or is it just embedded in me to show up for certain people this way or to show up and be nice in this particular way, you know? And so I think it's just important for us to always do that self reflection work, even after the fact.
But also sometimes we just have to allow life to happen and that life be the thing that shows us oh man, you shouldn't do this again, right, and allow that to be a roadmap for how we move forward and the different relationships we navigate in too. But I think that part about relationships is also important. Remember, no relationship is equal. I might be willing to do something for a best friend that I wouldn't be willing to
do for an acquaintance. Even in a marriage, I might be willing to do something for my life partner.
But just a friend, Uh, maybe not.
I don't think I want to do that, And if I force myself to do it, forcing it is a keyword or ready, you know. And so I think giving ourselves permission to show up differently for different people in different circumstances also helps us use discernment in those circumstances as well.
Yeah, And tying back to your broader message about community, I often say that like discernment often needs community, that you know, I'm able to discern things by talking to other people, I'm able to see things that I'm not seeing when I'm processing it in my own head.
Yes, absolutely, And I think that is so important. And it goes back to that concept of who you surround yourself with. You know, people who are also investing in you and pouring into you and have firm beliefs about you, even when you don't have positive beliefs about yourself.
Are there people.
Around you who want good for you, who want good things to happen for you, And sometimes they are the compass that leads you.
Towards your future.
And so community care is just vital for our growth and our well being, and I think we should all be cognizant of how we practice being in community with people.
You've got a technique that you talk about in the book that I thought was really interesting. I was hoping you could share it with listeners around audio journaling, because I think this is another way of getting it out of our head and being able to process it differently. So can you share kind of what audio journaling is?
Yeah, So I'm going to be deeply vulnerable here and share how audio journaling came to life for me. And that is because I live alone and sometimes when I'm stressed.
Out, I just talk.
I talk out loud. I talk to myself, y'all.
It happens same same, I'll meet you there, yep, yep.
I'm quite sure my dog is not listening to anything I'm saying.
He's absolutely not responding.
So I'm just having conversations with the walls, the couch, the dog.
I have a deaf dog who I talk to all of the time.
When you process earlier, you just got to talk it out.
Yes, you do.
And I think that is where the concept came from. That I actually started to share with my clients who started to give me wonderful feedback around it. And the reason why is because talking out loud is linked to two things. One, Yes, it helps us with discrepancies in our thinking. So I find that when we're talking out loud the same way a friend will call you up
and say, hey, this is what's going on. I'm angry, I'm frustrated, they're looking to you for some level of advice or feedback, and you're able to listen and pick up on things that may not make sense, things that may sound irrational, and you're able to feed it back to them. Now, the reason why a lot of us do that is because what we're seeking in that moment is something called cold regulation. When my nervous system is disregulated, it could be disregulated from a breakup, from something that
happened at work. Literally, maybe I was walking down the block and something happened and I'm just so anxious, I'm flustered. I'm calling someone because I need their nervous system to balance mine out.
And so the way the.
Brain works is there's those mirror neurons that light up when we're in connection with other people. We also have that wonderful chemical of release called oxytocin that draws us closer to people. And so I find that one of the things that happens for people, however, is the option to coregulate may not always be available. I am big on coregulating. I love being around people. I am super social. I want to talk on the phone, voice no FaceTime,
I want to do all those things. But I have enough discernment to understand people are not always going to be available.
I'm not always going to be able to have brain on the weekends.
I'm not always going to be able to FaceTime a front and talk over the phone. I might sent a voice no, I might not hear back until later on that night. I still have to find a way to regulate my body. I can't depend on someone else to always be the thing that I need. And so this is where that concept of audio journaling comes in, because now it teaches us how to self regulate. And I think the same way we would share certain things with a friend, hoping that they would pick up on those
discrepancies and give us advice. I find that when we speak out loud, we can hear something that when we think in silence it may be hard to pick up on. And so this concept of audio journaling is really straightforward. You grab your phone, you turn on the recording app, and you just talk what are you thinking of? And if you're not ready to play it back, it's fine. But just speaking out loud and hearing yourself could be enough for you to say, does.
That make sense?
Right?
Because science also shows that eighty percent of our thoughts are negative daily, so we're already waking up struggling to be hopeful, to be joyful, to be positive if eighty percent of our thoughts are conditioned to always focus on what's going wrong. So there are times where we need to just speak out loud so that we can listen to the things that we're saying and in challenge our mindset, because then when we challenge our mindset, that ultimately helps
us challenge our beliefs. What we talked about earlier, right, And so I think that is just a way that people can learn to self regulate when coregulation isn't an option, it's.
A form of self distancing also, which is another psychological technique. You change the way you refer to yourself internally, and it creates a little bit of distance. So I think it's another way that facilitates that.
Yes, yeah, it's amazing to me that sometimes I will hear something come out of my mouth that I don't think I've ever consciously thought.
I don't know where it came from, it just came out of my mouth.
So I feel like this is a technique I'm absolutely going to give a try too, you know, I mean I just think that it could be a really powerful one, and I think it connects to another term that you mentioned in your book, which I'd love us to explore a little bit. When you mentioned it self regulation, is what connected it to me? Is this idea of emotional maturity? Maybe I'll just let you. Would you define that for us? Tell us about what it means to be emotionally mature?
Yeah, so one I will bust a myth that age comes with maturity.
That is not true.
I think our parents and our elders used to teach that to us, especially the concept of respecting your elders, when sometimes our elders are not the wisest people in the room and sometimes the most harmful people in the room.
Right, But being emotionally.
Mature is about practicing discernment and wisdom. It is about practicing emotional intelligence, being in tune with your emotions, learning to hold yourself accountable, being responsible over your actions, and also learning to.
Meet people where they are.
I find that in our current culture, a lot of people struggle with this because we have been taught so long that again, age equals maturity. And I think there are so many different things that relate to why someone
might be emotionally immature. One trauma stunts development and so on a cognitive level, on an emotional level, on a mental level, experiencing childhood trauma during your primitive years of development, which is ages zero to five, can literally stunt your growth because your brain is developing rapidly during that time period.
So when you are experiencing especially complex and chronic trauma, which are different traumatic events that are ongoing, and it's multiple different events that are ongoing versus one isolated situation, Imagine being traumatized day after day after day after day, and that informs your childhood that is going to I have an impact on your well being. So I think that's the first thing to understand, because some people emotionally
react from the place where their trauma started. So you might have this adult who's forty five years old who when they're angry or they're upset, they regress back to their childlike behaviors to self protect. Some of their childlike behaviors might look like I threw a tantrum when I was a child, and so I screamed and I yelled because I needed attention, I needed someone to see me, and that was my way of being protected. And so at forty five, I still scream, and I still yell
and I curse. But the problem is you're someone's boss. You can't do that at work, right, You can't do that anywhere honestly if you want a healthy relationship. And so I think on the other side of that, when you're the person interacting with someone with those types of behaviors, it can be important to just remember that how old a person is literally is just it's this system we created to keep track of how old a person is through life. It doesn't necessarily help us understand emotionally and
mentally who they are. And so when we learn to take responsibility for our emotions and our behaviors, we learn to do that internal work with being self aware. That is how we start developing emotional maturity. So your trauma doesn't have to hold you back. You can heal through it. And that's the thing I want people to know too. You can reframe that, you can fix that, you can adjust that, but it's going to look different for every person.
So maybe we could wrap up with two ideas that you talk about that I think are sort of related to each other. And the first is you often talk about how healing is a ongoing, daily sort of thing. And you also have a line that I absolutely love, which is self care is a prevention strategy, not just
a crisis response. And I have to say, I think that is one of the ways that I'm matured in my healing over the years was I actually figured that out and went from I'm only doing this type of work when I really have to to living this way. So talk about those two ideas.
I think those two things are extremely important if we want to live a life of wholeness and really doing the work to manage our mental health.
One.
Healing is absolutely an ongoing process. As I shared earlier, there are going to be times there we experience things in life that are new to us that we never dealt with before that we have to teach ourselves how do I navigate this now? How do I manage this grief? How do I manage this pain? I've never did this before, I've never experienced it before. And I think we have the whole space for that and allow that to be a part of the process. Because this is life. We
can't determine what our next steps are. And I think it's because as people we want to control things so badly that it's like, how could I not know my future? But we don't, and life is really all about leaning into every moment that is open to us and asking ourselves daily, what do I need to get through today? Because it might look different from what I experienced yesterday.
I always tell people I had to go on this new journey of discovering what self care meant for me because when the pandemic hit, it altered my life so much that three years later, the things that I loved for years I hate them now. I don't want to do it. I don't want to come close to some of those things I used to love, reading physical books in bed, I don't even want to touch a book. I'd rather listen to an audiobook.
Right.
I used to do so many things, but twenty twenty was a year of trauma, and so that trauma rewired the way I care for myself. Right, this is what healing is a journey means. It means knowing when it's time to pivot. It means knowing when it's time to quit something, because quitting.
Can be a beautiful thing.
And it's also knowing when it's time to call and help, and this is where the community park comes in. But also recognizing self care as a prevention strategy is having a daily toolbox that we utilize so that there are certain practices that are part of our well being so deeply. It is now who I am. I embody this thing. It is not something I just do.
It is me.
And I say that because, to use an example, people often ask me when I'm experiencing certain things, how come you're not taking that personally? And I'll say it has taken years of self reflection and development for me to get to a place where I experiencing so deeply and within five minutes, I'm like, all right, well that really hurts and I'm sad about it, but it is what it is. I have no idea what they're going through, or maybe they just can't show up for me, and
I don't make it about me anymore, you know. But that's because I now embody this as a practice, which is why it's a prevention strategy versus something where it's like, oh man, I'm having bad day.
Now I have to figure out what to do.
And I also tell people your brain is always looking for safety, and so when you're having a very bad day or you're stressed out. Self care as a prevention strategy looks like what is familiar versus searching for something new. If I'm having an overwhelming day or I'm burnt out, I don't need to come home and say, well, what's for dinner? What am I gonna cook? Just order the Chinese food, Order what you always eat, right. Give your brain something familiar to stabilize itself. But it has to
feel familiar. So when you make self care a familiar practice, it is your go to and instead of engaging in fight or flight, your body now reacts in a state of calm because this is what you embody day to day.
Thank you for sharing so much of yourself in your book and in this conversation. Thank you for sharing so much of your wisdom that is hard earned through your deep pain and also the way you actively choose and claim and body or power.
It has touched.
Me deeply, and I am just really grateful. I think this conversation will to reach out and touch a lot of other people deep.
Yes, thank you so much, it's really been a pleasure.
Thank you both so much. I enjoyed speaking with you both, and thank you most importantly for holding space.
Absolutely take care.
Thank you.
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