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Emotional Badass
Beyond Charlie Kirk's Assassination: Cultivating Tolerance & Processing Trauma in a Violent World
01:04:06
Violence like Charlie Kirk’s assassination or the recent Evergreen school shooting hits hard, especially for sensitive souls
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Hello. Welcome to the show. This is Emotional Badass, where moxie meets mindful. I'm your host, Nikki Eisenhower, life coach and psychotherapist. And on today's episode, I'm discussing the Charlie Kirk assassination, what true tolerance means, and how to not be traumatized when we witness violence. Onto the show. Hello, y'. All. The episode I wanted to do today was about the experience Chris and I just returned from days ago. It was the most beautiful, amazing, inspiring retreat vacation I've ever experienced. Y' all know I'm a super introvert. It was the first time in my entire 45 years of life that. That I have been with 40 to 60 people for extended periods of time from Wednesday to Sunday and been energized and not drained. I cannot wait to tell you about our full experience. So our next episode will be with Chris. We're going to have a lot of fun sharing with you what we did, how special it was, what it really was. This is going to blow your mind, but a team member of mine even ended up puking on me. And, yes, I'm still saying it was the best vacation of my life. So if you're curious about that, make sure that you don't miss that upcoming episode. We have a lot of fun stories, and part of what I want you all to know is that as sensitive people, you can handle anything. I handled things that you would not expect me to handle, and I handled it like an unflinching warrior. And you have that unflinching warrior inside of you, too. If you ever have an opportunity to experience anything that Emily Schrom leads, please jump on it. Longtime listeners, you might notice that I do not endorse a lot of healing people to work with on this show or in my life because I have an extremely high bar of trust that someone has to hit before I recommend them working together. From academics to the most woo woo people, I have a very high bar because there are many charlatans and narcissists in that pool. Emily and anyone associated with her work who works with her deeply and authentically gets that rare endorsement from me. I do not give that lightly, and I don't make any money off of saying that or sending people her way. We completed what is called the Challenge season two. Some of you may be aware of a show that Chris and I have not watched over the years. So we showed up kind of not knowing what we were doing. But this was the Challenge Retreat season two. She created it. Emily hosted it on this amazing property in Casadera, California. There are pictures and clips coming. There were tons of photographers there, tons of video and pictures taken. We're just in the process of sorting all of that out so that we can share that part with you. So if you're interested in seeing us acting up and having fun, make sure that you're following us on Emotional badass on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok. You know, all the things, all the places that you get video attending. This has inspired me to finally create my first retreat. I'm getting teary as I say that, because now from going and participating in Emily's, I can actually see it. I can envision mine. But while we were on retreat, two things happened, and that's life, right? So we're having this amazing experience. And when we came back to the real life, back to getting online, there were two major things that struck me. One was Charlie Kirk was assassinated while addressing college students. And you might not have even known who Charlie Kirk was before this tragic event. There was also a school shooting in the little idyllic mountain town of Evergreen, Colorado. And that happens to be where we regularly go to grocery shop and visit and hang out, because Evergreen has more than our little town. So today's episode is about real life stuff, y'. All. How highly sensitive people, how we can take care of ourselves when we witness violence or the worst that humanity has to offer and all of its atrocious ripple effects. How we handle ourselves and life after such exposure can be the difference between experiencing something terrible and developing post traumatic stress symptoms. We don't even need to develop full post traumatic stress symptoms to be negatively affected in a way that we just don't need to move through the world collecting travesties and rubbing our nervous system raw with them. We do not need to form destructive mindsets that impede a satisfying and beautiful life just because bad things happen, human to human. So I might jump around a bit and I asked for some grace, as always, with these really big topics. I could talk for days and days nonstop and still have extra things to say. So just because I don't address a certain part doesn't mean I didn't see it, doesn't mean I haven't thought about it. And it's just the nature of this beast in our lives is that we. We can only bite off what we can chew. So in the days before we left for this retreat, we actually had my meditations kicked back flagged, as we've been working as a team to get them up on Etsy to sell as digital downloads. My meditations were pulled and flagged for misinformation. Y', all, Etsy is trying to protect you listeners from the misinformation of me making the health claim that meditating will calm you, which is in fact settled science. So all you people out there that say follow the science, meditating, calming your nervous system in your body and being healthful for you is very basic, settled, accepted science now. But we have platforms online protecting you from that. So my meditations are pulled, protected. So this was fresh on my mind. And it's hard, right? We're a very tiny business. I've been working so hard to build up these different streams of revenue so that we can have full time members and I can give my teams raises and full time hours and bonuses and do some team building activities. To have our stuff knocked down pushes us back weeks. It means that I'm paying for work that is ultimately fruitless and then I have to pay for it again and they have to do it again. It makes work slow. It's frustrating when all you're trying to do is get out there. So this was fresh on my mind when I came out of this retreat, logged back into technology and saw that Charlie Kirk was trending. And I tend to look at what's trending. I'm very good at staying reasonably detached with love from whatever I'm picking up because I have so many clients that I work with who will speak to me about what's going on in the news. And there's a balance there about how much to block and how much to allow, right? So I'm logging back in and I'm looking and I click on this and I see within seconds of clicking on something, before I even know what, I'm watching this young man shot and graphically bleeding out and dying instantly. We are living through a twisted, misguided, unbelievably ridiculous time where little makes sense and much is vile in the human condition. We have hyper control playing out. We've overplayed the importance of safety and saving people from information like my meditations getting flagged and pulled down as if they're somehow dangerous or misleading. And then in other areas we are wildly out of control and give almost no credence to human consideration to sensitivities. We can look at any amount of porn and violence, so much so that there are young people that have a reaction like a monster getting killed in a video game as if it's nothing, instead of having a true reverence for what it means to witness the loss of a human Life at the hands of another person. Longtime listeners, how many times have you heard me preach about the pendulum swinging into the dysfunction and extremes of the polarities and politics, all sides of politics plays on amping up this polarizing rhetoric, our society, our young people are being indoctrinated with extremes when health, goodness, reasonableness are found in the grounded middle in the center. When was the last time you heard anybody encouraged other than me being more neutral, more centered? This Internet will protect you from my meditation work to help you center and calm your nervous system on the one hand and then let you watch a real life instantaneous bloody assassination in the other. That is insanity. That is toxic for the human condition. I have said for nearly all of my career that we have a maturity problem in the population and that sounds like it's not a big deal. Even increasingly, I think it is the biggest deal. No one can be narcissistic and overly self involved and wrapped up in their own upset and story making if they are properly and healthily mature. It is something we do not address in mental health. We do not address it in counseling programs and psychology programs. We are not addressing this as a Society. For five to 10 years now I have had adults talking to me in private about how they're frightened that their own children seem 10 years younger than they should be. This is a problem as people who are not maturing get to the ages of 20 and 22 and 25 and 30 and are really more like 12 year olds and 15 year olds. Because also they're going to be prosecuted as adults in the age that they are when their development is more like 10 or 12 years old. Most people are not emotionally and mentally or spiritually evolving themselves. Maturing and growing up, everything that that means. Insight is low when someone is immature, that's normal. If I'm talking to a 7 year old. If I'm talking to a 13 year old, that's normal. But we are increasingly losing gains on insight in this population. And when insight and maturity are low, guess what else is low? Personal responsibility. The ability to let things go. The ability to let things roll off your back. Morals are low. Values are low. Living from a place of principles are low or even non existent. We are living in an upside down experience in many ways. As seekers, we face moral and ethical heart wrenching dilemmas every day about how much of this, this news, whether it happens in our own towns, whether it happens across the world, about how much to block out, how much to look, how much to stick our head in the sand, how Much to fight, how much to let go of, how much to feel, how much to attach to, how much to detach to what to believe in, what's right, what's wrong, what's in between. And it is and always will be an imperfect and difficult, if not impossible, but truly necessary balancing act that we face especially as seeking adults. Which means we are the people on the planet awakening to a higher consciousness. Awakened people cannot and will not delight even in their enemy's death. They will not glorify it, they will not publicize it, they will not get their jollies out of a life ending even if they believe in the death penalty, even if their person dies in that way. That is a still a horrific tragedy. And wisdom, maturity, growth, awakening knows that to glorify it gives a sickness, just like coughing in somebody's face when you're sick spreads a sickness. And there are so many people with a not just a weakened immune system out there for all kinds of modern reasons, but like a weakened spiritual system in our culture and in our society. We face questions like what do I do watching all of this? What do I do with my pain? What do I do with my sadness? What do I do with my grief? What do I do with my anger? What do I do with my advocacy? How do I keep that healthy and right for me and for anyone I'm speaking to? What do I do with my frustration? What do I do with my powerlessness that I am not a hundred thousand people, I am a single person? What do I do with that, with the limitations of that, with my actual power as my oneself? We even ask ourselves questions. Is it okay for me to live a good life with all this going on? Is it okay for me to eat abundantly if some people starve? Am I allowed to feel abundantly, to be joyous and happy? When we know so many are struggling right now, in this very moment, suffering, stuck, mired down, we face asking ourselves to question so much that we have been taught on our healing and growth and awakening journeys. We examine what we were taught by our families of origin, by generations of not just generations of trauma, but generations of poor emotional development and coping skills. We question politics. We even question how movies shaped us when we were young, to make us believe certain things that are not born of reality but are born of Hollywood. We question Big Pharma, when is it helping us? When is it hurting us? When is it honest? We question science? When is it bought and paid for? When is it healthy and testable? We question religion. We question how this Internet works, how it's good for us, how it's bad for us and everything in between. Seekers are the ones with the spiritual calling. You want to know how I could be around 60 some odd people for the first time in my life at that retreat and not get drained. I believe every single person that showed up was a seeker. Not just posing as a seeker, not just pretending to be because it's cool in certain woo woo circles, but they actually were. And in that environment, for the first time in my life, I was not drained because there is something uplifting to the spirit of who I am. To be around others that are sort of doing not just their work, but the work they're doing, work on this planet to make it better. And that what I know so well in my head fed my heart during this retreat. They fed me and so much of my work, so much of what I do in my life and on this mic is I feed into others and they, and they fed me. Seekers, we are the ones that feel the spiritual calling. We are the ones that grapple with these hard questions when so much of the world just wants to get angry and stomp and have a hissy fit and blame and point. Outwardly seekers, part of our spiritual calling is to be the questioners. And through this questioning, through this showing up for ourselves in what's hard for us individually and collectively and in the world, this is where and how we cultivate the courage to truth speak, to stand in and up for what we believe in. My challenge to you and anyone willing to give me 2 cents of listenership and consider what I'm offering here is to boldly question, boldly challenge. And that doesn't mean rudely, that doesn't mean obnoxiously, to be ferocious and yet centered. I challenge you to get curious about the differences amongst us. Not reactive, not shut down, don't buy into the stories sold by media and that get passed around by the algorithms. Be open minded and open hearted and willing to examine what pisses you off, what gets your goat just as much as what lights you up. There is no way for me to mention Charlie Kurt and not feel braced for backlash, for assumptions about me or how I voted, to just be berated with judgment negativity. By even mentioning this assassinated man's name, I risk losing audience that I've spent years building up. I risk what we've grown online. I see it in the face of my small team when I mention wanting to talk about a difficult topic like you talk about so much. Do we really have to tackle this. I don't want to be a coward here just because it's scary, but know that when I speak about this, these things, I actually threaten me and my team. I risk getting doxed. Which shows exactly how much of a problem we are having in American culture with free speech. And our entire culture was built on the freedom to express our different ideas. Different is a key word here, y'. All. I yearn for a return to true tolerance. What I grew up understanding tolerance to actually be. Somehow politics has devolved the definitions of tolerance and even love to now mean limited things. It is as if tolerance as a term was hijacked and forced to turn into judgment or something else. Tolerance was never meant to be. And let's be clear about tolerance. Tolerance is cheap and easy when we're surrounded by the same ideas, all the ideas that we're comfortable with and we align with. That's easy as falling asleep or taking a breath, waking up and trusting that the sky is blue. Tolerance is cheap and easy when we're surrounded by people who agree with us. The real tolerance challenge. I don't think I've ever used this language. Shame on anybody on this show in all the years we've been doing it. Shame on politics for changing how the public looks at tolerance. The real tolerance challenge is in how you respect yourself and others in the face of confronting or conflicting, even oppositional, even what we all think of as bad, bad ideas. If you roll your eyes or have that eye rolly energy without the actual eye roll about such ideas, if you dismiss people into categories that you've decided are just stupid or ignorant or ridiculous, you're being dismissive. You're not being tolerant. If you harbor and nurse anger towards hate of people that are different than you, you're not tolerant. If you put your way of being above someone else's because you think you're better. I don't care what topic you pick to try to prove this right here, that's your ego, and that's likely an ego problem. Tolerance allows other humans to be themselves and still be respected as a human being with a life to live. Even the humans who think the way that I live is wrong, who think that what I believe is wrong, they are still allowed to have their human life respected. When I respect them, I'm respecting me. It is one of the most immature things in the world to try to live from the idea that I'm not going to be better till you're better to me. So if you don't respect me, screw you. I'm not going to respect you. That is the emotional maturity of an eight year old, y'. All. And I don't care how popularized it is, it doesn't make it right, it doesn't make it healthy, it doesn't make it awakened, it doesn't make it wise. Other humans are allowed to be themselves. Hard stop. That's it. If you want to consider yourself to be a tolerant person, that's it. You have to tolerate what you don't like, what you think is wrong. That's tolerance. Don't do the fake thing of acting like you're a tolerant person while not being a tolerant person. Now, I have listened to Charlie Kirk. I first found him, gave him a listen because of hearing people's judgment of him start to hit my awareness. Some in person, some online. But the fastest way to get me to go find somebody and listen to what's actually coming out of their face hole, not what people say about them, is starting to hear people say that anybody on the left or on the right or anywhere is being called racist, sexist, or touting any kind of hate. I go right to the source. I don't want to hear any gossip, I don't want to hear any takes. I want to hear what is coming out of their actual face hole, from their face hole into my ears. That's what I want. And I want to hear it in the full context. I mean, my God, have the platforms done a number on this population by having less than a minute shorts constantly going viral? No full idea can be executed In a minute, 30 seconds. Are you kidding me? And to base a whole hate of a person on seeing little short snippets, that is deeply unfair, not just to that person, but to you. I deserve, before I make an assessment of someone or something to not just take one little bite. I think they say we have to taste something 11 times to cultivate a taste for it. Maybe it's 21. You get the point. We can't base something off of a handful of clips or what other people say about them. What are we, in middle school? You hear the immaturity. What I saw and heard when I introduced myself to this man, Charlie Kirk was a faithful Christian man. I don't consider myself a Christian. I was raised Catholic. I subscribe to no organized religion. What I saw, what I still see if I watch clips of this deceased man is I see a passionate man. He was passionate about spreading what he believed would make people happier and have more productive, satisfying, healthier lives. I have different ideas about that, but I could see that he meant it. But he wasn't just touting this. You try to screw with people or get under their skin or push their buttons. This man believed what he said. Now, I am a lot of what Charlie Kirk would tout as wrong. I don't practice a faith in the way that he does and believes in. I'm twice divorced. I'm a child free woman. I run a business. And if I am at a table with a bunch of men, I will play with the boys and I will show up and talk like the boys. I step outside of my feminine energy and into my masculine, especially with my work hat on. I also think that marriage is for anyone who falls in love and wants it. I support all gay rights. I could go on and on and on about how much Charlie Kirk and I could disagree about things. And I still think we would have had some lovely and respectful conversations if I'd have had the chance. Now, I tend to have a trust in principled people. They don't have to have my principles. I don't need agreement around me all the time. I like contrast. It's a better teacher. I also trust direct and assertive people. This is part of why I trust principled people. I respect them even when they're very different than me. I like not having to guess what someone is thinking. I like not having to guess what someone believes. I like the boundaries of principles. And I operate from a deep acceptance that I get to define my principles. And the Charlie Kirks of the world, they get to define theirs. And that is the kind of America that I want to survive this illness that we are living through. I want even those who say that my way of being and my belief systems are wrong, I want them to maintain the right to say it safely and not be shot and murdered over it. If you believe this man said hateful things, I ask you to not take the word of anyone giving second hand quotes. Many of the quotes that I've seen since he's been shot are vilifying him and are taken entirely out of context to, to change the meaning of what he was saying. This is part of how whoever these big organizations, whatever big money is at play here, pulls the strings, the mind strings and the heartstrings of the American people. We have to be wiser than letting our strings get pulled in such ways. Now I've had deeply religious people tell me over the years that they think mental health professionals take people away from God and are dangerous. Random people have said this to my face over the years, even my own sister, at a point when I was trying to be in contact with her, had held this belief about the work that I do, telling me that I let the devil in and separate people from God. That wasn't fun to hear. But it's enough for me that I know this to not be true. It's a desperate. I'm even going to use this word. It's going to sound a little judgy. I'm going to say it's pathetic to need other people to agree with me, to validate me that. What am I going to do? Wrestle them to the ground and force them to validate me? I don't need that. And needing that would make me desperate and sick. It would make me kind of pathetic to chase them down and try to force other people to agree with me. How have we gotten here? As a people, there's no reason to fight people who think I'm the worst. Y'. All. There are therapists out there who think I am wildly unethical for doing what I do over this microphone. They think I am doing therapy over this microphone. No matter how I've spoken to them or challenged them, I'm doing something that they're not going to do. So they just need it to be bad and wrong. I understand that that's part of how people work. I don't think that's very highly evolved. I'm allowed to think that. And they're allowed to think what they're allowed to think about me. Go forth, prosper, think good things about me or think the worst or something in between. It's all okay. It's a strength to grow into understanding that it is so okay. And it can even be met with an easiness that people believe whatever they want about me, about the world. I know who I am and what I do. And in this way, I am convicted. And that's what I saw when I looked at Charlie Kirk. That man was convicted, his wife convicted. Now I can vote if I choose in this country. And I can do what I can do if I want to inspire people to experiment in what I believe. But why would I impede another's right to do the same? This is where I'm principled. And principles mean we don't change them because it's uncomfortable. We don't change them because somebody so different than we are gets to practice this too and benefits from this principle. That's not a principle. That's wishy washy. That would be like just letting your front door swing open all night long. Screw locking it, not even shutting it. I don't believe either side of politics is principled enough to be anywhere close to reasonable or healthy. And I'll say it for those wondering in earlier years, I wouldn't. But I'm more libertarian than anything because I'm truly at a place where I don't believe our governments are going to save us from this, y'. All. We have to change this at the societal level. I think our governments are actually making it worse, not better. You can go back to the very first episodes of the show and I have been saying this. We change the world one person at a time, starting with ourselves. I have and will continue to support people, a full spectrum of people, anyone who wants what I'm putting out. The side I'm on is the human side, y'. All. And there is no political side, in my opinion, that gets to put a stamp that they're the real ones on the human side and the other side isn't. That's a manipulation. It's also small minded. It's also elitist. Despite our vast differences, I could respect and appreciate that Charlie Kirk was out there doing his thing, even where and when I thought he was entirely wrong, like gay marriage. But he was convicted. He was passionate and I think he was honest in what he was saying and he engaged people who disagreed with him in an honest exchange of words. It is a hellish reality that one person decided to send back a bullet like a coward instead of words through debate. I love my Factor meals. Their convenience, their ease, their tastiness. And I think you're going to love them too. As my husband travels back and forth to another state to help his mom, I'm ordering boxes of Factor to help me stay on task and not be stressed out with having to come up with meals for one while I handle everything else in our house. 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And I think this is increasingly important for highly sensitive adults and traumatized people who are doing the work, who are damned and determined to do the work, to ground and heal their nervous system, to demand and command of their life. A rich and deep, satisfying, expansive experience. Because I hope, with everything I've got, that Charlie Kirk's public assassination is a wakeup call to reinvigorate true tolerance. A wakeup call to grow the F up, to value life, to live and let go. I think Charlie would say to live and let God. As someone who doesn't subscribe to organized religion, my version of God is the energy of this whole universe that contains the inexplicable magic that brought us all here, that inexplicable, unexplainable part of being alive that connects us all in this human experience as we live under the stars on this immense floating rock that we call Earth that has to, with no religious affiliations for me, be seen as its own miracle. After healing from my youth and what I endured from religious hypocrites, I am not threatened in any way by accepting the different belief systems of others that I don't have to believe in. Everyone gets to have their version of God and everyone gets to Speak that truth and do their own work to inspire as they wish and as they see fit. In hearing about the Evergreen school shooting that happened last week, I wondered, how many school shootings have happened this year in the United States? Turns out that that's hard information to calculate based on how it's defined county to county, state to state, throughout the country. Sometimes when we're calculating these statistics, we're counting the gun being brought to school. Sometimes we're counting that shots were fired where no people were shot. Sometimes we're only counting if people were shot. Sometimes we're only counting if people died. I don't know if Charlie Kirk's death on a college campus would count as a school shooting. So the numbers I found range from 8 to 232 in the year of 2025. As I say that it is mid September, we have a quarter of the year to go. That's a wild range. Even one is too many. I despise that. The truth is, we're not done with incidents like this. And maybe the best we can do as highly sensitive people is have a strong strategy that is grounded, simple, realistic for when we find ourselves observing human horror, Whether in person or vicariously via the Internet or the spreading of story person to person. So what do we do if and when we witness something horrible so that our brain, our body, does not encode this as trauma? So I have a list. They're in no particular order. Number one, talk it out and write it out. Now, don't talk it out with people that don't have the capacity to hold that space for you. And be wise about that as soon as you can. And with people who will not be traumatized or re traumatized. Talk it out. You know how they say the devil's in the details? It's not just that this happened for people who were there in person. There is a visceral response. We pick up sights and sounds, patterns, our subconscious mind. It's as if our conscious and subconscious mind takes a snapshot of every single detail. That's not to torture us with later, though it can certainly feel that way. That's our system trying to protect us. This is not a dysfunctional thing that happens. This is a healthy thing that happens. It's just a hard thing that happens. And then it's a hard thing to live with. That's our mind and our body trying to say, wait a minute, something really horrific is going on right now. This is dangerous. Let me take in as much information as I possibly can so that we can Avoid this in the future, and I can keep the system safe when we talk about it. We're releasing the tension of all of these little micro details. So believe it or not, when I'm working with someone who's been traumatized, deeply and truly traumatized, I am asking them, please, tell me the details. Now tell me more. What exactly was the texture on your abuser's shirt? Was it cotton? Was it polyester? Was it shiny? Was it matte? To someone who's not trained in this stuff, that can seem almost like a cruelty. It can even feel like it as you go through the process. Why am I doing this? Why am I going over all these details? Isn't it enough that I lived through it once? But if we don't sort of break down all of those details, our system keeps throwing that imagery. That's what a flashback is. It might be a slight smell in the air. If there was a smell of. Let's say there was a rose garden around, and you didn't even consciously pick up that you were smelling roses, maybe the next time you walk by a rose bush, you go back to this memory and you have no conscious idea why. Why the hell am I thinking of this now? I'm on a hike. I'm on a nature walk. Why is this coming up for me? It's why people with PTSD can feel so stalked by these memories. But I want you to understand that if that happens, if something comes in a way that seems out of the blue, I want you to stop and put a hand on your heart, maybe a hand on your belly. Take a deep breath and let your inner psychology, your inner psyche, your inner child, your. Your inner younger person, even if that was something that happened three days ago and you let him or her know, that's not crazy that we're thinking about that and that I'm seeing that image in my head, we're safe. There must be something about this moment, even if I can't put my finger on it, that is reminding me to be safe and to watch out. We want to help ourselves understand that we're allowed to be vigilant and aware that. Not hyper vigilant and hyper aware. That's what exhausts us and wears us out when we talk about. There have been studies about this going at least 15 years, if not 20 years back, y', all, that one of the most important things we can do after something horrific is talk about it in the hours and days after. This may mean a therapist. It may mean a wellness coach who works in such Realms, it may mean a spiritual leader, a trauma or grief support group. If you struggle with addiction, that may mean getting your booty with a quickness to a 12 step group. Now there's nuance. This is why we reach out to not just people who have letters behind their name because they went to school and some college or academic program stamped them with. They're ready to work with people. There's also art form that academia often misses training, okay, so we find professionals that can really see us and that we can feel safe with. Some of that is art. Because there's nuance in the differences between obsessing versus processing towards release. This is why we engage in with artful professionals and not just one y', all, maybe meditation teachers, maybe different yoga teachers that help us release trauma, but different professionals who work in these realms to help us know and learn the differences of letting it go. Or if we're accidentally keeping it going in our mind or body. But it has to come out, it must be released. The second tip I have, know that trauma is not held in the event. It is in how our brains receive the experience. Believe it or not, people can go through really horrific things and not be traumatized. They can be sexually assaulted and not traumatized. They can be jumped or robbed and they can be spooked for a bit, but not traumatized. They can be in a terrible car accident and they can be affected, but not traumatized. Way too many people have cheapened the word trauma. Way too many people are publicly talking about trauma who do not understand this nuance. And this has led to a population that over identifies with being a trauma victim or having mental health diagnoses. And this ultimately disempowers. It does not empower. When you overblow trauma like this, it brings forth more of a disempowering victim mentality. And that's not good at the individual level and it's not good for society. In the first half of my career, I never, I mean never with a hundred percent had to talk someone out of thinking they were traumatized. But today, the second half of my career, most people seem to believe that if they went through something hard, difficult or deeply unfair, that they have been traumatized. And that is not real. To have real post traumatic stress is rare despite what the Internet will have you believing. So write and release it so it doesn't get trapped in you. It doesn't get stuck looping inside digging a groove that will need to then be filled in in trauma recovery. I hope that makes sense in understanding this Part of the human condition. Number three. Again, early in my career, this is not something I would have said today. I think we need this. Don't be turned on and seduced by the drama of traumatic events. I am. One of my specialties is addiction and I am of the belief that most young Americans, if not all Americans, are drama addicted. Guess what gives us our best hits of drama, y'? All Traumatic things. Peace doesn't give us a drama hit. Meditating doesn't give us a drama hit. Kindness and tolerance don't give drama hits. Don't globalize. Oh, this happened. Everything is awful. Don't take what one thing even. Don't take many things. What did I say? There were a few, potentially a few hundred school shootings. Don't globalize that and paint your entire mindset with horribleness, with hopelessness. We are certainly going through a time of great emotional and spiritual sickness. Even. So don't globalize it. Don't catastrophize it. Go find old episodes where I've talked about catastrophizing and watch your self talk. It is more powerful than I could ever state. Now, it's very common to say things like, oh my gosh, I could never survive that. Or I don't know how I'd go on if I didn't have my husband anymore. These are ways to chip away at the strength and tenacity that lives in the spirit inside of every human being. Now, y' all listening to this show, I know even though I've never met you, many of you, y' all have done enough self development work or you wouldn't be into this show. You wouldn't have listened this far to know the basic wisdom of not saying to ourselves, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. Or that's too hard. That's too hard. So don't use things like death and murder and getting paralyzed or getting laid off or losing a child to death, being assaulted, etc. Do not use these things to reinforce how delicate you are, how much you can't handle. I'm going to say it like this and I'm going to say it like this because I think it's going to make you feel icky and it'll help you never do this again. What a disrespect to use yours or other people's pain to reinforce that you can't handle things. Let's flip that. Longtime listeners, you've heard me say dysfunction flip flops things. This is a flip flop. And we need to flip flop it back. I'm a stoic. If you want a victim mentality, you will not like me, my work, or much of what I say. If you want to glorify weakness, you're going to have to go listen to somebody else's podcast. The obstacle is the way and it is far better to strengthen instead of weaken as we move through life. To consider a widow, let's think about Jackie Kennedy Onassis who lost jfk. He was shot while she was sitting right next to him. Consider her for a moment with me and let's use her experience to strengthen ourselves, not weaken ourselves, not convince ourselves we're so fragile. Let's commit to using what is awful for something positive to say to ourselves. Wow, she did not lay down and die, did she? She kept living for herself, for her deceased husband, for her children, for her own life, for the country. And if she could do that, let me borrow some of her strength. Let me be inspired by her resilience, by her resistance to ever giving up when life gave her so much permission to do so. I can face what I need to face in this life. Thank you for the strength that you have modeled. I will take that tragic death and I will force strength and resilience out of it. I've had Dwayne Osterlund on the show whose first child died as a baby. We talked about grief. Dwayne, somebody I've met through podcasting. He is an absolute sweetheart. I love his male energy and instead of thinking I could never survive the death of a child, probably the most popular statement here, I choose to force strength building in me instead of delicacy building in me by saying and believing. Dwayne, by seeing you go through that pain and get to the other side, I take strength from you that I can and will face whatever life throws at me with resilience, despite how devastated I may feel. Fourth tip I have for you through my tears. When you see an atrocity to help it not encode in your brain as trauma, send prayers the way that makes sense to you. This isn't about religion or any agreed upon God, yes, atheists, you can do this too. It would be sending an intention if you don't like the word prayer. When I heard of the school shooting, I was so close to where I live, I let out my prayer that I've practiced for years now. And because I have practiced this in the face of seeing what is horrible, practice this every time a client has left the space of working with me and has let go of some horrific betrayal or violation brought on them by another human being. I give them some variation of this prayer, though they may never know it unless they're listening to this episode. Now, may you or everyone involved get exactly what they need to let go of this pain and to heal just as quickly and fully as possible. This kind of prayer, this kind of intention, it's simple and it is for them, but it's also for me. Charlie Kirk is an example of this. That I can do little to nothing for his family. And his family must be gutted. My God. His little girl may have seen this, but I can send light and grace and strength. We need to empower ourselves to do what we can do and let go of the rest. Many of us are the children of narcissists and that's what we're healing, right? It's part of why you're here listening to me in the first place. Which means we grew up with the nothing is ever good enough dynamic woven into who we are. And we will be pulling those threads out for a lifetime. When we see horrible things, we cannot use that to allow that old not good enough feeling to get reinvigorated. If you see starving children, do what you can do. Go drop off food somewhere, go donate, even if it's only five or ten bucks, do what you can do. An intention or prayer is a form of doing, except that there is often nothing that can be truly fixed in any given moment. Therefore, we don't need our energy stressing, looking for the fix. Sometimes we have to help, sometimes we have to support. Sometimes the fix is not available now, sometimes the fix may not be available ever. Just being is sometimes the most fixing in air quotes that we can often do when processing pain. Number five, don't expect the violent imagery to go away. Our minds learn to protect us. I was touching on this earlier. If you witness someone get shot on a college campus, you, your mind, your body are not wrong to become somewhat hyper vigilant or on guard and anxious. If you were to go back on another college campus, work with yourself. Don't try to sweep it under the rug or block it. Don't try to not feel sometimes facing those triggers just as quickly as we can. Getting back up on that horse minutes after falling off is very important because we're showing our brain, our brain chemistry, different parts of our brain and our body. See, we can face this. See, we can try again. Yep, we were very thrown by this happening. But we lean in, we don't let it stop life. So if you're having a lot of imagery that is popping up for you. Sit down in a quiet place when you have time and let yourself remember it. Let yourself cry or get angry. Look at it. Write out the details going through your senses as a release. Over time, your system can learn to feel safe again on a college campus as the example I'm giving here. Often our instinct is to look away, to sweep it under the rug, to pretend. And if we grew up with dysfunctional family that handled things like that too, it will feel like a certain comfort zone and it will feel uncomfortable. If you need guidance. There are so many different forms of guide and guidance out there. Get what you need and don't stop till you get it. Keep seeking it. Number six, Clarify your spiritual principles and if you don't have any, explore if that's right for you and be willing to reevaluate as you age. Now, my spiritual principles help me accept that there are humans who may always be allowing their dark sides to take over. I think Christian and religious people would call that evil and the devil. My spiritual principles help me remember that this is part of the human reality. I also have a huge acceptance that if and when it's my time, I accept if and when it's my time. Of course I want to live to be a hundred. But I also know the reality is that I don't get to fully predict that not everyone lives a very long life. This helps me ground myself in these very hard and very adult realities. It helps me remember to not take life for granted. It helps me remember what I actually can do and what I can't. That all I can do is be smart and vigilant, not hyper vigilant. I can be situationally aware and I can sometimes, as an act of defiance towards terrorists, shift away from fear to presence. My spiritual beliefs help me find where and when I need to enact fierce acts of rebellion like against fear. My spiritual principles give me permission for ease and joy despite what is hard in the world. They help me remember that in the end this life is short. And I think that it is very true that if you die at 31 like Charlie Kirk, it's so short and somehow it's also true that if we get to live to our 90s or 100, it's also short. So use what is hard in this life to help inspire you to not waste a minute. Number seven, Honor life. I'm sick of the idea that depression just happens. I have yet in my 19 year career to meet someone that I believed depression just happened to because of brain chemistry. Mindset is one of the most important factors this life. What's hard about it, invites us to be depressed and anxious again and again and again and again and again. Resist and refuse those invitations. Honor this one precious life, this life, even what is hard and sucky, even our taxes and stuff, maybe even sometimes tolerating what we don't want to have to tolerate. Life is not something you have to do, it's something you get to do. And no, do not twist my words into saying that. I'm saying tolerate abuse. I'm not. But we have to get back to sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Look what happens when we let a generation believe that words are the same as violence. That doesn't reduce violence, it increases it. Life is short. Life is not something you have to do. It's something you get to do. Reframe, reframe, reframe and reclaim your peace. Reclaim your present moment. Reclaim your groundedness. Reclaim your joy as a radical act of rebellion in the face of this type of human betrayal and atrocity. 8 Give yourself time. All healing grows patience. All self development and awakening is in some ways a patience process. Give yourself time and space to move slowly but move. Don't get stuck. Don't get mired down. Move. Eat well. Allow yourself time and space to spontaneously get sad or angry and let it out appropriately. Anger Scribble with a red crayon till you feel satisfied. Scream into a pillow or go to a kickboxing class. Beat the crap out of that punching bag because the bag can take it and is willing. That bag will let it go like another human's ears might not know how. Number nine when facing nighttime, don't let a fear of bad dreams grab you and start to chip away at you. If you dream frightening things, here's what I want you to know. Trying to fight that or make it stop can backfire and can make you feel really crazy. Accept that your subconscious is just trying to work it out, something that it never should have had to work out, and it's doing its best for you. It's trying to work it out while you're sleeping. It's not trying to disrupt your sleep. It's not trying to make you exhausted and raw and make you cry at work the next day because you're exhausted. It's trying to work it out. Partner with yourself. Don't fight with yourself. So upon waking, whether that's in the middle of the night from a nightmare or a dream or A flashback in the moments where you realize that you're out of a dream and you're coming back to yourself. Even if you're out of breath, even if you're sweating, even if you're crying. Here's some language to play around with that I can model for you and your inner child or your inner younger self, which doesn't mean younger in age. It means younger yesterday or a few days ago. Hand on the heart, hand on the belly. Oh, that was a lot. So you're hearing me acknowledge that was scary. I don't want to see that anymore. But you keep replaying it, trying to figure it out, huh? I don't think there's much to figure out. It was an awful mistake and it can't be undone and it's done and it's over. And we hope that people learn from it and force positivity out of it. And you breathe in through your nose and out through your nose. I'm safe. I'm in my home. I'm in my bed. That event is over. It's okay for me to let this go. I know how to be just as safe as I can be. It is okay to let this go. Trust that it will not always feel how it feels right now. And I want you to use, not what I'm saying, but the proof of the whole rest of your life to prove this to yourself. I like to go back to moments when I was 12 or 14 that where I was absolutely mortified and thought I would die of mortification. And today I feel nothing about those things. For me that's a moment of being a 13 year old girl. I still wonder today why the hell anybody would let a 13 year old girl have white shorts. But I had, you know, that first year of my periods and my God, did I have a bleed through accident with white shorts. Embarrassed, mortified. Almost everyone my age has a similar story because after that you don't let that happen again. But experience is the teacher, right? So we look back at our lives, those moments where our immaturity had no idea that we could get past it. And we use it to prove to ourselves that it will feel different in the future than it feels in this moment. It will not always feel how it does right now. And that is its own Solace. Number 10. This is the last one I've got for you. I know you know this quote, but I want you to hear it with a beginner's mind like you've never heard it before. Be the change you want to see in the world. You want the world to be more positive, brighter, more tolerant, more encouraging. Then you be that. Let it flow from you. It will become you and it will come out of you. We are resilient. We can live through anything. In these times, we are learning how to help ground ourselves and our nervous systems in the face of modern mistakes, missteps, manipulations that lead to devastating mental health outcomes and horrors. It's adulting, y'. All. And we can do it no matter what. There's an old episode where I talk about how sometimes we have to have a temper tantrum. Might have to have a temper tantrum. Every now and then. Every now and then I have to just take a minute to go. It's not fair. I hate it. I don't want to anymore. Sick of trying, sick of being resilient. I do that for about 30 seconds or a minute, then I let that shit go. I don't want to give my time, my energy, my bandwidth to that. I want to give it to my resiliency. And I refuse to let a resentment about having to be resilient take over. I hope everything I've ever put out into the world helps you learn this. And here's a final tangible tip. Not so much of what you can do in the moment with an atrocity, but a movie. To help you see these concepts in visual format, I want to encourage everyone listening, even if you've seen it before, particularly if you've. If you've never known of or seen this movie, and younger people, you likely won't. Life is Beautiful, it's from 1997. It's a movie that is a fable written by a Holocaust survivor. Life is Beautiful. I believe it won the Oscar that year. I'm considering starting a book club in 2026, and if I do, it will be with starting with the book Man's Search for Meaning, written by Viktor Frankl. This is a book that taught me many of the concepts that I shared with you today. It's a book that changed my life. It taught me to never, and I mean never, ever let myself feel disempowered, to never ever identify with being a victim, even while being victimized. It will change your life. It did. Mine let me know in the Patreon how many of you that will give me a good estimate so I can visualize how to structure a book club if you guys want that with me. And if you don't, you don't. But if you'd like a book club with me, come on to the Patreon let me know so that I can form it in a way that can work for as many of us as possible. Light and love, y'. All. Tune in for next week's light and fun conversational episode where we're going to talk to you about how we've challenged ourselves, why we challenge ourselves. It is time to stop feeling overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted from constantly putting others first. I created the Boundaries Intensive for highly sensitive people, for people pleasers just like you to learn how to take their power back and be satisfied with their life and stop exhausting themselves out. We live in a world that takes and takes and takes. It's not going to stop taking and it's not going to stop asking of you. The only way is learning boundaries, y'. All. I have a six week live course to help you stop people pleasing. To protect your energy, respect your energy and finally cultivate peace. Join me this October@emotional badass.com boundaries or or check the link in the description. Use code badass to save 50 bucks off the full price. And if you're in Patreon, find your big giant hefty discount and come sign up. Would love to have you. I'm an emotional badass. You were an emotional badass. And together we are where moxie meets mindful. Take care of yourselves and each other out there, y'. All. Light and love and so much tolerance. Bye bye. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
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Yo, this is important, man. My favorite Lululemon shorts. The ones you got me back in the day. I think they're called pace breakers. The ones with all the pockets. I just got back from vacation and I left them in my hotel room and dude, I need to replace replace these shorts. I wear them like three times a week. Could you send me the link to where you got them? Oh, also my birthday is coming up soon, so. Anyways, thanks, bro.
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Talk soon. Looking for your newest go to's Lululemon. What's New Gear drops on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday head to lululemon.com to shop what's New Gear.