E249: How to find yourself with Deborah LeBlanc | Trauma Healing Podcast

Michael: Hey! What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well, wherever you are in the world today. I'm very excited to be back with you with another episode with my guest, Deborah LeBlanc, who is an entrepreneur, speaker, best-selling author, and also a therapeutic imagery Master practitioner, which I'm very excited to talk about today. Deborah, my friend, how are you? What is happening in your world?

Deborah: I am doing great, Michael, hope you are as well. You know, we ran with COVID this way, but everybody came up on the high end, so that's a good thing.

Michael: And I'm so excited to be back to somewhat normal reality as we head into 2022, which I think is going to be hopefully for many of us, the best year of our lives, that said before we get in and dive in I would love if you would share a little bit about your story, your history, and how you got to where you are today.

Deborah: Well, because I'm such an old broad story, backstory can be a bit long, but I'll cut it as short as I can. I came from my parents divorced, when I was about eight years old. I was raised by an abusive emotionally and physically abusive mother. My dad wasn't around very much and I had two siblings are younger brother and sister who protected most of the time, not most time, all of the time. I became very stood at watching my mother and her eye movements, her body movements because it's she wasn't like an explosion, I was waiting to happen and I could see it building in her and that's when I would stash my brother and sister away. So she had to take it out on anybody, it would be me. So, I was a loner in school didn't have friends mostly because I was kind of the weird kid, you know, I wore long sleeve shirts and pants and Louisiana, you don't because it's so hot all year long, but I had to cover the bruises that were always on my body. So, you know, there were clicks everywhere not really didn't mind. I was an avid reader and I read a lot of biographies and autobiographies and people who had come from nothing and made something out of themselves that was really interested in that to see how they came out of such dire situations.

And so it just kind of brought me into a different world, I got married very young, 16 years old, but at 16 now, I had been scrubbing floors, cleaning house, cooking, cleaning and watching two kids, one an infant since I was nine, so by 16, I felt like I was 30, you know, I'd already lived an entire lifetime. So people say that, my God, she got married young well in years, yes, but, you know psychologically, no. Well, I had my first daughter when I was 18, when I finished my three daughters for the stuff having my three daughters by the time I was 30. It didn't take me long in between there to realize that I had married a male version of my mother, it had been concealed in that honeymoon section, where everybody's on their best behavior and with me you get what you see, there is no honeymoon, phase usually don't like it what you see or you don't, you know. But regardless I was a real wallflower, very quiet and to myself. And around the steps back a little bit, but around 14 years old I thought I got off of the school bus one day and this was not a thought that was ruminating in my mind at all, but I just walked home my brother still had not returned from school, my baby sister was at a sitters and I just went into the bathroom, my mother was subjected to prescription medications, like Xanax and any pain killer or mood-altering drug, that would keep it from feeling, she would Dr. Hopp and back then, could you know, they have you plugged into a computer.

I'm told this story to kid’s teenagers specifically thousands of them around the country and they can't then don't do it ever believe me because it's so massive. But at the last count, I started taking every pill, she had in that cabinet and what I would do is take it and there were almost full because she panics, if they were doubtful I would take it recap the bottle include back. I didn't want some drama seem like somebody find me in your bottles everywhere and they knew what I'd done, it rushed me to the hospital in pain, stomach out in turn, save my life, I didn't want that. The last thing I remember taking was a bottle of 100 aspirin, why aspirin? It was the last thing in medicine cabinet. So collectively I had taken four hundred tablets of everything from painkillers, sleeping pills, you name it, I took it and Aspirins was the last thing. Anyway, I started hearing sounds a little, I don't remember anything between the aspirin and starting to hear these sounds, and I could recognize the voice as my neighbors and she said we're going to need to call her mother. Now I'm hearing this and I want to say, don't call her but I couldn't speak, I couldn't open eyes, I could do nothing, I couldn't move my body, I could do nothing but hear. And I knew if I wasn't dead now, I was going to be because my mother being called in from work was over that was the biggest faux pas. And well, long story short, mom comes then there was an elderly gentleman who was a retired MD who lived a couple blocks from us who knew my mother well, and he came over and started I could feel him poking around my body. And I heard him say, I think it's probably her menstrual cycle, I'm going to give her a shot of Demerol that should help, and I'm thinking to myself I'm only 14 but it doesn't take a genius to figure out after all I taken and Demerol, that's it I'm going to die. In that, I wanted with all of my mind to say, don't stop, I don't want to be dead. And it's really strange as much as I wanted it in the beginning is as strong as I didn't want it then. You know, don't they say statistics shows that people that there are only two percent of people that jump off the Golden State Bridge that survived and out of those two percent they all of them have said, the moment, they jumped, they regretted to jump because what seemed so traumatic to them, became miniscule, the moment they jumped off, some of them couldn't take it back, only 2% that survived, you know, live to tell the tale, that's how I felt. Like I was stealing something from somebody, the universe, God, whatever your higher power, whatever it was when I had no right to. I was put here on this Earth for a reason, this all of clamored in my mind and in seconds and then next thing I feel has a needle going in my hip, well, I woke up three days later in the same clothes I was in three days prior, I was alone in the house and I woke up kind of stung this to, you know, where the heck am I? I'm in my bedroom my bed, and I noticed that I'm covered in this granule stuff it looked like salt like someone had crushed up, rock salt and sprinkle that not the table salt and rock salt and crushed it up and sprinkled it over my body, and I sat up and I saw my outline of my body there was a thing material, that same salt looking stuff, that outline my body. I got up out of bed and for my first thought was got to get this house cleaned up, my mother was going to be coming home soon we looked at the time that's all I thought. And from that moment on I never saw her as Mom, I saw her as this is a woman who's ill and my job right now is to take care of my brother and my sister so they survive this journey and to help my mother get past this point in her life.

You know, she my dad broke up, she didn't know how to function without him, she was angry all the time, well, when I moved out again, realizing I had married, my email worship my mother. I figured out, you know, if I don't do something, he was continuing school with this time, I'd got my degree in marketing and really I wanted to be one, two, three things when I grow up as a little girl, went to be Superman, once being nun or a psychiatrist. Superman, take care of anything, any bully, anybody, beating up anybody, right? On nun I felt I could pray, I would be closer to God and get people out of trouble that way, its didn't work out for me. And then I had the Psychiatry, I knew I desperately wanted, but realized I've had three kids to feed and if I don't do something quickly, we're going to be on welfare because he could not take criticisms, we couldn't keep a job.

So I went to work in all fields within, I went from recession economy where people were lined up just, people were lined up, just for a receptionist job, there were there was no work and I remember walking into from, in Headhunters call, walking into an office and seeing all these people sitting here and I'm thinking to myself, why don't our Earth do you have to offer them that none of these people have? What this different about you? And the answer came like this, it says; ‘You, you that's what makes you different, you there’

So when I was interviewed with this guy, the last question, he asked me was, why should I hire you? And this just flew out of my mouth because this will be the best business decision you'll make this entire year and I got that job. Within 12 years working for that company I wanted to being the first vice-president of Transportation Female Executive Vice President for interpretation in the United States. I actually left a six-figure paying job to begin my own company monitoring underground fuel tanks, I was a logistics company, something that did not exist in the US before.

Now, in the midst of that, I'm getting a divorce, I am writing novels because I just literally woke up one morning brushing my teeth and said, I couldn't write a book and that's how I flow and started my own company and people could tell me, you're crazy, you're crazy, what are you doing? Everybody thought I'd lost my mind and it just so happened that when I opened my doors, I had gathered a team of people. And I took each one was working on a different section. I'm a software package that I knew was going to act like almost like a policeman because fuel suppliers and fuel transportation companies were taking advantage of retail owners. You know, when they going to top off their tanks to make extra revenue, that's the fuel supplier or the transportation company they just go fill them up. Well, they don't realize what that does to the bottom line for the retailer because he's carrying extra inventory at the end of the month, at the end of the year. So I was able to come out with that at the same time, high points came out, hypermarkets or where you go to Walmart, or some big supermarket and you see fuel stations, you know, people kiosk, right in front of the store, these were new.

These people nothing about fuel or transportation and then you buy groceries. So, I was the hot ticket item and we can't work with every hype Morgan's US and Canada, we work that way for 25 years and about that 25th year I lost my middle daughter, three in a four-year span of time, I lost my middle daughter, she had become an alcoholic and her kidneys, pancreas everything is shut down. Despite the help and the therapy and despite everything we did, she was just determined, she just couldn't handle his life anymore. My youngest daughter died, four months later in a fiery car crash and my three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter died of it's not called SIDS it's for children between 3 and 5, they could be breathing in their sleep for whatever reason that nearly destroyed me, that really put the brakes on my life, it's like with second. Here I was successful in transportation and started my own company, it was a multimillion-dollar company, I was already up to 14 novels and my world just stopped because I said, what are you doing? What is life worth? Look at what you've lost. Then my father died not long after and my younger brother of lung cancer, it was a real eye-opener for me. I sold my company and I literally wondered, I mean walking in circles, walking down trails, thinking-thinking what is your purpose in life? You know, and out of the blue one day and it's not coincidence, still believe in coincidences I think they just happen when you're ready to happen.

I had this somebody handy information on HMI which was the first accredited hypnotherapy University in the United States first to be accredited by the Department of Education. And it started looking into the program and I had a Bachelor's in marketing didn't matter, I had a minor in Psychology, but I'm enrolled. And I knew that's where I fit because in hypnotherapy, he became a clinical hypnotherapist on the nine, I'm literally certified in 32 other modalities. You know, imagery is just one in NLP, is another, MER is just another, but I wanted to be certified in things that were pain points in people's life. Cancer, anxiety, depression, addiction, things that impacted my life, I've wanted I couldn't help my mother, as hard as I tried to help my daughter I couldn't, I've got to help that's why I think why we're here this planet is to help other people not, keep taking- taking – taking, everywhere you look somebody wants you to give, just give me the olive, stick it in your pocket and I'll make you 10,000. Well, that is its BS, you know, it literally is BS because why aren't you making ten thousand dollars a weekend if you can make me that? Well, of course you're going to do it if you can sign up excellent where people for fifteen, hundred dollars a pop, yeah, you're gonna get there, but who's going to be not? Who is not paying attention enough to say, wait a minute, I'm hearing this again and again and again and again, and it's all the same message, it's just worded differently.

Well, I wanted to find something where I could give back and hypnotherapy has proven itself to me again and again, and again, there are often times when I see such relief and freedom come over a clients face. And I knew all of my sessions over Zoom that I have to quickly click off after I count them up, set up the next session, tell them by and click off, because I just feel that tears welling up, you know when I don't want them to see me crying, but because I'm just, this is what it's all about, it really is what it's all about.

Michael: Yeah, that's so beautiful, and that's captivating story. My mind goes so many places when I hear a story like this and I sit here and I take it in and it's the parallels of the journey and in many ways with my experience and with many people who are listening right now, where we were kind of thrown into this position of we have not only be caretakers for our siblings. I mean, I remember learning to cook at a very young age and learning to do dishes and laundry and like, all the things that come along with that. And you see that happening, time and time again in these abusive households and myself going down this road where I was 14, I downed a whole bottle of aspirin and I was just like done with it and thinking about all the things of life and service and what you're here for and ultimately, you know, I think beyond unfortunate part of the human experiences quite often, we need the rock bottom moment, we need that like baseball bat to the face moment to look at our lives and go, what are we really doing here? What do we really want? Who do we want to be? How do we want to serve? How do we want to show up and not the hard part is like, I feel like we don't know the real you. And that part of us is that real you trying to protect ourselves or trying to keep ourselves safe, but I think in doing that you're also handcuffing yourself, right? What I'm so curious about because especially in this journey and looking at your life and multiple pivots, between being an entrepreneur, writing the books, having all these events happen and then still trying to figure out who you are? How do you find the real you when you're always trying to protect yourself?

Deborah: You know, I found that in creating everything that I was creating. I was in essence doing when I thought long and hard about it and I was doing what my mother expected my worth wasn't in who I was; it was in what I did. So I took a good long look at that, I mean I was somebody's wife, I was somebody's mother, I was the president of this, I was the author of that but who is Deborah? Who is she? And what purpose does she serve? And I wanted to find out what that was. You know, I consider myself a good person, but I really had to get out of that and when you have to feed kids, hard to get out of that Financial mindset because you've got to put food on the table, you have to pay bills, you gotta pay for a divorce, but you really dig down deep and I have got to throw this caveat out there. My younger baby sister once told me she said Deb you should try to go to therapy, try it and just see if anything, you know, if you like it, it might help you. And so to appease her, I did, I went to a therapist and I sat there and listen to her. And what this woman was about, was selling her books on how to be free from about… well, she started asking me about my mother, and my father, and something just graded inside of me, like, fingernails on a chalkboard and it said, you know, and I stood up I think we were like 15 minutes in session, and she's already trying to sell me her book twice, I stood up and I said, I don't think we're the right fit. I said, I know what my mother was, I know what she did, I still carries the scars, but mentally I have compartmentalized the fact that she was a sick person. She was human being, she was in brought here just to be a mother, she was somebody's daughter, she was somebody's wife, she was an individual and she was hurting and there was no one to help her. So I said, the parts, that my mother did that physically hurt me, I mean, my mother told me things like, I hate you and wish you were dead, but words like that after the experience had going through, they just bounced right off, they didn't sink because I knew she was taking frustrations out regarding another situation, she was taking that out of me.

I just compartmentalized and I said lady the things that were not so pleasant about my mom relating as her daughter I buried that in the concrete where she's buried and I am not, I don't have any reason to do though because she was a hurting woman, I was sent there to help with other two children she had who I adored and that's it, that's the bottom line. I don't need to be psychoanalyzed, I've done that myself, plenty of times and I know where I fit. I know where I fit and that fit is not hearing your office. I'm sorry to have taken up your time, I'll gladly pay you for the hour and off I went. So my sister didn't say, oh, how'd it goes? I said Don't talk to me again, I'm going to therapists. Don't do it, just don't, we were on two separate journeys. You know, I call it by the grace of God, I just opened my eyes and saw things for what they really were higher being, my husband calls it, the universe, whatever you want to call it, I don't care, it was speaking loud and clear in my ear and I listened and followed it.

One of the most amazing things that I find is how long we carry that hidden person inside of us. There is a thing that I talk that I normally give called who's hiding in the dark? And I have a client close their eyes, take three deep breaths, and I'm just going to go through the exercise of my going to have you do it because I've already talked much about from quite some time. Close our eyes, and imagine three doors, three white doors, average size, and out of the first door, it's the door opens up at out steps, you, as you, see yourself as you see yourself now and I have them describe what that person looks like. What colors are here. How did they stand? How did they dress? What kind of Timber do they have to their voice? How do they react in fearful situations, anxious situations? How did they react over stress? Once we go through a litany of questions, so now let's turn to door number two and I haven't earned their physical body ever so slightly, this is now, the door opens announced steps the person that you want other people to think you are, now, describe that person to me. And it's amazing how different it is, usually that person stands up straight over their heads up taller, there are more finely dressed, they're more ticular, more outgoing, they laugh easier, that's how they describe themselves.

And I say, I want for through, with the Litany of the door number two, walks a now, there's a third door. Now behind this door and its opening ever, so slowly and won't open all the way I said is the you that you have not even seen yet. The world has not seen yet and he's about to poke his head out for on the corner of that door. Because he feels sort of safe enough now to show you what he looks like, describe him to me. And I can't tell you the number of times, people have said, I can't look, I'm too afraid. I want to have what it looks like.

Michael: That's fascinating. What comes to my mind and I've done hypnotherapy is played a beautiful role in my life and hypnosis as well and I think that when we can tap into that subconscious and accept the truth behind it, like, you can really have this tremendous amount of change come from that. What I'm curious about and especially with this third door, what is keeping people stuck there? Like how do we get people into this position where they allow that third self to both live and breathe and be that thing that they know they're capable of being?

Deborah: Most of the time the person that's hiding behind the door, is a conglomeration of the negatives or the false positives that sit in their subconscious. You know, for example, let's say you were seven and you were told by your father and mother who never to go and clean up your room, so you do that and you really do a good job because, you know, cleaning up your room makes your mother happy, okay? Now you've done the best job you can you run back to her and you go, and she says, are you done? And you say yes, ma'am, well down here, we'd say yes, ma'am, or ambulance would pick us up, okay? So she goes into the room and she looks around and she goes I thought you said you picked up your room and you look up shocked. She said, what's that toy truck doing sticking out from under the bed? What's that T-shirt peeking out from the corner? What is this? What is that? And she's nitpicking everything that you didn't see. So what happens is, what we give meaning to in our subconscious, is that what we perceive as our very best is never good enough. So we grow up with that permanently set in our subconscious that you know, some people will take it as why do everything I can? Why work hard? Why this? Why that? It's never going to be good enough, it's never been good enough. Why should I do it now? And a lot of it is having to do with what was planted into your subconscious, you know, if yelling and screaming at someone one, for example, let's say your father was a screamer and he did it because he thought that was the only way to get your attention, to get anyone's attention, he had to be loud boisterous and you saw that or you somehow at planted in your mind wanted to ways as a negative so you became super quiet, that negative is like, it is not good to be loud and boisterous look how people react to him. But if your father gets the attention from that yelling and people are just like, you know, doing anything, but by wanting on his feet and you see it as a false positive, I need to do that, I need to yell and scream and be boisterous and more remote more in order to get the appreciation that I deserve.

So we develop meaning is to false positives and negatives at a very from birth to eight years old and then what group was formed above that? It's called the critical mind. Now the subconscious mind is the 88 percent of our brain power, that's a lot of territory. The critical mind acts like the trampoline, any new messaging that comes in and is contrary to what, or none’s to us false or not, it will not let anything in that's going to contradict a known to you because I know be it right or wrong, it's a safe zone for you, it's a safety net. So twelve percent of our brain is our conscious mind that's where we have logic reasoning, that's how we make decisions. Typically, the only way to get through that critical mind, effectively and change those false positives and negatives in those false negatives into positives, or vice versa, is to create an opening and address them directly and then we pull out the truth, and lock in the negatives. So that what you have now coming to your conscious mind is the truth of that positive, the truth of that negative and your life begins to adjust accordingly by itself, it's not something you have to consciously say, okay, we did this so that means I don't have to do that. It just happens automatically because our brain has been unbroken.

Michael: I have this interesting thought around this. Obviously this is what happens when you get to that third door, it's barely opening that subconscious programming from childhood is there. What I think is really fascinating and interesting and I'd love to know your thoughts on is there are people who will be able to acknowledge that, right? I'll put myself in that camp. Let me rewind myself 10 years ago, right? I go, okay, I acknowledge it, I look at my life, my past is impacting my present, this is going to hinder my future, all right, I'm going to do something about it. But there was just this onslaught, I do not have a better word for this, this onslaught of self-sabotage in this process. Why do you still self-sabotage even though you've acknowledged everything you've just said and we're able to make meaning of it and you're still like, well, I'm just going to screw my life up?

Deborah: Because inside and I don't know you; you said you had some experience with hypnotherapy and hypnotherapist but what happened is they did not remove that and change it from a negative that false negative to a positive, false positive to a negative and pull it into the conscious mind where it becomes an automatic thing for you, it's not a thought process. You are self sabotaging because that is a safe zone for you, there is something in there saying I'm never will be good enough, you're not good enough, you screw up everything is stored, you'll never amount to anything, things we've heard and gave meaning to in our childhood. And they just get locked in there and unless they're effectively pulled out, you're going to continue to self-sabotage.

Michael: Yeah, that's fascinating. And I recall these moments of not only in therapy and like Gestalt therapy, EMDR, CBT, whatever those were, men's groups being, having a coach, going to different hypnotherapists and different kind of, just trying a little bit of everything and I think it was this kind of amalgamation of implanting all these concepts and ideas in my own brain that ultimately helped me find out who I was. But what I'm really curious about is from your perspective is, how do you find your real YOU?

Deborah:  I want insert for her. I went looking for her. I literally came up to that third door, without knowing that it existed and kicked it open. I didn't care what she looked Like, I was expecting to see some sniveling cowardly looking, somebody that just come out of, that's what I was expecting but it wasn't that? What is behind that third door is what you were originally created to do. So it's strong. It stands straight. It's powerful. It's not been impacted by teachers and parents and peers and bullies and everybody else. What hides behind that third door the real YOU is the one that was created from the beginning of time and meant to serve Mankind and one way or another, that's the real you.

Michael: So interesting because I feel like people to some extent like they can rationalize that, they can hear that and then it's the stepping into it that becomes so difficult. And I feel like in that process by being willing to be curious about modalities that you otherwise may not be curious about helps get to that place. I guess, it's probably very much like your sister saying, hey, you should go to therapy and you going actually this isn't for me because I think people try to do things, just simply like therapy and then find out, it's not for them, but they keep going and I'm like, why it's not serving you? Like I tell people all the time, like, there's a period of time where therapy may just not be for you, right? And you need coaching, or you need yoga and meditation or journaling or hypnotherapy, or whatever that thing, maybe. And so, I love that, here's what I think is so fascinating about this entire mental health journey is that you're not in this position where it's a one size fits all because you know for yourself personally, you've had this experience where yeah, I did therapy just not for me and you honored that, I wish I could give people a magic pill that said honor your truth because if you do that's going to create all of the difference in the world for you because so often, yes, we're set up for failure, we come from homes of addiction and abuse, we find ourselves in the most precarious situations, we even to some essence, myself included in this like, destroy our lives. But when you start to acknowledge the power that you have the capability that you have for greatness, for the thing that you want, for that third door, and you have the willingness to step into the… we're some people look at this and go hypnotherapy, that's so weird, step into it because that weird thing might actually be the thing that changes your life forever. And so this has been an absolutely beautiful conversation Deborah, before I ask you, my last question. Can you tell everyone where they can find you and learn more about you?

Deborah: They can go to mindpaththerapies.com and of course, they can email me at deborah@mindpaththerapies.com then feel free to email me and ask any questions. In fact, if they go on my site you know what? Because this is your program, Michael and because I am so connected to what you do, if whoever's your audience is listening will email me at deborah@mindpaththerapies.com and put in the subject line, THINK UNBROKEN PODCAST, I will give them one hour of free hypnotherapy, a free hypnotherapist.

Michael: It's beautiful. Thank you and unbroken Nation, I know there's tens of thousands of you guys listening to this, take that up on this offer because I'm gonna tell you right now, like I'm not even kidding with you hypnotherapy change my life forever like forever. It's one of the most important parts of my journey. My last question for you my friend is, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Deborah: It means freedom.  It means my arms are long enough to hug the world. It means my voice is loud enough to carry over the loudest to tell people that there is hope, there is love, there is acceptance for you on this planet. You don't have to stay locked where you are, it means freedom to me.

Michael: Very beautiful. I got the goose bumps as beautiful.

Thank you, my friend.

Thank you for being here.

Unbroken Nation, thank you so much for listening.

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And Until Next Time.

My friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll see you.