Practical Strategies for Healing from Trauma and Reclaiming Your Life on the Think Unbroken Podcast

Jaime Bronstein – Finding LOVE After Trauma

 Michael: Contempt is often the gateway to divorce, to value relationships to all of those things. And I remember like as I started shifting in my own life to get to this place of really just a tremendous amount of self-compassion in that I realized like, wait a second, I don't want to be afraid of having everything, having a great relationship, having great friendships, having all of this stuff, and it really came down to just sitting down and going, what do I want? And at the beginning you talked about manifestation and I think that it's such a fucking buzzword right now that people don't understand even how to do it, they're just like, I'm manifesting all this stuff. I'm like, yeah, yeah but wait a second you're probably missing the boat here somewhere. So, I'd love for you to kind of just break down like what does manifesting actually mean, especially in terms of love.

Jaime: Yeah. So, there are steps, and I mean, each chapter of my book is essentially a different step and by the way, even though it's called manifesting, you can use these tricks, these tools, these nuggets of wisdom, and you can apply it to everything in life. So, the first step we've already gone over is loving yourself. You have to love yourself because our outside experience is a reflection of our inner reality, so we already went over that, you need to love yourself, so you're actually showing up as your authentic self to manifest that aligned match it's about attracting, and this is the law of attraction buzzword also, however, very real, literally very real. You were just saying before you feel like sometimes things are even like you said, eerie, I would say like crazy, it's crazy. I don't know things are happening to me all the time. I was randomly thinking about this guy the other day and the night I got a, or I was telling my husband a story about this random man that had sent me a message on Facebook and then I had written to my friend who I was asking if he's related to this guy because this guy was a little creepy anyhow, I was just telling my husband that story, and as I'm telling him, I receive a message on Facebook from my friend who I had sent a message to, but I had sent him message, I don't know, days earlier I hadn't thought about and like in that moment. So, this is an example of how we're constantly, like when you're in the zone, you're just connected, so you want, that's the point. Once you want to be connected to yourself so you can be connected to the universe, which I'll get more into the end of my book. Trust me, it makes sense. So wanna be connected to yourself, love yourself, so you can manifest that which is aligned with you. You need to, once again, trust. Trust yourself. You need to cultivate this intuition. Be in your integrity always, it is the most powerful, wonderful feeling to just trust yourself on your manifesting journey. You don't need to ask a million people. Trust yourself, get really connected with yourself. Along those lines, something that I tell my clients to do is before you go to sleep at night, make a list of about 10 “I am” statements. I am smart, I am worthy whatever you say I'm beautiful inside and out, and you say those right before you go to sleep, and that starts to help the process of getting connected with yourself. I do have a free gift, which is seven days of manifesting love affirmations and manifestations, I mean, and exercises, which that is one of the exercises so I can share the link with you. So, that, anyhow, to wrap this up, and I don't wanna give everything away, but a few other aspects of manifesting are you need to believe that it's going to happen literally, you have to believe it's gonna happen or it's not gonna happen visualize living as if it's already happening. I tell my clients to undo both sides of the bed at the universe needs to know that there's room to even bring this person in. Okay? When you set a place setting for dinner, I dunno if anybody actually does that, or you pour a glass of wine or pour some, you're eating dinner, put a plate in some silverware for your lovely guest with you. And also have the men start to have the mentality of you are in a couple and what it would feel like and once again, I have exercise and tools for this and the cool thing about visualization is that our brain doesn't know the difference between something actually happening and it not happening. So, the more that we actually live as if it's happening, the more easily it will come into our life. And that's also why it's important not to live in the past because if you're living in that mentality of the past, you're not healing.

Lesley Logan – How Mental Health Impacts Your Physical Health

 Michael: You mentioned the word confidence a few times. What does that actually mean?

Lesley: Yeah, that's a word that's so interesting. My mom will always say you have so much you've always said so much confidence. I know that there's a definition of confidence in the dictionary that you all can look up, but for me, it's a belief and maybe courage is a better word because I feel like I'm scared a lot of the time when I'm doing something, I feel very nervous, because I'm excited about it and I want it to go a certain way. I also don't know how it's gonna go, right? You've been in business a long time; you have an idea of how things are gonna go and then tech can happen or something get like something can had happened so, but for me, it's a belief in what I am doing and I'm creating things that solve people's problems. And I know if you're listening this to like, how does Pilate solve the world's problems? Because I think a lot of people don't know who they are and they don't spend time with themselves and they, when they do, they're shaming themselves and they're talking negatively themselves. So, to me, confidence, it's a belief in myself in that even if I screw it up, even if I do it wrong, it's gonna be okay, because I'm gonna just show up again tomorrow and I'm gonna learn from it. So, it's less that dictionary word of like, I'm so good at something I've done it so much. I'm so confident, I'm nervous all the time. My husband was recording an event that I had to teach at and there was 85 people in the room, which doesn't sound like a lot if you teach talk to 10,000, but I had 85 people I was teaching in one room. And that at the time was years ago, I'd never taught 85 people in a room and in the front row as a bunch of people who have never done Pilates before that flew out a company, flew them out to take my class. There's also like other famous Pilates instructors who took the time to take my class and then there's all these other people. And I looked at my husband and I said, oh my God, I'm so nervous right now. And he said, how is this any different than what you're already doing? And it was that moment that I realized that I think a lot of us get nervous and scared, we doing a thing we already had confidence in doing. So, for me, I just really try to focus on believing in what I'm doing and just doing the things that I know I believe I can do. And the confidence and the courage and all of that comes.

Michael: A hundred percent. I thought comes to mind and I'll butcher this so, I apologize, but I was listening to Kobe Bryant and do an interview, and he was asked about being nervous, taking game winning shots. And he said, I'm never nervous taking game winning shots, cuz I've already practiced it a thousand times in the gym. And I think that's such a relatable concept. People ask me all the time before I get on stage even last week in New York city, they were like, are you nervous? I'm like, no. And the response that people get is give me is shocking, cuz they're like, wow, you're so confident. I'm like, yeah, but you weren't there when there were two people, four people, the mirror me practicing in this, in my head 10,000 times and that's the truth about it. I'm in full agreement with you. If you're not willing to go through the suffering of the doing it at repetition to create proficiency, you'll never be able to do it when it's on the line. You know, you see all the time in real life scenarios, those who are unprepared because they're going to fail and I would rather fail in practice than fail during game time, you know, Iverson's thing about practice, practice, practice we're talking about practice, it's just practice. Like that's so important because it is the practice in which you gain the tools to be proficient and build the confidence to show up when it's time to execute and it sucks. Like honestly, like practicing sucks, like it's boring.

Lesley: Oh, I used to cuz people ask, this is a great question. People ask, how are you so confident when you do video? Right? Like, cuz now everyone has to do video. Like you all have to learn how to look at the dot and screen, not throw somes eyes, like all the things but how did you do that? Because I've been teaching online for years, I've been teaching online before people got on zoom. And I said, you know, what's really funny? I took a random commercial acting class and they make you practice looking at a post-it notes while you make your bed and you are like selling an Amex while you're making your bed. And so, I practiced talking to post-it notes in my house, doing this thing and it ended up happening that when a very famous company brought me on to teach a Pilates class, they're like, wow, you're a natural, no, not a natural. I've been practicing talking to a post-it notes while sweating my floors, you know, these things. And so, I think people, they look at other people doing stuff and they think that was so easy for them, they don't see the practice, they don't see like the Kobe Bryant practicing game, winning shots in practice, they don't see you the twos and the fours. And when they see us, they see, oh, where we are at now, not where we came from. And I challenge anyone listening that's like going, oh gosh, it's so easy for them whenever you say that to yourself, I want you to picture them actually starting with two people and four people, cuz that's what they did. No one is starting off with 10,000 and by the way, you don't want to, you don't want your first speech to be in front of 10,000 people. I promise.

Gloria Zhang – Discover Your True Purpose After Childhood Trauma 

Michael: You talked about in your own journey, this aspect of recognizing a decade in that it wasn't until you started doing this inner child work, that you started to create the space, to be able to move into something healthy and safe and secure. What's the correlation there?

Gloria: With inner child healing?

Michael: Yeah.

Gloria: I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. Some people find it kind of strange coming for me. So, I'm originally, I'm a registered psychotherapist eventually became a coach. And I have honestly found in a lot of my own training as a mental health practitioner. There's been so much emphasis on the CBT, and these eight-week programs and these, you know, two session programs, I've done it all, Michael and nothing has hit me the way it did in those inner most deeper layers as looking at attachment and inner child work, that's just been my honest experience. You know, I would go to certain sessions and they would say, oh, you just have anxiety, right? Let's just give you this medication to treat your anxiety, then you'll be fine in relationships. And in other types of modalities, I would go to, you know, dating, gurus and learn about how to dress properly on dates, right? Like that was the fucking problem, but I wasn't wearing a dress and that was the reason why I was attracting the wrong people. Right. And everything was just so surface layer. You know, this was why I was so drawn to your work as well, Michael, because you really get it that it has everything to do with the way we are wired and we are wired in our childhood.

You know, it's crazy that I didn't even learn about that in my therapy school. But when I first went to my first inner child coach, it was actually a guy, believe it or not. And we actually had nothing in common, he was like, a forties something white man, he was like a skateboard champion in, you know, like in Canada so random, we had nothing in common other than the fact that he had a very messed up childhood and he was now in a happy relationship. I saw those two things, put it together I thought that's where I was, you're where I wanna be like, let's work together. And he helped me look at the way that my parents raised me to be and how I literally took that blueprint and just extrapolated that onto all of these people I was dating and it was like, oh my God, it was like breakthrough after breakthrough of seeing all these connections, but also things that I could actually do differently by reparenting myself, giving myself the needs that weren't met in me as a kid and not looking towards other people to fill that cup for me, but it was almost like unlocking the superpower like, oh wow, I can actually fill my own cup. It was like tapping into this inner reservoir that I didn't even know was there. And I just ended up feeling so abundant and so full. When I parted ways with my coach, two years later, I just felt like a totally different person, I don't think I would've been able to get there if I hadn't gotten into those deeper layers of the inner child work.

Michael: Yeah. And it's a scary place. Right? And I think people don't understand how much you will discover about yourself. And I mean, ultimately when I wrote my second book, Eight Steps to Healing your Inner Child, I mean, it's pretty simple, it's pretty foundationally straightforward book. It's not as in depth as some of the other things I've written, but it's just like, if you're willing to look at these things, like just nakedly unabashedly, honestly, you're gonna find some shit out about yourself. You know what I'm saying? And you're gonna end up in this place where you're like, fuck, like, this is who I am not necessarily only because of my wiring, my programming, you know, sometimes it's grooming and me enmesh meant, but also, it's the choices that you're making, it's the decisions that you make. And unfortunately, there's a reconciliation that you're going to have to have with the truth of who you are and understanding radical responsibility in terms of making better decisions. I think one of the difficult things for me, there's a space in which you have to evaluate the value that you have and what you are worth and there's conversation about worthiness here. And I like kind of attribute this to the same as being an entrepreneur or business owner, or even just working a career, like getting paid, what you're worth. You know, there are people who just undervalue themselves so drastically and I’m like fuck that get what you're worth in relationships and career in life, in everything, because you can, and you deserve it, but like, I can't force feed that to you. You have to be able to create that in yourself and more so you have to be able to, and this is my thought about it continuously do incredibly uncomfortable things to build the confidence, to own that. How much of that feels true in this journey for you?

Gloria: Oh my gosh. A hundred percent. It's almost like with fitness coaching, I can't do your pushups for you. You know, you really do have to be at a point where you are ready to face the music because as beautiful as this healing journey is it can be quite painful. I don't think we can sugarcoat it and say, oh, it's all just gonna be, you know, rainbows and fairies and butterflies, but it really is the shadow work where you are taking the most honest, good hard look at yourself and the parts of you that feel really icky and shameful and uncomfortable. And it's, you know, bringing all of that out on the table and looking at it and being okay with it. Takes a lot of courage for sure. And it can take some people a little bit of time before they're ready to get to that place, but only you can truly acknowledge when you are ready. There's never gonna be an external time where all the lights are green at the same time but I believe that readiness is an internal process and it's an internal choice that you are going to make this happen, not dictated by everything around you. So, I fully believe that.

Lindsay Mitchell – How Your Brain Can Heal Itself

 Michael: We have the opportunity, even though we go through these very terrible, emotional physical ailments, right? Because I would argue that the illness is more emotional than it is physical at times, the feeling painful, things of this nature. What was really the precursor to the catalyst for you deciding to take back your life by learning, by getting educated, by trying, literally what it sounds like, everything, what was that like for you?

Lindsay: I think that stems back to a core belief that I developed in childhood, that I am strong and I need to advocate for myself. And I know a lot of times we hear about core beliefs and a lot of times they can be negative pore beliefs, right? I am not enough, I don't deserve healing, all of these things that we can kind of be stuck with. And of course, I have my fair share of those that I've had to learn an address over the years but this was a core belief, that really helped me and guided me throughout the process.

So I remember, during some of my deepest darkest moments, a point where if you've had Lyme disease, or you've had like a parasitic infection, they can be similar in the fact that you can have hallucinations, and I was having one and if you've ever experienced a hallucination, it's like – you're not yourself your somebody totally different and it's horrifying. And I remember experiencing that I'd never experienced anything like it and I was lying on the ground and I was crying and I was like, I just want to die like this is horrible, I'm not myself, you know, and looking back, like, okay, that was my nervous system that was my limbic system in overdrive, the emotional feeling reacting brain just firing and firing and firing surviving, I was like, I don't think I can survive this.

And I remember having a moment where I thought, this can't be it, this can't be all that there is and I think that core belief of, I am strong and I am my advocate it did shine through even in that moment like that was probably the worst moment of despair, just very, very vividly remember lying on the ground and what that felt like even though I didn't feel it, even though I didn't really believe it, it was there. And then the fact that I became aware of, it made me realize and other situations when that core belief came out.

So then I went to see a therapist who told me how your story is the worst story, this was an 80-year-old therapist, and she your story is the worst story I've ever heard just with your childhood trauma and dealing with this chronic disease, and I was sitting there thinking it can't be, I was like, there's no way, this is the worst story she's ever heard. I want to prove her wrong, I'm strong and I am my advocate and I would go see practitioners and they would say oh, you know, just like you probably experienced Michael of going through pots and e-coli and these types of conditions. You know, my practitioners, most of them that I saw would say something along the lines of well, you're just going to have to make yourself comfortable and live with this for the rest of your life and not core belief that was there was like no, I am not, I'm gonna prove you wrong. I thought was my motivator for change my catalyst for change of I'm gonna prove these people wrong, who supposedly, they know best, right? No, I know best, I have healing properties within me, I believe in my body and I believe in my immune system. And luckily that neural pathway in my brain related to strength and resilience was strong despite my circumstances, my internal environment my body, my external environment, what was going on around me that neural pathway was still strong and that just strengthened and strengthened, and strengthened.

And when I read about neuroplasticity and I learned that we can retrain our brains to basically communicate a signal of resilience, a signal of health through accessing our natural resilience, which is our parasympathetic rest and digest or growth and repair response. And when we operate from that response, more often than not and our autonomic nervous system response is the balance that fight/flight response, that freeze response, that growth and repair response when we can kind of easily bounce back between all of those responses that's when we start to feel better, blood flow gets sent to our GI tract to digest food, we actually communicate through our cells and through our genetic expression a new way of being we actually can change the way our genes expressed through releasing feel-good neurochemicals like – dopamine when we laugh or oxytocin when we give somebody a hug or we give to somebody in need. So those are very small tangible examples of how we can change our neurochemistry to help us to feel better and to even shift our health and put focus on our immune systems.

And so, when I read about this, I had learned about it in PA School, a very kind of small snippet of what I know now, but it was so empowering to me and at that point after dealing with this condition for a year, I was like, I need something empowering, I have out sourced so much of my ability to heal on external resources, right? Other practitioners, other people, other things, supplements even other tools, that may help a little bit and may have got me gotten me to a place where I could use these Neuroplasticity tools, but I'm so tired of outsourcing my healing. I wanted at that point to tap into my natural resilience and to me learning about brain retraining was really empowering because it followed that same trajectory of one of my favorite neural pathways, one of my favorite core beliefs of I am strong and I am my own advocate.