How To Seek Help for Those Healing from Childhood Trauma

Do you ever feel guilty about asking for help?

Do you ever feel like if you step into that level of vulnerability, that you'll be ashamed or embarrassed?

What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well, wherever you are in the world today. I want to talk to you about how you ask for help. You see if you go and kind of trace back the lineage of not only this show but what Think Unbroken is. A big part of this has always been about trying to empower ourselves to be able to ask for help because the truth is and you've heard me say this before you just can't do this alone. I mean, there's no one that I've ever met in my life that has found great success without having assistance and guidance along the way. You know, I think about life so frequently as this idea of their, especially in the beginning of this journey, when you're healing, when you're like, oh wow, I've been impacted by trauma and abuse and I have these scars and these burdens that I carry and it's starting to make some sense and meaning in your life, you can feel trapped, right? And you're like, what do I do? Where do I begin? And the truth is that asking for help is the Catalyst for everything that's going to be next in your life.

So what do I mean by that?

Look, here's the reality as you kind of step deeper into this journey, especially if you're at the beginning, or maybe if you're like me and you've been doing it for a long time, there's always space for guidance and that tunnel that were walking through that darkness, right? Because sometimes it feels super dark, especially at the beginning because you're like man, why the fuck am I dealing with this? Why did this happen to me? It's unfair and all of those things are true.

So, let me be clear about that first and foremost, I totally agree, it's bullshit, it's unfair, I wish it didn't happen but for many of us, it's our truth, it is our reality. And because it is our reality as we're stepping into tunnel, what we come to realize is the life that we have today is all because of the experiences that we've had. And when we want to go to the life that we want to have that place of asking for help, while can be the most terrifying aspect of this journey is in reality like the most important aspect of this journey. And people always ask me well, how do you ask for help?

Well, the short answer is… you ask for help.

The long answer and the one that it took me, hmm, a very long time to come to the truth and understand is that I have to ask for help for me because I know that it's going to make my life better. We talked about this idea about giving yourself the permission to be the hero of your own story and often that first step of permission, and acknowledgement is simply putting it into the world that you need guidance, that you need assistance, that you need somebody who can come in this journey with you, to help you navigate what's next. I mean, that's how I got into coaching.

People ask me all the time, well, how did you get into coaching? And about six years ago, somebody just kept emailing me. They were asking me for help, they were relentless. I'll tell you right now, if it wasn't for this person, I wouldn't be here, right? And they just kept messaging, I wish you would have a coach, I wish that you would help me, I wish and I was like, I don't know, I don't know how to do that. And that was an interesting thing to face in the truth of the fear that comes along with it and I sat down, I said, you don't fuck it, I'm gonna do this, and I'm going to build books, and courses, and events and speak on stages, and this podcast, and all that. And in this process, I've had to ask for tremendous amount of help and that is come in the form of mentors, in my own coaches, in education, really everything like I'm the first person that you will ever see to raise their hand and be like, I don't get this.

You know, as an event where John Maxwell was speaking recently, who's arguably the greatest leadership coach ever in the history of the world, sold more books than anybody else in the leadership space, like 200 million copies something crazy like that. And he says, who wants to ask me a question? And it was the first one raised my hand. And the reason why is because you have to understand like asking for help is what's going to be the difference between success and failure in your life.

Now, the fear and asking for help and where you start to go down this road, in terms of figuring out how to do it is, assessing the reality that most people are not going to judge you, that's something we don't normally hear and you've even heard me say people are judging you anyway, that's true, they are. Like, everyone's judging you, I'm judging you, right? You're judging me, that's how this works. But what I've come to discover and find in this journey, is that the people who ask for help, very rarely if ever are judged by other people, very rarely. And if you ask for help in somebody's judging you will that person wasn't going to help you anyway, doesn't matter.

And so, can you let go of that narrative?

Can you let go of that personal belief that you have that somebody is going to judge you? Because it's not true.

Now, if you tell yourself, it's true that's going to put you in a cage and in that cage, you're not going to be able to reach out, you're not going to be able to extend and say, hey, I need guidance here. And so, if that's in your head because again, what you think becomes what you speak, what you speak, become your actions, your actions become your reality. So, if that holds true that you think oh, people, will judge me when I ask for help, then you've already laid down the foundation in the groundwork for that, to be your reality.

Now, I'll tell you from my first-hand experience, that's not true.

So, from a step one perspective, if you can simply say, it's okay to ask for help and people are not judging me. You already in a position to move towards being success to get through that tunnel.

The second aspect of this is being very clear about the questions that you're asking in regard to the help that you need. You've probably heard this before the quality of your questions, determines the quality of your life. And so you need to be very very clear and specific about what it is that you're asking.

I'll give you an example.

If you were to ask for help and say hey, I need help changing my life. That's so general, like that could be anything, that could be eating better, that could be waking up on time, that could be drinking more water like you can literally be anything. When you get into specificity, wow, I totally butchered that word. When you get into specifics, about what it is that you want and you lay it out like this, I'll give you another example. I need help in healing the childhood trauma and abuse that I went through so that I can learn to love myself so that I can live my life on my terms and I don't know where to start. That's a very specific question, that's very laid out. And the right person with the right education and training. Many of whom who should have probably done this themselves will be able to start that process of assisting, you and guiding you.

You know, that's why I write books because they're easy, they're accessible, that's why I have the Think Unbroken app, that's why there's coaching.think unbroken.com, that's why these things exist, right? Because they're simple entry points to specific questions.

And from my perspective the question I'm asking myself, when I'm creating these things, I say to myself. What do I need to create that I would have needed in my journey of healing childhood trauma and abuse so that I could learn to love myself and ultimately be the hero of my own story in the beginning of this process when I couldn't find resources? See? How specific that is. So, when I'm in this and trying to craft everything that we do here in Think Unbroken, that's generally the foundation, right?

Step three, I'm only going to give you three today because I don't want you to be overwhelmed, there's a lot more.

Step three is execution.

Step three is you taking these things that you are learning from the people that you've asked for to help you and following through. One of the biggest reasons that people fail probably, the biggest reason that people fail when they stop start creating change in their life is they don't execute on the game plan. Think about it from a sports analogy, if we're playing a sports game, running game, and I'm the coach, and I give you the play, and I go, all right, run that play and you get onto the field or the court were whatever and you do the exact opposite of what I just told you, there is no way you're going to be successful.

The reason why you execute the game plan that is coming from people who have already done it is because they've already fucked up, they already made the mistake, they already did the thing that they're trying to help you not do. And so what happens is that you have to be willing to trust their help, that's where that line starts to kind of blur between where you were and where you want to go because a lot of us have trust issues. I know, I do, it's been a part of my journey to get that out of my life. I don't like using that word anymore. I don't like that phrase, don't like using it in that context, I no longer have trust issues. I'm willing to trust people; I had trust issues.

I'm willing to trust people like even now I have to remind myself because I use that in a context that is not befitting. So, I am willing to trust people. I do trust people. Because of that, when you start to get in that place in your blurring, those lines of reality, you have to trust that person, that coach, that Mentor, that person that you've sought for guidance, is giving you what you need to be able to go and execute successfully.

You know, I tell people when they come into coaching with me, so I'm not here to be your friend and I'm not and I think that might catch a lot of people off guard, but it's true, I'm not here to be your friend, not in the beginning, maybe we'll some friends, I don't know. Maybe, we'll hang out, have dinner one day, I have no idea. But when you come into this, I have one goal. Giving you the tools that you need to learn to love yourself. It's not about friendship, like I know that sounds weird and you've have to compartmentalize this, but I think about my coaches, I'm not friends with my coaches, their job is to drive me forward, their job is to put a foot in my ass on those days when I'm like, yo, I'm not feeling it, their job is to give me guidance so I don't fall in the same traps and pitfalls that they did. And if when it's all said and done, are we going to be friends? Very likely. I just super possible but today that's not reality. And so my job as a person being mentored, as being coached, as being the player on the field is to go and execute the game plan to do exactly what they've laid out so that I can have success in my life.

And I promise you this I can measure it like a clock like when I deviate from the game plan every single time I hit a brick wall, I fell, I stumble, I screw up, I could have mitigated the risk if I simply execute it.

And so my friends, those are the three steps.

If you want to go through this process of figure out how you ask for help it is those three steps and in those three steps, you will watch your life radically transform.

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Unbroken Nation, I'm super excited to announce one thing before we wrap up the show today. I've just finished and launched well, it's not launched, it will be the website for The Unbroken Man Book. So I sat down and wanted to write a book to help guide men in this trauma healing journey. It is accessible for anyone, no matter how you identify and I think the tools can help many but it is written from the perspective of a man who was a man, trying to help other men on this healing journey after trauma.

And the best thing that I can tell you about the book is that when you read it, it is an Entry-Level Baseline 101 High Level Curriculum to give you the foundational understandings to think about the context of what it means and how you are defining manhood in your life as someone who has been through an abusive environment, as someone who's been through trauma, someone who's been hurt. Many of you know my backstory, many of you know the pain and the suffering and the hurt that I've been through, right?

And today sitting here on the other side now having coached thousands of people around the world and thousands of men. I have seen the space where the men who come into coaching with me, their lives are dramatically different. Now, so are the women and I'll be honest with you but the thing that I know to be true of have all these amazing women in my life, who are coaches for women, I can name, literally 15 of them right now, off the top of my head. I know one guy who coaches guys and so I was sitting probably, oh, gosh, must have been October right around my birthday last year and I had just come back from a conference and I was at my desk and I was doing my journal and I wrote a note that said ‘guide men’ and that felt really true for me in that moment.

And I created the website, men.thinkunbroken.com where you can pre-order Unbroken Man, which is a book that I decided to write, to help men become the hero of their own story. And so it's called. Unbroken Man, A Man's Guide To Being The Hero Of Your Own Story.

Now if you pre-order there, what will happen is I'm giving a ton of bonuses with that book including access to the Discord channel that is launching right now, as well as direct access to the six-week coaching program the same app that is all over people's phones, that I've been putting together over the last year, that thousands of people have gone through, if you pre-order the book, you're going to get that for free. As well as you're going to get access to the weekly coaching group.

Now, this will be an open coaching group, it won't be men specific because I'm building out a secondary one for that because I want this information to be accessible because I know that there are mothers and sisters and daughters and wives who want this information for their, their partners, their husbands, their brothers, their fathers, and then for the men, I know that there are people who want this for their brothers, for their fathers, for their employees, for their co-worker, so they'll be a general group that's accessible to everyone, and then there will be a group that is only for men.

And if you're a woman, listen this and you're like, well I want to access to like women's only stuff message me, DM me on any of the socials because I'll be able to put you in contact with somebody but that said, the books going to come out in June. So if you go over to men.thinkunbroken.com, you'll be able to see all the breakdown in the details of that and the pre-order you can go to the website men.thinkunbroken.com

You can pre-order on Amazon, on Kindle, it’ll be on Walmart and Target soon it's coming out, literally everywhere on audio, on paperback, on Kindle, on hardcover, so it'll be everywhere.

I wanted to make this book, really powerful and accessible like Think Unbroken it's part journal and its part self-help guide and it's a very very, very small portion of my story because you've probably heard it a million times and instead, it's a companion for men, on their journey to healing and I wanted to create a book that felt accessible to men that felt truthful to Men and so there's a lot of language in it in the vernacular of how I grew up and my understanding of manhood and talking about toxic masculinity, talking about vulnerability, talking about healing, talking about growing, talking about what it means to show up for yourself.

And so what you'll need to do is just pre-order that you'll put in your order confirmation into a form on that website and then you're going to get an email and a text from me that's going to have access to the Discord.

You will immediately be able to start taking the 6-week coaching program, which is over a thousand-dollar value. And then you'll get access to the weekly group coaching that we're going to launch in mid-April, so we're a few weeks away from that.

So, I want to say thank you so much Unbroken Nation for being here, for listening, for supporting this journey, for being Unbroken.

And please like, subscribe, comment, share.

Tell a friend.

Go to men.thinkunbroken.com and pre-order.

Until Next Time.

My friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll see ya.