The First Step to Healing Trauma | CPTSD and Trauma Healing Coach

What is up, my friends. Hope that you are doing well. I wanted to pop on here today, say hello to you, I apologize, I do not have my headset or my mic. I'm actually traveling right now going to Summit of Greatness with my brothers, which I'm very, very excited about.

And I wanted to pop on here and talk to you about something that's really been on top of mind for me today and that's thinking about this idea of why we have to choose to do the things in our life that make our lives better. And one of the things that I probably have struggled with the most over my life, and again, sorry, I'm outside sitting at a brother's house, so the audio, quality's not the best ever, I apologize, but we'll get through this.

And thinking about the why and thinking about what it means to choose, to decide, to do what it takes to ultimately learn to love yourself, heal and become the hero of your own story. One of the biggest struggles that I had, which actually it's, what's interesting was I talk about this with people and they go, that's shocking to me. I could never believe that was true. Is that I always was a people pleaser growing up. I always bend myself to the needs and the will of other people. I rarely have ever spoke my mind. And a lot of that's a trauma response, right? So many of us who come through traumatic experiences, we learned, we learned to turn off emotionally, we learned to turn off mentally. We stop asking for our wants, our needs, our interests. We placate, we bend, we do whatever it is that other people need in order for us to feel safe which is one of the really difficult aspects of people who come from a traumatic background in that ultimately the very thing that is holding you back, not being able to speak your mind, ask for your wants, needs or interest, or to live life on your term, that is ultimately once you cross that chasm, the very thing that is going to give you the tools that you need to start the journey to healing. And of course, the second I step out here, some dudes like chopping down a tree across.

And what I thought about in my journey was being 27 years old, well, almost a decade ago now, but most of my twenties always doing what other people needed me or wanted me to do was the very thing that was keeping me stuck. And it wasn't until I started leveraging my voice and deciding that, you know what, whether I'm going to, and this happened and I'll tell you, this is the truth about it. I lost friends. I lost relationships. I lost business opportunities because I started only speaking my truth. And when you only speak your truth, you unfortunately, I hate to break it to you at times are probably going to rub people the wrong way. And I don't think that's intentional, right? I've never intentionally tried to hurt people in speaking my truth. Right. But you hear the old adage that the truth will set you free. And so, I made a decision around this idea of why honesty and truth had to become one of the foundational principles of my life and it's because one of the things that I learned very young was how to be a very masterful liar. And I learned that through my mother, through my grandmother, through my community. And one of the things is that it was reinforced that being dishonest would actually help you achieve the things that you wanted in life.

So, I'll give you an anecdotal version of a very long story is that I watched my mother lie to people constantly to get what she wanted. My mother was very narcissistic, she was later diagnosed with bipolar, she had suicidal ideations, a lot of things. So, when I recognize like her trauma and her abuse had kind of led her down that path, then it made me think about this concept and idea about generational trauma, how so often that is repeated and learned behavioral patterns.

And so, when you look at the fact that my mother was a liar and I go look at my grandmother, oh, she was always dishonest and then so on and so forth. Well, you ask yourself, why? Well, that's probably a survival mechanism. You have to learn one of the things that we do as human beings, which is actually really innate a part of us, is to measure environments, to make decisions, based on those environments and to determine through the decisions we make about those environments, whether or not we are safe. And if we are not safe, then the brain will go, okay, well, what do I need to do actually survive this circumstance and for many people it's lying, it's being dishonest, it's telling other people what they need to hear to keep you, that was my mother's experience, that was her mother's experience. I'm sure, ultimately that became my experience. And so, in my teens and twenties, I lied all the time because I thought that's what you were supposed to do to be safe. And then I recognize that very thing that I'm doing every single day, that I believe is the thing keeping me safe is actually destroying my life. It's ruining my friendships. It's ruining my relationships. It's ruining my health. It’s ruining my mental health. It's ruining anything that I could possibly have because ultimately the greatest tool in this journey is known thyself. And so, if you do not know thy self, you will not be able to go into the next level in this journey. And for me, the very thing that I needed to do was get clarity on who I was and recognize that every time I was lying about who I was, I was actually taking gigantic steps backwards.

And so, I made this declaration again, understanding the why, like, why am I doing this? Why am I making this choice in this decision to be honest, to not, why to show up for myself, to live in authenticity and vulnerability and love and all of those things is because I realize that if I didn't, then I was forever going to remain stuck. And if you are stuck in your life right now, and you're like, what do I need to. One of the greatest things that you can do to begin this journey forward is be honest with yourself. Be honest about who you are with what you want, how you identify mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, sexually, all of those things because if you're willing to be ultimately honest with yourself, then in turn that honesty will reflect onto the world and it will be reciprocated back to you and you will be able to move closer and further into what it is that you desire in your life and in your world, because the universe is going to continue to reciprocate back what you put into it.

And so, when I look at my life and my teens and twenties lying all the time led to broken relationships, broken friendships, broken career opportunities, my body was a disaster, my mental was a disaster. And through honesty, all of those things started to come together in a healthy and in a healthy way and in a way that has created a lot of longevity and momentum in my life, around the actions that I've taken to get to where I am. Now that doesn't mean it's not hard, right? Because people are like, well, I want to be honest with my husband. I want to be honest with my coworkers. I want to be honest at church and they're terrified because of the potential shame and guilt and judgment and all the things that come along with honesty, but the hardest guilt and shame and judgment that we have and this is in my opinion, is the guilt and shaman judgment that we have for ourselves when we go look in the mirror or we put our head on the pillow at the end of the night and know that we are not being honest. And you have to be willing to step into the fear of showing up and being who you are, because without that, you're never gonna be able to discover your real truth. You're never going to be able to discover your power, what it is that you're able to create and who it is that you're ultimately able to be and become. And so, what I found and what I discovered in my journey, and tying into that why; why did I want to be honest? Well, because all I ever do is lie and the more that I lie, the worse my life gets. So, maybe if I'm honest, my life will get better. And that is one of the things that's really interesting is that to go from this place of always being a yes, man, always people pleasing, having no confidence, always putting myself in the position of putting my back against the wall by doing things that I didn't want to. I was living a life that I didn't wanna live. I was fucking miserable. I hated my life until the time basically I was 27 years old, I recognized that I was a constant liar and that I needed to be honest, to have what I would call this out body experience where I rebuilt my life and my identity and the truth that I decided not the truth that was given to me from the people who hurt me, who were abused me or my parents or the church or the school or the community and that is singularly one of the biggest game changers that I had in this journey, because I said to myself, even though this hurts a lot of times, right? Because what you're doing when you start to be honest is you're changing your identity and you're stepping into the person that you choose to be and that's uncomfortable. And there's with that discomfort because you've never done it before. Let me tell you this, if you've never really, truly been honest before one of the hardest things that you can do is be real and truly honest. And I suffered through that. My God, like there were so many painful moments and experiences of stepping into my truth and my honesty, where I was like, is this worth it? Is it worth it to show up every day and to be myself and to say that these are my wants, my needs, my interests, my boundaries. Is it worth it to say, this is who I am mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, sexually, because knowing that doing so meant that I may ostracize people knowing that doing so may mean that people will no longer want to be my friend, knowing that doing so may completely interrupt everything that I know about myself and ultimately the answer was yes. Because we hide, we run, we placate, we bend, we pretend to be who it is that other people want us to be ‘cuz it's a fucking survival mechanism and there's safety in that dishonesty, there's safety in lying to yourself. But the hard part is when you do that, the thing that's going to happen is that when you die, you are gonna die with regret, when you die, you are going to have a life unlived if you are not willing to step into honesty. And I know how frightening it is and terrifying, and scary and uncomfortable it is because I have done it. It is insane to me to go look at my life, to have been at the time 25 and be 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, having my girlfriend find out that I cheated on her more times than I can count, having a brother, tell me, never talk to me again, having friends tell me that I'm a loser and a piece of shit. All of that was painful, but I had to choose the pain of continuing to live that life because I was always lying and pretending to be someone I wasn't, or I could make the decision to face the fear of the discomfort of truth and step in ultimately to the identity that I wanted to create. And so, if you are trying to figure out how to step into the identity that you want to create, because you want to do it for you, the very first thing that I would suggest is that you take an inventory of the truth of your life. Ask yourself, am I in a fulfilling relationship? Am I satisfied with my health? Am I in friendships that bring me companionship and joy and trust? Am I in a career that makes me want to continue to strive to be better? Am I contributing to my community and society? Are the people in my life, reciprocating back, the energy that I'm putting in? Am I eating the right foods and working out and taking care of my mental health and doing all the things that I know I need to do to have a good life? And if the answer to those questions is incongruent with the person that you want to be that's where you start, that's where you begin. You say to yourself, okay, this is not actually who I am. So, I am going to start making micro steps forward.

One of my great friends, Ken Joslin says it's about incremental progress, right? It's incremental mastery. I can tell you this. I've tried to 180 my life, probably about 10 times and it never works, it never works to go from one identity to another identity overnight because you have to change behavioral patterns. You have to change mindsets. You have to change a lot of the ways that you think about and view the world externally and internally. But if you can go into this very simple place and acknowledge there are things in my life that are not copacetic, there are things in my life that are unfulfilling, there are things in my life where I'm not being honest and truthful and loving, and caring and compassionate with grace and kindness and joy and fulfillment in connection with God's, spirit, universe, mother nature, source, whatever you want to call it and most importantly, with the mirror, then you need to hit pause.

And so, my friends, I invite you to come join us at UnbrokenCon. We're doing it this November. It's absolutely FREE. We're gonna get deep and into depth on these concepts and these ideas. All you have to do is go to unbrokencon.com to register. We're rocking and rolling in November. It's a free transformation week. We're gonna turn trauma into triumph. It'll be myself, multiple guest speakers. It's for free. If you watch live, you can always get the recordings, we'll talk about that stuff here in the week to come. And we're going to change a lot of people's lives over the course of Unbroken Cons. So, if you're not there, I invite you to come and join us. If you are not signed up yet, that's you in unbrokencon.com. I'm pushing this hard. Our goal is to put thousands and thousands and thousands of people from around the world into this. And we're gonna talk about these concepts. We're gonna talk about your why, we're gonna talk about the science and research of trauma, we're gonna talk about shifting mindset, we're gonna talk about learning to love yourself, we're gonna talk about boundaries and setting goals and how it is that you have hard conversations, we're gonna talk about why your path is impacting your present and keeping you from your future, we're gonna talk about how you get deeper, involved into community, how you grow, how you can be sustainable in a world that is full of pain and suffering and to leverage your story to become the hero of it and to own it, instead of it owning you.

And so, many of the amazing speakers we have lined up, guys, I've got people locked in right now that they never do this stuff because they want to create massive value for you; for the Unbroken Nation community. And I'm telling you some of the guys that we have and some of the gals and some of the people I cannot tell you yet, we're gonna announce them soon in October, but right now you gotta sign up for this because if you don't, you're gonna miss an opportunity of a lifetime. This is literally going to be the greatest online trauma conference ever in history. I'm betting my life on it, we're going all in for the Unbroken Nation, because I'll tell you these very things are the same things that started to change my life, that's why I'm about to take my little brother, Lewis Howell's event in Columbus here in just a moment. So, we gotta pack up, get outta here, go do that. So, check out unbrokencon.com

Of course, check out Think Unbroken Podcast.

I appreciate you, my friends.

And Until Next time.

Be Unbroken.

I'll see ya.