Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele Taraba

Gissele: [00:00:00] With Martin Luther King, Jr Wright, does love have the power to turn an enemy into a friend? Gissele: Does it have the power to heal? we’re creating an inspiring documentary, courage to love the Power of Compassion, which explores their extraordinary stories of those who have chosen to do the unthinkable, love and forgive even those who are most hurtful. Through their journeys, we will uncover the profound impact of forgiveness and love. Gissele: Have not only of those offering it, but also on those receiving it.  In addition, we’ll hear from experts who will explore whether love and compassion are part of our human nature. And how we can bridge divides with those with disagree with. If you’d like to support our film, please donate a www M-A-I-T-R-I-C-E-N-T-R e.com/documentary. Gissele: That’s maitricentre.com/documentary. Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion [00:01:00] Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking about how love binds us with others, including those of crossed over. Gissele: We’ll be talking with Rebecca Schaper about communicating with animals on the other side after the sudden and unexpected passing of Rebecca Schaper dog’s. Gus. She consulted animal communicator Sonny Mann, beginning a lengthy and revealing correspondence. Gissele: Sonny reported her dialogue with Gus in the afterlife at various times throughout the next year. This moving story includes the transcripts of those psychic sessions, along with Rebecca’s notes from her daily journal as she responds to both the earthly and spiritual guidance from Gus. His spirit describes his life in both worlds. Gissele: He urges her to embrace fully her life contract as a Shamaic practitioner and healer. Please join me in [00:02:00] welcoming Rebecca. Gissele: Hi, Rebecca. Hi. Rebecca: Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to this wonderful conversation. Gissele: Thank you so much for being on the show. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about how you started this journey of, communicating with Gus on the other side. Rebecca: Sure. 2023. My dog Gus died unexpectedly on December 7th. Mm-hmm. he was six years old. He was my co-pilot. He was definitely my soul dog. It was as though we knew each other in the past life and we communicated to each other telepathically, and of course it broke my heart wide open. To the point where I was worse than losing my parents by suicide and. Rebecca: I’ve never felt grief like that in my life. So in January of [00:03:00] 2024, which was a month after he had passed away, I decided to reach out to a pet communicator because I knew I needed help. and I knew I could not do this on my own. Normally, I can work through situations. I’ve had some real trauma in my life, which I’m grateful for. Rebecca: because it’s definitely led me to a lot of love and compassion like your show. But I knew at this point I definitely needed help. So I communicated with Sonny, asked her if she’d be willing to communicate with my dog, Guss. And what she would do is she would, go into some type of trance is the correct. Rebecca: Word to use, but she was just able to have that strong telepathic connection and she would ask him questions. And then after she was done, I mean it wore her out. She told me, she said, it’s [00:04:00] very taxing on the body. And so after she was done with that first session. I was blown away with what, with what the information she had told me. Rebecca: And so fast forward, we had 10 sessions, so she would transcribe ’em to me because she lived in Australia and the time zone was difficult. And a couple of times we chatted with each other and then I would journal my comments to the comments between Gus and Sonny this book is a three way conversation and so there you go. Rebecca: And it, she was really able to provide a lot of healing for me. And Gissele: what were some of the messages thatwere unique to you in Gus’s experience that most people wouldn’t have known? Rebecca: Yes, I will definitely share a few. One of ’em was she saw the word beck [00:05:00] and Gus said, that’s my mom, Beck, her brother David calls her Beck and. Rebecca: There’s no way that Sonny would’ve known that. I mean, there’s just no way. Because he was communicating to her. He said, yes, that’s my mom. Beck, her brother David calls her back. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rebecca: And then another one, which I felt was really profound. We hiked to Machu Picchu and the day one of the days was on my husband’s and i’s anniversary and I had to look down and there was, I wish I had it with me, but I think it’s on the altar table, Rebecca: it had a heart shaped stone. And I thought, oh my God, on that anniversary, how beautiful. So I kept it with me. Fast forward after Gus had passed away, I was sitting outside [00:06:00] and I was doing some meditation and just kind of working through, Rebecca: really tapping into the stone and some other stones I collected accidentally dropped the heart stone and it broken three pieces. Hmm. And I thought to myself, oh my gosh, is this a sign saying that my heart is broken? Of Gus. So I was devastated. Rebecca: The next day, I walked down, I go to this fire pit’s made outta stone and Guss and my daughter’s dog, Stella would always get on top of that fire pit and they would walk around it and try to find chipmunks. So this was like, you know, a constant thing. So anyway, I would go and put my bird seed on top of the rim of the fire pit so I could feed the birds. And I just happened to look down and there was a heart stone, almost the same shape and size. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rebecca: And, to me I [00:07:00] was like, that. So profound and so stunning and it just warmed my heart completely. And, another one, I’m at my beach house now. Rebecca: We have this area where you can look out over the marsh, and he would always be with me in a red chair is a cushion. And he talked about the red chair and the fire pit looking out over the marsh to her. Mm-hmm. So there’s many more, but that’s what comes to the forefront to me as of now. Gissele: Were there any messages from Sonny and Gus around the relationship between human beings and animals and even the connection and nature that we might have lost? Rebecca: Oh, most definitely. Rebecca: I felt like Gus was trying to communicate, saying they always want to be with you. Gissele: Hmm. Always. Rebecca: they’re always there, They definitely can talk to [00:08:00] you. even the most subtle ways. They speak to you, they can speak to you through songs, which Gus used to speak to me through songs. Rebecca: There’s one of my favorite songs over the Rainbow. And they were unbelievable synchronicities when that song would come on when I was grieving. Mm-hmm. And I knew that was him. They communicate through numbers, they communicate, they can communicate in so many ways. One of the key factors is, is being aware of it Rebecca: It’s to me. It has opened my eyes wide open to whole different realms of communication and not just dogs, cats, any type of animal in nature. Rebecca: ’cause I am very much in tune with nature and they are here to help us. We just have to open up our hearts. [00:09:00] Open up our hearts and listen. trust is a big issue. And one other thing every time I would get a message that I knew intuitively, I knew that was something from Gus. Rebecca: I felt it in my body. I would always say thank you. I would. Be very heartfelt in saying thank you because it’s a gift. Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. It’s amazing how we’ve been taught that we are separate from animals and that there’s this hierarchy. Gissele: And so it probably is challenging for people to. To understand or believe that they can communicate with animals. there’s not this hierarchy that somehow human beings know better. Do you believe that people sort of have a contract or agreement even with their animals before they incarnate? Rebecca: Absolutely. Absolutely. I know I did with Gus and now we have a new dog, [00:10:00] Zeke. Gissele: Hmm. Rebecca: And he is from the same breed and from the same breeder, and how synchronicity led up to that. And he’s into my life for a reason as well. Mm. There is no doubt in my mind. I mean, I think about animals. You think about your family. Rebecca: I believe is a contract. Rebecca: if people will look for the lessons and the connection, or even if you’re out and about and you see somewhere and you’re like, God, that energy feels very similar. I feel like I know that person. Rebecca: That could be. A contract soul connection, but you just may not know at that time. Gissele: Yeah. is there some specific practices that you use to help you get in tune? Because sometimes our own emotions can get in the way. Gissele: I lost my dog last November and. I’m very, very grateful for the lessons and the being that he was. Gissele: But I also miss him a lot. [00:11:00] And I know my kids are eager to get another dog, but I’m just like, Gissele: It’s not the right time and I don’t want another dog. I want my dog back. Which is, can we pause Yeah. Rebecca: if you put that intention out Gissele: mm-hmm. Rebecca: Ask your dog. You can have your dog reincarnate and soul dog a new dog, but you’ll know. Gissele: True. Rebecca: you’ll know if you’re supposed to, and that dog, I promise, if you’re open and expanded to it and ask, it will happen. Gissele: my challenge Rebecca is, I also don’t wanna be the type of person that would hold back another soul for my own ego needs, right? Like my dog’s time with me was very, very special and he taught me so much. Gissele: But maybe his journey is to go on and do something else. Like I would never want to hold another soul hostage for my own needs. [00:12:00] And I think that’s what’s been preventing me from. Making that desire request. I’ve heard of from people, lots of different people like yourself included, talking about like, my dog has been reincarnated into this new dog. Gissele: I can feel it. And there signs and all of that stuff. That is wonderful. But I think one of the things my dog taught me was that, that loving without attachment and needing to hold onto the soul. the ability to be able to be grateful for the experiences we had and be open to different experiences. Gissele: I Rebecca: hear you and I validate exactly what you’re saying because I found myself the pain was so excruciating that I found myself forcing Gus to come back. Yeah. And I came to a point where I can’t do this. Gissele: Yeah. Rebecca: I can’t force it. If he’s supposed to come back, [00:13:00] then so be it. And I had to let go. Mm-hmm. So maybe in your situation, just say if, if it’s meant to be. It will be. If not, then you’re grateful for the time together. And that’s kind of how I’m at. Yeah. And I understand. Yeah. But I’ve heard people where their dogs have reincarnated. Rebecca: It’s pretty astounding some of the stories. Gissele: Mm-hmm. definitely. And I like what you said in terms of our willingness to let go because. Maybe my dog’s journey is to reincarnate and come back in a different way and have a different experience. Or maybe it’s not, I think it’s that willingness which I in the past have not had. Gissele: I think I it’s like you said, totally normal grieve those experiences. It was my first dog ever. and he was just so special And I didn’t wanna replace that dog and expect another dog to take that place, so, [00:14:00] Rebecca: exactly. Yeah. A lot of people feel guilty about Rebecca: that. Rebecca: And I felt guilty about that too. And I thought, okay, it’s amazing how Zeke, how everything aligned and am I going to love this dog as much as I did? Gus, am I gonna be fair Rebecca: to this? Rebecca: But it’s pretty incredible the gifts and the lessons that Zeke is showing us. And I do, I honestly say, and my husband feels this too, we do see Gus kind of soul dogging Zeke at times. Rebecca: I was told they’re brothers Gissele: Yeah, for sure. Rebecca: You’ll figure Speaker 9: it out. Gissele: How did compassion and love help you through the grieving process? Because every, all of us experience loss, Rebecca: My situation with Gus losing a dog or losing parents by suicide, that really opened up. My [00:15:00] heart opened up my compassion and to see other people suffering who have may have gone through that same trauma, Rebecca: it opens my heart up because I can hold space with that person. sometimes we wanna fix it for the individual, but it’s not our place to fix it. Gissele: did the fact that you don’t believe in death. I mean if you, if you went right away after your loss to find someone to communicate them, you must not believe in death. Gissele: Did that actually help you overcome ’cause to lose parents, to lose a dog that was your soul dog? Those, those are fairly significant losses. Did that awareness help you not feel grief in the same way? And what helped you gain that understanding that maybe there’s a little bit more to life than just this bag of bones in this particular experience and [00:16:00] time? Rebecca: Very good question. Rebecca: Mm-hmm. both of my parents dying by suicide and my brother passing away, I saw my mother at the doorway after she, passed away, I was able to connect with my father and my brother. There were ways that I could connect with him, so that helped me a lot because it gave me a sense that it’s not final. Rebecca: they’re still there. they’re the ones that still wanna help your path, your journey, your life here. And I believe that even though it was a difficult childhood, but I was same time, I was very blessed because it wouldn’t have been able to, do the documentary to help others, all of that. Rebecca: It, it was a curse, but a blessing in the same way. And I’m forever grateful for it. And I, to this day, and until I die, I will always believe [00:17:00] that. My life steps have been interesting situations, but it has just opened up so much more. And different ways to look at death. Rebecca: I do not think death is final Gissele: though. Yeah. And I think that’s one of like the biggest hurdles that humanity has to overcome. I think that our fear of death is so huge that I think if we could realize that there isn’t death, not death in the way that we perceive it to be, that we stop existing and we’re just nothing we think that’ll open up people to be more courageous and to truly live their dreams. Gissele: But I think people’s fear of death can feel really challenging and It’s hard for us to understand that there is much more beyond even if you’ve had spiritual experiences to truly believe that, this life is just one chapter in a larger book of this being that encompasses this [00:18:00] particular body. Rebecca: I’m one of those that I know I’ll reincarnate again. Think about our ancestors. Gissele: Yeah. Rebecca: they’re here to help. Even on the land of wherever you walk, everywhere you go, the ancestors are there to help. Rebecca: It’s just opening, opening and expanding yourself Gissele: to tune Rebecca: in. Gissele: Yeah, so were you aware before your communication with Gus that you had a life contract as a Shamanic practitioner and healer? Or was it something that you discovered in your communication with Gus, through Sonny or Personally? Rebecca: I’ve always wanted. To do that. you know, it’s interesting you say that ’cause I go back and look in my journals and I have written years and years that that’s what I wanted to [00:19:00] do. And so prior to Gus’s death, it was, 23 in October is when I started working with the shamans Rebecca: And when Gus passed away, he was pushing me on the other side I don’t know how he knew that. You know, here’s the thing. I think dogs, even though we’re, if I was standing in right here, and say, Zeke or Gus was here, they’re so in tune to what we do energetically Rebecca: I’m sure Gus was in tune to what I was doing Gissele: so what are some of the things you’ve learned from your shamanic teachers about sort of this consciousness evolution that human beings seem to be going through? Rebecca: it’s a balance between here and the upper world. Speaker 7: Mm-hmm. We Rebecca: try to walk that balance, and the best way I can explain for myself is just Exude as much light as I can and be the true [00:20:00] person that I am. Of course, there are days where I can be crunchy you know, I’m human, but I can get myself back into balance and I just, Rebecca: I don’t like focusing on all the chaos and bringing a negative energy to that because I think that exacerbates it. I just try to be a positive light and maybe just saying hello to some person you don’t know, a smile on their face, who’s to say you may have made their day. Rebecca: Simple things like that. Gissele: Yeah, and I think you said two key things. Number one is the balance. I think that if we, each of us individually on our journeys found a balance, then I think that then we could create systems that were more balanced than they currently are now, and have leaders that, you know, reflect that balance. Gissele: And you [00:21:00] mentioned the importance of. Little tiny things. People think, well, you know, we gotta fix the war in Gaza. Or, you know, there’s all these other wars that are happening that are not being reported. Just living a life of love and compassion and light and kindness towards others. Like you said has a ripple effect. Gissele: ’cause many people, they’re war within their own homes. Yes. They’re in war, within their own relationships and they, they’re not willing to fix war, fix it Rebecca: themselves. Gissele: Yeah. And they’re not willing to fix that. But then they wanna fix the world, which really doesn’t make a lot of sense because the world really is a mirror of all of us. Gissele: And so fixing ourselves I think would go a long way and, and really. Helping us heal as, as a humanity, right? Rebecca: Yes. And, I also believe we’re having to, go through all this Hmm. To get to the light. [00:22:00] Truly, this is a very phenomenal time right now in history. It certainly feels phenomenal. Rebecca: but, it’s like clearing all the stuff to get to where we really wanna be. I know it’s tough, but Yeah. We just have to stay strong and stay in joy. Try to stay in joy. I go in nature all the time. Mm-hmm. that’s my balanced place. Nature. Gissele: Yeah. Rebecca: Yeah. And no doubt. Gissele: Yeah, definitely. And what helps you stay in Joy when it feels like sometimes the world is so chaotic, or When our minds are so chaotic. What helps you stay in joy? You mentioned nature. Are there any other things that you do to keep Rebecca: your joy? my dog, my husband, my family. Rebecca: Of course, when I wake up and I look at the sunrise, it’s just an experience that I have and that brings me such joy and [00:23:00] I’m make it a point to do that every day and close the evening. Same way watching the sunset. Rebecca: Mm-hmm. Because it’s very important to me. Gissele: Yeah. appreciating all the beauty, yes. That already exists that’s one of the issues with electronics, right? Like people really focus on their social media or electronics, but we’re missing all the beauty and the wonder that is outside, that is present right now. Rebecca: Yes. It’s, even the subtle things in life. Mm-hmm. Yes. It’s like stepping out and seeing an incredible cardinal. The coloring. Gissele: Yeah. So going back to the conversation with animals. So did the relationship with Sonny and in conversation with Gus help you then become more attuned with communicating with other animals? Rebecca: Yes. Gissele: What about insects? I Rebecca: I struggle with the insects. I have to be honest here and I, ’cause I’m very honest. [00:24:00] Speaker 7: Yeah. I often Rebecca: since insects except for fleas, mosquitoes and roaches and ticks. I’ll just try to scoop it up and put it outside. Rebecca: Mm-hmm. Somewhere I got a tick on the back of me two weeks ago, I know they’re all part of creation, but there’s just something about that. Gissele: nice. There’s a real struggle there’s an aspect of me that is like everything is of God and source universe, right? Gissele: And I’m not separate from anything. And at the same time, there’s a small part of me that still sees herself as a victim, which is like, that could bite me and has bit me. that could hurt me So I don’t wanna experience that. And so that memory, it’s hard for me to be in that kind of harmony with nature in that sense and see myself as not separate from it. Rebecca: I really try to get in that mindset, but when that insect does something Rebecca: to my [00:25:00] animal, to my dog, I, Rebecca: Do what I gotta do. Gissele: I wonder why they cause so much chaos. My husband and I were talking about this like where did this mosquitoes come from? Gissele: There’s this country that doesn’t have mosquitoes. I can’t remember which country it is. Apparently they’ve Rebecca: really weird. Yeah, Gissele: that’s what I was trying to remember. I don’t know. I saw it on social media. Gissele: I don’t know is it possible for us to live in harmony with all beings? Rebecca: That’s a really good question, and I think it’s a really. Tough one for a lot of people because you know, if you’re being infested by mosquitoes or stinging flies. Rebecca: That’s, yeah. Well, Gissele: my daughter was saying, because we go for walks, If you wear a dragonfly hat, the bugs will not bug you because Dragonflies are a natural predator. Oh yeah, because, so I order some from Amazon. Rebecca: Oh my God. Gissele: What is it called? Share [00:26:00] Dragon. Fly clips. So this was all over TikTok just a fake dragonfly that you can clip on your hat or you can clip it somewhere in your body and they will not come near you because they’ll think that it’s a real dragonfly and dragonflies are natural predators and so they won’t come near you. Gissele: Yeah. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve ordered it Rebecca: I do use, use all natural repellents like garlic. Yeah. Or apple cider vinegar. I’ve heard that works. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, Gissele: There’s hope. There is absolutely hope so that we don’t have to harm them and they can leave us alone. Gissele: So, yeah, it’s like, hopefully that works because I don’t wanna kill them and I don’t wanna put bug off stuff on my person. they have a right to exist. I just have a right to not be bitten. So if the dragonflies can help me, that would be good. Rebecca: I’m going to get that. Rebecca: I love it. Gissele: So tell us a little bit about your book. When does it come out? Rebecca: Okay. It, it was published April 9th. Oh, nice. Gissele: Okay. Rebecca: And it’s on Amazon. People can order it on [00:27:00] Amazon, and if people wanna reach out to me, it’s rebeccaschaper.com. Gissele: Sounds good. and you have a previous book you said. Rebecca: Yes, it’s the backbone of the Sister’s Call documentary that I had a calling to. Rebecca: That’s a whole different story. And then the light in his soul lessons from my brother’s schizophrenia. here’s one thing I would love for your audience to take away, is you think you’re going down one way with your career. I had no idea. I’m not a filmmaker. Rebecca: I’m not a writer. I had never written a book, any of that, but I had people walk into my life. So you have people. That help you for your purpose, and the universe will course correct you. You’re like, okay, I got this calling, so I need to listen and I need to make it happen. Gissele: Hmm. Yeah. I totally agree with that. Gissele: That has been [00:28:00] my experience as well, in terms of being called to do something. I never thought like this podcast is one of ’em, right. I thought I was gonna be working within the child welfare system until the day that I died. And so, yeah, like doing some of the things I’ve done were sort of like a higher calling, but not anything that my ego self had thought or desired. Gissele: Right. Right. none of these things were in my plan. Rebecca: Yeah. It comes totally unexpected. You’re like, what? It’s like a download and Gissele: Yeah, and, The interesting part is that sometimes it doesn’t mean what you think it means either, right? so like you was guided to write a book and then I thought, well, maybe the book is it. Gissele: This is what I’m gonna do, and it did well. But then that wasn’t supposed to be the thing. Because then because of the book, I did a TEDx talk and because of the TEDx talk, I’m now doing this documentary, so it’s steps I couldn’t have put [00:29:00] together. and what you had said earlier, it takes an enormous amount of trust. Gissele: Yes. even with communicating with animals on the other side. It takes trust because it goes against the grain of what we’ve been taught. We’ve been taught that, you know, seeing is believing, right? it’s only what I can physically touch or feel with my senses that is real or truth. what helped you gain trust in your life in that inner guidance or voice? Rebecca: Doing the documentary, it took 14 years. Gissele: Oh, wow. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about it? Rebecca: Sure. It’s a documentary about my families when I was growing up. There’s sexual abuse in there. there’s alcoholism talked about in there. There’s suicide talked about in there. And mental health. Both my mother and brother were quote. Rebecca: Diagnosed with [00:30:00] paranoid schizophrenia, and to this day, I’ll never believe that. I think they were hearing other dimensions, but anyway. Mm-hmm. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Rebecca: My brother left and was missing for 20 years, but I always knew he was alive, always, and through a miracle. It was time for us to find each other and he was the catalyst of the film. Rebecca: And that’s when I got this calling. And I wanted to, express to people that he’s not this diagnosis. He is a person’s he is an incredible loving individual very. Observant and he passed away 2012. his contract was up and but the thing is, I learned so much through doing all of this and I hope that people were, able to relate [00:31:00] that. Rebecca: having, medication isn’t always the cure and I fought for that for a long time. So it’s a very vulnerable, very transparent, it speaks the truth and it’s a tough film to watch but it’s a also a very happy film.And it gives people hope and it’s through forgiveness and compassion. Gissele: Which I feel are very important messages. It’s interesting. I used to work at somewhere called cmh, which was a center for mental health and addictions. And I used to help as a student run a social program for people who were diagnosed with schizophrenia. And I remember having a conversation with individuals and they would talk about how. Gissele: The awareness that they had when they would have episodes some of the reasons why they didn’t take their medication, especially young women, they would gain weight. And so they didn’t feel that the doctors always understood the [00:32:00] other impacts of the medication and the stigma that they felt that was out there like every person who is diagnosed with schizophrenia is violent. Gissele: And somehow it’s gonna lead to them killing someone, which was not true at all. These people were very kind and generous, and, compassionate. and vulnerable. They were more vulnerable to harm themselves than to harm someone else. But there’s always this misconception because there’s always so much fear you know, fear causes us to kind of dehumanize others, right? Gissele: Because we’re so stuck in survival. Documentaries like yours and conversations really help us have more compassion for others when we have greater understanding that just because somebody’s going through something does not mean that they’re gonna harm someone else. Gissele: And so I think that’s a very important message. Rebecca: Absolutely. And I felt like that with the voices that he was hearing, because he was extremely empathic. [00:33:00] Gissele: Mm-hmm. And Rebecca: he was just tuning in. And my mother, same thing. They were tuning in and they didn’t know how to channel all these voices that they were hearing from dimensions. Gissele: of course. Yeah, So last question. What is your definition of unconditional love? Rebecca: Oh, that’s such a good question. Hmm. Seeing the person for who they really are Gissele: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Rebecca: Let them be seen for who they really are without any judgment. Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. You could remove the lens of judgment. We could see each other as as authentically as we truly are. Exactly the beautiful way to end. Rebecca: Thank you, and I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. Yeah. I’m so glad we could connect. Gissele: Yes, me too. Thank you so, so much for being [00:34:00] on the show, and thank you for those who tune into the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele Rebecca: Bye bye. Thank you.

Gissele: [00:00:00] was Martin Luther King, Jr. Wright, does love have the power to transform an enemy into a friend. We’re currently working on a documentary showcasing people doing extraordinary things such as loving. Those who are most hurtful in this documentary will showcase extraordinary stories of forgiveness, reconciliation, and transformation. You’d like to find out more about our documentary, www M-A-I-T-R-I-C-E-N-T-R-E com slash documentary. Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking with Larry Rosen about whether enemies can come together in dialogue. Larry is the founder of a mediation law practice. Through understanding he has helped thousands craft enduring solutions to [00:01:00] crippling conflicts, millions have watched this popular TEDx talk with secret understanding humans whose insights informs the enemy’s project. From 2024, Larry completed writing the novel, the Enemy Dance, posing the question, must the society riven by tribalism descend into war or can it heal itself? Larry is a graduate of UCLA School of Law, where he served as editor of the Law Review and received numerous academic awards. Growing up, Larry was both the bully and the bullied. The one who was cruel and the one who was kind, he was sometimes popular. And sometimes friendless. He had many fist fights with kids who became his friends. He had his very own chair at the principal’s office. He believes that his peacemaking today is born out of the callousness and empathy that he knew as childhood. [00:02:00] Please join me in welcoming Larry. Hi, Larry. Larry: Hi there. That, it’s funny because that la last piece that you read about my, you know, the, the principal’s office that’s on my website, I’ve never had someone read that back to me and it brought me a little bit to tears, like, oh, that poor kid. Yeah, I, I don’t hear that very often. So anyway, Gissele: yeah. Oh, I really loved it when I saw it, and I could relate to it because I’ve also been both. when we hurt other people, we wanna be forgiven, but when people hurt us, you don’t always wanna forgive, right? Mm-hmm. So it gives you the different perspective. I’m so thrilled to have you on the show. And how I actually came to know about your project is, so I’m a professor at a university and I teach research and ethics. And, what I had discovered about my students is that many of them don’t come with the ability to do the critical thinking, to be able to hold both sides. Many of them come thinking there’s gotta be a right answer, and there’s a right way of doing things. Just tell us what the answer is. [00:03:00] And so for my students, I get them to write a paper where they tell me the things they feel really strongly about. Then they’re researching the opposing perspective using credible sources. because trolls are easy to dismiss, right? So credible sources, the opposing perspective, and then they are supposed to, so tell me what are their main points? You know, like why do they believe what they do? And and are you really that different? Right? And then the last part of the paper is. Talk about the emotions you feel and throughout the year I prepare them in terms of being able to handle it. So I teach them mindfulness, I teach them self-compassion so that they can hold because it’s really difficult to hold posing perspective. What? It’s research and ethics. I do it for my, ’cause one of my research interests is compassion. And so, and I was a director of one of the departments I had was hr. And what I noticed was when people had conflict, it was the inability to regulate themselves, to sit in a [00:04:00] conversation that prevented them from going anywhere. And so what I do in my classes, like I’ll do like a minute, like maybe five minutes, three minutes, right before the start of class, I’ll teach mindfulness or like a self-compassion practice and we talk about it all year. And then at the end of the year they’ll do a, a paper where they do the opposing perspective. Then at the end they talk about the emotions they feel. So, and, and they can do that through music. They could do that through a photograph. They could do that through an art project or they just use text. They say, oh, I felt this. I felt that. And so it was in my students researching for their papers that they encountered your project. And they were blown away. They were so, so happy about it. And I like, I’ve watched the episodes. They were amazing . And so that’s why I wanted to have you on the show. And so I was wondering if you could start by telling the audience a little bit about the Enemies project and how you got inspired to do this work. Larry: So the Enemies Project is a [00:05:00] docuseries where I bring together people who are essentially enemies, people of really dramatically different viewpoints, who pretty much don’t like each other. And so an example is a trans woman and a, a woman who is maga who believes trans people belong to mental institutions a Palestinian and a Zionist Jew and, and lots of other combinations. And the goal is not to debate. There are lots of places where you can see debates and I allow them to argue it out for a few minutes to, to show what doesn’t work. And then I bring them through kind of a different process where they. Understand each other deeply, which basically means live in each other’s viewpoint, really ultimately be able to, like you’re trying to do in your class as well. Have them express each other’s viewpoint. And that is a transforming process for them. Usually when they do it in each other’s presence. And it, you know, it has hiccups which is part of the process, but it goes really [00:06:00] deep. And so ultimately these people who hate each other end up almost always saying, I really admire you. I like you. I would be your friend. And sometimes they say, I love you. And usually they hug and there’s deep affection for each other at the end. And they’re saying to the camera or to, you know, their viewers, like, please be kind to this person. This person’s now my friend. And that is for me important because. Like you probably, and probably most of your listeners, I’m tired of what’s happening in society. I am tired of being manipulated. I think we’re all being manipulated by what I call enemy makers. People who profit from division financially, politically they’re usually political leaders and media leaders. And we’re all being taken. And the big lie at the center of it is that people on the other side, ordinary people on the other side are bad or evil. That’s the, the dark heart lie at the [00:07:00] center of it. And if we believe that we’ll follow these leaders, we’ll follow them because we all want to defeat evil. We all must defeat evil. And so what I’m trying to do in this project is unravel that lie by showing that people on the other side are just us. Yeah. And they too have been manipulated and we’ve been manipulated. So and it’s gone well, it’s gone really well. You know, there have been, we’ve been, we’ve done eight or nine episodes and we have in various forms of media, been seen tens of millions of times in the last five months. And we have, I think, 175,000 followers on different media. And the comments are just really, from my perspective, surprisingly, kind of off the chart powerful. Like this has changed tens of thousands of comments of just this is, this is in. Sometimes I’ve, I cried throughout or it’s actually changed my life. I see people differently. So it’s, it is been really, it’s really great to have that feedback and, and then we have plans for the future, which I can tell you [00:08:00] about later. But yeah, but that’s, that’s the basic background. The reason I got into it I don’t know if you have kids, but for me, kids are the great motivator. You know, the next generation, probably people who don’t have kids also are motivated for the next generation as well. We, I care deeply about what I’m leaving my kids and other people’s kids, you know, they all touch my heart and I, I feel really terrible about the mess we’re believing them in, and I feel terrible about what humanity is inheriting. And so I want to have an influence on that. Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. And one of the things I love about your docuseries is that the intent isn’t to change anyone’s mind. The intent is for people to feel heard and seen, and that is so, so powerful. It makes me think of Daryl Davis about how he went. Do you know the story of Daryl Davis? I don’t like jazz musician. So he’s a black jazz musician who when, since he was little, he wondered why people were racist. So what he did was actually go [00:09:00] to KKK rallies and speak to KKK leaders. Yeah, Larry: I have heard, yeah. Gissele: Yeah. He didn’t mean to change anyone. He just wanted to offer them respect, which you, as you say, is fundamental and just wanted to understand. And in that understanding, he created those conditions too that led people to change . And so I think that’s the same thing that your docuseries is offering. Larry: Absolutely. I mean, you can see it so easily that Yeah, as soon as one person hears the other person, the person who was heard is the one who changes. you don’t change the other person by telling them your story and by convincing them of anything. It’s when you hear them and hear what their true intention has been and what’s going on in their life, that’s when they change. It’s the fastest road to their change really. But if you go in with that objective, then they won’t change. So there’s kind of a, you know, an irony or a paradox embedded in this, but usually both people move [00:10:00] toward each other, is what happens. Yeah. Gissele: I want the audience to understand how brilliant this is because, I don’t know if you know Deeyah Khan, she’s a documentarian and she interviewed people from the KKK And one of the things we noticed in all those interviews was that many people hate others. They’re people that they’ve never met. They’ve never met people in that group, but they hate them. So, Larry: yeah, that’s, that’s really interesting just to hear that. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. So how does the Enemies project help challenge misconceptions about groups that have never met each other, carry beliefs about the other? Larry: Well, so far really hasn’t because everybody who we’ve done a show with has met people from the other side. Gissele: Oh, Larry: okay. You know, it’s not like because thus far with the, with I think one or two exceptions, everyone’s been an American. So in, in the United States, everybody’s gonna meet somebody else. they’re not friends with them, they’re not deeply connected with them. But from my perspective it, it doesn’t [00:11:00] matter. You know, you can be from the most different tribes who’ve never met each other, we’re all gonna be the same. the process never differs. we don’t start with politics. My view is that starting with politics, which is how some, some people who try to bring others together to find common ground, start with politics, and that’s not going to work. What I start with is rapport. You know, as soon as you start with something that a person is defensive over, you’re gonna put up, they’re gonna be wearing armor, and they’re going to try to defeat the other person. So we exit that process and we really just help them understand what’s beautiful in each other’s lives, what’s challenging in each other’s lives, and they, there’s no question that as soon as you see what’s beautiful in someone else’s life or challenging, you’re gonna identify with it because you’re gonna have very similar points of beauty and challenge yourself. And then we fold. Politics into it about why politics really are important [00:12:00] to the other person. And we do it in a way where it’s a true exploration. And once that happens, people connect deeply. so it doesn’t matter from, in my experience, how different the people are, how extreme the people are. you’re going to be able to bring them together, you know? And so if they haven’t met each other, it’s really interesting what you said that people hate, people a haven’t met, which is like a, such a obvious statement. And it is really profound just to hear that, like, it’s so absurd. Yeah, and I would say that in my experience, the most profound or the deepest sessions are with people who are really dramatically surprised that the other person’s a human being. So if they, if they haven’t met each other, if they haven’t met someone like that, it’s gonna be an easy one. Yeah. ’cause because the shock is gonna be [00:13:00] so huge. Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. And Larry: so, and so full, it’s when the people have had experiences with the other side that it’s, that it is, it’s still powerful, but it can be a little bit more intellectual than, than in the heart because when you’re shocked by someone’s humanity, because you couldn’t imagine it at all, it, it really crushes your thoughts about them. Gissele: What I love about the process is that that’s the part you really focus on. You masterfully, are able to get people to really get to the root of their humanity and make that connection and then reengage in the dialogue , which is, is amazing. So who individuals selected and what’s support needs to happen before they can engage in the dialogue? And I ask that because each individual has to be able to hold the discussion. Because sometimes it’s, sometimes it can feel so hurtful, and I’m thinking in particular, even Nancy. So they’ve gotta be able to regulate enough to stay in the dialogue. Otherwise, what [00:14:00] I have seen is people will eject, they’ll fight, they’ll just kind of flee. So what preparation needs to happen and how do you select people? Larry: So on the selection front, it’s different now than when I started, you know, when I started filming about a year ago, I didn’t have any choices. You know, it wasn’t like anyone knew who I was or they had seen my shows, so I would go, I would live in the Bay Area and it’s really hard to find conservatives in the Bay Area, but all the conservatives in, in the San Francisco Bay Area congregate, they have like clubs. Mm-hmm. And so I would go on hikes with, in conservative clubs and I would speak to them and I just would try to find people who were interested. There were no criteria beyond that. Now, having said that, it’s not entirely true. I did interview some people who I just were like, they’re two intellectual, they just wanted to talk about economic issues or stuff, something like that. and then for liberals, it was actually harder, [00:15:00] believe it or not, to find people in the Bay Area who wanted to participate. I could find tons of liberals and progressives, but they had zero interest in speaking to a conservative person. And I wasn’t sure if that was a Bay Area phenomena, because liberals are so much in the majority, they don’t really care to speak to the other side, whereas the other side wants to be heard, or whether that’s a progressive kind of liberal thing. I have my views that have developed over time, but it was hard to find liberal people. And so really at the beginning it was just people who were willing to do it. There weren’t criteria beyond that. At this point, you know we’ve received some that people know what we’re doing and people want to be on the show and we receive applications and my daughter. Who runs this with me, my daughter Sadie, who’s 20 years old and in college. She is the person who finds people now, and you might have seen the episode a white cop and a black activist. I don’t know if you’ve seen that one, but, you know, she found those two people and they were [00:16:00] great. And the way she found them is she searched the map on the internet. It’s a little different now because by searching people on the internet, we find people who have a little bit of an audience. Mm. And that could be a bit of a problem. But it’s also like so much less time consuming for us. And so. You know, if we had a lot of money, we would spend more money on casting, but we don’t, and so mm-hmm. But we were able to find pretty good people. I’d say the main criteria for me, in addition to them having to have some passion about this, this particular show that they’re on, whether it’s about abortion or Israel, Gaza, the main criteria for me that’s developed is, do I want to hang out with this person? Because if I do, if the person, not whether they’re nice. Okay. Not whether they’re kind. That’s not it. I want them to have passion and I want to like them personally, because if I, it’s not that I don’t like the, some of the people, I like them all, but I don’t [00:17:00] want to hang out with them. If I do, it’s gonna be a great show because I know that they’re gonna be dynamic people and that their passion will flip. they’re gonna connect in some way and people who are really cordial and kind, they’re not, they’re not going to connect as deeply. The transformation’s not going to be as powerful for them or for the audience. Gissele: Hmm. Really interesting. I wanna touch base on something you said, you know, like that most people listen to debate. And I like Valerie Kaur’s perspective, which is to listen, to understand is to be willing to change your mind and heart. And I also like what you said, which is listening is to love someone. Can you explain what you mean by that? Larry: I think it more is the, it’s received as love than it, than necessarily it’s given as love. It doesn’t mean that you love the other person when you’re listening, but all of us, I would say if we think of the people [00:18:00] that we believe love us the most, they get us. Yeah. We receive it that way and, and they don’t judge us. And so when an enemy does that for you, the thought that they are a bad person melts away. Because if somebody loves us, and that’s the way it’s received, it’s not really an intellectual thing, we just receive it that way. They can’t be a bad person. Like somebody who loves me cannot be a bad person. And so it’s probably the most powerful thing that you can do to flip the feeling of the other side, is to listen to them, not to convince them of anything and to listen to them with curiosity, not just kind of blankly to listen to them without judgment. That’s a real critical piece. And if you do, you know, you can see on the show, it’s just like, you can see the switch flip. It’s really interesting. You can almost watch when it [00:19:00] happens and all of a sudden. The person likes the other person and now they’re listening to each other. It was really interesting. I was on a show one of the episodes is called I forget what it’s called. It’s the Guns episode. How To Stop The Bleed or something. It was these two women, and one of them has a podcast that she had me on and she said what was really interesting to her was that given how the show was laid out, like the first part of the show, they’re arguing, like usually doing a debate and they don’t really hear each other. But she said, given how the show was laid out, she was not preparing her responses in her mind like she always does. When speaking to somebody else, she was not thinking about what she was going to say. Her job in her mind was to understand the other person, to really get the other person. She said it was a total shift in the way she was acting internally. Like, like, and she said she noticed it. Like, I am not even thinking about what I’m going to say. And then she said afterwards she thought a lot about it, [00:20:00] and that was a dramatic shift from anything she’s been involved with. And that’s another way to put it. You know, I don’t, I didn’t think of that when, you know that the people wouldn’t be preparing for their response like we usually do. But that is definitely what happens when you concentrate on listening, and so yeah, it’s received really warmly and it’s transforming. Gissele: Yeah, and I think it, a lot of it has to do with how you manage the conversations, right? Like the tools that you use. I noticed they use the who am I right? To try to get people to go down to their core level to talk about themselves, the whole flipping side, identity confusion, which we’ll talk about in a minute. So are these based on particular frameworks that you use to mediate conversations since you have a history of mediation? Or is this something that you sort of came up on your own? Larry: It is something that I came up with on my own for the most part. I mean, I do a type of mediation in the law. I’m a lawyer where it’s unusual because [00:21:00] I’m doing like a personal mediation in a legal context. It’s kind of weird. for people. Yeah, but I only do the types of mediations where people know each other, like I don’t do between two companies, because there’s not really a human element to it. It’s, it really is about money for the most part. But, but when it’s two human beings, the money is a proxy for something else, always. Mm-hmm. Yeah. and so I’m used to being able to connect people. I do, you know, divorce founders of companies, neighbors family members who are caring for another family member. People who, where there wouldn’t be a legal issue if their relationship wasn’t broken. And so they already know each other. I don’t have to do that really deep rapport building. I do have to do some, but not really deep. but my theory was that when starting this project, which is mostly political, and people who don’t know each other, that there would be a piece missing. You know, like I wasn’t sure if what I’d do would do would work. What I do with clients would work in this. Political context, and I want them to [00:22:00] know, my thought was how do I build that rapport, even if it’s broken in the personal relationship, like they’re craving that they want that healing, but here, like they don’t know the other person. So it was really just me think thinking about how do powerful things that I want to know about other people. Speaker 3: Yeah. Larry: And so I really just tried it. I mean, like, you know, what is most, what would I most powerfully want from another person? and I develop a list of questions that really worked well, but I’m really practiced in keeping people focused on the questions at hand and not allowing them to deviate from what it is that I’ve designed. So that’s something that, you know, I’ve been doing for 20 years, and it takes some skill to even know whether the person’s deviating, whether they’re sneaking in their own judgment or they’re, you know, they’re asking a question, but it’s [00:23:00] really designed to convince the other person. So I’ve good at detecting that from, from a fair amount of experience, and I’ve developed skills in how I can reel them back in without triggering them. Gissele: Yeah. I’ve watched it, like you’re very good at navigating people back and it’s very soft and very humane. can I just bring you back here? So there’s no like judgment or minimizing of what they say. They’re just like, well, can I just get you back on this track? It’s, it’s very beautiful how you do that . Larry: Thank you. and you ask how I prepare people. It’s interesting because what I do is I interview them for an hour and a half to see if they’re a match for the show, an hour and a half to two hours. And I get to know them during that and, and me asking all these questions, gets them liking me. Right. The same process happens between us. Yeah, Gissele: yeah, yeah, yeah. Larry: Smart. [00:24:00] and then before the show, I spend another, hour with them again over, it’s over video. I’ve never met these people in person, just repairing them for what’s going to happen, what my objectives are helping them understand that we’re going to start with conflict. It’s not where we’re going to go. Just really helping them understand the trajectory and answering their questions. And so they come in with some level of rapport. For me, it’s not like we know each other really well, so a lot of times it’s just us starting together. But they do trust me to some extent. There’s no, like, and you said, how do I get them to regulate? I don’t. there’s no preparation for that. It’s just that I, from so much experience with this, you know, thousands of conversations with people over the years, it’s easy to get a person to calm down, which is, you know, you just take a break from the other person to say, hold on a second, I’m gonna listen to you.[00:25:00] And then they calm down. And, those skills, you know, the whole, the whole identity confusion and the layout of the questions, that’s kind of my stuff. But the skills that I use are not mine. I’ve developed them over the years, but a lot of them come from nonviolent communication. Mm-hmm. And Marshall Rosenberg. And I got my first training in nonviolent communication probably 25 years ago. But I remember well the person’s saying, you’re moderating a conversation between, between two people. You prov you apply emergency first aid ’cause one person can’t, can’t hear. And you as the intermediate intermediary can apply that. And it, so it becomes quite easy, you know, with that thought in mind that I can heal in the moment, whatever’s going on. Gissele: Mm, mm-hmm. Beautiful. I wanna talk a little bit about the flipping side. ’cause I think it’s so, so important. Why do you get people to, with opposing [00:26:00] perspectives, to flip sides and then just reiterate the viewpoints from their perspective. I know sometimes it can be confusing to the people themselves, but why do you get them to flip sides? Larry: Yeah. So, so it might be helpful to view it through, you know, a real example. Let’s take. Eve and Nancy, which is, you know, a really powerful episode for your, wow. Your listeners who haven’t watched or heard any, any of these, Eve is a transgender woman. Fully transitioned. Nancy is what, what she called a gender fundamentalist wearing a MAGA hat. She comes in and she’s saying stuff like people who are trans belong in mental institutions. She tells Eve to her face that you’re a genetically modified man. Eve is saying, you know, you people don’t have empathy for other people. They’re really far apart. Let’s just say it’s not gone well. [00:27:00] Eve is very empathetic, however, you know, like she is unusually empathetic. And able to hear Nancy, and that is transforming for Nancy. I mean, I can’t express the degree to which Eve’s own nature and intention transformed this. You know, I helped, but it is an unbelievable example of me listening to you will transform you. And where I take them ultimately is I’m preparing them as they’re understanding each other for switching roles. Because what happens when we switch roles? I mean, my thought is that human beings can easily, you might, it might be weird to this, this point, but we, we often say you can walk in the shoes of another person. How is that even possible? If you, if you think about it, we, we have totally different upbringings, you know, how can you experience what another person experiences if we have totally different upbringings, [00:28:00] different philosophies. Like, how is that possible? And yet almost everybody can do it. And it’s because we have the same internal machinery, we have the same internal drives. We just have different ways of achieving them. And so if you can slowly build your understanding of a person’s history and their beliefs, like a belief might be that there’s Christ who is love and will save me. That’s a belief. If you identify the person’s history and their beliefs and you occupy that belief, you can understand why it’s important to them. If you have that be, why would that be? Well, it’s important to me now if I really believe that, because I wanna live forever. I can be with the people I love forever, I can help save other people. Like can there be anything more powerful than saving somebody’s soul? Like once you enter their belief, and the reason we’re able to do [00:29:00] that is because we are the same internally, we have the same desires. So the whole show is a buildup toward getting them to understand each other’s beliefs and experience and then occupy them. And once we do and we start advocating on the other person’s behalf, we become confused who we are. And that’s really powerful. Like, I don’t even know who I am and I’m doing this legitimately, like I’m totally advocating for you. I’m saying stuff you didn’t even say. Yeah. And then you are listening to me do that, and you’re blown away like you’ve never been heard so deeply. And particularly not by someone you consider an enemy. And so that is transforming. What I will say is that I use this process a lot in mediation. For a different reason. My mediations are not meant to repair relationships. This is meant to repair relationships my mediations are meant to solve issues. Gissele: Hmm. Larry: In, in this show, I [00:30:00] specifically tell them, you are not here to solve the issues. Like, how are they gonna solve the Palestine Israel issue? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it’s too big of a burden and no one’s gonna listen to them. Mm-hmm. The goal is to show the audience that people should not be enemies. That they’re the same people on the other side. That’s my goal. So I try to keep them away from solution seeking because they will be disappointed. People won’t listen to them and things could fall apart. And that’s, it’s not the point of the show. But what’s interesting is that in my mediations, I use this tool of having them switch identities to solve issues because once they do occupy the other person’s perspective fully, they are then. Solving the issue because they understand that an internal level, the other person and what drives them, and they have no resistance to that and they understand themselves. They already understand themselves. And so during that process, solutions emerge because [00:31:00] they’ve never been able to hold both perspectives at the same time. And I heard you say that when we were opening the show, I don’t remember what the context was about holding both perspectives at the same time. But you, you said that, that that’s something that you do. Yes. Gissele: So so when, when students are taught research or even like thinking about ethical considerations, right? When you’re doing research, you’ve gotta be able to hold differing perspectives, understand differing views, understand research that might invalidate your perspectives, right? And so if you come already into the conversation thinking that there’s a right way or there’s a right perspective, and I heard you say this in your TEDx talk, I think you were talking about like, we can only win if we defeat the other side. That perspective that there’s only one side, one perspective prevents us then from engaging in dialogue and holding opposing views. Larry: and the holding the opposing views for, in my mind is not an intellectual process. Like you might think that if I, if I list all the [00:32:00] desires and the goals on both and on a spreadsheet, then I’ll be able to solve it. No chance. Yeah. It’s not a conscious intellectual process. It’s when you get it both sides deeply without resistance that your subconscious produces solutions. So we don’t consciously produce solutions. And what I found is that that is the most powerful tool to bring people to solutions where they are themselves and the other person at the same time where both people are doing this and then one person just suggests something that never occurred to any of us. And it solves it. Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. Now, that doesn’t Larry: happen in, in the show because I’m specifically telling them not to seek solutions, but it does happen in mediation. Gissele: Hmm. Yeah. And What you’re doing is so fundamental too, sometimes it’s not even about finding a solution. Sometimes it’s even just about finding the humanity in each other. And that is such a great beginning. You know, people wanna solve war. Yeah, of course we all wanna [00:33:00] eliminate war, but sometimes there’s war within families with neighbors. So why are we worried about the larger war where we’re not even in able to engage and hold space for each other’s humanity within our homes? And so I think what you’re inviting people to do is, can we sit with each other in dialogue without the need to change each other, just with respect, which you’ve mentioned is fundamental, just with presence, just remembering each other’s humanity. And I think that’s all fundamental. Larry: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. I wanted to also mention, you know, one of the things that I noticed in, the conversations is how you focus people on disarming, and one of the ways that you get them to disarm is to take their uniforms off. Can you talk about a little bit about how uniforms show up in these conversations? Larry: Yeah. Some people come with like a MAGA hat or a pin or bracelets or something like that, that show which side they’re on, and I don’t discourage that. You know, [00:34:00] it’s part of the process for the audience from my perspective, because at a certain point, if they do come that way, I ask ’em not to wear a shirt that they can’t take off, but they might wear a hat. And if they, when they do take that off, eventually when we, when we stop the argument, when we stop the debate portion and we enter into another. Portion of the discussion, you can see the effect on the other person. And you can even see the effect on the person who took like the most dramatic is Nancy. Gissele: Yep. Nancy is wearing a, that’s the one I was Larry: thinking. MAGA hat. Yeah. And then she puts on Nancy is is from Kenya and she puts on a Kenyan headdress because her hair is, that’s so beautiful. A little messed up from the hat. And she’s like, I’ll put this on. and I asked her like, wow, you look really happy when you have that on. And she’s like, yeah, this is my crown. And she is almost like a different person and you know, uniforms basically divide, I mean they announced to the other side [00:35:00] essentially. I don’t care about you whether consciously or not. it’s interpreted as I will defeat you at any cost. You just don’t matter. I am on this side and I will crush you. And, and when she took that off, you could really actually see the difference in her and in Eve. Gissele: Yeah, absolutely. It was truly transformative. ‘Cause I noticed that when she had the hat you can even see it in the body language. There was a big protection. And she use it as a protection in terms of like, well, my group but when she used her headdress, it was so beautiful and it was just more her, it was just her. It wasn’t all of these other people. When I think about, you know, the Holocaust and how people got into these roles. ’cause you know, in my class we talk about the vanity of evil, right? Like how people, some people were hairdressers and butchers before the Holocaust. They came, they did these roles, and then they went back to doing that after the war. And it’s like, how does that make sense? And, and to put a uniform on, to [00:36:00] put a role on and then fully accept it, like you said, creates that division, creates that separation between human beings. Whereas what you’re doing is you’re asking them to disarm and to go back to the essence of their own humanity, which I think is really powerful. But it was really interesting the whole discussion on, on uniforms, right? Larry: Yeah, yeah. it is one of the many ways we separate ourselves, that we separate ourselves, that we perceive ourselves as different than them, and that they view us as a threat. Gissele: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I heard you say that enemies are not enemies, it’s just us on the other side. What do you mean by that? Larry: I mean the ordinary people of the enemy. I believe enemy makers, if you can think of who you might consider an enemy maker. They are political leaders and they are media leaders. And they wouldn’t exist. They wouldn’t have any [00:37:00] power. People wouldn’t vote for them. People wouldn’t watch them if they didn’t create an enemy. If they didn’t foster the idea that there is an enemy. And the enemy has got to be broad. It can’t just be one person. It’s got to be a people that I’m fighting against. It’s gotta be a big threat. And so they paint people who are ordinary people on the other side as a threat. All the time. Yeah. and so that’s the, big lie at the center of it, that they’re a threat. And what happens is, there’s the psychological process that the, brain goes through. The mind goes through that where once we’re under threat, that’s a cascade that is exists in every human being. And that results in us going to war with the other side once we’re under threat. But this is an us choosing a leader. But this is a very fundamental basic process and [00:38:00] fundamental, basic lie that that autocrats and demagogues and people who just want power have been using forever with human beings, I imagine. And it’s extremely powerful. And so what I intend to show is that that is a lie. Gissele: Hmm. Larry: That is just not the truth because at the core of this psychological process is the thought that you’re a threat to me. And then this whole cascade happens internally for me. If I no longer believe you are a threat, the cascade unwinds and the power of the enemy maker unwins, it can all flip on that one lie. And so I want people to understand that ordinary people on the other side are just them. Like, I can’t tell you how many times people on the show are, are just like, holy cow. Yeah, I see myself in you. Like I, that’s exactly what I’m experiencing. And it’s revelatory for [00:39:00] them. Like how could that be? Like how could we be opposed to each other? This is crazy. Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Gissele: And you know, it’s amazing how when we truly understand somebody’s reasons for believing what they do, their history, their beliefs, why they believe makes sense, right? Yeah. Like, I saw it a lot in children in care, in the child protection system. Their behaviors seem reallymisbehaved. they shut down. They, act out. in some cases, that’s how those kids survived, these abusive homes, right? And so to them they’re still always on survival mode. Yeah. Makes sense. That’s what helped them survive. And so you, when you understand the other person’s perspective makes sense. Yeah. And you know, as you were talking, I was thinking what is going on for those demagogues and those authoritarian people that believe that that’s the only way that they can get what they need. you mean the leaders themselves? The leaders themselves, like so powerful people, people that are in their power, feel, love, feel [00:40:00] fulfilled, don’t need to disempower others, they don’t. In fact, the more that you love yourself at least that has been my experience, the more I have compassion for myself, the more I love myself, the more I’m in that state, the less I wanna hurt other people. The more I care about other people actually. So what is going on for them? That they think that this is the only way to get their needs met? Larry: I’ve thought a lot about this, you know, because the goal of this show is to show that people aren’t enemies, but there are enemy makers. And to me they are the enemy. like of all of the rest of us, all of us who are just trying to exist in the world, who prefer a world where we’re working together, you know? Yeah. It’s these people on the extreme who are, who are basically consciously sucking the goodwill out of society that I couldn’t care less about that because they get power. So is there something different about them? Is there, I have a few conclusions. One is [00:41:00] that there are people who are different that, that they are born, you know, all of us are born with the same internal desires and almost all of us get pleasure from seeing other people happy. That’s just born into us. Like, you know, almost everyone who’s an activist who comes onto the show, everyone actually is doing it because they want to other people to be happy. They, they don’t want people to experience the same pain that they’ve been in their life, but there are people who are born without or have extremely dialed down the pleasure that they get, the happiness that they get from seeing other people happy and healed. It’s not that the rest of us always want to see other people happy, but it, it’s one of our greatest sources of pleasure. There are people who are born without that. We call them sociopaths, Some leaders are sociopaths. They, don’t, I believe, obtain pleasure from other people’s happiness and they’re able to manipulate us quite often very well. And it’s these people who in peace time, [00:42:00] we wouldn’t even sit next to, we wouldn’t invite them over for Thanksgiving. Those are the people we choose, that it’s, it Gissele: doesn’t make biological sense. Larry: Well, they’re the people we choose when we’re at war, they are the people we choose. So, so think about this, okay? There is a virus, and the virus will kill 95% of human beings. And you have a leader who says there’s someone in power who says, we understand that people who are infected are going to infect other people, that as a society, we need to euthanize them. We actually need to do that as a society to save other people. Mm-hmm. There might be a leader who is empathetic, who says, I can’t do that. That, that feels wrong to me. almost all of us turn to the someone else who is a tyrant. Gissele: Who’s willing to do [00:43:00] what needs to be done to save us, right, exactly. Larry: To defeat evil, to kill, you know, when there’s a big enough threat, we will turn to the tyrant. And so people who are sociopaths and who in normal society would be rejected as a person who’s extremely dangerous, are the very people we turn to in times of war, when evil needs to be defeated. And so if you’re a sociopath and you want power, there’s no other way to power, you’re not going to follow the route of cooperation. You’re not going to follow the route of, you know, building alliance with the other side. You’re, if it, you’ll go the route of creating an enemy. And so that’s what we’ve, we’ve found. In our society, there are people who rise to power, who are the very people we would want nothing to do with in peace time. And that [00:44:00] people turn to, because they believe the other side is an enemy. They believe they are the virus that will kill 95% of people. So you can think of any leader and you might say, how could people follow this person? How could they possibly, what kind of evil is in people that they would follow this person, given what this person is doing? And the answer is obvious. They’ve been convinced that the other side is evil. Gissele: Yeah. Larry: And they truly, truly believe it. Gissele: This makes me think Hitler would’ve been a lone nut if 10 million people hadn’t followed him. Right? Larry: Right. And they believed, right. Gissele: They believed, I Speaker 4: mean. Larry: That, that Jews were, were incredible danger. They also ignored it and, you know, wanted to get along in society and, and be with the people they cared about. But, they truly believed that Jews were evil. Yeah. And if you, if you can convince them of that, you can lead a people. Gissele: Yeah. So the, it goes to the [00:45:00] question of like the reflexivity, like, so what is people’s own responsibility to constantly examine their own biases, beliefs, and viewpoints? Right. I gotta applaud the people that are on your show because they have to be willing to engage in a dialogue. So there’s an element of them that is willing to be wrong, right? or willing to kind of engage in that perspective. And we struggle so much. Yeah, with being wrong, like the mind always wants to be, right. We want to be on the side of good. And that’s one of the things that I was so reflecting on, I think I was listening to the conversation with, proud Boy, and the, in the progressive. The, yeah, progressive And that’s one of the episodes, by the way, for people. Yeah. That’s one of the episodes. And, and I, I love the follow up by the way. That was also amazing. It’s so funny because I was like, oh, is there a follow up? And I were like, went to search for it. Just to see how both sides feel that they’re right. And on the side of good, on the side of like positive for humanity, I think was really puzzling to me we have different ways [00:46:00] of getting there. You know, the people that for Trump really truly believe that some of the stuff he’s doing is very beneficial. The people that are against, they truly believe that what he’s doing is horrible. And to see those perspectives that at the core of it is a love or a care about humanity was really kind of mind blowing. Larry: Yeah, that is mind blowing. Gissele: Yeah, Larry: it is mind blowing. And what is infuriating to me is that we are manipulated to not pair with these other people because then these leaders would lose their power, you know, it’s a huge manipulation. Gissele: So this is why it’s up to each of us to do that work, to do the coming together, the engaging in the conversation, even though sometimes it feels difficult. And, having a willingness to listen And that’s the thing, that’s the thing about your beautiful show, which is like, you don’t have to agree at the end. You just have to see each other’s humanity, right? to let go of enemies, let go, to let Larry: go of that we have to agree that’s a real problem for me as well. Like when I get into a conversation with someone, [00:47:00] it’s like, how do we conclude the conversation if we don’t agree? It’s almost like it’s, it’s a forced imperative that is a mistake. Like that’s the point of the conversation. Yeah. for the most part, let go of that because I see now that that was just a mistake. Like we never had to agree. Gissele: Yeah. I so let’s talk about then, since we’re talking about disagreement, let’s talk about censorship, So because of the class that I teach, because I want them to understand different perspectives. One of the things I say in these papers is like, look, you can be pro-choice or pro-life. You can be pro Trump or against, I’m not judging you. That doesn’t matter. The exercise is to view the other side. That’s it, right? But it’s amazing how some of these dialogues in institutions have been diminished because there’s the belief that if we have these conversations, we’re supporting it, right? But the truth of the matter is that dialogue goes underground. It doesn’t disappear. It [00:48:00] doesn’t mean like, oh, everybody now believes this. It just goes covert, right? And these dialogues about these opposing perspectives are happening. And so I think I’d rather have these conversations up. And so that we can engage in dialogue and see what people are believing. I mean, there’s this undercurrent of racism, it seems, from my perspective, it it that that has existed for such a long time. It used to exist very, like visually in terms of slavery, but now there is still underground racism, right? Like it’s covert people may be able to vocalize the importance of diversity, but some people don’t believe it. So let’s talk about it rather than kind of like try to get those people to disappear and pretend it’s not there. What are your thoughts? Larry: Yeah. You know, there’s been a criticism that comes from the left a lot on the show, from people, from in comments is that we platformed bad guys. Like, you should not, you should not be giving a [00:49:00] stage to a proud boy. Well, if you listen to the Proud Boy’s perspective, this guy is like completely reasonable. He, he, you know, from people on the left, they’re even confused that he’s a proud boy. I think he might be confused about why he is a proud boy, I’m not sure. but he’s completely reasonable. So to, to just reflexively reject this person. He’s not there to represent the proud boys. He’s there to represent himself and to reflexively reject this person is to miss out on really a, a beautiful person and an interesting perspective. I’ve given a lot of thought to the criticism, however, because there’s a guy I’m considering having on the show who is a self-described fascist, a white supremacist, and I’ve had conversations with him and it is amazing how. The reason he is a white supremacist is he truly believes that white people are in danger and that he will be rejected. There will be no opportunities for them, and that he [00:50:00] is possibly in physical danger. He truly believes this. And if I believe that, you know I might do the same thing. And, I had a three hour interview with him where I really liked him, but I’m probably not gonna put him on the show. And, I’ve really thought a lot about whether to platform people and, I’ve kind of developed my own philosophy on whether it’s worth whether I should be airing viewpoints or not. And my thought is that a bridge goes both ways. So I can build a bridge where I walk him back. I am confident that I can have someone hear him out and him develop a relationship with them where he then becomes less extreme in his viewpoints. Gissele: I was gonna say, I think you should have him on the show. here’s is my perspective. Okay? Again, this is so similar to what Darrell David said, right? his intent wasn’t to change. It was to [00:51:00] understand, I think if we understood why people were afraid of us or hated, I’m Latino, by the way, right? We understood then we, can have the dialogue. The thing is like. People are giving like a one-sided propaganda. And it’s true, like if you actually hear the rhetoric of many separate groups is the fear of the other. Even though when you look at the population stats, right, even in the US black people make up 4%. Indigenous people make up 2% of the population. Like I think white people make up 57% of the population of the US and it’s higher in Canada. But it’s the fears, even though they might not be based on reality. That’s the rhetoric that these groups use. They use the rhetoric of we’re in danger, that these people are out to get us to destroy us. Thatsomehow it’s better for us to be isolated and separated. And they use the rhetoric of belonging. They use the rhetoric of love. They [00:52:00] use a co-opt it I don’t even think it’s rhetoric Larry: for them. It’s truth for them. Okay, Gissele: thank you. Yeah, so if you have people who are engaging in those different dialogues, like Darrell did, people don’t understand why they believe that the way that they do. Right? Because, because it’s real. Right? Now that rhetoric is happening, whether people wanna face it or not, that’s the problem. So Larry: I you completely, and when I first started this, I said to myself, there’s no question that I’m gonna have a Nazi on the show. There’s no question. But as I’ve thought about the critique that’s been offered, I’ve kind of drawn a line for myself at least present. And, and that’s fair. but I’ll tell you why I haven’t, I haven’t said why yet, which is A bridge goes both ways and, while I believe it’s really important to hear people, them out, because you walk people on both sides back from the extreme, toward the majority when you hear them out because they don’t see people as a threat anymore. As much. [00:53:00] What happens is by building the bridge, you provide an opportunity for many people to walk out toward them. When you give them an opportunity to hear, hear them out publicly, and my thought is that I will hear anybody out who has a large following because they already are being heard. Mm-hmm. They already have people walking out to them, and my goal is to bring them toward the rest of us so that we can function as a society. Mm-hmm. But I’m not gonna hear somebody who’s 0.1%, who’s because. Mm-hmm. Gissele: Okay. Larry: I understand me walk because they’re, I can walk them back, but maybe I walk 20 people out to them. Gissele: And it creates Larry: a bigger problem. And so, in my own view it’s about how big their following is already. Mm. Even though, yes, it’s, we can walk them back by hearing them. Gissele: Mm. Yeah. So, yeah. It’s, [00:54:00] it’s so interesting. I was just thinking about Deeyah Khan And Darryl David’s the same. And one of the things I noticed about their work is that, and I noticed it in yours too, is sometimes what happens in these sort of circumstances is that the people that they are exposed to might become the exception to the rule. Have you heard of the, the exception to the rule? So let’s say I meet someone who’s anti-Latino, but they’re like, but then they like me. And so they’ll do, like, you are all right. Speaker 4: Yeah. Gissele: I still don’t like other Latinos. Right. And so in the beginning that used to irk me so much. Right? Then I realized after watching all of this, information and I observed it in your show and I thought about it, is that’s the beginning of re humanization. Larry: I agree with that. It’s like it’s a dial, it’s not a switch. Yeah. Gissele: Yes. And so it begins with, oh, this is the exception to the rule, and then this next person’s the exception to the rule, and then this next person, and then, then the brain can’t handle it. Like how many exceptions to the rule can there [00:55:00] be? They couldn’t hold the exception to the rule anymore. Right. It had to be that their belief was wrong Right. Which is, it’s really interesting. And, and Larry: it’s another, another interesting thing I often say, which I get negative feedback about this statement that we don’t choose our beliefs. we don’t have any power over them. They just exist. Mm-hmm. And we can’t choose. Not if I think that. A certain race is dangerous to me. I can’t just choose not to. You can call me racist, whatever. I just can’t choose my thought about it. I have an experience. People have told me things. That’s my belief. That belief gets eroded. It doesn’t get changed. Gissele: Mm-hmm. It, Larry: it happens not consciously. Life experiences change our beliefs, we don’t just suddenly love white people. if we’ve experienced, brutality from white people or from white cops, you don’t just change your belief about it. You have to get, you have to slowly be [00:56:00] exposed. You have to, or be deeply exposed. so these types of things erode our other beliefs. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Larry: And, and my goal is not, you know, like Nancy came in, I would say as a nine or a 10 with her. Dislike for trans people when she left. Just to be clear, ’cause people I think are mistaken about this, who watch this show, she does not think still that trans people should be around kids. She still thinks it’s dangerous, but she thinks trans people themselves are okay. That they can be beautiful, that they do not belong in mental institutions. And as she said, I would drink outta the same glass from you Eve and I would protect you. So she went from a 10 to a seven, let’s say? Yeah. Gissele: Yeah. Larry: And she’s still out there. She still there. She used the word Gissele: she. Larry: Mm-hmm. Yeah. She used the word SHE and she’s still out there advocating for keeping trans people away from kids. and [00:57:00] people are like, so she’s a hypocrite. She’s, no, she has moved so far and. Eve moved toward, I shouldn’t paint Nancy as the wrong one. Eve moved toward Nancy understanding that Nancy really is worried about kids, and Nancy brought up some things that really concerned Eve when she heard it, about the exposure that kids have to various concepts. I guess my point is that people who get dialed down from a 10 to a six or a seven can deal with each other. They can run a society together. Mm-hmm. They don’t, they don’t invest all of their energy in defeating the other side, which is where all of our energy is now. I call it issues zero. You care about climate change, or you care about poverty, you care about mass migration, you care about nuclear per proliferation, you care about ai. Forget it. None of these are getting solved. Zero. Yeah. Unless we learn to cooperate with each other, and if [00:58:00] we’re dedicating all of our energy to defeating the other side, every single one of these issues goes unaddressed. And so my goal is to dial the vitriol down so that we can actually solve some human problems so that the next generation doesn’t inherit this mess that we’ve created. Gissele: Mm-hmm. You once said, I, I may be misquoting you, so please correct me. Revenge is a need for understanding. Can you explain that further? Larry: Yeah. I said that in in my TEDx, mm-hmm. if someone has been hurt by another person, they often seek revenge. And that desire for revenge will go away actually when they’re understood. If you’re under and you deny that you want to be understood by your enemy. You’d say like, that is baloney. they deserve to be punished and they need to be punished to provide disincentive for other people in society so that they don’t do this terrible thing. People [00:59:00] would deny that they want understanding from their enemy, but when they receive it, the desire for revenge goes away. I mean, I’ve seen that innumerable times. So how does the need for understanding help us live beyond the need to punish one another? Well, I think that if someone’s seeking revenge against you, if someone’s trying to injure you, you can unravel that by understanding them, whether we, people agree that that human beings seek revenge as a need or not, you can unravel it pretty, not easily, but you can pretty reliably. Very often people who seek revenge against each other, like in my mediations, once they’re understood by the other person, once they have some connection, They go through some kind of healing process with the other person. They don’t even understand why they were seeking revenge themselves, like they are [01:00:00] completely transformed. they were like, that would be a total travesty of justice if you were hurt Now. Gissele: Yeah. I love the fact that these conversations get at the core of human needs, which is they need to be seen, they need to be understood, they need to be loved, they need to be accepted, they need to be long. And so I think these conversations that you’re facilitating get to those needs, you kind of like go through all of the, the fluff to get to the, okay, what are the needs that need to be met? and how can we connect to one another through those needs? And then, and then from that, you go back to the conversation on the topic. And really it’s about fears at the core of it, right? Like the fear that my children are gonna be confused or forced into something or, the fear that somebody’s gonna have a say over my body and tell me that I have to do something. All of those fears are at the core and conversations get at those needs, not at the surface. Yeah. It’s not to say Larry: I should say that. It’s not to say that the fears are irrational. Yeah. They might be rational. But you know, it’s also a [01:01:00] self-fulfilling prophecy that if we fear somebody, they’re going to think of us as a threat. We’re gonna do stuff that creates the world that we fear. And it’s obvious with certain issues like between two peoples. You know, like if you fear that the other people are going to attack you, you might preemptively attack them or you might treat them in a, in a way that is really bad. And, and so you start this war and that happens between human beings on an individual basis and between peoples, yeah. It’s less obvious, with an issue, let’s say abortion. my fear is not creating the issue on the other side. but many of our interactions with other human beings, it is our fear that triggers them. We create the world we fear. Gissele: Yeah. And I think that goes back to the self-responsibility, right? to what extent are we responsible for looking at ourselves, looking at our biases, looking at our prejudice, looking at our fear and how our [01:02:00] fear is causing us to hurt other people. What responsibility do we have to engage in dialogue or be willing to see somebody’s humanity, right? It’s Larry: just this better strategy. Even if you think of it as, yeah, you know, people sometimes say these two sides. I get this criticism a lot, and this, by the way, these criticisms come from the left mostly that these two sides are not, are not Equivalent. Oh, okay. how could you equate Nancy and Eve, Eve just wants to live. Nancy’s trying to control her, the left views, the right is trying to control them and oppress them and so they’re not moral equivalent. And my point is always, I’m not making a point that they’re morally equivalent. That’s for you to decide, okay? If you want to. I’m saying morally judging them is not effective. It’s just not gonna produce the world that you want. So, you know, it’s just really effective [01:03:00] to hear them out, to take their concerns seriously, even if you think that it’s not fair. But you’ll then create the world you want. And if you don’t do that, if you poo poo them, even if they’re wrong, you believe they’re completely wrong, and you think that mm-hmm you know, there is good and evil and they are completely the evil one, you are going to exacerbate their evil by morally rebuking them. And I want to say that like as clearly as possible, I haven’t made this point e enough on the show. I’m really kind of building a base before I go into more sophisticated, what I would consider a more nuanced. Philosophy, but if you judge somebody, it is the greatest threat to a human being. Just understand that we evolved in groups and moral judgment was the way we got kicked out of groups. If you were a bad person, you were gone, you were dead. [01:04:00] And so all of us respond very, very negatively to being judged as selfish. I’ve had clients threaten to kill each other. Not as powerful

TRANSCRIPT Gissele: Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking with Barry Adkins after losing his 18-year-old son, Kevin, to alcohol poisoning. Barry saw that he had two choices. He could curl up in the corner and allow himself to become a victim, or he could get out and tell as many people as possible about what happened to his son, Kevin. Barry chose the latter in an effort to raise awareness of the dangers of binge drinking. Barry set out on an Epic 1400 mile journey on foot from Arizona to Montana. His son’s ashes in his backpack, stopping at numerous schools, churches in treatment facilities along the way to share his story. Larry’s presentation describes in powerful detail the night his son died.[00:01:00] The quiet morning that he got the knock on the door and how he came up with the idea to walk from Arizona to Montana.Barry’s message is both powerful inspiration and a warning about the consequences of even one night of binge drinking. Barry has shared his story with over 200,000 students and parents. He has been a featured speaker at numerous high schools, community events, and town hall meetings. Barry has also been featured in numerous media outlets, including Reader’s Digest, the Dr. Gina Show and the Leon Fonte Show. Please join me in welcoming Barry. Hi Barry. Barry: Oh, thanks for having me on. Gissele Gissele: Ah, thank you for being on the show. I was wondering if you could share with the audience a little bit about the story of your son’s passing and how that led you to actually decide to become this powerful messenger on the dangers of pitch drinking. Barry: Well, Gissele, I probably should start by kind of telling you, you know, what led up to that. [00:02:00] Yeah, let’s start with that. So he had just graduated from high school. He struggled in high school. He was actually flunking his English class in March of his senior year in high school. And he needed it for graduation, right? Mm-hmm. And I would always talk to him about it and, you know, he would tell me to quit bothering him about it. He’d take care of it. But at the end of the day, he did graduate, and I remember at his high school graduation ceremony, he gave me a hug and whispered, thanks for not giving up on me, dad. Gissele: Hmm. Barry: And shortly thereafter suffice to say he saved up enough money and I agree to co-sign a loan so he could buy a new truck. And if you have listeners that work at dealerships, I apologize, but I have a healthy dislike for that process, right? Mm-hmm. Because they’re gonna try to sell me something I don’t want or need. He found one of the dealerships, so I gotta go in and sign papers, right? Gissele: Mm-hmm. I Barry: sit down in the, the dealerships. You know, in their [00:03:00] office, and the first thing this guy says to me is, how about some life insurance? And I’m like, 18-year-old boys don’t need life insurance. They don’t die. But I was wrong. They do die. He wouldn’t live long enough to make a single payment on that truck. So a few weeks later. I remember him sitting down in our living room and talking about how he couldn’t believe his life was finally beginning and he wanted to move out, and I did my best to discourage him because we honestly never really had any problems with him. His high school principal didn’t even know who he was. I didn’t have any luck talking out of it. So a couple weeks later, his buddy Craig came over and they started moving him out. You know, he’s 18 years old. His definition of moving out was throwing a bed, a tv, and a dresser in the back of his truck. Mm-hmm. I remember him coming back in and he came into the living room and he said something I’ll never forget. He said he wasn’t [00:04:00] gonna take his toothbrush with him. He’d be back tomorrow and grab it. I walked out front with him like I normally do, gave him a hug, told him that, be careful, and I loved him and watched him drive away. It was the last time I saw him alive that night. His friends decided to throw a house warming party for him. Started with a keg of beer and moved on to shots. He left a voicemail for his sister that night talking about how much fun they were having and how drunk he was. After he left that voicemail, he passed out his friends laid him in his bed on his side in case he vomited, but the party was still going on. They actually went in and shaved his head and his legs while he was passed out because he’s just passed out, right? Gissele: Yeah. But Barry: his buddy Craig, was worried about him, kept going back into check on him around 4:00 AM calls started coming into 9 1 1. First calls were difficulty [00:05:00] breathing. Next calls. Not breathing. My son died alone in a hospital. Well, I slept peacefully in my bed. The next morning was Sunday morning. My wife and I are sitting around talking about what we’re not gonna do that day or do that day. Eight 30 in the morning. The doorbell rings. And we’re looking at each other because we weren’t expecting company. And I open the door and I see two police officers and somebody in plain clothes at my front door. Should have been a big red flag, right? It should have been, but I’m that guy. It didn’t even occur to me, Gissele, that something bad had happened. I actually joked with them as they came in thinking this had to have something to do with a dog or a parked car, but they didn’t laugh at any of my jokes. One of the officers in the plain clothes stayed at the front door. The other officer walked in and stood in front of the chair that Kevin had sat in [00:06:00] two weeks before and talked about how his life was finally beginning. He said There had been an accident and your son is dead. We asked who, because we have a number of children, they said it was Kevin and they handed me his driver’s license. Yeah, there is something pretty final about it when a police officer hands you your child’s driver’s license because until that exact moment in time, you’re holding out hope that this is all a big mistake. You’ve misspelled the last name, but once they hand you, your child’s driver’s license, you know he is gone and he is never coming back. Gissele: That must have been so devastating. Barry: Yeah, people say it’s impossible to know what it feels like to lose a child, and they’re right until it happens to [00:07:00] you. It’s a life changing event. There’s no two ways about that. Mm-hmm. Gissele: And so what was the journey between hearing that your son had died to one, you had determined to spread the message to save the lives of other young people. Barry: Well, I’ll tell you a little bit about the process. Honestly, I was angry with God and I told him so I simply didn’t understand why a kind God would. You know, let my son die. And I tried to bargain with him and said, Hey, back up time, you’re God, take me, let him live. And I don’t think, as a parent, I’m unusual. That’s not, I don’t think that would be an unusual thought for anybody. Right? Gissele: No. Barry: But a couple days later, I had another life changing event. This is a little bit difficult for me to describe, but I’ll do my best. I was [00:08:00] laying in bed, it was about four o’clock in the morning and I was awake, and I just had this sense that someone had just came in the room, you know? Yeah. You have that feeling. Did somebody just walk in behind me or something? And then there was a light. A light I’ve never seen before and I haven’t seen since, and there was a message, and the message was that he didn’t suffer. And something very good would come from this. And I didn’t get a chance to say anything. it’s not words you hear, it’s just things, you know. I, it’s really Gissele: mm-hmm. Barry: I’m not a seance guy or anything like that. I just, that’s what happened. And I’m not here to tell everybody that that made everything okay. ’cause it didn’t. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Barry: But it gave me a mission. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Barry: Right. And then we had to go pick up his [00:09:00] ashes. I remember going down to pick up his ashes and I walked in, you know, into a funeral home. They’ve got, you know, pictures on the wall and they’re playing music in the background. They take me into an office, sit me down in a big comfortable chair, or the desk in front of me. The funeral director walks in. Sets an urn down in front of me, an urn that held all the remain of the kid that I burped. I changed his diapers. I coached all kinds of different sports. I taught him to shoot a gun, swing, a golf club. All the remains of him were sitting in an urn in front of me. And at that moment I knew one thing, and that was that I didn’t want to be a victim. Because the world doesn’t need any more victims. We’ve got plenty already. The world needs people who take something bad and they make something good come from it. Gissele: This [00:10:00] might be a difficult question, so you can skip it if you want to, but what was your wife’s reaction like? Barry: that’s another part about grief. Right. She has been incredibly supportive of everything. Yeah. Was she terrified when I said I wanted to walk to Montana? Yes, we both were, but I knew. That’s what I wanted to do and. I had a lot of people try to talk me out of it. Gissele, right? Well-meaning people that I think they were afraid I was gonna fail. and you get that right? Yeah. Who do you think you are? Right? That’s a long ways of walk. But I had another guy that I talked to that said something that kind of sealed the deal. I really wasn’t gonna get talked out of it, but he said, well, how do you think you’d feel about it in 10 years if you don’t do it? Gissele: Ooh, perfect. Barry: Was it easy? No. [00:11:00] But I knew it didn’t matter. This was, this was what I needed to do. Gissele: So did you, you plan out the whole trip or was it like you were kind of just allowing yourself to be led where your next destination was? Barry: so the idea for the walk, first of all for those. Older individuals in your audience came from the movie Lonesome Dove. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, has Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duval. That was Kevin’s favorite movie. I won’t give away the ending of the movie. Mm-hmm. But I will tell you that that’s where the idea came from. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Barry: But then you gotta figure out, you know, in the movie somebody did something on horseback, not like this, but something similar. Right. I knew I wasn’t gonna do it on horseback initially. I was gonna walk the Continental divide. But then I knew I wouldn’t be able to do the speaking stuff. Okay. So I’m gonna do the speaking stuff now. I need to get some help. Yeah. And I reached [00:12:00] out to people to sponsor me. I got a lot of. Nah, no thanks. But a nonprofit here in town, notmykid.org I spoke to them and they were in they set up all of the speaking engagements, but you can imagine the logistics around this we’re mm-hmm. Pretty challenging because they said, okay, well you gotta tell me what day you’re gonna be in all these towns. Yeah. So I had to give them a schedule. Of how, you know, how many miles am I gonna walk a week? When do I think I’m gonna be in this town? When do I think I’m gonna be in this town? And we got it figured out. I did. Were you a big walker before? I’ve ran marathons. Oh, okay. But walking was a different thing. one thing to say, I’m gonna go out tomorrow and walk 15 miles, right? Gissele: Mm-hmm. Barry: But it’s the wear and tear mm-hmm. Of every single day. And you can, I kind of [00:13:00] prepared for that by, on the weekends I’d go out and walk, you know, 15 miles each day or 20 miles each day. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Barry: Kind of get a sense of what it was gonna feel like. But it’s. Pretty hard to judge what it’s gonna feel like repetitively. Right? There were ingrown toenails had plantar fasciitis, had knee issues. But I never took a single day off. I ended up walking seven days a week. I found it to be easier to just walk seven days a week. And there’s days I didn’t feel like going, but I always thought, eh, I might feel worse tomorrow. Maybe I better go try. And usually when I got out there I felt better. Gissele: Wow. So how did you find the messaging was received in the conversations that you had with young people because, drinking is kind of part of the culture, if you may. What were some of their comments or questions? [00:14:00] Barry: You know, my messaging has changed a lot through the years. In the beginning, Gissele, I was actually just reading it and I rationalized that, I don’t know if I told you about this before, but I rationalized this by saying, well, Martin Luther King read I Have a Dream Speech. Speaker 2: He read Barry: the whole thing and it was good, right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Barry: So I had it written out. But. I had so many places where teachers and principals would come up later and say, I have never seen those kids that quiet ever. And as it evolved, one of the things I started doing was telling the audience, but I’m not here to tell ’em how to live their life. I’m just here to tell you a story. And I really believe for students especially, and everybody, nobody wants to be told how to live their life, right? Who are you to get Speaker 4: up Barry: here? Tell me how to live my life. [00:15:00] I’m just here to tell you a story. And like I said there was some standing ovations in a few of them. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But for me, when they’re that quiet you know, something’s going on. Gissele: Definitely. I’m sure I know that you’ve saved some lives Because I don’t know if kids are often educated on like how to drink, how to learn, how much. Alcohol to take? Like had your son had experience with alcohol before or was that really like the first time that he was out? Barry: He, there was a couple times where I suspected it and that, you know, one of the questions I often get asked is, you know, did you ever talk to him about alcohol? I didn’t talk to him much, any of the kids much about alcohol, but I did about drugs because we have an alcoholic in the family. And he always talked about how stupid he was and how he wasn’t ever gonna let that happen to him. You know, so in hindsight, [00:16:00] should I have done more of that? Yeah. and the question comes up, so when do you start talking to your kids about that? And my answer is, whatever you do, don’t wait until it’s too late. Gissele: Yeah. I think conversations about like. Sex, alcohol, drugs, all of that stuff. Ongoing conversations with children are important, and at the same time, we’re doing the best we can as parents, right? We don’t always anticipate, like you said, your son said that he wouldn’t do that sort of thing, right? Like sometimes you can’t anticipate. But as parents, we go back and question ourselves and say, could I have done that differently? Could I have done that better? What role did self-forgiveness have in your ability to undertake this journey? Barry: It was a big part of it, right? One of [00:17:00] the first things we did was agree that we’re not gonna play the blame game, right? I’m not gonna blame anybody at the party. I’m not gonna blame anyone. But, but the forgiveness part of it. Takes a while, especially forgiving yourself. I heard a pastor describe it best once, ’cause forgiveness is one of the things that’s one of my key takeaways is forgiveness. And what I tell everybody is anger and vengeance is only gonna lead to one thing. Destruction, forgiveness, leads to healing, and sometimes the most important person you need to forgive. Yourself. We all make mistakes. It’s the way you handle it. That really matters. ’cause I can’t change the past. I can only change the future. Gissele: Yeah. Barry: And that takes a long time to come to grips with Gissele. Right? That’s, it does. That’s not something the day after you’re, you’re [00:18:00] there. That’s about 19 years in the rear view mirror for me. Gissele: Yeah, definitely because we as parents put so much pressure on ourselves, we feel it’s our responsibility to keep our children safe. Even though your son had left home, there’s still that sense of, responsibility. it can feel definitely overwhelming, especially since like the thought is always, well, we’re gonna pass away before our children do. And so it’s not anything we’re gonna have to manage. They’re gonna have to manage our loss. But when it’s the reverse, you’re like, oh, this is not what I prepared for. And what you’re helping us learn is, is. It’s not about trying to avoid the things in life that causes suffering, but alchemizing the difficult moments into something where it could be a positive out of it. That doesn’t diminish the grief. It just helps us not hurt ourselves because I do [00:19:00] feel like path to grieve and the path to blaming and the path to punishment hurts us as much as it hurts the other people as well. Barry: it a hundred percent does. And one of my other key things for takeaways is about adversity. Yeah. Bad stuff happens to everybody. The way you respond to adversity is gonna define your life. And I’m living proof of that. divorces, whatever, you know, make the list, your boyfriend broke up with you, whatever. All of these things happen. And the way you handle them, they’re gonna define your life. They just are, it’s not the A’s and b’s in school generally. Mm-hmm. Its the way you handle adversity. Gissele: I wanna go back to that instance where you heard the voice say that something positive was gonna come. ’cause I’m sure there was a level of, reassurance did that help you rethink the whole concept of life or death [00:20:00] and whether or not things are final? Barry: You know I’m a Christian and we all believe that God is out there. We have to push the believe button. But when something like this happens you know he’s there. Right. And again, that, you know, you’ve heard people describe it, but I can’t describe that light. Gissele: Yeah. Barry: And I just knew. You know, it was God and it was kind of his voice, but I knew God was part of it and for me it moved. Gissele: You mean like Kevin’s voice? Barry: Yeah. Kind of his you know, because it seemed like he was pretty excited about it. Gissele: Hmm Barry: mm-hmm. Right. And it, it moved it from the theoretical to Oh yeah, he’s really there. He really [00:21:00] is. I mean, sometimes it’s you start to wonder if he’s really there, right? You start to wonder, well, is there really something there? And after this I can say, yeah, there’s life there. Gissele: Yeah, and and what you were saying, it takes it from a theoretical ’cause I think often we think of like God out there and we’re over here and we can feel so separate and so alone. And when you look at the state of the world, you wonder why things are the way that they are. And I think there is sort of a grander. Purpose and a grander picture that sometimes we don’t often see. But I think to have that reassurance, I myself have had a number of spiritual events that make you think, oh wait, here’s an experience to everything that I’ve been reading or wondering about, which makes you question. How final is death? now that doesn’t lessen the loss any less. we are [00:22:00] still in this physical experience where you don’t get to experience your son in the same way. Have you had any other interactions, like through dreams or any other ways where you have been able to connect? Barry: Well, I have no doubt that God was part of this process. And the reason I say that is I’m not the right guy to be doing this. I was never a public speaker. Mm-hmm. I’m a stay at home. I was telling somebody the other day, I had a really good month. ’cause I think I only put 50 miles on my car in a month. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Barry: I’m not that way, but I feel like it’s what He wants me to do. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Barry: Right. And another interesting thing for me is that. You need to be quiet to really feel [00:23:00] where God might be pushing you. And I remember I I was up in the Bob Marshall wilderness up in, up in Montana, out in the middle of nowhere. I was sitting on top of this mountain with my uncle, and it was just, you know, utter silence. Right. Just. As quiet as it can be. And I turned to him and I whispered, man, it’s quiet up here. And he said, yeah. And it’s got a lot to say. Gissele: Mm mm-hmm. I love that. Barry: Yeah, because you have to understand it. I think we don’t have enough quiet time in our lives. Anymore. We’re just bombarded every single day with stuff. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Yeah. There’s constant messaging and there’s constant looking on social media, and I think what you’re talking about is really the path inward to be able to address all of the difficult things you were talking about, to deal with grief [00:24:00] and not let it consume you, to deal with forgiveness and allow yourself to open up to that. You have to. Go through the emotions, right? Like you have to have felt the grief. You have to have felt the difficulty in forgiving because the mind immediately goes to, well, who was there, who could have taken care? Why didn’t they check more? And all of those things. Absolutely. Yeah. Barry: was there blame to go around? Yeah. The, the guy at the party was a 28-year-old this house that he moved into. There was a 28-year-old there who was renting the house rooms to 18 year olds. Right. So, you know, it is probably good situation, but was it Mikey’s fault? No. It, this was Kevin’s choice. This was his decision. Yeah. And that’s my third point is the two most important decisions you’re ever gonna make apart from following Jesus are about drugs and alcohol. It isn’t even close. [00:25:00] We all know stories. Right. You just, you need to educate yourselves as if your life and the lives of your kill children depend upon it. Speaker 2: Because Barry: it does, it just does. These are, these are society. We don’t talk a lot about how big this problem is. I googled it recently to find out how big the rehab industry is, and I believe the number was, people can look it up. I think it was around $35 billion a year. Wow. And it’s projected to grow at 5% a year. Gissele: it doesn’t, help. That’s alcohol in particular is, a legal drug, right. And the interesting thing that I observed during the pandemic was in Canada in particular, I don’t know about any other countries how they made alcohol more accessible, but of all the things they could have done during COVID, making alcohol more accessible, made me curious.[00:26:00] I’m like like what is it that you’re promoting or saying? it’s sort of like different departments working on different things. Like you’ve got a public health that tells you, like do things in moderation, take care of your body, eat. Then you’ve got another department that is like making alcohol more accessible. it doesn’t make sense. Barry: It’s a business, right? The alcohol industry is a business and they want to grow their industry and every opportunity they get to do that. Of course they’re gonna do it. Mm. You know do I blame them? No, not really, because it’s every, it’s your choice, right? Mm. It just, Gissele: yeah, for sure. It’s the Barry: education part of it. I think the prevention, you know, as I said, $35 billion a year on rehab. I guarantee you they don’t spend 35 billion a year on prevention. It’s largely onesie, twosie things. it’s a PowerPoint in one class at school. [00:27:00] And, and it takes a lot of different angles to get to kids, to students. You know, am I one part of it? Yeah. Is that the only part? Absolutely not. There are other things that help click with kids. You know, I’m not the only thing, but you know, some kids might click when you start talking about the chemical things that happen. I don’t know. But mm-hmm. There should be a little more, in my opinion, more focus on that prevention part. Gissele: Yeah. Agree. And I think that’s the beauty of the conversations you’re opening up space for. And also the opportunity for parents to not expect the school system or all these other systems to educate kids, right? Like we have conversations with our kids and I, gotta give credit to my husband. I was always one of the, the complete abstinence. We’re not gonna do drugs, we’re not gonna do anything. My husband’s like, well, that’s not realistic. Right? Yeah. Like, so just because you, that’s a choice you made for [00:28:00] yourself years ago. Doesn’t mean that that’s the thing they’re gonna make. The best thing we can do is arm them with information and tell them like, here, and Okay, this is what alcohol feels like in your body. This is what it tastes like. You know, you should pace yourself. Like see what it does to your body. See how long it takes in your body so that you can become familiar. So it’s not a thing that like kids go out in. and want to explore like in large quantities. My husband was telling me when we were having these conversations, as our kids were younger, he would say to me that the ones, the children whose parents oppressed them more like about like, you can’t do this. You can’t do that. Were the ones who probably explored it the most. He said when they were outside, they were the ones who were the binge drinkers. They were the ones, and he saw it and he was like. You know this, this person is hiding it. Whereas his mom, she used to have a drink with her when he came, home from high school. And so he learned how to [00:29:00] maneuver and how it felt in his body. And so he would never like get drunk or pass out or do any of that because he knew, he started to experiment and see, oh, okay, this is how it impacts. I observe other people. And so he started to get familiar with, okay, what it does, what it doesn’t do in my body. And what you’re talking about and the beautiful part about it is increasing their awareness of, okay, what’s my maximum? What’s the dangers? You don’t know? ’cause if you’re just taking shots and drinking, you’re not waiting for your body to process the alcohol, so you don’t know how much you’ve taken. Barry: You know, for me, and you know, nobody ever likes to talk about peer pressure when you’re younger, but mm-hmm. Peer pressure is there. The thing for me, and everybody’s different about this but for me you think, well, I need to impress these. My high school friends, I have one friend [00:30:00] that I still know from high school. I don’t know how many you have that you stay in contact with, but you know, my daughter said, well, I have ’em on Facebook. I said, well, you do, but how many are your friends? Mm-hmm. Oh. Two, three. Yeah. One. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that kind of thing. So you think you need to impress these people and you don’t, and that comes with age. You just start realizing that I don’t really care what they think of me. Gissele: Yeah. Barry: That’s the beauty of it is you get older, Yeah. Gissele: So thank you for raising this. ’cause I think this is really important, sort of the reasons why people take. Substances. Like sometimes people just wanna experiment. Their people are addressing pain, right? If their home life is an issue, or if they have experienced trauma sometimes, and the peer pressure thing I think is so fundamental. I remember this about myself when I was in my teens, I cared so much what people thought about me, and I [00:31:00] thought people were constantly thinking about me, which is not even true. They were only thinking about themselves. And that’s why I tell my kids, when I was in my twenties I thought, oh, all these people are looking at me. All these people are thinking of me And I’m like, they were not, yeah, they didn’t care about me. They were thinking about themselves and what other people were thinking about them. Yeah. And so I think that’s an important thing in terms of what helps young people develop that inner confidence. Remember that inner worthiness, Speaker 2: the worthiness of it. Yeah. Gissele: they don’t need to succumb to peer pressure, they are just enough as they are and to be of their authentic selves. And if you look at the school system, and I’m not complaining about the school system, but we are taught conformity. There is a right answer and wrong answer. Everybody should sit and be quiet. So the kids that struggle the most are the kids who are the most aberrant, right? Who don’t think the same way, who have struggles sitting down all day, because That’s not kids’ natural nature to [00:32:00] sit all day, right? And so what we’re taught to conform to this box and that there is this right answer versus wrong answer and color inside the lines. And so it shifts away from authenticity ’cause the need to belong, the need to fit in, the need to align. And so then later on we’re like, oh yeah, be yourself. Be authentically. well, I don’t know how to do that. I was only taught to conform and belong. Where is the role for the authentic in schools and for the divergence and difference Barry: and, and everybody learns differently. Gissele: Mm-hmm. Barry: Right? Just so many things there. I barely got outta high school. Speaker 2: Hmm. Barry: I simply didn’t understand the point. Speaker 2: Yeah, Barry: and I, I was only, it was only by the fear of my parents. That I got outta high school. I mean, it turns out, you know, once I went to college and I was paying for it, I got straight A’s, [00:33:00] but I just didn’t see the point. And I’ve realized through the years that everybody matures differently and everybody learns differently because there’s a lot of pressure on kids today to decide, okay, what are you gonna do with your life? What are you gonna be, I didn’t decide, I ended up waiting two or three years before I went to college. Mm-hmm. Because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Right. And Speaker 2: yeah, and I Barry: think you have to know when you’re 18 years old because you’re 18 years old, and I think adults tend to forget that not everybody matures and in general girls mature before boys, let’s just call it what it is. But you need to give them time. They kind of figure it out. Gissele: absolutely. And I think that’s, a really important conversation. we need to give them time to explore all the things that they’re passionate about, that they really want to [00:34:00] do. Rather than trying to push them into a profession because I don’t know, like I changed my mind a lot. Like first I was gonna be a lawyer, then I ended up in child welfare, and now I’m doing something different. So there’s the opportunity to explore, the opportunity to find out what their real passions are, and to make a decision when you’re 18, 19, about the rest of your life, just doesn’t. make a lot of sense, right? what you’re passionate about now, but with the cost of education, that’s a huge investment you’re making or something you might not end up liking. So it just doesn’t seem to make sense. Right? Barry: Yeah. I think there are tests out there that can I’ve heard of some that can kind of tell you what you’re good at. Speaker 2: Hmm. Which Barry: kind of will help for me. I actually, short story. I actually got my pilot’s license before I got outta high school. Gissele: Oh, that’s cool. Barry: Yeah, because I had a class where the guy said, well, if you pass the private [00:35:00] pilot written, you can have an A in the class for the whole year and you don’t have to show up. So suffice to say, I ended up with my pilot pilot’s license. Yes. But I wanted to be in the Air Force. I wanted to fly jets and, and we took the tests and they said, well, you’d be good at electronics. I wanted to be a pilot. They wouldn’t let me do that. But I didn’t forget that they said I might be good at electronics. And so that’s what I did. Engineering stuff. And I’ve been in the same industry for 44 years. Mm-hmm. Because I found something that I kind of like doing this stuff. I mean, the job is a job, right. But I kinda like doing this stuff. Gissele: And that’s, that’s what I say to my children. I say, explore the world. Explore all the things that you’re excited about now. Right. Because, and that’ll get you through the path, even if it’s just like the next step, like you said, okay, this guy said you don’t have to come to class. I’d rather have some flying lessons. I [00:36:00] think that’s a great. Wait, have you ever flown since? Well, Barry: I got my pilot’s license, but I couldn’t afford to keep flying. Right. Mm-hmm. My dad paid for it as part of my graduation gift ’cause he didn’t think I would pass the p private pilot written. Oh. Because he said, well, if you do that, I’ll pay for your flight instruction. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Barry: So, but, you know, you talk about getting to places one of the questions I get asked is, did I ever think about quitting? On the walk. Yeah. The answer to that is no, but, but I started wondering what I got myself into. Speaker 2: Hmm. I Barry: wasn’t even outta Arizona. I was probably 150 miles into it, you know, like I said, this hurts, this hurts. and the problem I had was I was thinking about 1400 miles every day. I thought about, man, I got. 1300 miles to go. And so I just changed my mindset to I’m gonna walk [00:37:00] another three miles or four miles, take a break, see where we go from there. And it’s these baby steps that take you a long way. ’cause you look at something and say, well, I could never get that degree, or I could never get to that position where I would be able to do that in my life. But if you take these baby steps. You focus on those baby steps, then the next thing you know you’re in Montana. Gissele: Yeah, Barry: right. I mean, that’s really the way I thought of it is I didn’t want, because you think about, oh my gosh, I gotta do this every day for the next four months. And I just started thinking, all right, my wife Bev met me about every three or four miles. She’d go up there and park and I’d go up and take a little break and then move on. And it’s a great metaphor for life, I think. Gissele: Yeah, absolutely. I have a friend who would say, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. [00:38:00] Barry: Yes. When you are thinking Gissele: about the whole elephant, you’re gonna be full. But if you just take it one bite at a time, and like you said, That’s definitely a great metaphor for life. Is that how long it took you? Four months? Barry: Yeah. It took about four months. I averaged about 90 miles a week. Just met a lot of wonderful people along the way. Mm-hmm. It just. The world is a little bit jaded, but there’s a lot of wonderful people out there that, that just want to help. I had people bring me brownies and milk. People stopped every day and asked if I needed a ride. You know, what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? You know, it’s raining and, ’cause I, I walked in a fair amount of rain and get in the car. I’m like, no, I’m good. Whatcha doing out here? So then I have to tell ’em the story and yeah. But you meet a lot of wonderful people. Mm-hmm. Gissele: Yeah. It made me think of like, gump when he started running and there was a whole bunch of people that were running behind him. Yeah. And they’re like, what are running for? Barry: You get [00:39:00] that, you get a lot of people. I think it was a lot easier to do. I’ve actually driven the route, just drove it here a couple months ago. A fair amount of it. There really wasn’t nearly as much traffic as there is on those roads today. Gissele: Oh wow. Barry: You know, two lane roads, you’re walking that whole thing and you. It’s, it’s busy now. It wasn’t nearly as busy 20 years ago. Gissele: Yeah. And was it all gravelly? Like some of those roads are usually gravelly where you walk, like there’s not paved. Barry: These were all paved roads. They were all two lane roads. I kind of wanted to walk on the freeway because it was a straighter shot, but I could not get the Department of Public Safety in any of the states to tell me. They wouldn’t kick me off the freeway. So I had to stay on two lane roads, which added a few miles to it. But you get to see a lot of country too when you do that. Mm-hmm. Gissele: I mean, Barry: you get to let your mind wander and Oh wow. Look at that over there. You know, when you [00:40:00] drive by stuff, you don’t really see it. You just doing 70 miles an hour down the road. You don’t see it. But it was, and I tell everybody. Like, if I can pull off something like this, imagine what you can do. I’m not all that clever. I it’s just one of those things that I tell students you could do something even cooler, I’m sure of it. Gissele: Hmm. How did it feel when you reached the end? It’s a very emotional when you got to the end, what was that like? Barry: You know, it’s funny you asked that question. So I wrote the book, it’s Kevin’s Last Walk. It’s on Amazon. But when I wrote the book, I wanted to get feedback and this is where I’m going with this. And I had a, a group of book club. I printed it out and let ’em read it and I said, okay, I need everybody to tell me one thing you didn’t like about the book. One of ’em said, you told me more about your shoe selection than you did about how you felt when you finished the walk. [00:41:00] Because I hadn’t really, it was a relief physically, but at that point I didn’t know what was next and people would ask me, what’s next for you? And I’m like, I don’t know. But it turned out that. Now I can go tell the story about going on the walk and all the things that led up to going on the walk. And it’s evolved a lot through the years because my wife Bev was really helpful because when you, with the books, if you ever write a book, don’t have any family or friends read it because they’ll read it and say it was great. Speaker 2: Hmm. Barry: Mm-hmm. That’s the same way my wife Bev would tell me. ’cause she would sit in the back of the room and tell me, now you lost the audience with that. You need to either redo it or get rid of it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Barry: And so that helped me to [00:42:00] refine. Things because you need people that’ll actually, you need people in your life that’ll actually give you honest criticism. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Barry: Right? And, she did. She’s like, you lost them with that. You know, and that’s, that’s how it’s evolved into what it is today. Gissele: Mm. That’s beautiful. Barry: Yeah. Gissele: Thinking about your children, I mean, you talk about how you and your wife sort of manage the grief. What were your children’s journeys in losing a sibling? And did your journey itself help them cope with a loss? Barry: I think it did. One of the things that we did that not every family does, is we didn’t stop talking about Kevin. Because sometimes when a someone loses a child, nobody wants to talk about it anymore, which to me, and again, I have a different perspective on this.[00:43:00] Yeah. That’s not healthy because that person was a part of your life for the last however many years. You don’t just stop talking about him. And I think that’s a healthy way to manage the grief. Right. we all talked about we’re not gonna play the blame game. Right. We talked about that stuff. My one daughter, he had, Kevin had left a message for her that night, and I don’t know if to this day if she turns her phone off at night. I think she might, I’ll have to ask her. ’cause the last time I talked about it, she said, you know, I haven’t turned my phone off since then. when she goes to bed, she doesn’t put it on silent. Because she missed that voicemail. Would she have done anything about it? Speaker 2: Yeah. I Barry: dunno. Right. But I think it’s kind of been probably been therapeutic for all of ’em, although I will say that I don’t know that any of ’em have read the book Gissele: If you had something to [00:44:00] say to young people about the dangers of binge drinking what would that be Barry: for me is to just know that it can happen to you. Nobody ever believes, including me, is that it’s ever gonna happen to you. I never believed anything would happen to him. And, you know, he had an attitude of, you know, 10 feet tall and bulletproof. Right? Most people do. It can happen to you. don’t worry about what other people think about you. Yeah. If you think it’s the right thing to do, then you should do it right. Don’t worry about it. Because like you said, those people are worried about themselves, not you. Gissele: [00:45:00] Yeah. Barry: Yeah. Gissele: Last few questions. So I ask all my guests what their definition of love or unconditional love is. Barry: For me you have to have humility to be able to really bond with somebody. I think you need to let go and not have to be right about everything. In marriage and in life. You know, if you become one of those people that has to be right about everything. That’s, that’s harder to love. But really loving everyone is about caring about them and setting an example and setting an example of love. Gissele: I think that’s what you’re doing with these presentations in the book and all the work that you do. I think coming at it from [00:46:00] a place of, I’m not telling you what to do, I’m just sharing my story in hopes that it will help you, that it’ll be of benefit to you. I think it’s the ultimate sort of act of love for your son. So last question. Where can people find you? Where can they find the book? Where can they work with you or listen to your presentations? Please share anything. Barry: The book is on Amazon. if you just search for my name, Barry Adkins, it should come up pretty close to the top. What I tell my big message is I still speak at schools. And I would love to come to your school. I just need to get connected and we’ll make it happen. On Facebook. It’s Kevin’s last walk. You can certainly message me there, or it’s http://www.kevinslastwalk.com. Just reach out. Most of the stuff I do is. I end up getting speaking opportunities through podcasts. Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Barry: People will reach out, or the podcaster Speaker 2: mm-hmm. Barry: Will [00:47:00] connect me with someone. And I’ve done a few of ’em that way, where we made the connections and we make it happen. and the big thing there is that I’m not looking to make money on this, Gissele, if I have to travel, there’s travel costs, but. There isn’t a big speaker fee on that. I just want to come and tell the story and I don’t want money to be in the way. Gissele: Yeah, Barry: bring me in. We’ll do it. Gissele: Sounds great. Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of Love and Compassion with Gissele. Thank you Barry for being on the show and sharing your wisdom. And thank you to everyone to tune in. Have a great day.

TRANSCRIPT video1290704010 Gissele : [00:00:00] Was Martin Luther King Jr. Right? Does love have the power to turn an enemy into a friend? Does it have the power to heal? We are creating an inspiring documentary called Courage to Love. The Power of Compassion explores the extraordinary stories of individuals who have chosen to do the unthinkable, love and forgive even those who have caused the most deep harm. Through their journeys, we will uncover the profound impact of forgiveness and love, not only on those offering it, but also on those receiving it. In addition, we’ll hear from experts who will explore whether loving compassion are part of our human nature and how we can bridge divides with those we disagree with. If you’d like to support our film, please donate at www MAI tt R-I-C-E-N-T-R e.com/documentary. [00:01:00] Hello and welcome to The Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking about not feeling good enough and what we can do to start feeling better. Our guest today is Sabrina Trobak Based out of Fort St. John BC Canada is a registered clinical counselor and author of the book, not Good enough, understanding Your Core Belief in Anxiety. She’s also a clinical supervisor, public speaker, and holds a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Before establishing her practice, she dedicated over 20 years to education, serving as a teacher, vice principal, school counselor across three school divisions. Sabrina, has extensive training in addressing trauma in its effects on daily life, [00:02:00] including anxiety and the core beliefs. Of not being good enough, not important, not valued. Her counseling agency Trobak. Holistic counseling aims to help individuals identify, challenge, and transform these core beliefs into being good enough, important enough, and value. Please join me in welcoming Sabrina. Hi, Sabrina. Sabrina: Hi. Nice to be here. It’s nice to meet you. Gissele : Oh, nice to meet you too. Thank you for being on the show. I was wondering if you could start by telling the audience what sort of led you to do this sort of work? Sabrina: I always wanted to be a teacher, you know, even in kindergarten, I was the kindergartner helper that helped other kids tie their shoes. Just was always something I wanted to do is be a teacher. Towards the end of my teaching career, I was a school counselor. And even as a teacher, I was a learning assistant teacher, so I did a lot of work in smaller groups, working more individually with students. So you get [00:03:00] to create a much deeper connection because you’re working one-on-one as opposed to a class size of, you know, 25, 30, 35, whatever it might be. And so then I went into counseling. Same thing. You really get to build that relationship. And then I went to a workshop on suicide. That was looking at suicide, more of a symptom of that core belief. Feeling not good enough. Not important, not valued. At the end of the workshop, I just thought, this is what I need to do. So the presenter, Tony Martins taught me his model of therapy. I quit teaching and started my own private practice, which really uses that as the focus point. So really going back and helping people understand and support and challenge that core belief. I started my own private practice in 2010. And within about six months I had a waiting list and I hated having to turn people away. The model I practice where we’re really addressing that core belief is a long-term model of [00:04:00] therapy. So a lot of my clients are with me a year and a half, two years, sometimes even longer. And so I decided to write the book not good enough as a way to provide a resource for people who can access counseling for whatever reason. Gissele : That’s beautiful. Thank you. And reflecting on your teaching experience, did you find that students were suffering from not feeling good enough? And do you think that’s changed? Sabrina: Students, teachers, parents, administration, support staff? Yeah, it’s kind of a worldwide thing. You know, I think it’s been there for a really long time. I think what we’re seeing a difference in is. People are talking more about mental health. So rather it being this thing that we just kept down and suppressed and pretended wasn’t an issue. Now we’re talking about it and the problem with that is we don’t necessarily know what to do with it now that we’re talking about it. So it seems like it’s kind of imploding all over the place. But you know, I think it’s been going on forever and [00:05:00] ever, and ever and ever. In fact, your core belief develops based on your parents’ core belief. If your parents’ core belief was not good enough, not important, not valued, they can’t really teach you anything else. So that means that was that generation. Well, where did they get it from? Their generation, and it just kind of goes on and on and on and on. Gissele : I really appreciated that you said that. ’cause that has been my experience that we are just now vocalizing the fact that we have these feelings. And to some people it’s like, we didn’t have these things before. That’s just simply not true. It’s just that now it’s feeling safer to talk about it. We want to address the issues and want to understand where this sort of came from. I wanted to really. Touch on the concept of not good enough. Because at least in my experience, I wasn’t that sort of person that criticized themselves. I didn’t say call myself a loser. My not good enough actually showed up in a very different way, in a [00:06:00] very covert way. I would say in terms of limiting my dreams or really negative thinking in terms of like catastrophizing. how does not feeling good enough show in different people? is there specific patterns or is it just very different depending on the person? Sabrina: I think the main pattern is it holds you back. it doesn’t allow you to feel content, feel peaceful, feel confident. That would be a common pattern, but what that can look like can vary significantly. Also, the degree of your core belief can play a significant role as well. You might be feeling, you know, actually pretty good enough, important and valued just once in a while. That not good enough, not important, not value comes up. All the way to the other where really everything, every thought you have is reinforcing and supporting that not good enough, not important, not valued. So it can look like a variety of different ways. We get clients who come into counseling for all kinds of different things. [00:07:00] Relationship issues, anxiety, depression. They can’t really sleep. They’re having nightmares. Pornography gambling, alcohol, drugs, cheating, lying you name it, all kinds of different things. What we say is. These aren’t really the problem. These are the symptoms of that core belief. If your core belief is not good enough, not important, not valued, you need to distract, but you’re gonna be going to things that allow you to distract that ultimately end up reinforcing that core belief because it gives you something to beat yourself up over. Hmm. So it can look like a variety of different behaviors For sure. Gissele : Do you ever see people with like health issues? Sabrina: Oh, all the time, for sure. Mm-hmm. Stomach issues, headaches, sore aches and pains. What happens when with that core belief not good enough? it creates a lot of self-doubt and insecurity. Anxiety is lack of [00:08:00] confidence. Not believing in yourself. You can handle something. A lot of people think anxiety is about the trigger, right? I have anxiety of driving on the highway. If it really was about driving on the highway, then no one would be driving on the highway. So it’s not about that. It’s about my belief and my ability to handle it. So if I believe I can handle driving on the highway, I’m not gonna have anxiety. If I can’t, I believe I can’t handle it. I will have anxiety. So that anxiety, that self-doubt, every time we go into anxiety, that fight, flight, freeze, adrenaline gets dumped into our body. That gives us that boost of energy to fight or to run away. But if I’m creating all of this anxiety in my head through my own thoughts, or it’s creating a sense of danger, I think I’m in danger, but I’m not really in danger. It’s the catastrophizing thoughts, the negative thoughts, the beating yourself up, the what if scenarios. Every time you go into that fight, flight, freeze, that adrenaline, that energy has to come from somewhere.[00:09:00] So what happens is it zaps all of our non-vital organs. Stomach, bladder, pancreas, kidney, liver, skin all of our non-vital organs get zap of energy. So if you have really high anxiety where you’re going into this fight, flight, freeze response, hundreds of times a day, you are going to see a physical impact. Absolutely. You know, if your stomach is being zapped a hundred times a day, don’t expect it to digest food properly. That’s, it’s just not gonna work. Gissele : Oh, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. That also got me to think about my experiences with trust. I used to have huge trust issues ’cause I was raised with like, my parents also had views and trauma and, it was when I realized that I didn’t trust myself to deal with people’s betrayal, not necessarily trusting the other people, that things shifted for me. It was me realizing that it was like, oh, this is about me. This isn’t about them. And their behavior, whatever they choose to do, is [00:10:00] entirely up to them. if they choose to betray me, well then that’s their choice. But it was about me. What are some things that can help someone become more aware of whether or not. They’re not feeling good enough. Sabrina: You know, I think that one, the one that you just kind of said where you don’t trust, you think you can’t trust in other people. Anything where you’re doing, where you’re focusing on others, blaming others caring to others, people pleasing for others, judging others, gossiping about others. All that time that you spend focusing on other people is all time. You’re not spending on yourself. Why is that? It’s usually because that core belief is there. We don’t like ourselves, we don’t wanna deal with it, so we’re focusing on all these outward things. As long as you’re fo focusing outward, there’s likely a bit of that core belief going there, and it’s not gonna get better until you focus more inward. Gissele : Mm, [00:11:00] yeah. To what extent do you feel like the systems we’ve created also perpetuate that, continue that belief? So not only the belief that kids were taught from their parents, but also when entering in these different systems that we have created. Sabrina: You know, I think a, a lot of our systems are very symptom based. So, you know, I have anxiety. Okay, we’ll do these things to deal with the, anxiety you have depression. Okay, we’ll do these things to deal with the depression. You have anger, okay, here’s some anger management strategies, rather than really looking at why is it there in the first place. What’s fueling those things? So our society in general often has a very bandaid, approach. Just put a bandaid on it. But if you have a wound and you just put bandaids on top of bandaids, on top of bandaids, that wound doesn’t just not heal. It gets worse, it gets more infected, it becomes more painful. It creates more stress, more anxiety. [00:12:00] And so we really need to take that bandaid off. But our society, you know, even medical right? I have a sore throat, they just address the throat rather than looking at is there something going on that’s feeding that right? Yeah. our, policing system is all very reactive and again, very kind of punitive and system based rather than really what’s going on here, what’s feeding all of this underlying stuff. Gissele : Yeah, and I think it comes from the separation from within ourselves, right? Like not really understanding or seeing ourselves holistically and our separation from each other and from nature. And I think that’s kind of why we have these systems. Sabrina: And I think part of why we even have that system is because if I deal with the surface doesn’t create a lot of emotion. Mm. If I go a bit deeper, ooh, that creates more emotion, vulnerability, fear. Abandoned. Lonely. I don’t like to feel those emotions, so keep it surface. Minimal emotions have to play. One of the [00:13:00] big things that drives that core belief and a big issue in our society is. We don’t really feel our emotions again, I think we’re getting better at talking about them, but now it’s almost like, oh, I’ve got emotion. I need to stop rather than I’ve got emotion. I need to feel it so I can move through it. And so that emotion piece is massive. We keep things very surface, so we don’t really have to feel. Gissele : Yeah, absolutely, as children, some of us were taught like, don’t feel or only limit the scope of emotions. You can feel these emotions are okay, these emotions are not. And this took me a long while to realize that the reason why my emotions were limited, at least by my parents and people in my life. They didn’t have the emotional girth to be able to hold space for my difficult feelings. So they did not teach me how to hold space for my difficult feelings and how to hold space for my kids’ difficult feelings. And so it was a journey where I really had to understand and it took me shifting my [00:14:00] perspective because I think originally I felt it was my fault, right? As I got older and became a parent, I realized, oh, they didn’t have the space, so they had to squash my emotions in order for them not to feel uncomfortable because they couldn’t cope with it. Sabrina: If I’m as a parent, if I don’t like to feel my emotions, now my child is feeling emotion, well that creates emotion in me, but I don’t wanna feel my emotions, so I need to shut my child down. It’s okay. It’s not really that big of a deal. It’s fine. You’ll get over it. You know, you’re worrying about nothing. Minimize, minimize, minimize, which is teaching your child shut down and suppress their emotions as well. Where did they learn it from? Right. You know, if we’re not learning how to feel our emotions, we are learning how to suppress our emotions. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. And then that comes out in a different way, in the worst parts of my journey in learning to love myself and, step into that worthiness was I realized a pattern I had some unexpected things [00:15:00] happen in my life that were shocking to me. they had such a traumatic effect that I would actually, with my negative thinking, create negative experiences so that I could control them. does that make sense? Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Gissele : but I wasn’t aware that I was doing that, So that uncertainty was very frightening for me and it’s very frightening for very many people. I’m just curious as to your thoughts about that. Sabrina: You know what I think uncertainty. Again, what feeds that is that core belief. So we can have all kind of experiences happening. If I don’t believe I can handle them there, there’s gonna be a lot of stress over all these situations. But if my core belief is good enough, important and valued, whatever comes up, I think o okay. I got it. this isn’t gonna be easy. This is gonna be a lot of work, but I can handle it. I can figure it out. But when there’s that uncertainty and that self-doubt often, rather than again, working inward on what do I need to do to build my confidence? We work look outward on how do [00:16:00] I control these things. And of course you can’t control anything but yourself. So you may have these things under control for a period of time, but eventually things are gonna collapse and then you can go, oh, see, no one cares reinforces and support’s not good enough. So as long as you’re using control as a way to try to. Try to kind of handle situations. It, it’s not gonna be highly successful. It’s about within yourself, building that confidence within yourself. Mm-hmm. Gissele : What has been your experience with surrender? I have found in my life and my experience that the more I surrender, the less resistance I have to things, the less I need to control. the more things work out, sort of in a very smooth way. does surrender have a role Sabrina: what we kind of refer to it as is responsibility. Do I have responsibility in this? If I do, then what’s my role? If I don’t, then it’s okay to me, for me to just remove [00:17:00] myself from it. And so we wanna look at that. if I have something that I do need to be accountable, I will take accountability for my part. But I’m not gonna worry about taking accountability for everyone else’s part. And if I have someone in my life who refuses accountability over and over and over again, then I need to learn from that and realize my expectations for this person need to look very different. Maybe I choose not to have them in my life. Maybe I do. But those boundaries look a bit different rather than constantly trying to get them to take responsibility. I realize that that’s not my place. I need to just figure out me. That’s it. Hmm. Gissele : Are there any sort of behaviors that don’t outwardly seem as issues of not being good enough but are or might be? Sabrina: Busyness is a big one. You know, it’s almost a bit of a bragging rights in our society to be busy, right? Oh, I’m so busy. I got this activity, I got this, I got my kids, I got this, I got this, I got [00:18:00] this. Busyness is not good. Mm-hmm. Busyness is a distraction. As long as I’m, again, running around focusing on all these things, you know, out in front of me, that’s all time I can use to avoid and distract from what’s really going on within me. So we often see that as a pretty significant symptom. Same with control. Micromanaging. A lot of people may see that as a healthy coping strategy, but it really is not a healthy coping strategy. You know, when we look at coping strategies, one of the things we talk about is, you know, a coping strategy in itself is not really healthy or unhealthy. It’s how I choose to use it, right? Mm-hmm. So if I go out and have a drink of wine with, you know, a couple girlfriends once every couple weeks or whatever, it’s probably a healthy coping strategy. But if I’m drinking because I’m feeling emotions and I need to numb everything, and I’m drinking way too much, and it’s damaging relationships. Then it’s more of an [00:19:00] unhealthy coping strategy. So we really need to look at why are we using it, if we’re using it so that at the end we feel good, we feel content. It makes us feel proud of how we’re handling things. It’s allowing us to feel our emotions sort through things. Probably healthy coping strategy. Unhealthy usually is used to the extreme, either way too extreme or we shut it off and don’t do it at all. Like exercise Now I’m not exercising at all. And so it’s used to the extreme. It’s used to escape and avoid dealing with things. It’s used to numb our emotions so we don’t have to feel our emotions. It ultimately, after we do it, we feel guilt, bad regret, reinforcing and supporting. Not good enough, not important, not valued. So rather than looking specifically at the behavior, we need to look at why am I using it? That’s gonna give you more idea of which core belief you are reinforcing. Gissele : So what do you think the role of compassion is in [00:20:00] helping somebody go through the difficult emotions? Because as a person who has done it, who sat with probably the most challenging emotions that she has faced, a lot of the fears, it can feel really overwhelming. What helps people sort of titrate or stay in it long enough to get to the other side of it? Sabrina: You know, I think like most things, it’s really about practice. The more you practice it, the more comfortable it becomes. You know, with a lot of my clients that are in their thirties, forties, fifties, you know, my oldest clients are in their seventies. They’ve spent decades avoiding feeling emotion. And so how do you start to feel emotion where that doesn’t feel absolutely overwhelming? ’cause most of them are full up with emotion. So the thought of feeling emotion is just too much. So we always go back and start very, very small. You know, I have a emotions list on my website, but really if you Google Emotions list, you’ll, you’ll find a hundred of them. I tell my clients, print them off, [00:21:00] put them all over your house. Then when you start feeling angry, overwhelmed, just kind of off like something’s bothering you, pick up the emotion list and just read through it. The emotions that you are feeling, you’ll recognize. So now you’re starting. Don’t even have to say it out loud, just read it. So you allow yourself to feel the emotion just a little tiny bit. Doesn’t feel quite as overwhelming. Then after you’ve done that a few times, then you can say the words out loud. ’cause even saying sad out loud creates a bit of sadness. So now I’m feeling a bit more confident. I keep using that for a while, then I get to that place where I can just stop and think about what I’m feeling in the moment. But it takes time and practice. You gotta build that up. So I think a big part of compassion is. Confidence. I have to believe in myself. I can handle being compassionate to myself and to others. Once we build that confidence, then that compassion almost just seems to more just kind [00:22:00] of naturally flow because we can let our own defenses down and really just be present and in the moment with ourselves or with others. Gissele : so thank you for that. I really appreciated that. what are some of the things or signs that will help them know that they’re changing, for example, that they’re starting to feel more good enough? Because I think sometimes we are very good at saying, these are the signposts of things that aren’t working, but what are some signposts of things where people are like, yeah, you know what? Things are changing. You’re changing. Sabrina: You don’t feel as stressed at the end of the day. Mm-hmm. You’re sleeping a little bit better, you smile a bit more. Mm-hmm. You are open to other people’s opinions, thoughts. criticism, feedback you’re not as defensive. You’re able to kind of just listen to what someone else is saying. You’re getting better at feeling your emotions and sorting through your emotions. You are [00:23:00] using more healthier coping strategies that at the end of it, you feel proud of yourself. Right. Whether it’s going for a walk or listening to music or doing some journaling, at the end of it, you feel like, wow, I, you know, I, I handled that really well. You are more patient, you are more calm. you are more open to other people’s suggestions. All those kind of things are suggesting you believing more in yourself. You can handle more. That means that core belief is shifting. You’re willing to take risks, try new things, listening to podcasts, different things like that where you’re stepping outta your comfort zone, creating new opportunities and experiences. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. Somebody that I was talking to was saying that they’re gonna take two things that make them uncomfortable, like two risks a day. I thought that was pretty cool. Like a pretty cool idea to become more, much more comfortable with discomfort, right? Sabrina: For sure. [00:24:00] Remember, anxiety is lack of confidence, not believing in yourself. You can handle something, so every time you try something new. There should be more anxiety because it’s something you haven’t done before. Mm-hmm. Right. Even just building your confidence in taking risks and trying something new where now, oh, it’s scary, but I know I can handle it. ’cause I’ve stepped outta my comfort zone many times as well. One of the things we say in this model of therapy is nothing really stays the same. Yeah. So if you are not challenging and stepping outta your comfort zone, it’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Gissele : Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that. I’ve had many conversations with different people in my life and one of the things it’s like. I don’t like to say pick your hard but it is sort of like that if you face your, difficult emotions now, later on, it gets easier. The more that you choose from fear, the more you constrict and constraint, the smaller and smaller and smaller your world becomes. And it [00:25:00] feels much more difficult to do it. Later on do you find that your older clients tend to struggle a little bit more or is it just sort of buried? Sabrina: Well, okay. That’s a good question. So a lot of it is buried, but once we start opening it up, then yeah. And one of the things that the older clients have to recognize and acknowledge. Is the hurt they’ve caused to their adult children, their grandchildren, maybe even their great grandchildren, whereas someone who’s in their twenties and thirties, they haven’t had nearly enough time to hurt as many people. And so there’s not as much of that kind of responsibility piece with it, for sure. you know, hurt people, hurt people. So if I was hurting, the chances that I did things to hurt other people is really, really high. Part of the counseling that we do is we need to acknowledge it and sort through that. ’cause as long as I’m carrying a bunch of stuff where I’ve hurt other people, why would I believe I have the right to a happy content life? it’s not [00:26:00] balanced. So I need to deal with all those things that I’ve done to hurt people in order to really, truly heal. Hmm. Gissele : Yeah. And that’s very powerful. Shame and guilt can feel really overwhelming, right? people that don’t know how to regulate their emotions will do almost anything to avoid the feeling of shame, right? Because underneath there there’s a belief that you won’t be loved. And so what helps people work through the whole concept of shame? Sabrina: You know, I think shame loves not good enough and not good enough loves shame. They just feed off of each other for sure. And so it often is this thing that we’ve done that we feel bad about doing, and rather than just acknowledging it and addressing it, and understanding why we made the choices that we did. We just hold onto it. and as long as you’re carrying a lot of shame, you’re not gonna feel happy and content in your life. they just don’t balance out. Shame is significant. So one of the things you wanna do is, first, manage some of those other emotions. [00:27:00] Get better at feeling, you know vulnerability, loved, connected powerless, vulnerable, unheard and then start looking into the shame after you’ve had some experience feeling some of those other ones. If you start off with shame it’s almost too overwhelming and we just end up shutting it off. Then you have to acknowledge and allow yourself to feel that, take responsibility for the actions that created that shame, and then you can start to kind of move on. You know, guilt’s another one. a lot of us were raised with parents who used guilt as a parenting coping strategy. So it’s ingrained in our head that we just automatically feel guilty about everything because that’s how our parents tried to control our behaviors. So that’s a really ingrained thinking pattern more than an emotion. It is a thinking pattern. Mm-hmm. The good thing about that is we can go back and change it. The definition we use of guilt is [00:28:00] not living up to someone’s expectations, usually our own. Hmm. So once I challenge those expectations and change the expectations, the guilt goes down. So, for example, if I was always taught, you never say no, you please everyone don’t ever wanna upset or make anyone else unhappy. That’s my pattern of thinking, sacrifice to make everyone else happy. But now I’m thinking I wanna have a voice. I wanna start saying, no, I wanna start taking care of myself. Well, those collide. Yeah. I can’t say no and make everyone else happy. So I have to change and adjust my expectations. So my expectation now is I need to be respectful when I say no, but it is okay if I have a voice and it is inconvenience or awkward for the other person. That’s for them to figure out. Now as I tell myself that I’m not gonna feel guilty because I’m expecting that this may be uncomfortable for them, and that’s okay. That [00:29:00] guilt dissipates guilt’s more of a thought than it really is an emotion. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Yeah. You mentioned the difference between thoughts and emotions. And, and this is just my perspective, I usually find that. All emotions begin with a thought. So you usually have a thought first, which you have interpreted, and then some somehow have a big emotion about or not. Right? And so is it accurate that The habits that are formed from just your thoughts are easier to manage than ones that are based on thoughts and emotions. Sabrina: That’s how emotions are created. So what happens is we have a thought that creates a chemical reaction that we then feel physiologically in our body creating the emotion. Our thoughts create our emotions. So the good thing about that is if I’m feeling really anxious and I challenge and control my thoughts, the anxiety goes away. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Sabrina: Right? If I’m [00:30:00] feeling really angry and I can stop and go, what are my thoughts? And I can realize, oh yeah, those thoughts are gonna create anger, challenge, and change those thoughts, the anger goes away. So neutral thoughts gonna create neutral emotions. But if we’re having thoughts of people hurting us, of feeling taken advantage of feeling you know, of being unappreciated, that is going to create emotions that we then feel physiologically in our body. Gissele : Mm-hmm. you mentioned that whole concept of not good enough. Where does self-love fit into the whole concept of good enough? Sabrina: the more you feel good enough, important and valued, the more you feel loved and content, right? Our kind of end goal is that contentment. You just feel peace within yourself. you love yourself. I’m always a bit cautious around the word love. Because it has been warped in many situations. Yeah. I’ve heard [00:31:00] clients tell me love means taking abuse. Mm-hmm. Love means sacrificing myself to not cause any, issues. Love means keeping secrets. Yeah. Right. Then we have the other extreme where we say, I love you now almost too much. It’s almost like, hi. Like I’ll say, oh, you know I love you. Oh, and I love spaghetti. Well, Gissele : yeah. Sabrina: So what does that really mean? So I think we need to even be aware of what is my definition of love? Is it a healthy definition or is it more of an unhealthy definition? And then what? What else does that look like? Contentment. Peace, calm thoughts. You know it, you’ve gotta define it. love is almost a bit of that symptom word. We need to go deeper. We’ve gone through generation, you know, my parents were never said, I love you. Never said it at all. and didn’t have to, didn’t create any emotions. But now we still don’t wanna say feel emotions, so now we [00:32:00] say, I love you a thousand times. So it really still doesn’t create a lot of emotion. Mm-hmm. So I find that balance and really be careful of what that word means to us, for sure. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that. And so using whatever different term you’re gonna use, as long as you’re getting at the same thing which is about thriving, I think is really important. You mentioned that anxiety is lack of confidence. What’s depression? Sabrina: they go together in a cycle, right? Mm-hmm. So anxiety is that fight, flight, freeze on guard, ready to attack. Well, you can only do that for so long and it’s exhausting. So then we kind of slip into the depression where I just don’t have to feel anything. I can curl up in a bit of a ball. I don’t have to deal with anything, but then that kind of passes I feel a bit better. So I come out of that, but now I’m in that fight flight freeze again. So we often see depression and anxiety often working together in a cycle for sure. Depression, you know, is [00:33:00] another way of reinforcing and supporting that not good enough if I feel not good enough. Not important, not valued. What’s the point? Why bother? So, you know, just like we talked about how that core belief can present in alcohol, drugs, gambling, anxiety is one. Depression is one as well. Gissele : I also wanted to emphasize the fact that, you know, the work that you’re doing is focusing on people feeling good enough from within. Many people try to find it from outside, whether it be through overworking, like you mentioned, through acquiring all the things they think they should have or by acquiring love from outside. What sort of the mindset shift that needs to happen for people to realize that? It’s something that they can give to themselves from within versus from without. Because if you look at this world, everything in this world that we teach is get it from the external. Sabrina: if my core belief is not good enough, not important, not [00:34:00] valued, I don’t believe I have much to offer even to myself. But if I get it in a car, a big house, if I get a new dirt bike, if I have the best, whatever it is mm-hmm. Then I’ll be good enough. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Sabrina: As long as you’re looking externally, you’re not going to find it. But if I don’t believe in myself, I don’t really believe that I have it within even myself. So I think that’s one of the first stages, is really becoming more aware of where is my core belief at. How much do I really give myself that opportunity to feel good enough, important and valued. Once you become aware, even just becoming aware starts to develop that core belief good enough, important and valued. ’cause now you know what’s there and you’re willing to challenge it. Honestly, if I don’t think I can even handle doing that, I’m not going to. So once we even start to become aware of it, that core belief is shifting. Once that core belief shifts, then we can continue to build on it little tiny step at a time where we start to find more of our own worth and [00:35:00] value within ourselves. As we do that, we just naturally start to kind of look more inward and don’t worry so much about the outside stuff. Hmm. Yeah, yeah. Gissele : But the journey towards. Shifting from not feeling good enough to feeling good enough can sometimes feel very challenging, right? Because you are dealing with difficult emotions. What are some of the things that keep people moving forward? Sabrina: it can be absolutely terrifying, you know? Mm-hmm. I’ll say to my clients, going through and challenging and changing this core belief is going to be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. The only thing maybe harder is living the way you’ve been living. Yeah. Right. But the only way to really keep is you gotta let all that stuff out. Well, letting all that stuff out sucks. Mm-hmm. It is lot fun. It’s terrifying. It’s a lot of work. It’s exhausting, but going very, very [00:36:00] slow helps you build confidence so you feel more in yourself. You can handle it. Reminding yourself that to heal, I gotta let this out. The more you let it out, the better it is. You are never going to feel emotion that you aren’t carrying. So if there’s emotion there, let it out. Mm-hmm. Every time you do that, it gets a little bit easier and you feel a bit better. Right? Mm-hmm. We have a good cry. We always feel a bit of a sense of relief the next day. Continuing to do that. They work hand in hand. So as you practice, you’re learning more, you’re understanding more, but you’re also feeling better, feeling more content, feeling more good enough, important and valued, feeling more pride. So they feed off of each other and you can continue to move forward. But they’re definitely, I know for my clients, every single client, there are days where they think I don’t wanna do this. Like, what’s the point? You said I was gonna get better? I feel worse than I did before. Because you’re in it, right? Part of moving and getting healthy [00:37:00] is you may have a bit of an idea of what you wanna work towards, but you haven’t figured out how to get there yet. That is frustrating, but you have to keep practicing and practicing and practicing hope. You know, I think hope is okay for a period of time, but we need much more than hope. You know, if I’m going hiking in the Outback and I say to my guide. Do you know where we’re going? And he says, I hope so. I’m probably not going with them. Right. And so hope can can get us over that lip a little bit, but we need to have a plan. We need to have practice behaviors so we know what we’re doing, not just hoping. Gissele : Mm-hmm. And you know, as you were talking, I was thinking People who have done hard things, the people that overcame, you know, the Holocaust, they saw themselves beyond that experience. They might have died, but they needed to see themselves beyond that experience. So there is an element of belief that you can do it. There is that element [00:38:00] of desire to say, I don’t know how, I don’t know when, when I’m gonna get through this, this hurdle. What do you think the role of affirmations are in helping people gain more confidence and feel more good enough? Sabrina: You know what, again, it can be a surface level thing, right? I can tell myself a thousand times that I am good enough, but if I don’t believe it, it’s not going to do any good. So what we talk about with all those kind of. Tools is, it really is just a tool. It’s up to you how much you wanna apply it. So I can have an affirmation that I say, I, you know, I stick on a sticky note on my bathroom and I see it every day. But we all know after about five days, we don’t even really notice it there anymore. It’s not, gonna be of benefit, but if I’m using that affirmation to remind myself, to reframe my thinking, to challenge myself, to see things differently. Then they can have an impact. So it’s not so much about the tool, it’s about how [00:39:00] am I using it? Am I using it to make changes to believe in myself or am I using it to actually beat myself up? Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. Are there any other tools that you think that are helpful in helping people start on their journey? Sabrina: I think there’s two really important pieces. First one is breathing. So when we’re going into that fight, flight, freeze response, and we’ve got adrenaline being dumped into our body, we also have a chemical called cortisol being dumped into our brain. Cortisol stops us from thinking we can’t use logic and reason, understand consequences feel our emotions. It has a massive impact in our brain. Breathing stops that fight, flight, freeze response from happening. So if I’m in danger, we often hold our breath shallow breathing. When I take nice deep breaths, my brain goes. Oh, we’re not in danger. And so it is a really effective tool in helping to stop and [00:40:00] break that fight, flight, freeze response from happening. What I usually say to my clients is don’t wait until your anxiety is a 10 outta 10 to breathe. You definitely need to Breathe outta 10, outta 10, but start breathing regularly throughout the day. It just brings everything back down. So breathing is a really, really effective coping strategy for sure. But the other one is make a plan. Remember, anxiety is a lack of confidence. Well, if I have a plan of how I’m gonna handle something, I’m going to feel way more confident in handling it. So a lot of times we have those worry thoughts, those what if scenarios, we just let them repeat over and over and over and over and over in our head. We say, take that thought, write it down on a piece of paper and figure out what do I do if this happens? Once we have a plan, we realize, oh, I could handle it. That anxious thought goes away. If it’s still there a little bit, it’s gonna be much less. But then you [00:41:00] just remind myself, no, I just do A, B, and C, and I would handle it. Even taking that to worst case scenario. Right. So, you know, let’s say I’m working with a student who is worried about failing a test. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Sabrina: So we can make a plan about what do you do to not fail the test. But that’s not the worry thought. The worry thought is what if I fail? So what if, if you fail your test, what do you do? You talk to the teacher, you know, you see if you can rewrite, you study more for the next ones. You do really well on your presentations so that you are bringing your markup, okay, so I can handle failing this test. Worst case scenario, what if I fail the whole course? So what do you do? You retake it. Maybe you drop out and you start working. Even the worst case scenario we could handle. So once we start making a plan, we can really help believe in ourselves more that we would handle it. [00:42:00] Might not be fun, might not be great. I probably won’t even be very graceful in doing it, but it will happen. We are way more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. You. Think about all the experiences you’ve been through in your life. You’ve survived them ’cause you’re here now. Mm-hmm. We need to stop and look at that. I’ve handled all these things. Can I handle failing a test? Yep. Probably. Mm-hmm. Won’t be fun. Mm-hmm. It’s gonna create emotion that I don’t wanna feel, but yeah, I can handle it. Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Sabrina: So I think those are two really important strategies. Breathing and make plans. Mm-hmm. Gissele : Is there a level of detachment that should happen when you create a plan? during the time. When I was challenged the most creating that plan might’ve introduced a lot of resistance in me if it didn’t come through the way that I had planned. And so I think that would’ve generated a little bit more fear in me. Is there a level of detachment or maybe different options that would’ve helped and [00:43:00] the other thing that would probably have arisen in me was well, I’m feeding that experience. I’m saying that that’s gonna happen. Sabrina: Yeah. Right. Well, well, and the problem is, you probably are already thinking that’s gonna happen a thousand times in your head. Yeah. So let’s just acknowledge it and say, okay, what do, if it happens? Mm-hmm. With a lot of our anxious thoughts, they never even really happen. So we don’t even have to put the plan into place. But in knowing we have a plan builds confidence, which means those anxious thoughts are going to go down. You know, when we first start doing it, well, I think even after we’ve been doing it for a really long time. We can have a plan and the chances that it’s gonna go exactly the way our plan is, is laid out not very high. That’s just not the way life works. Mm-hmm. So the first few ones can be, frustrating, but after you’ve made plan 10, 15, 20 times, you start realizing, okay, I can adapt that piece and I can challenge that piece. And I never even thought about that, but I figured out how to handle it because it’s not even really about the plan. It’s about [00:44:00] building confidence, helping me realize I got this, I can handle it, I can figure it out. And so over time, that happens. But the, the plan is often more thought based than emotion based. It doesn’t have to be, but often it is. It’s more, you know, I’m thinking through more than I am really feeling through. Gissele : Hmm. I was just thinking of a quote that I had heard about how people with good mental health are people that are the most flexible. Flexible and flowing who are willing to go with life. It’s not that life doesn’t give you adversity or things don’t happen. it’s the willingness to be flexible and the ability to bend. And it really is the people that are the most in resistance and struggle the most, or the people that are want to control and are not. Able to adjust, Sabrina: right? More. My core belief is good enough. The more confident I’m gonna be. So the more, no matter what comes up, I got it. I’ll figure it out. Core belief, not [00:45:00] good enough. More insecurity. I don’t trust in myself that I can handle any of these things, so it’s gotta go exactly like plan. Mm-hmm. And so it’s, it’s building that we, you know, we don’t want that plan to be like a routine where it has to go A, B, C, D. It’s more about how do I handle these kind of scenarios and building that confidence rather than creating more rigid plans. For sure. Gissele : Yeah. And that flexible and flowing can make you feel like. Right. Because when you stop controlling things in your life, there’s an openness, there’s a sense of, oh, I don’t have to do all of that. I don’t have to control life anymore. I can just allow it. And that doesn’t mean that things aren’t gonna happen. You know, there’s a difference between pain and suffering, right? Everybody experiences pain, whether we choose to. Suffer is optional. Like when I think about my experiences, many times I [00:46:00] experienced pain, but I was the one who was causing myself suffering by repeating those same thoughts and constricting and all of that stuff. But it’s hard for us to acknowledge that we are doing that to ourselves. Right? Right. Sabrina: It’s that responsibility piece. I think same with the word stress, right? People often talk about how everything is so stressful. You create your own stress. If you go into it thinking, I can’t handle this, yeah, you’re gonna be stressed out. But if you go in feeling confident, knowing that no matter what comes, you’ll figure it out and you will handle it. It’s not as stressful. there are varying things for sure, something really significant happen. It may create more stress than other things, but if we’re really stressed all the time, you are creating your own stress by how you are thinking about how you’re gonna handle the event. Not the event itself. Gissele : Hmm. Yeah. Thank you. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to share where can people find you? Where can they work [00:47:00] with you? Tell us a little bit more about your book. Sabrina: Sure. So my book is not good enough. Understanding Your Core Belief and Anxiety. It’s available on Amazon’s. It is a handbook. So you’re reading about core belief and in general, but then you do an activity where you’re applying that information to your own personal experiences. So it’s a, a book about self-reflection, learning more, understanding more about your core belief, and then how is it, you know, showing up in your life. And then what do you do? What are some things you can do to challenge yourself? To start to feel more and more good enough, important and valued. I am also on on most social media. I am Sabrina Trobak on YouTube and on LinkedIn. I am NGE. So not good enough. Understand. NGE_Trobak on Instagram and NGE_CoreBelief on TikTok. And then I’m on Facebook as well in [00:48:00] Trobak holistic counseling. Mm-hmm. Wonderful I have a website, http://www.trobakholistic.org. On my website is a page to my book. It’s got a blog section, which is just short, two to four minute reads about everything. Also got a link, a page that links all of the podcast interviews that I’ve done as well. Gissele : Hmm. Beautiful. So one final question. I ask this of all my guests. What is your definition of love? Sabrina: I, I would say my definition of love is. Probably just one word. Acceptance. Mm-hmm. Acceptance of self and others. And, and sometimes that means giving love and sometimes that means moving on. Gissele : Hmm. I like that. I like that. Even acceptance of situations. Right. If you have the confidence to believe that you can overcome anything, it’s just acceptance. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Sabrina, for being on the show and for sharing your wisdom with [00:49:00] us, and thank you to those who tuned into love and compassion with Gissele Stay tuned for another episode.

TRANSCRIPT Gissele : [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our world. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more amazing content. Today we’re talking to Krysti Beckett, who’s a passionate plus size personal trainer and pelvic fitness specialist. Her goal is to get moms to move with confidence and build strength at any size without worrying about their size or weight. Krysti resides in Burford, Ontario with her husband, three children and beloved dog Ozzy. Please join me in welcoming Krysti Hi Krysti. Krysti Beckett: Hi. Thanks so much for having me. Gissele : No, thank you for being with us. I wanted to ask you if you could tell the audience how you got started in this business that you’re in. Krysti Beckett: Yeah, I mean, as a young person, fitness was not [00:01:00] really on my radar. I’ve been a plus size my whole life, but I actually was a nanny in my early twenties and one of the women I was a nanny for had a fitness business and she said, you know, you’d be really good at this. So I kind of started doing admin work and then I got certified as an instructor and really like, found movement that I liked. ’cause I think for a lot of women I grew up. Just doing fitness, like you exercise to be skinny. And it had to be hard and it had to be uncomfortable. But I kind of fell in love with it, trying different things and decided that that was the career path I would take. So I became a personal trainer and I kind of did follow the grain for a long time with the fitness industry and selling weight loss and teaching people how to basically always be on the journey to lose weight And then I kind of understood and, and saw some research that showed that [00:02:00] most diets are actually designed to fail. That’s how we make our money. And started to learn more about. The benefits of strength training for longevity to relieve pain. the benefits for your bones, all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the scale whatsoever. And through that, also becoming a mother at the, around the same time learning about pelvic health. So as a pelvic fitness specialist, I’m working with women to overcome things like pain, leaking, painful sex something called prolapse, where your pelvic floor, if it’s not supportive enough, the organs can actually descend from your body. And it’s actually fairly common, but it’s, it’s something we just don’t talk about enough. Gissele : Mm mm I love everything you just said. Krysti Beckett: Thanks. Gissele : The first thing is really that, you know, reflecting on as a society we’re very plus size phobic, right? Like we, we think that skinny is the place to [00:03:00] be in. When you think about. You know how much we try to get everyone to fit in a box, right? Even like plastic surgery, everything. Everybody has the same nose, everybody has the same face, everybody has to have the same body, and that is such a disservice. What sort of messaging did you see around the fitness industry about people embracing their own sort of like body shape? Krysti Beckett: So unfortunately, I think the industry as a whole doesn’t, if you were to Google Fitness, if you were to Google Gym, you’ll find young, white, thin bodies. that’s the general representation that comes to the fitness industry. But it’s interesting because first of all, we white people, I mean, I’m a white person. We are the global minority. It’s people of color, the global majority, and yet this [00:04:00] industry has only reflected that in, you know, visually especially it’s become an aesthetic rather than about health. There are certainly other professionals like myself that serve as health at any size or fitness at any size, but there’s comparatively very few of us. Gissele : Hmm. You just got to triggering in my head, when I think about fitness and I think about what you were just talking about, I envision sort of the Lululemon. Yes. Even like yoga has sort of been sort of taking over. ’cause yo yoga’s supposed to be a spiritual practice as well as a physical one. Krysti Beckett: Mm-hmm. Gissele : Right? But then you, and then I’m not trying to judge the Lululemon wearing. Yoga people. It’s just that, you know, I sort of envisioning how everyone’s trying to fit that mold. And if you don’t have workout gear, that makes you look acceptable. I was one of [00:05:00] those, I never had workout gear that would be presentable, right? I half the time didn’t remember to shave my legs And so, yeah, the messaging that people are receiving is that they’re not good enough, right? Krysti Beckett: A hundred, a hundred percent. And to tie in into what you just mentioned a lot of traditional practices that belong to other cultures. Like yoga have been whitewashed. And so there’s this, I can’t even think of the comedian’s name, but she is East Indian and she has this hilarious bit where she talks about like, if you are rushing to yoga, you are doing it wrong. The whole purpose of yoga is to slow down and restore yourself, and it’s something people do in their pajamas. But in our western culture, it’s people hustling to get to class and they’re taking their fancy yoga mat and they have to, like you said, the Lululemon [00:06:00] clothes. And it’s you know, on, on Instagram, especially when we see these influencers, they’re very thin. They’re wearing all the fancy gear and, and doing the very extreme poses, handstands and floating and, it’s incredible the things we can do with our bodies, but it’s also an, that’s an ableist perspective. Most of the population cannot move their body that way, could they? With training and display, I mean, it’s very possible, but for most people, that’s not what their bodies do, and that’s not necessarily what fitness looks like for them. Gissele : Yeah. And I was just contemplating on the fact that there have been now yoga studios that do drinking and yoga, right? Krysti Beckett: Oh yeah. Gissele : And so they do drinking and yoga, and then they do like the puppy and that, that’s all great. Like if that’s what you wanna do. But like you said, like, are we abiding by the true essence of [00:07:00] the practice? Right? Right. And are we creating environments that are. Open to different body shapes, different sizes, and let me know your thoughts about this, because I always thought these sorts of things are just a mirror of us, how we reject ourselves, right? plastic surgery these are billions of dollars. So these are people that are realizing or thinking that they’re not enough, that they need to look a certain way. the diet industry is billions of dollars. Ozempic, I’m interested in all your thoughts. Krysti Beckett: Yeah. I, so to start off, culturally, we are people that expect instant everything. I mean, we no longer wonder or search for information in our brain. Like, what was that actor’s name again? Or what was that thing that happened last week in the news? We instantly can pull up our phones and we can get the [00:08:00] answer in seconds. And so when it comes to something like our bodies, everything takes time, everything. And so to expect that you can change your body, particularly in appearance instantaneously, is not realistic. And. Unfortunately, I think a lot of pressure is put on us. One of the ways that the diet indu industry really messes with our heads is before and after pictures. And though the intention maybe, and I did, I used them for a time as a personal trainer. The, the intention was to show if you put in the work, you will get results. But that’s not what it ends up doing. What it ends up doing is telling our brains, here’s a body ideal. Here’s what you have. It’s not enough, it’s not worthy. Here’s what you can [00:09:00] have that is worthy. You will be a better person. We will respect you more. We will see you as far more valuable if you have a smaller, more chiseled body. And with Ozempic it’s such a weird time for us. In the states, especially celebrities can market pharmaceuticals. So we have Gissele : mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: These beautiful people Gissele : mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Who may or may not be using the drug being paid to market it. So using their influence in order to sell it. And I’ve had three clients that were on ozempic, two of them for diabetes but all three with the goal of weight loss. All three of them women in their fifties and no, maybe sixties have come off it because even though they did say it did help them reduce their eating, they found that they were always overeating and they were always thinking about food. They all reported low [00:10:00] energy and muscle loss. And no one is talking about this because especially after 50 perimenopause, when your estrogen drops, it is harder to keep your muscle, let alone, to grow it, to make more muscle. Mm-hmm. With ozempic. You are making it astronomically harder because it’s actually removing some of that muscle. And above and and above that there are other things that people are reporting. It’s hard, it’s hard to really know what the, the landscape is going to look like. Yeah. Over the next decade or two because it is so popular and seeing the effects. But every single medication out there, and I’m not knocking medication. I have used medication, you know that is a discussion between you and your doctor. But that discussion should always, always include the risks. And there are always risks to medication. You have to make that decision with your doctor. Is the risk worth it? Are [00:11:00] you going to get significant benefits to improve your health and your life? Right? But going on Ozempic because you saw a celebrity selling it because you think it’s going to solve all your problems with weight loss. I don’t know. I don’t know that it is. Gissele : Yeah. And I think one of the things that you just mentioned, which triggered in my head, it’s one thing to take a pill to help yourself, like as a stepping stone, But if it’s impacting your ability to create healthy habits, that you can continue beyond that pill, I think that’s where I start to wonder whether or not it’s really helping. Right? So if you take for example, something that can help you, manage your pain so you can start walking and out there and getting more physically fit, Krysti Beckett: right? Gissele : That makes sense, right? You wanna manage the, the symptom in the moment. But if it’s impacting your ability in the long term, and you and I have chatted before about Blue Zones [00:12:00] and about the importance of movement, right? And so if that’s preventing you from moving and creating those long-term habits, it’s would be concerning to me that that’s an option. Krysti Beckett: I think even, and speaking from experience with you know, having seasons of debilitating mental health, there were periods of time where I did need medication to function. I did need medication to get out of bed to be able to think clearly without I go back to the word debilitating, right? There are seasons of our lives where we need this, and of course there are, you know, lifelong chronic struggles where people are dependent on medication, and I’m so grateful that we live in a time where so much is available, but again, we have to have those discussions with knowledgeable professionals to know what we’re getting into because it can, it can lead [00:13:00] to alternatives that maybe we weren’t anticipating or thinking about. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah. I just wanna clarify for my listeners, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to change, right? Like, so there’s nothing wrong with, you know, wanting to be thin or wanting to be plus size or wanting to be fitter. Mm-hmm. It’s the way that it is marketed, the way that the messaging is you are not enough. Krysti Beckett: Mm-hmm. If Gissele : you are not thin, you’re not enough. If you don’t look a certain way. I think that’s probably the most damaging thing, that we accept those messages and then change ourselves because it is okay to love and accept yourself and choose to change. Krysti Beckett: Absolutely. Gissele : Right. And say, you know what, because I, I dye my hair, I just like my hair darker right now. It doesn’t mean I, I don’t like my gray hair. And sometimes I grow up my roots quite a bit. I’m not rejecting myself either way. I [00:14:00] just have a preference, but it’s not gonna make or break me if I don’t go a month or two months without dying my hair. what has been your experience around the women that you have supported about their worthiness, around weight issues? Krysti Beckett: Yeah, it’s interesting ’cause what you just said about being content with who you are, but also wanting something different is, is not a bad thing. And I a hundred percent agree with you. It is a very uncomfortable conversation to have with yourself, to sit with the reasons why you’re doing something when it comes to your body. When you really start to think about, am I doing this because I want it? Or am I doing this because someone said something? Am I doing this because my mom commented on what’s on my plate at Thanksgiving? Am I doing this? Because every time I look at my pre-pregnancy jeans, I cry, am I [00:15:00] doing this because I saw another ad on my phone that’s telling me that I can lose 20 pounds in just six weeks? And why can’t I just do this on my own already? the conversations I have with my clients are truly, is it what you want or do you need to set boundaries with your mom? Is it what you want? Or do you need to get rid of those jeans and just spend the money and buy jeans That feel good? Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Is it what you want or do you need to tell that ad on your social media? No more? Like, what is that function where you’re Gissele : like, I don’t Krysti Beckett: wanna Gissele : see this kind of ad anymore. Krysti Beckett: there are things that we can do. We do have choices. And understanding that you can take that power back. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: You can. You can. And it’s, again, it’s uncomfortable, which I think is why it stops us. I’m totally guilty of not being assertive to somebody [00:16:00] in the moment and saying, I don’t like what you’re saying to me. Sometimes I go back, sometimes I let it fester. Like I’m gonna be totally honest, right? Gissele : Like, yeah, yeah, we do that. Yeah, Krysti Beckett: we, we do that. And that’s, Gissele : mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Some of it’s human nature. Some of it’s how we were raised, some of it is cultural. Women are not to be loud. If we are if we are assertive, like we are called a bitch, like it’s Gissele : mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Right? Like there are just things that culturally are not acceptable or that we’ve just learned to act a certain way. And so sometimes with my clients, it’s before they gain the confidence to do something different, they have to sit with that discomfort and give themselves permission to do whatever the heck they want and what’s actually going to benefit them. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Bravo I think figuring out like whose voice are we listening to, and is [00:17:00] it our true desire from our heart or is it someone else’s criticism of us that we’re listening to and maybe some people were raised with parents that, taught them those self-regulation skills. I certainly was not, my parents really didn’t know how to emotionally regulate themselves, and so I was not taught how to sit with those uncomfortable feelings. for you, what do you find helps you sit longer in that conversation or dialogue without pushing the eject button? Krysti Beckett: Ooh, I find that journaling is helpful because otherwise I ruminate. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: And one of my. Funny enough, one of the, the pelvic physios that I’ve had and her assistant were like, absolutely life changing because they came at pelvic health and physiotherapy from a perspective of rest. Gissele : Mm. Krysti Beckett: So it wasn’t about what can you do to fix this? It was about [00:18:00] slowing down and breathing and releasing tension before you went to the exercises. And Al Pat is her name and she taught me the phrase, rest is productive. And so in our sessions sometimes she would walk me through a meditation and then she’d say, whatever came up for you right now, let’s journal it. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: What came up for you in that time? Where did your brain wander? And she presented me with this concept that I didn’t realize how often I do it, but she called it time traveling. So like chopping vegetables, I’ll be standing at the counter chopping vegetables and I’ll start to think about that thing I said to that person in the grocery store that I was really embarrassed about. Or I’ll start worrying about what my kid is going to do at that play date with that other kid that he’s been fighting. You know what I mean? Like, we start to either worry about things that have happened that we can’t change or worry about things that have [00:19:00] not even happened yet, or maybe they won’t ever happen. We, we are really good at this. Gissele : Yeah. Krysti Beckett: And so journaling and just bringing ourselves back to the present and telling ourselves, Nope, I’m not thinking about that right now. No, I don’t need to think about that right now. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that. It’s interesting ’cause one of the things I’ve learned about myself is that. What I find when I do too much past, it kind of leads me to feel more depressed and too much future can cause anxiety. So really being in the present moment is important. And I love what you said about those monotonous behaviors because I now use my monotonous behaviors to envision my ideal life. Krysti Beckett: Ooh, Gissele : I love that. So if I’m doing something, the socks, either I’m listening to someone that is inspiring, or I am daydreaming I’m going to use that time to think about what I wanna create, to think about the things that are exciting me, because I used to do the same thing. It was like that constant [00:20:00] back and forth past future, past, future, past, future, in my mind was not kind to me, right? Like it would go to the most negative thing. So I’m like, you know what? I’m wasting my energy. I’m wasting my time. That time could be better spent planting the seeds that I want to create. Right. Krysti Beckett: Yeah, absolutely. Gissele : Yeah. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and talk about pelvic health. Krysti Beckett: Hmm. Gissele : Because, and that’s obviously related to movement because like you said, it’s something that’s not really talked about in women unless you live in like Denmark or something, or one of those Scandinavian countries where they actually apparently invest in women’s pelvic health. Why do you think we don’t talk about it? Why is it so taboo? Krysti Beckett: Oh gosh. Okay. So yes, you are right in some European countries, including France. Oh, of Gissele : France. That’s the one. Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Krysti Beckett: So France is like, they are like the topnotch country, in my opinion, when it comes to pelvic health. Mm, Gissele : [00:21:00] mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Women postpartum are given 12 weeks of pelvic physio. Women in France do not pee their pants. They do not deal with incontinence. It is part of their healthcare system. And here in Canada and the US physical therapy is generally not part of our healthcare. It occasionally is part of a surgical rehab. Although major abdominal surgery, like C-sections, hysterectomies, my ectomies, there is no rehabilitation investment whatsoever from our healthcare system, which is mind blowing, considering how small, how common it’s, Gissele : yep. Krysti Beckett: But when it comes to our healthcare system and, pelvic health, I think we don’t talk about it, number one, because it’s quite honestly, it affects women The most. Men have pelvises. They can have pelvic dysfunction, they can leak, yeah, they can [00:22:00] have pain during sex, things like that. But generally speaking, it’s not as big of a male issue. It is a female health issue. And when it comes to all the research that we have, women get a smidgen, they get like a little bit. And even the stuff that we do have, it’s geared towards, again, white women. And a lot of the standards that we have are, are based on the general population and not even for women. So for example menopause. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Had men included in the studies up until the nineties. Gissele : Wow. Krysti Beckett: So only the research. Yes. The research that we have for menopause. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Only in the last 30 years was it exclusively women. Gissele : Wow. talk about not generalizing to your target population. Krysti Beckett: When you think you, you think about the struggles that women have in health [00:23:00] and we’ve been taught not to complain and the common complaints are incontinence, so leaking pee when you don’t want to. So jumping, running, sneezing, laughing, coughing or painful sex, which is talked about even less. Gissele : Yeah. Krysti Beckett: And then prolapse I mentioned, or just pain in general in the pelvic area. They’ve become very common jokes in our culture. Like now that you’ve had a baby, you’re gonna have to wear Depends. Gissele : I was just gonna say that. How, how have we come to just accept that now there’s a diaper aisle for people? Krysti Beckett: Yeah. Gissele : Like, have you seen those commercials that are just basically like, here’s a diaper. Oh, this one feels comfortable. Like, why are we accepting that Krysti Beckett: and they market them sexy. Why are we Gissele : accepting that? Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: They market them as sexy, like the, the, it’s like invisible panty lines, but it’s like invisible diapers. Like you can’t tell that you’re wearing it underneath [00:24:00] Gissele : diaper. Krysti Beckett: Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s really interesting and I think the quick answer is that anything that can be capitalized is. Like truly, Gissele : ah, that’s, Krysti Beckett: yeah. Gissele : We’re accepting it, like you said. Krysti Beckett: Yeah. Gissele : We are giving it power. We are choosing to just use that instead of saying, no, I’m gonna heal this. Right. Yeah. The only advice I got post having two babies that like to some real movement down there and it, it was basically just do like as many Kegels as you can during the day. And I gotta be honest, that’s so freaking uncomfortable. I would never do them. I would never, ever do them. Like I’m telling you, it’s, it was until I started having some issues and then I’m like trying to kele myself to death. Right. And there are some tools out there that you can use, right? There’s the, there’s like a thing that you can like. [00:25:00] Exercise, right? There’s like that. Oh Krysti Beckett: yeah, yeah, Gissele : yeah. Krysti Beckett: So there’s, there’s lots of things out there, whether or not they’re beneficial, mm-hmm. To everyone’s situation. Really, really depends. so Kegels, for anyone that’s listening or watching and doesn’t know what that is, but that is the term for the pelvic contraction of the muscle. So the tightening, and you have several muscles in there. Think of them as like, think of your pelvis. Your pelvis is actually two bones that joins at. Your spine think of that as like a basket. And the lining of the basket is a whole set of muscles and they have many functions. But they do hold in your urine and your feces and they do provide sexual function and pleasure. They hold up your organs, they actually contribute to blood flow in your body to help return blood flow back to your heart. So they, they do have a lot of functions and just like any other muscle. Every [00:26:00] muscle that functions in your body needs to be able to lengthen and contract. So when you’re feeding yourself cereal, when you reach for the spoon, you’re lengthening. And when you’re pulling the spoon towards your face, you’re contracting. Okay? When you do a bicep curl, you lower the weight. That’s a lengthen. When you bring it towards you, that’s contracting. You’re making the muscles shorter. So when we do Kegels, when we tighten them, that’s making the muscles short and strong. What happens to a lot of women and a lot, a lot of women, whether they’re doing Kegels or not, we tend to have an imbalanced pelvic floor. We tend to be very tight on one side and not tight enough in another, and that’s what causes the dysfunction. So dysfunction is anything that is not working properly. So to tell someone to just do Kegels, well, if you’re already too tight and you add more strengthening. It’s going to not help, it might [00:27:00] even make the problem worse. So in that case, that person might need to do some relaxation to release the muscles. And I don’t know about you, but having children is not relaxing most of the time. So for most women who have had children and over 85% of women will become mothers. Mm-hmm. They will have pregnancies and births. They need to manage their pelvic floor rather than worrying about being too tight or tight enough or pleasing their partner with their pelvic floor, which is another really awful message in our culture that pleasure is only for the man. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Sex should not hurt like ever. Gissele : No. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I’m glad you said that. I just wanted to go back to what you had said that your mentor had said about relaxing before doing the Kegels. Krysti Beckett: Yeah. Gissele : Can you talk a little bit about that? Krysti Beckett: Sure. So, a common thing that we do when we are stressed is we tense [00:28:00] muscles. Mm-hmm. We might not be conscious of how we do it, I’ll talk about three of the most common ones that affect your pelvic floor. One of them, which you can kind of think might directly relate is you actually clench your butt. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: So your glute muscles are not part of the pelvic floor, but every single muscle in the body does not work on its own. Every single muscle works with other systems, with other muscles. So there, there groups and there are pairs. And so your glutes, your butt muscles support your pelvic floor. Well, by clenching the butt we cause an imbalance. So that’s one area of tension. Another area of tension. Gissele : Sorry to interrupt you, but if, if somebody has constipation, that could also be indicative of Krysti Beckett: Oh yeah. Gissele : Yeah. Krysti Beckett: Okay. Constipation is a pelvic floor killer too. ’cause it causes a lot of pressure and strain on the pelvic floor. Gissele : Mm. Krysti Beckett: Yeah, there’s a lot. And dehydration contributes to that as well. Mm-hmm. Yeah, [00:29:00] that’s another one. Another area of tension is a lot of us like to clench our jaws. Gissele : Mm. Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: And there is fascia. Fascia is like like a netting, like a saran wrap that kind of covers our muscles that intertwine through our whole body. It’s a really amazing thing in our body. Mm-hmm. When we clench our jaw, that fascia runs from our jaw. There is fascia that runs from our jaw down our spine directly to our pelvic floor. And so they together. Gissele : Oh, Krysti Beckett: tighten. Another one is breath holding. So every time you breathe in your diaphragm, which is your breathing muscle under your lungs, it actually works like a sub pump with your pelvic floor. And when we hold our breath, whether that’s just thinking and ruminating, or maybe it’s every time we lift the laundry basket or, or lift our toddler or whatever, if we hold our breath, we create pressure in that canister. And by not releasing the air, by not breathing [00:30:00] through activities, by not breathing through our stress, we are creating tension. And again, that pressure can lead to other issues as well. So honestly, the, the best thing we can do is rest. To relieve tension, to breathe. And I think it’s such a, it’s become such a cliche thing. Oh, just breathe. Oh, just relax. And if somebody tells you that when you’re stressed out, we just get more mad. It’s not helpful. Fair enough. But, but truly, if we allowed ourselves to slow down, to breathe to rest, to actually believe that rest is productive mm-hmm. It would help us regulate our nervous systems. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: It would help us relax these tight muscles. It would allow us to actually be present, be in the moment, and [00:31:00] enjoy what’s going on, rather than always worrying about what’s next and worrying about how to fix something. Because sometimes the things that we need to fix start with stopping and slowing down. Gissele : Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. I always thought there was a connection with, especially with like incontinence, that there might be an association with a fear or, or Right. Because think about kids when they’re young. Like if they have fears, they usually will pee the bed or they have nightmares, right? So like is there an emotional component to the pelvic? Krysti Beckett: So the, the kids part. So from a physiological standpoint, it’s incredibly common. More so in boys. Mm-hmm. Up to 2% of boys with what? The bed until 14 years old. And the highest contributor to that is actually constipation. Oh, so poor diet or you mentioned fears and I have [00:32:00] heard people say, well, it’s ’cause it’s strict parenting. But like, I think you kind of have to see, you have to know kind of your research before making. Gissele : Yeah, of course. Those, Krysti Beckett: those things. But from a physiological standpoint, Or they might be afraid of what might happen in the bathroom. And these are real fears. I mean, I was just talking with my clients in a class recently about how. Do you remember in middle school, like hiding the pad in your pocket and then when you got to the bathroom, you waited till the bathroom was completely empty to open the wrapper. Like you, we couldn’t mm-hmm. Have anyone know that we were menstruating. We like, it was just so, it embarrassing. So we’ve created kind of these conversations as young people. And then to add to that, I think that a lot of people generally have a, distrust and a shame when it comes to their pelvises, when it comes [00:33:00] to their genitals, because we over sexualize bodies. Gissele : Mm. Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: And so it no longer becomes, you know even the simple concept of saying the words penis and vagina, these are not dirty words, these are anatomy. Gissele : Yeah. But we didn’t even call it that before. Krysti Beckett: No. Gissele : Right. Like Coie and Chacha and all these other words. Yeah. We have, I think now our kids are, yeah. Before, like during my time, people didn’t really talk about it. And I love what you just said about it’s, it’s so true. This is part of our anatomy, but we have shamed ourselves. I think this is why we have so much shame and guilt in, in the antidote to that is to have compassion for ourselves and to be kinder to ourselves when it comes to that discomfort that comes from having these conversations, which is why I love that we’re having it, we’re talking about, you know, pelvises and the importance of that health and, but you are right, like we are so used to [00:34:00] fighting these aspects of ourselves that we don’t talk about it and then we suffer in silence. Like, how many of us are suffering in silence, not knowing anything about pelvic health or not anything about the things that women are going through, right? Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: I think so many of us were taught messages, you know, like, you know, starting from a young age, you have private parts, you don’t show anyone else. Well, for some of us that led to hiding in change rooms. Gissele : Yeah. Krysti Beckett: No one’s allowed to see this and you’re not allowed, like, don’t look. Mm-hmm. And then going into sexual relationships and not understanding that painful sex is not normal. Gissele : Yeah. Krysti Beckett: Or understanding that like. Self, like self lubrication, like your body does to an extent, makes some, but if it doesn’t, like using a lubricant [00:35:00] is 100% okay. And encouraged so that you can actually enjoy being intimate on top of that. Self pleasuring is not a bad thing, it’s not a shameful thing. Mm-hmm. You can enjoy that beautiful body you have. And if, if you were raised in a church like I was, guess what God gave you that amazing body. Yes. And he gave you all those amazing functions. And guess what? It’s okay to enjoy what he gave you. Gissele : Yeah. And then you think that if we made like masturbation and all those things. Okay. Like if we, if there was a messaging then, then maybe people might be less likely to experiment with like penetration, maybe leading to less pregnancies. I think it would open up the likelihood that women are more likely to have full expressive orgasms and have those like great experience and probably lead to less risky behavior. I don’t know. What do you think? [00:36:00] Krysti Beckett: I think, I think maybe it’s a bold statement, but I think men would be too afraid of how powerful we would be if we had complete control and enjoyment of our bodies. It’s a bold statement, Gissele : You know, there’s lots of people talking about like, the key to manifesting is using the O method. Have you heard of that? Krysti Beckett: I have not heard Gissele : this. Using an, using an orgasm to manifest your Right. Well, you’re about to orgasm. You think about your manifestation. If you just Krysti Beckett: wanna manifest orgasms, can you start there? Gissele : Exactly. That was brilliant. I gotta take my hat off of that one. In terms of pelvic health, are you seeing sort of a shift in terms of people engaging in more conversations with less shame and guilt over their bodies? Krysti Beckett: I think once women become aware of what is normal and what is common, like leaking is common. But a healthy pelvic floor, [00:37:00] you can control, you can pee when you want to. And you can enjoy sex and live pain free pain is your alarm system, right? So once people kinda hear, oh, I can do something about this. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: I do find that more women are taking those steps to book their assessment with a pelvic physiotherapist to understand how they need to change some habits to feel better. And for some women it’s as simple as drinking more water. And for some women it is a little bit more work like doing the exercises. And of course there are still barriers, physiotherapy, like I said, it’s not covered in our healthcare system. And as a fitness professional, I can’t diagnose your symptoms. I can help you improve your symptoms with my knowledge, but I can’t do an internal exam or anything like that. [00:38:00] So there still are going to be barriers where women will just not have the money to go get an exam. But we do the best with what we can. And I’m really glad to see the conversation shift that women are open to having these discussions, that they’re open to saying, okay, yeah, I did have painful sex, or I am having painful sex. Mm-hmm. And I would, I would like to not like to actually enjoy it again. Gissele : Yeah. Do you find certain ages are more open and receptive to talk about things like pelvic health? Krysti Beckett: Yeah, there’s a lot of women I think in the childbearing ages because you do tend to talk about your symptoms a lot in the pre postpartum period with your healthcare professional. When women start to talk and compare their experiences, that’s happening a lot and I’m seeing it a lot now, [00:39:00] particularly in women over 40 in perimenopause, which is also something that was very taboo. We just kind of had these stories about what women did and how they acted in menopause and you feared them. They were angry women with hot flashes, right? Mm-hmm. But, but now we’re seeing more women come, come forward and talk about their experiences and. I think that’s not only changing our healthcare, but it’s changing our communities as women, because we need that connection. We need to support each other. Hmm. And you know, your body, you’re gonna have it your entire life. Right. We have to learn how, how to manage it. And so having these conversations can not only validate you in your experience, [00:40:00] but it can open up doors to find what can help you through your experience. And even if there isn’t a remedy, then maybe it can at least help you understand that, okay, this, this is normal and I can manage it. Gissele : as you were talking, I was reflecting on something you said. Which really stuck out to me, which is we used to have all this secrecy about our bodies but secrecy is what leads to abuse, right? Like keep it secret, don’t tell anyone. Whereas making it out in the open forming community like you are. Putting people together as a support system, I think goes a long way in helping us lift each other up and support each other through our most challenging circumstances. I think there we’re sort of in a epidemic of loneliness and isolation that people are feeling I have to suffer through this alone in these opportunities of bringing women together in conversation, in discussion, in support, I [00:41:00] think are so amazing and I think something that definitely should be done, especially about, what people consider taboo topics, right? Like pelvic health. Yeah. Krysti Beckett: And when you know you’re right, secrecy can contribute to abuse. Absolutely. But also when you are suffering with something in your body, and even if it involves absolutely no one else, keeping it to yourself, often spirals into shame. And I have had clients who stopped having sex with their partners because it was uncomfortable and they didn’t feel comfortable having that conversation with their partner. So they just stopped. And that created disconnect in their relationship. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Because it wasn’t just about being in the bedroom. Right. Sex and intimacy is not just physical, it’s about the relationship above and beyond that. Mm-hmm. You [00:42:00] know, when. The second leading cause of being put into a senior’s home is incontinence. The first is dementia and Alzheimer’s. Gissele : Really? Wow. Krysti Beckett: Yeah. So I mean, you’re, our health is incredibly intricate, but also so huge. Like it’s intricate in that there’s so many different things going on, so many systems and our bodies really are so amazing how they work for us every single day. But in that same token it is just one part of you. Like we are multifaceted beings and so Gissele : mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health, all of those. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: Like those three categories even have like several subcategories. Your physical health, your pelvic health is not like independent of you. It’s connected. So if you [00:43:00] tend to clench your jaw, ’cause your stress relates to your pelvic health, and then maybe that’s causing your leaking or your pain, and then maybe that leaking your pain is stopping you from going out with the girls on Saturday night. And then that contributes to your mental health too, because you’re not connecting with your friends. So you’ve got like all these steps and they’re all connected because you yourself are a multifaceted being and you need. Not just physical care, but emotional care, mental care. And, and I think that’s another thing that we don’t do very well culturally, or at least I wasn’t raised that way, was to really look at you as a whole person. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And, but that’s how the medical system is, right? Like, again, not to judge it, it has, does very like a number of things really well, which is deal with like sort of acute problems, right? Like you get a cut, you need pain meds. All of those are amazing, grateful to have it right, but it doesn’t do well [00:44:00] with chronic. and it’s all symptom management, right? I’m handling this symptom, but I might give you this pill for this other symptom. And sometimes like multiple pills you’re taking for this symptom and that symptom, it doesn’t treat historically the whole person, at least not the North American model. I know that models in other countries are different, so we’re seen as just body parts. Right. That we’re treating instead of seeing holistically the whole person. Right. What’s going on for you stress wise that might be leading to this particular physical reaction? like people acknowledge that there is the research out there to connects things like stress with heart disease But we are still sort of treated as limbs as part of a body instead of a whole being that has all of these social relationships. Was it you who was talking to me about like the doctors answer? if you’re a, a person who’s plus size, the doctor’s first answer is always lose weight. Krysti Beckett: Oh, yeah, Gissele : yeah, yeah. Okay. Share that story. That’s so [00:45:00] important. Krysti Beckett: Yeah. It’s very common, especially for women that if they go to their doctor with a health concern. And the doctor will usually go through a series of questions, do you do this? Do you do this? And usually if they can’t come up with a quick answer, they’re almost always the answer is just lose weight. And in my experience, I haven’t had my current doctor tell me that. But there was a conversation where I was struggling with low energy and we’re going through the markers. And now I was, I don’t remember how many months or years postpartum I was, but I was inexplicably tired. I was getting enough rest. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: And at the time he’s, he said, well, let’s do some blood work. And when it came back, everything was like, textbook or better than textbook. And he said to me, your triglycerides are better than [00:46:00] textbook. And he’s like, did you forget to tell me about a medication you were on? And I was like did you not hear the part where I weight train and I teach five fitness classes a week? Like I’m incredibly active. It’s not abnormal for someone who’s physically active as me to have load triglycerides like that. They should be, you know? Yeah. But, but no, it was though, though, not a direct accusation, but I did feel as though he was saying that I had lied or failed to share some information. And I have had clients, you know, report things like neck or back pain and inexplicable. So they were told just lose weight. Where, you know, they are strength training, they’re walking, they’re doing whatever, and, mm-hmm. In one case, it was a client. She needed she finally got an MRI, she had degenerative discs. Something that cannot be fixed by dieting. So there’s, [00:47:00] there’s so many things out there, and unfortunately between pharmaceuticals, between the diet industry, which is often supported by pharmaceuticals our, our doctors are often kind of, that’s what they’re trained in. Yeah, Gissele : yeah, yeah. And like you said, as consumers, we should be looking for more holistic approaches in trying to find people that are creating the whole body and supporting the whole body. I love the idea of interprofessional workers together. Like I would want as a woman to have a pelvic health specialist with my gynecologist, with all of these different individuals working together to talk about. The whole me. Krysti Beckett: Mm-hmm. Gissele : Rather than having me go with all these different individuals separately and have to spend that money separately to come together to have, to figure out how to put all these plans together. [00:48:00] I think as a society, I’d hope that we move to having all of these individuals supporting the whole body, and also the need for physiotherapy and all of these other, additional therapies to be supported by our, healthcare. Mm-hmm. Like if we’re truly having inclusive healthcare, all of these options should be available. For individuals. Right. So I do hope that we get there. Krysti Beckett: I would love that too. I mean, if, if you have a good job with benefits, fortunately, you know, my husband’s benefits provide so much for us in that way. I’m able to have a lot of my physiotherapy, massage therapy, osteopathy, naturopathy chiropractor. Like there are lots of things that are covered. But again, that’s because of his work benefits. It’s not covered by our healthcare. Not yet anyways. Gissele : Right. And so if people don’t have work that provides those benefits, then who might you punish? Are you punishing people that are [00:49:00] more vulnerable that don’t have those, those that kind of employment that might be higher paying, better wages? So from that perspective, we have to wonder, ’cause I kind of have this belief that the quality of the government. Is demonstrated by its ability to take care of its most vulnerable citizens. Krysti Beckett: what an incredible place we would be in if, everyone made a living wage. Yeah. Gissele : Yeah. They talked about basic income, but I guess that went the way of the dodo. because the research on basic income. and there’s certain, European countries that do basic income and people that don’t need it actually say, oh, I don’t want it, right? Krysti Beckett: Mm-hmm. Gissele : But they give it to the majority of their citizens. And people have a higher standard of living, more likely to be better educated. So people don’t use that just to sit around. Krysti Beckett: No. Gissele : Right. Like there’s this perception, the research and it was Canadian research [00:50:00] prove that people’s lives improve when they were outta survival and they had more income. And so there, there was a contemplation that it was something that they were considering applying. But then that just kind of quietly went away. At least here in Canada. But who knows? But yeah, it would be fabulous to have, those, those sort of options for different people. There’s also like countries that do away with homelessness by providing people homes, right? Yeah. They give people little tiny homes that they can have space and they’re more likely to then wanna take it to the next step in terms of getting jobs, getting off drugs, and all of those things. So I think when we, when we reach out and help people and see them as a whole being and care about their wellbeing, I think that’s what societies improve and get better about. Krysti Beckett: There’s really no downside to investing in people. Gissele : Yeah. Krysti Beckett: I mean, I’m so grateful in Canada that [00:51:00] we have a mat leave, which Wow. Seems like, so in my mind, basic because. we’ve had it for so long. Yeah. But then when I take on a client from the states and they tell me that Gissele : Yeah, Krysti Beckett: at the most, at the most they get 12 weeks. Gissele : Yeah. Krysti Beckett: And a lot of it depends on either what state you’re in or what your employer allows. It may or may not be paid. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Krysti Beckett: But wow. Like in one case I was supporting a mom, a c-section after twins, and she was going back at 12 weeks postpartum as a neonatal nurse. So she’s leaving her babies behind to go take care of other babies. Meanwhile, she’s had major abdominal surgery and she’s gonna be on her feet for like, 12 hour [00:52:00] shifts. So she needs her body. And here like. Their system was not supporting her. So I just feel so grateful for where we live and that we, you know, even as a self-employed person, I didn’t get a mat leave for my third birth, mm-hmm. But I still had culturally here, the understanding that I was postpartum, I was stepping back, I was doing things differently and I was well supported during that time. Yeah. You know, by family, by clients. You know, certainly the respect of understanding that that was happening, no expectation for me to rush back into things. Mm-hmm. But like, what a different world we would be in if we, if we set kind of those bare minimums, those standards of taking care of people. Gissele : Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was thinking about the time when I had my first baby and I returned back to work, it was [00:53:00] like. Like you opened up floodgates. I was crying all the time. I was crying at work. This was a year after, like Right. I had been for a whole year with my baby. Right. I can’t even imagine having, giving birth. And then a few weeks later it just like, well, okay, I gotta go. Oh my God. I think I, I think I might’ve quit.So a couple of more questions. I ask all my guests what their definition of unconditional love is. Krysti Beckett: Ah, unconditional love is being able to give when you are at Any season really at your absolute worst, at your absolute best, but being able to still give no matter what kind of resources you have. Gissele : Hmm. Krysti Beckett: [00:54:00] Emotional or other. Gissele : Hmm. Thank you for that. So last question. Where can people work with you? Where can they find you? Tell us about your website, anything you wanna share with the audience? Krysti Beckett: Sure. Yeah. My website is http://www.theconfidentmama.ca and I have a blog and I have free core guides and things like that. You can always message me for a free consult. I love meeting people. I love chatting about health and, and whether it’s working with me or just getting connected to somebody that can help you. I really do love having those conversations. I am on social media and LinkedIn, so if you’re looking for the Confident Mama and yeah, and if you’re in Southwestern Ontario yeah, hit me up. Brant Burford. I’m often in Kitchener and gray Bruce area and Niagara Gissele : Do you support people in both the physical activity part and the pelvic health as well? Krysti Beckett: Yes. So I’m a personal [00:55:00] trainer with pelvic fitness specialty, so whether virtual or in person, I offer coaching and personal training, so I work one-on-one. I also have fitness classes here in Burford. But if, if somebody needs help getting started or doing something differently in their fitness, I certainly can help them with an exercise program. Or if they just need coaching so that they can feel better in their bodies, feel more confident make their health a priority, then I’m your gal. Gissele : Oh, amazing. Thank you so much, Krysti for such an awesome conversation. I’m so, so excited for our listeners to, to listen to this conversation because we’ve been talking about things that have been taboo and haven’t really been talked about. So thank you so much for being on the show, and please join us for another episode of The Love and Compassion Podcast with Gissele. Krysti Beckett: Thanks. Have a good night. Gissele : Bye.

Can compassion be trained? In this inspiring episode of Love and Compassion with Gissele, Dr. Olga Klimecki—neuroscientist and compassion researcher—joins us to explore the science of compassion and what helps people genuinely care for others, even those they find difficult to like.

Discover how play can transform your relationship in this enlightening conversation with Peter Anderson, “The Playful Couple.” In Choosing Play in Relationships: From Conflict to Connection, we explore practical strategies to turn tension into joy, strengthen intimacy, and reconnect with your partner in meaningful ways. Whether you're navigating conflict, seeking more fun in your marriage, or curious about building deeper connection, this episode offers actionable insights and inspiring stories to help you bring playfulness, love, and laughter back into your relationship.

Part 2 of my chat with Britton and Carolee and they share their story of trying different types of school systems from Walford and Montesori to Unschooling to determine the path of greatest soul development for their children. We talk about why schools don't focus on skill development such as love and compassion in this episode.

Listen to PART 1 of this podcast episode with Britton and Carolee as they share their struggles in dealing with infidelity with compassion for themselves and their partners. They share how their childhood and upbringing lead them to having issues within their relationship and how a "BIG" decision changed their entire lives and the lives of their children.

In this powerful episode, I sit down with two courageous mothers from Palestine and Israel, members of the Parent Circle Friends, who share their journeys of grief, reconciliation, and hope. Through their unimaginable loss, they have chosen love over hatred, showing us what it truly takes to build a more united and peaceful world.

Are you struggling at work? Do you wish that workplaces could be more forgiving or more humanizing? Listen to this powerful and moving chat with Dr. Jenn Griggs about ensuring people's dignity, the importance of authenticity, and the power of forgiveness at work.

Listen to this powerful episode with Vivien Kalvaria as we discuss her memoir, My Name is not Rifka. In this chat, we discuss silence, intergenerational trauma, the banality of evil, forgiveness and reconciliation.

Tired of red vs. blue? Meet Scott Grace, the Spiritual Dr. Seuss, as we explore how to heal division with humor, heart, and his new book Beyond Red and Blue. Politics, peace, and poetry—this episode has it all, one rhyme at a time!

In this deeply moving episode, Sonny Von Cleveland shares his extraordinary journey of survival and transformation from enduring childhood sexual abuse and rape in prison to spending 19 months in solitary confinement. But this is not a story about staying broken, it's a story about choosing love over hate. Sonny opens up about the radical act of forgiveness, the power of compassion, and what it truly takes to create a more loving world. We explore healing from trauma, confronting greed and ego, and finding the courage to transform pain into purpose. His message is clear: no matter what we've lived through, we all have the power to love. If you're searching for hope, healing, or a reason to believe in the human spirit again then this episode is for you.

Discover how compassion boosts business performance in this powerful podcast episode with Dr. Bruno Cignacco, author of The Art of Compassionate Business. Learn practical strategies to build trust, improve employee wellbeing, and create a more human-centered workplace culture. Ideal for leaders, entrepreneurs, and HR professionals looking to drive success through heart and purpose.

Discover how to create spaces that support peace, presence, and emotional well-being. In this soulful conversation, interior designer Kim Depole shares how her time with Thich Nhat Hanh and the teachings of mindful living transformed her design philosophy. Learn how to design from the inside out, turning your home or workspace into a sacred, healing environment. Perfect for those interested in mindful interior design, conscious living, and creating intentional, soul-nourishing spaces.

What if animals could speak—and we could truly understand them? In this powerful episode of Love and Compassion with Gissele, world-renowned animal communicator and telepath Penelope Smith shares how she discovered the ability to communicate with animals through telepathy—and how this deep interspecies connection can lead to greater compassion, healing, and mutual understanding.

hat does it take to bring real compassion into the child welfare system? In this heartfelt episode, we talk with Peter Mutabazi—author, advocate, and single Black foster and adoptive father—about his extraordinary journey from surviving life on the streets of Uganda to fostering over 36 children in the U.S. With raw honesty and deep wisdom, Peter shares the joys and challenges of being a foster parent, the unique barriers faced by Black single men in the system, and why love, safety, and belonging must be at the core of how we care for vulnerable children. This is more than a story—it's a call to action to reimagine the child welfare system with compassion at its center.

In today's evolving workplace, emotional intelligence isn't optional—it's essential. In this powerful episode, leadership coach and business strategist Jeff Ma joins us to talk about how love, compassion, and vulnerability are transforming company culture and improving team performance. We explore how to lead with empathy, create a psychologically safe environment, and have honest, difficult conversations at work. You'll learn how forgiveness, trust, and authenticity can increase employee engagement, reduce burnout, and fuel long-term success. Whether you're a CEO, manager, or team member, this conversation offers actionable insights for building a more human, high-performing workplace.

In this powerful episode, Sean Hemeon opens up about growing up Mormon, coming out as gay, battling addiction, and learning to forgive himself. We explore religion, shame, manifesting, and what it really means to live authentically. A must-listen for anyone on a healing journey.

Do you want to know about the connection between love and money? Do you desire to understand what your passions are and how to live authentically? then listen to this conversation with Ghary D. Won around his experiences with homelessness, how a mindset shift helped him overcome that challenge and how his relationship with abundance changed after a conversation he had with money.

We are living in a time of great division. Where rights are being eliminated, and people are struggling more than ever finding common ground. Additionally, people seem to be struggling more internally. They are feeling more burnt out. Many spiritual traditions claim that love is the answer. But how? Listen to my chat with Scott Stabile, on the power of love. We will discuss why choosing love is always the better choice and the connection between self-love and love for others. A must listen if you are interested in understanding how love can help us heal.

Transcript [00:00:00] Gissele: Hello and welcome to the love and compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our worlds. Don't forget to like, and subscribe for more amazing content. we're doing an amazing documentary called the courage to love. Focusing on sharing stories of those who have chosen to do the unthinkable, loving and forgiving those who are the most hurtful through their stories, we will find out what the impact of forgiving and caring for our opponents is for those doing the forgiving. And for those who were forgiven, we'll also hear from experts about whether it is in our nature to love and to come together with those with whom we disagree. We'll be doing fundraising in March with lots of amazing perks. If you're interested in the documentary, you want to nominate someone or support us financially, Please look out for the information coming out in March. On today's podcast, we'll be talking about [00:01:00] punishment free parenting. Our guest today is Rebecca Wolf. She is author of the book, The Gift of a Punishment Free Childhood. She is a parenting mentor, educator, and mother. She supports parents through mentoring and workshops and navigating their parenting journeys. Using punishment free practices, however, her most important work was raising her own children without punishment. Her extensive personal experiences, contribute to her ability to guide others on their parenting journeys. Rebecca is a certified parenting educator for the redirecting children's behavior program. and has conducted extensive research on how punishment impacts children's behavior. Rebecca has a Ph. D. from the University of Northern Colorado in education and has been a lifelong teacher and learner. Please join me in welcoming Rebecca. Hi, Rebecca. [00:02:00] Hello. Rebecca: Thank you, Gissele: Giselle. As I was saying to you before, I love your book. Absolutely love it. I wish I had found this book earlier in my parenting experience. Because I feel like my husband and I really had to struggle to learn by making lots of mistakes with our kids. So I wish we had found your book. And so I was strongly encouraging my listeners, especially who are starting out in the parenting journey, or even if they have kids today, because you talk about teens to get it. Can you tell the audience a little bit about how you decided to go punishment free? Rebecca: Yeah, absolutely. So, as you shared in my biography, I was trained to work for the Redirecting Children's Behavior Parenting Workshops. And in that work, it, it, There still was punishment included, but it really started to emphasize the idea of redirecting right rather than punishing. Let's [00:03:00] redirect. And so I had kind of this solid foundation. And but what I'll share is that it was really when I started thinking about some of the crises that we're seeing. In the world now. I live in Colorado. And so the Columbine high school shooting that happened back in 1999 was pretty impactful for me. I spent a lot of time thinking about that, thinking about that family, those parents you know, the parents on both sides, the parents of the shooters, the parents of those who lost their lives that day. And there are many, many factors that go into a situation like that. But Rebecca: it was clear that the reason those two boys walked into that high school was to punish their classmates. And so I'm like, why do we think that that is the solution? And if you think about it, it's because that's what most, most children, it's how they are. It's the relationship they have with their [00:04:00] parents. It's their primary relationship is one of love. When I misbehave, I'm punished. And if we can shift that paradigm where making a mistake or even misbehaving is actually just an opportunity to learn rather than to be punished, could we shift that paradigm around punishment?

Transcript [00:00:00] Gissele: Hello and welcome to the love and compassion podcast with Gissele. We believe that love and compassion have the power to heal our lives and our worlds. Don't forget to like, and subscribe for more amazing content. we're doing an amazing documentary called the courage to love. Focusing on sharing stories of those who have chosen to do the unthinkable, loving and forgiving those who are the most hurtful through their stories, we will find out what the impact of forgiving and caring for our opponents is for those doing the forgiving. And for those who were […]

Are you craving true intimacy? do you have difficulties expressing your needs for intimacy, connection, touch and sex? Then tune into this episode of the love and compassion podcast with Gissele. Today, we talk to Luyba Venable who is a sex coach focusing on the needs of men and women for greater connection, unity, communication, and love.

Are you craving true intimacy? do you have difficulties expressing your needs for intimacy, connection, touch and sex? Then tune into this episode of the love and compassion podcast with Gissele. Today, we talk to Luyba Venable who is a sex coach focusing on the needs of men and women for greater connection, unity, communication, and love.

Are you dealing with a recent loss? are you experiencing the possible loss of a loved one? if you are, then this podcast episode is for you. Listen as I chat with Dr. Jan Schwartz, about the three types of intelligence needed to handle the most difficult moments in your life. In this episode, she shares her experiences in helping her dog, address and heal a terminal cancer. Do not miss this exciting episode full of wisdom.

Are you dealing with a recent loss? are you experiencing the possible loss of a loved one? if you are, then this podcast episode is for you. Listen as I chat with Dr. Jan Schwartz, about the three types of intelligence needed to handle the most difficult moments in your life. In this episode, she shares her experiences in helping her dog, address and heal a terminal cancer. Do not miss this exciting episode full of wisdom.

In this episode, I chat with my own sister, Jessica, about her weight loss journey. She lost 100 pounds and shares her wisdom on how to lose weight while honoring yourself. We talk about society's view of weight, about her journey in losing the first 20-30 pounds, and how being radically honest with herself, got her on track to living her best life. Most importantly, we talk about the role of compassion in helping Jessica transform her body.

In this episode, I chat with my own sister, Jessica, about her weight loss journey. She lost 100 pounds and shares her wisdom on how to lose weight while honoring yourself. We talk about society's view of weight, about her journey in losing the first 20-30 pounds, and how being radically honest with herself, got her on track to living her best life. Most importantly, we talk about the role of compassion in helping Jessica transform her body.

In this episode of our podcast, I speak with the incredible Ashley Williams, who was voted top 40 under 40 about the power of mindfulness in helping us return to ourselves.  We talk about how the systems we have created are crumbling, about how mindfulness can positively impact children in the school system, and the about the importance of creating mindful spaces where BIPOC people are welcome!

In this episode of our podcast, I speak with the incredible Ashley Williams, who was voted top 40 under 40 about the power of mindfulness in helping us return to ourselves.  We talk about how the systems we have created are crumbling, about how mindfulness can positively impact children in the school system, and the about the importance of creating mindful spaces where BIPOC people are welcome!

Currently students and teachers seem to be struggling more within the school system. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was something that the school could be doing to support students, teachers and administrators regarding their daily issues? Well there is! Introducing mindfulness into the school system can go a long way to help support student well being, mental health, education and more! Join me as I speak to Ben Painter who is leading the implementation of mindfulness in the school system. We speak about his perspective on what the schools of the future should focus on, as well as why it is important to have a mindfulness Director on site at every school. If you are a teacher, student, parent or administrator, don't miss this episode.

Currently students and teachers seem to be struggling more within the school system. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was something that the school could be doing to support students, teachers and administrators regarding their daily issues? Well there is! Introducing mindfulness into the school system can go a long way to help support student well being, mental health, education and more! Join me as I speak to Ben Painter who is leading the implementation of mindfulness in the school system. We speak about his perspective on what the schools of the future should focus on, as well as why it is important to have a mindfulness Director on site at every school. If you are a teacher, student, parent or administrator, don't miss this episode.

Martin Luther King Jr, said "love is the only power able to transform an enemy into a friend", but how does love do this? How do we embody Jesus' teaching of love thy enemy when other's behaviour is often so hurtful? Listen to my conversation with Christophe Mbonyingabo, Executive Director of CARSA Ministries. CARSA brings together Tutsi and Hutus who have been impacted by Genocide, in order to practice forgiveness and reconciliation. Listen to Christophe's wisdom around how people are conditioned to hate and the innovative approach his organization is using to bring people together in love. Do not miss this episode!

Martin Luther King Jr, said "love is the only power able to transform an enemy into a friend", but how does love do this? How do we embody Jesus' teaching of love thy enemy when other's behaviour is often so hurtful? Listen to my conversation with Christophe Mbonyingabo, Executive Director of CARSA Ministries. CARSA brings together Tutsi and Hutus who have been impacted by Genocide, in order to practice forgiveness and reconciliation. Listen to Christophe's wisdom around how people are conditioned to hate and the innovative approach his organization is using to bring people together in love. Do not miss this episode!

Do you wish there was a way to help young people regulate their challenging feelings and emotions in the school system. Do you desire more compassion in how we manage school based behaviors? Do not miss my enlightening chat with Kara Cosby on the power of compassion in the school system. In this conversation, she talks about her work with the Compassionate School Project (CSP) and how it is helping young people in the US have better personal and professional outcomes.

Do you wish there was a way to help young people regulate their challenging feelings and emotions in the school system. Do you desire more compassion in how we manage school based behaviors? Do not miss my enlightening chat with Kara Cosby on the power of compassion in the school system. In this conversation, she talks about her work with the Compassionate School Project (CSP) and how it is helping young people in the US have better personal and professional outcomes.

Are you a people pleaser? Do you say "yes" when you mean "no"? Do you believe that saying no to someone means they will no longer love you, or that they will leave you? If yes, then this episode is for you! Listen as I chat with Tina O Hoang about people pleasing, what historically led her to people please, and how she talks to herself now to address those tendencies. We also talk about how the other extreme of being confrontational, is not as different to people pleasing as some may think.

Are you a people pleaser? Do you say "yes" when you mean "no"? Do you believe that saying no to someone means they will no longer love you, or that they will leave you? If yes, then this episode is for you! Listen as I chat with Tina O Hoang about people pleasing, what historically led her to people please, and how she talks to herself now to address those tendencies. We also talk about how the other extreme of being confrontational, is not as different to people pleasing as some may think.

Listen to this inspiring episode on how mindfulness can help young people flourish in life and in the school system.  Listen to three incredible men share their 20 year journey of teaching mindfulness in schools and the impact their work has had in helping children become more peaceful, compassionate, loving, healthy and balanced.  Their work has been featured in CNN, Oprah Magazine, Good Morning America and so much more.

Listen to this inspiring episode on how mindfulness can help young people flourish in life and in the school system.  Listen to three incredible men share their 20 year journey of teaching mindfulness in schools and the impact their work has had in helping children become more peaceful, compassionate, loving, healthy and balanced.  Their work has been featured in CNN, Oprah Magazine, Good Morning America and so much more.

If you are going through a difficult moment, right now, this conversation is for you.  On this podcast episode I speak to Savio Clemente who survived stage 3 cancer, through determination, forgiveness and compassion for himself.  We talk about how he was able to overcome treatment symptoms, and how his journey lead him to completely change his life for the positive.  We also discuss emotions in boys, vulnerability and shame and of course, the importance of self compassion during a healing journey. 

If you are going through a difficult moment, right now, this conversation is for you.  On this podcast episode I speak to Savio Clemente who survived stage 3 cancer, through determination, forgiveness and compassion for himself.  We talk about how he was able to overcome treatment symptoms, and how his journey lead him to completely change his life for the positive.  We also discuss emotions in boys, vulnerability and shame and of course, the importance of self compassion during a healing journey. 

Listen to Alexi's story of overcoming lung COVID during a time when little was known about the virus. Listen to how she was able to alchemize this difficult moment into something greater with gratitude and compassion. We also talk about psychic powers, listening to our bodies, self-care, and the power of compassion.

Listen to Alexi's story of overcoming lung COVID during a time when little was known about the virus. Listen to how she was able to alchemize this difficult moment into something greater with gratitude and compassion. We also talk about psychic powers, listening to our bodies, self-care, and the power of compassion.

Listen to this remastered version of my interview with Lara Naughton on compassion during and after a sexual assault.  In this conversation Lara shares how love and compassion saved her life after she was kidnapped while on vacation.  She talks about how compassion changed her, and shares her ideas on how to change systems so that they can work better for both men and women who are involved in SA. 

Listen to this remastered version of my interview with Lara Naughton on compassion during and after a sexual assault.  In this conversation Lara shares how love and compassion saved her life after she was kidnapped while on vacation.  She talks about how compassion changed her, and shares her ideas on how to change systems so that they can work better for both men and women who are involved in SA. 

Almost everyone I know, has a mother wound.  What is that? an unresolved issue with their mother, or mother figure. On this call, you will learn how being compassionate towards ourselves and having boundaries, can help us address our mother based traumas and can help us step into forgiveness.  We also discuss the importance of unconditional love, as well as self-care. 

Almost everyone I know, has a mother wound.  What is that? an unresolved issue with their mother, or mother figure. On this call, you will learn how being compassionate towards ourselves and having boundaries, can help us address our mother based traumas and can help us step into forgiveness.  We also discuss the importance of unconditional love, as well as self-care. 

***Trigger warning*** Listen to this compassionate conversation about shame and sexual abuse from the perspective of a person who hurt others.  In this chat, you will learn about what causes some individuals to hurt others, how shame shows up in our lives, and how loving and being compassionate towards ourselves, can help us shine light to the darkest aspects of humanity.