How Trauma Makes It Hard to See What's Real (4-Video Compilation)

a lot of what you've been told about how to heal and what works for changing your life just isn't true too many people get stuck in their trauma because they think something outside of themselves you know Society parents ex Partners events that happen in the past that those are the sole cause of problems today and the truth is you've got to hope that's not true because there's very rarely anything you can do about the past or about the way other people have behaved so if you're waiting for those things to change and outrage is building

and you're falling into despair I have great news your healing doesn't come from those things it comes from things you can change and if there's anything you're destined to change about Society or if a confrontation with the people who hurt you is in the cards then you healed is how that power within you is going to get strong enough that you can take those problems on but you in the middle of your trauma reactions I'm going to be honest with you active cptsd is such a vulnerable state there's distorted perception undermining you there's emotional disregulation

undermining you there's almost always a lack of reliable emotional support from people around you that's part of why you have cptsd but it's also a symptom of cptsd it drives away people you can trust so my trauma healing began with a huge Paradigm Shift the old broken way that I saw the nature of the problem and the nature of the solution totally shattered in a period of a few weeks and a series of traumatic events threw me into a deep trauma reaction and me doing everything you're supposed to do about trauma threw me even deeper

into a trauma reaction I don't blame anyone but I was trying to operate and navigate solutions from a set of beliefs that weren't true and when your belie belief are true how you know is they work when nothing is working it just might be pointing to you know there's no nice nicer way to say this it might be pointing to lies there are lies in your belief system things that lots of people believe but that aren't true so things that you might even have been told to believe by experts or you were bullied into conforming

your beliefs to what you're supposed to believe that might be what's operating when things aren't working for you but if it does work it doesn't work so I had a belief system meltdown like that by luck when I was at the lowest point in my life an acquaintance who saw I was going down showed me a way to soften the hold of my old beliefs and to let in some sunshine some truth and I woke up and about half my trauma healing happened in a day just like that it was such a marked and Sudden

Change that the therapist I used to see at the time was sure something was ser seriously wrong with me I was Serene I felt okay about things I felt confident and excited about the possibilities in my life that was really out of character for me back then and here I am almost 29 years later to say they're very clearly was something right about me at last and I broke out of the lies that governed my life and I'll tell you what I did instead so people say I'm tough love but I'm telling you nothing changed

in my life until I learned and accepted these 10 truths one when it comes to your past trauma no one is coming to save you from the effects you'll have to seek that out so don't just suffer through your life saving up your problems for weekly appointments with someone who's supposed to know what to do even if you have access to a therapist and even if they know how to help you and you actually feel better you are going to still need tools and awareness that you are in charge of it it's you who will

be recognizing your trauma reactions and devising how you'll change the pattern and then working every day to fine-tune and integrate those changes you are sovereign over your healing second thing second truth therapy isn't the only way to heal from trauma and for some people with cptsd from childhood talking about trauma only makes it worse our culture says that talk therapy is the way to deal with this kind of problem but many people's experience feeling like it does more harm than good is backed up by Recent research there's a time and a place to tell your

story and get validation and have that blessed experience of of understanding what happened but if talk therapy feels bad and doesn't seem to go anywhere or if you're like the millions of people who can't afford talk therapy I want you to know there are simple tools you can learn and use that just might make all the difference they did for me and I'll talk about that in a few minutes but having a therapist isn't the only way that you can have emotional support things like 12-step groups offer support every day of the week with people

who are likely to understand what you're going through and have experience they do have walking the path all the way to Healing this can be a huge benefit whether or not you have professional help because peers who have healed and whose help you ask for can help you by teaching you the Practical day-to-day tips that they develop through real life experience and they can help you get the focus off other people who may have hurt you and get the focus back onto your own self-destructive behaviors some might call this calling you out and maybe you

see this as the opposite of support but sometimes the most loving supportive thing someone can do is be straight with you and this is something not all therapists can or will do for you it can be a bit of a taboo for them to give direct advice or make moral judgments about what you're doing what you plan to do but getting called out by a 12-step sponsor after years of getting unconditionally supported by a therapist it was exactly what helped me to stop my trauma driven behaviors and move forward in my healing very quickly so

you might see in your own experience that you've needed both and that may be true but for someone traumatized as a kid when you're an adult so much of the problem in present time is the way that you might be so that leads me to a third truth that has to be faced which is that focusing on other people and society and the past drain your power it's a helpless place because you're helpless to change the past and you can't change other people present time is where all your power to heal your own life resides

so healing the thinking healing the reactions healing the behaviors that traumatize and other people yes people hurt you and yes there is value in telling your story and getting help to make sense of it but now what for many people it helps them to know they're not alone and there's a reason for their struggles healing the thinking healing the reactions healing the behaviors that traumatize and to know they're not alone and there's a reason for their struggles but all that trauma reeks havoc in your life and all the understanding in the world isn't enough to

straighten out your trauma driven reactions and your self-destructive behaviors right it's now and not in the past and it's with yourself not with the people who abused and neglected you that that's what holds the potential for changing your life it's you now and one once you make this shift you can start to recognize your symptoms when they're happening and taking actions to create a trauma-free life that's what works okay fourth truth neurological disregulation is the symptom underneath the vast majority of other trauma symptoms you probably never got taught this and you probably never got help

with it and this could explain why you've tried so many things that never worked the truth is until you learn to re-regulate your healing efforts are likely to just kind of limp along when you learn to spot disregulation and quickly re-regulate everything gets easier all right fifth truth research doesn't show a clear pattern of efficacy when medication is prescribed for cptsd symptoms not only don't they help but they can actually make it harder for you to re-regulate anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs might be necessary for you for other reasons at least in your experi experience or

in your doctor's opinion but because our insurance system tends to push people suffering with trauma symptoms first to talk therapy usually limited to 10 sessions then when that doesn't work refer them to prescriptions a lot of people are getting disregulated by the talking approach and then thwarted in their efforts to re-regulate because they're taking medication so this is something you'll need to talk to your doctor about it's a bad idea to change medication without medical supervision but in my experience staying sensitive to the feeling of disregulation and then mastering re-regulation is super important maybe the

most important thing that you can do to heal trauma symptoms so if medication you're taking or any mind-altering substance is blocking you that's going to defeat the purpose of learning to re-regulate and healing your trauma number six let's talk about the phrase self-medicating this is a euphemism for the use of drugs and alcohol by people with emotional pain now not everybody gets emotional relief from drugs and alcohol but those who do don't usually get that beneficial effect for very long so a word for trying to feel better might be self anesthetizing or maybe self- sedation

because medicine self-medicating medicine implies it heals you and sedated people are seldom able to make the positive changes needed to actually heal their trauma you know it is part it is part neurological and then it's a lot of changes in your life and that takes being present when you numb your pain I get it it's what you need to do sometimes but it's delaying the part where you feel the pain and pain has information in it that you need to know you know what's going wrong where does this suddenly go south for me what's my

trauma reaction what's versus what's a feeling that I actually need to act on what is triggering disregulation for that matter and what is the moment before before that happens when I can maybe learn to put a little pause in and re-regulate before deciding what to say or how I'm going to respond to something so if alcohol and drugs are part of how you're coping there's a reason that your healing has been so hard and there's an easier way when you're ready for it all right seventh truth there's no point in arguing with people that they

haven't met your needs you are the one who meets your needs when you do a good job of that you're better able to choose caring people and to have in your life people who you're going to have as friends or as a partner and then it's not going to be such a question of whether your needs are met you meet your needs and then from there you can attract those caring people operating on the belief that other people are supposed to do that meet your needs just because you've become attached to them it's an echo

from childhood when your needs were supposed to be met by someone but they weren't in adulthood caring and commit commment happen rarely and they build slowly so being angry at someone you've been dating a short time for not meeting your needs um as one of our members said recently it's it's like driving around wildly expecting the other cars to keep you safe and then being mad that you crashed so meeting your own needs is the strongest protection that you have also against romantic Obsession that is something that rises up when your needs aren't met and

it starts with you all right the eighth truth when you've ended up in bad relationships the truth is most times the red flags were there on day one but maybe you rushed in anyway what caused that an attachment wound um extreme loneliness that made it Unthinkable to turn back no matter how glaring the problem was that you saw until you can heal that that need to go forward anyway the pain is going to keep happening and this is normal for people neglected in childhood healing happens when you can slow down and stay connected and honest

with people who are supportive of your healing process then you can develop the awareness and the guard rails that you need to stop making the same relationship decisions that have worn you down in your life so far all right the ninth truth is about how you slow things down and though a lot of people don't want to hear this the way to do that is by avoiding casual sex to borrow from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous which I read a long time ago I'm going to change a little phrase here and say that casual

sex is the dubious luxury of untraumatized people now maybe it's fine for them but for people with attachment wounds it opens the door to trauma driven thinking and behaviors that can ruin the relationship and it can wreck your happiness it can be very destabilizing traumatized people can have good relationships but there's a lot of learning that you maybe didn't get from your family and you can make space to learn A Better Way by going slowly all right number 10 as painful as it is to realize that a lot of your trauma now is from you

making trauma driven choices facing the truth is nothing to fear it feels good to seek the truth of your situation to see your part in it and no matter how small to heal that facing reality it feels good it's empowering it brings peace and sometimes you'll cry but good cleansing tears bring relief and if you need help with this process that's what we do at crappy childhood fairy truth feels good and you need to feel good you do you need it not years from now but today your mind has to turn itself inside out and

go into deep denial sometimes when you want something or specifically someone who is completely not okay for you to pursue it's not right it's not fair it's not a good idea they're not actually available but doing this is common in some of us who are traumatized as kids and so instead of going nope nope what I'm about to do is immoral and it will screw up my life and everyone else's life and I will stop well instead of that your traumatized mind starts looking for signs that it's actually the right thing to do and in

fact it's better for everyone you might be telling yourself now I'm talking about Affairs of course and the thinking and the denial and the cognitive dissonance necessary to keep hanging on to the idea of someone no matter what it costs no matter what kind of mental gymnastics you need to do to believe that the horrible drama that you have just been part of creating is just happening to you and this is the most disempowered place your mind can go and I want to tell you how to not go into denial how to stay in reality

instead because your happiness and your healing depend on it my letter today is from a woman I'll call Renee and she writes hi Anna I'm a single mom from Europe I just turned 40 a little over two years ago I started to work for a very small company run by my boss and his wife now I've got a pencil I'm going to circle some things that I want to come back to in this letter it's a little longer than usual which I usually will cut Parts out but I kind of needed to tell you this

whole story you're going to be surprised it's it's an astonishing situation all right so Renee said says the boss and his wife their son Ben was also working there I was only working there for a couple of days when Ben started to send me messages she says we started to text a lot we got along well and we found out that we had a lot of common interests gardening living simply and sustainably just the lifestyle we were both chasing there was a weird pull from the very beginning the way he looked at me the way

we texted but he was married and so I was simply confused used I'm circling that by what the hell was going on today this whole scenario would be a huge red flag but back then I just didn't know the whole texting thing got more and more intense and over time I kind of went crazy as in there must be something going on he never talked about his wife except once when he opened up about him not being happy in his marriage he even once asked me for a date during lunch we went for a walk

there was this very intense moment but he never did anything he barely even talked to me like a different person than the one I was texting with at some point when I couldn't handle it anymore I told him that I was attracted to him looking back I don't even know if this was true or if I just needed some sort of resolution of this whole timec consuming emotional relationship this had really affected My life nowadays I would just say or in this case probably text exactly that but back then I feel I was so different

like a toddler version of myself so we were sitting at a campfire when I told him campfire I was attracted to him he didn't say anything at first he was just staring at the fire we went back to the car and said goodbye and he kissed me and I immediately had this feeling of oh no no no boy just thinking about this gets my heart rate up but not in a good way but it's because of everything that has happened since I even told him that I loved him on the very next day when we

met again at the same place woo I'm not even sure I really felt that now imagine a complete relationship just in WhatsApp texting basically he wrote that he and his wife agreed on an open relationship when they married but that he had never made use of it before he told me that he loved me via text and worst of all he went on a family trip with his wife while being hundreds of kilometers away and sent me a very very long text about that they had been trying for so long and now finally his wife

was pregnant and that he would understand if I wanted to get out I cried for a very very very long time today apart from the fact that I wouldn't get myself into such a messy situation again going to hold you to that I would get out without a blink M but back then I didn't there were so many synchronicities so many signs I had never experienced anything like this before there was a very intense connection disregarding the fact that I wasn't even sure all the time if this is what I really really wanted I did

feel that at times but after all I think it was more my mind playing tricks on me because I wanted this so much and not see my confusion I went for many long walks back then but finally sort of went with the I also deserve some love argument which in the end led to him ending his marriage I think what you're saying is you decided to start sleeping with him and that ended him ending his marriage but that's a very unstraight forward of explaining that but you did something okay all right I don't know what

I had expected but the storm that that set off sort of unexpected for me back then I really felt a huge connection and I felt that everybody must have seen I once visited Ben and his wife at their home long before we got together and Ben told me much later that even his wife said later that she had felt that we belong together it was all very confusing keep hearing that word Ben's parents were so hard on me his dad was also very emotional H his mother didn't talk to me for almost a year and

I just sort of froze for a very very long time I couldn't really do anything I was just surviving I did not have the energy to get a new job I did not have the energy to do anything I was just in survival mode Ben's wife would just show up in the office and claim her man claim her man in quotes I don't blame her what I found unfair was that he had told me about an open relationship I don't know if I would have been okay with really having a sort of triangle but I

sort of did not intend the ending of their marriage and with her comment about us belonging together I just didn't understand of course I can relate to it I'm a single mom myself and I just really didn't see the intensity of hate coming that did of of course our relationship was doomed from the very beginning it was very intense at times and there was a huge connection but he has he was not the person from the texts he was emotionally not available of course mhm I couldn't talk to him anymore I had tried before and

he instantly almost collapsed and begged me not to break up with him I found out about his egocentric side and the little boy within him that he was living out a lot it was all very confusing there's that word again after I found out that he was texting with another woman on a non-smoker's forum and even read his text saying that he would love to go for a walk in the woods with her the old walk in the woods and philosophies mhm I called it quits after eight months after a short break before if I

could erase any time of my life it would be this time that came after that huh it was very uncomfortable working with him and still is and it's almost 2 years now yes I'm still working there I'm just now getting out of the anger and freezing and sort of getting my power back after our breakup I would say I was somewhere between still being limerent and standing my ground I don't know I think those are mutually exclusive he started another relationship just three months later but he would contact me again and again and it was

always the same pattern he would say something like I just wanted to tell you what a wonderful human being you are uhhuh or just wanted to let you know how grateful I am that I got to meet you uh-huh and I was hooked mhm and at least for the first couple of times we were always good at texting and we still were our text got way over every line he once even started sending me erotic images and I went with it oh that's shameful we went so far as to tell each other that we still

felt attracted to each other and that one day we would have sex again all while he was still in a relationship naive me I should probably say the limerent me always assumed that he was single but how he texted with me just wasn't compatible with being in a relationship in my world now yes I never really said no I know that I never set clear boundaries it all just always escalated about something else I usually blew up at him not not for nothing for him belittling my feelings for him honestly I don't even remember it's

always escalated and I never clearly said boy don't contact me as long as you're in a relationship I went with we shouldn't text when we really can't be friends smiley emoji and so on I know that's not enough says Renee he was always saying something like can't we talk about it I think we're both not being honest blah blah blah I texted him again that we can't be friends and that I will no longer read or reply to his messages and went no contact I've been watching videos about dealing with narcissists and I do know

that I could have communicated much more clearly and thoroughly but in the state I was in back then I just couldn't handle it anymore and now I don't have any interest in any kind of relationship with him anymore or in the real B there is still sometimes this meme of the person I fell in love with but this person doesn't exist there you go and I see many things very differently now than I did back then in the beginning I was completely on this route of covert narcissism and having to protect myself oh you thought

it was him okay and while I do see many of the traits in him with me and I found myself in many of the stories I have read but this for me is confusing where do you draw the line confusing when should you protect yourself your emotions and your sanity by going no contact and when not um you know I'm just remembering there's a there was a little bit I cut out of this letter at the beginning that was actually IR relevant where she thought that the issue here was that I said giving um someone

the silent treatment within a relationship was emotional abuse but this is not a relationship not talking to somebody is a totally different thing just FYI okay I often think about apologizing to him and setting things straight with him because it is still uncomfortable at work but I'm so afraid of starting this weird pattern again I think about apologizing to him and setting things straight because oh de here okay but I'm so afraid of starting this weird pattern again and this idea of having to constantly fight this uh-huh constantly um I want to talk things out

I want to work things out I really just don't want that so I just remain no contact honestly I couldn't even handle a message about the weather from him it would just be so triggering very long story short where is your line between silent treatment and no contact okay I do hear the confusion do I realize how I still am limerent in a weird way and I'm still holding on maybe just to the holding on to the fight confusing again she says Renee okay Renee this is going to be one of those like tough love

fairy days so hold on buckle your seat Bel you're a single mom and um I have I was a single mom for N9 years and I just want to tell you and everybody who's a single mom that it is a grave matter when your life gets gets carried away in a crazy relationship or an obsession of any kind every minute that you're obsessed with somebody else is your emotional availability not there for your primary job which is being the parent to your kid so first of all I just like that that all got lost in

the story um and with that I will just say I recognize that as a single mom you have to work and also that as a single mom you have a lot of emotional needs that nobody's meeting and this is where limerance can kick in I mean can kick into people who are in relationships that are presumably good and full and all that but your emotional needs aren't met and um that leaves you vulnerable to this sort of thing this sort of thing now I'm going to be hard on you I think this is an extremely

toxic situation and this guy sounds terrible and a nut job and totally manipulative and a sex addict and I'm just going to put that out there right now but he didn't write to me about what he should do I don't have any expectation he's ever going to change you wrote to me I'm going to call you out Renee to say what the hell are you doing in this job I cannot understand here why you are still in a job for years where there's this much Insanity okay so let's unpack some of the stuff you said

all right so they have a son working there right away he started texting you so probably you thought of this but why do I have a feeling you are one of many who came before you for him to have his um very typical sex um kind it's called intriguing with somebody gets it going on text not at all consistent with who he is made up some about his open marriage right you know oh is he the first guy who's ever done that no and women do it too I'm not picking on guys here but uh

first of all I never think that some sort of uh love triangle is a good idea for somebody with attachment wounds that you clearly do you didn't tell me about your childhood but there it is it's all over this letter your attachment wounds the way you get confused the way you go into brain fog and Moral Moral muck every time you're about to do something terribly terribly wrong that's what's happening through this whole letter so you noticed he's a different person but you say oh you know you first told him you were attracted to him

at a campfire and I'm just saying what were you doing with him at a campfire it is never appropriate just saying with a married man okay he lied to you I've got it but just from here on out all right back up Renee if you ever want to be in an open relationship with somebody I don't recommend it I think that's a terrible idea but if you did don't take somebody's word for it go meet the other spouse go find out go find out if this is actually what they want because there's no other way

to get clear about the lie about something like that and when you make a choice to get involved with a great big liar a big pathological liar a manipulator and you're not able to see the red flags that's one level of terrible but that hurts your kid it hurts the wife and it hurts her future kid like so many people are getting hurt by this and so you know who among us is going to stand and hold the line and hold the line against slipping in to a step across the lion into the dark evil

you do not want to go there it's so bad for a traumatized person to lose your bearings in this way and this is the trouble with uh cptsd is you've had your perception you've had your moral reasoning shut down so many times I'm guessing this is true for you I don't think you got this way you know just out of the blue it's always wrong it's just always wrong and um what I find particularly troubling is it's a family business and you're around his parents who very naturally were devastated by what happened here that a

child a grandchild was on the way and the marriage got busted up over somebody who work there and I can only imagine like why did all of you decide to have you keep working there when it was just destroying the family it was just destroying everybody I don't know this guy to be fair he's going to destroy things no matter what but don't let him swoop you up in his path you deserve to make a living and a job where you can be happy and respected and honest and open and transparent and you can rise

up and make better money as time goes by like all of those things are totally important to a single mom the other thing is it ties up your emotional energy like you're not going to meet anybody new to go out with when all your emotional availability is just like going out like a terrible you know HVAC machine just like into into just nothing just waste it on somebody who truly is not going to love you back right oh my goodness he's a sex addict all right but I think it's possible that you are too I

think it's possible you're a love addict and that that's why you have this really serious sort of cognitive dissonance going on every time you're about to cross the line and do something that is by anybody's standards like just wrong just a terrible idea destructive hurtful um very self-destructive too and so you know there's a 12-step program for that and I really encourage you to check it out and to check it out I I I tell people you know if your problem is that you can't hold boundaries with men I would say go to a women

only sex and love addicts anonymous meeting they have them online they have them in person and there are mixed gender meetings and there are some people who that might be appropriate and healthy for but because of your boundary issues you being around sex addicts not everybody in a 12-step meeting is working a strong program and so you know you can imagine all right you want to be in a place where you're safe where people are not um using spiritual 12-step la la la to try to drag you right back down that Primrose path into your

own self-destruction so I see this word confusion again and at first I had to admit I just felt like you weren't being honest with me it doesn't seem confusing to me it he seems like a very um like a really strong I mean the red flags are so great but then again I had to say well did I always see red flags and I didn't I remember being confused as well so I'm going to assume that you really can't see it but I want to really exhort you to do whatever healing and program of recovery

therapy you can come into my program my dating program there are a lot of things you can do but I really encourage you to make it your number one priority right after caring for your child the most terrible thing that you can do to your child is to bring sick relationships into the family God forbid you end up you know married to or living with one of these guys who creates all this drama it's so bad for the kid and so you know we the people of your life you know the people of the world

we reach out to you it's like come on up girl come up come out of that little pit of Badness and trouble and come up where you're safe and free and I know what's so terrifying about that is that it feels like if you were to give up this horrible toxic poison yuy fake version of love that there would be no love at all but it's the opposite is true Renee the opposite is true no love can reach you because you're just wrapped up in this great big drama this family drama also you're forced to

to be stuck in this place where the family quite rightfully is upset they're upset this is so disruptive and I'm just guessing you're in a country where there's some kind of law or something where they can't fire you or something and you know I I'm assuming you did a great job the whole time but just nonetheless for the sake of everybody's mental health Renee for the sake of your future please remove yourself from this toxic soup you can do it people change jobs all the time and you can too you can go have a neutral

job where there's no trouble at all and you're just a self-respecting person and nobody knows this about your past and privately you're clearing up the trouble of your past oh this is the kind of thing you know a lot of people who write to me this is the sort of trouble that their parents were in when they were neglecting the kids when they were um you know focusing on themselves rather than the needs of the kids which is a very serious thing so okay I'm just calling out another sort of thing you say I sort

of didn't intend to end the marriage and I can imagine the fantasy it's like oh I can just go in and have a little bit of an affair for several months and it'll be nice and it'll make life interesting but it won't end the marriage it's like that is never something that you can assume and especially because so many things he said were a lie you have to assume everything was a lie right then this part of you I just really want to um bring this to your attention where you say I found out about

his egocentric side and I think you mean like self-centered narcissistic All About Him side you found out about it you did and the little boy within him that he was living out a lot whoa there's no little boy there it's just a mean guy it's there's no little boy there I don't know you know me I'm not I realize that a lot of people have this concept of an inner child and if anybody has them everybody has them but I just don't relate to that concept I think of myself as one person um I suffer

my blows I am accountable to change my life nobody else is coming to save me and I just don't have I don't I don't imagine myself as having Parts I'm not dissing people who do but when you start getting into talking about somebody else's little boy inside them that is a rationalization for tolerating abuse I just it just has a bad smell to it for me okay and then you say it was confusing I just think the confusion there it's like he's this terrible jerk who used and lied to me but there's this nice little

boy in him and I'm confused it's like you're not confused you're in cognitive dissonance it's called denial this is denial is a terrible terrible liability when you have trouble holding boundaries and when you tend to get involved with you know really destructive people this guy doesn't care about you at all gosh and then he I couldn't help but laugh that he you you end up like kind of in a relationship with him briefly and then what's he doing he's texting with yet somebody else at a non-smoker forum and offering to go for a walk in

the woods the old walk in the woods maybe the campfire I don't know I'm laughing I I I know you're still in pain about this but I want I want you to get lighthearted and just realize you got taken for a walk in the woods girl this guy so you say if I could erase any time of my life it would be what came after that so I would just sort of say well could I vote for the time of your life where you made the decision to get involved with him at all I would

say why don't if we can reset the clock in our imaginations let's go back to that moment right let's just go back and undo so then what came after that was this kind of like weird couldn't leave him couldn't let him go texting texting texting so I want to teach you um a super ninja trick for when you don't when you really want to have a boundary with somebody and you don't want to be in sick texts you don't text them you just do not te no texting and to make sure that you don't also

talk to them you don't work where they work okay I'm I don't mean to be snarky here but I'm just really getting in your face you know if you are going to be around somebody where you can't hold your boundaries this is going to keep happening and look what it's doing to you it's miserable so since you asked for my opinion and you have some kind of respect for what I understand about how this works I'm just telling you you're not giving him the silent treatment you're also not going no contact you are in mesed

you are in meshed and entangled with him and in a lot of pain and how like silent treatment is what I when I talk about that I'm talking about when two people are actually in a relationship and they've had an argument and one of them is unhappy about something and rather than work it out they give the silent treatment for a day or three days or something that is emotional abuse in a committed relationship that is not what you're in this is you trying to simulate having some boundaries when there actually are No Boundaries you

would not be texting him if you had boundaries so his everything that you say he's saying it's like like you're a wonderful person he's he's clearly he's just sitting there with his like emotional fishing line can I get you with this compliment can I get you with this little I pity you thing can I get you with this and then uh you said I'm hooked like a fish right you responded to that and you say you're naive you're not naive I think you're I think you're Frozen I think you you're going into a trauma induced

brain fog about this like why is this happening um I guess I just didn't realize but this has gone on for years and it's really only ever gone one way so I'm just trying to help you like with the cold bucket of water in your face it's like Renee Renee this is all this this is this guy's trouble for you and you are trouble for him that's the other thing I want you to take responsibility for he's got a kid he's uh got an addiction I think and he's got a lot of trouble please don't

be part of his trouble every person who adds to his trouble is sort of like piling on to something that's going to push him to I don't know what you got to get out of there the right thing to do is to get out of there and stop all contact and I know you can do it you'll be fine and he will be fine it will make no difference to him um you know this is that he's doing addictive behavior where he's just getting a little dopamine from getting a reaction from you he'll find another

way all right he seems very good at it and so then his thing like we're both not being honest that's fishing BL yeah so then you texted and said we can't be friends and put the smiley face and you're sort of laughing at yourself cuz you're trying to be nice but that's because you have to see him all the time yeah when you don't ever see him again this will just like all the drama in your heart it'll just go and then every once in a while there'll be a little memory or something reminds you

and you go oh a little blip and then it goes back down see in my in my healing Community here at crappy childhood fairy everybody's doing the daily practice so like old memories come up old feelings stuff that we know we don't want it comes up and we always have the daily practice twice a day to get the fearful and resentful thoughts out Downstream not in here gone we need that stuff out left your own if you're like alone and that's what happens with an affair you can't tell people it's shameful you know it's you're

you're with alone with your thoughts and especially when you're a single mom I know what that pressure is like and there's nobody to like help you out or support you emotionally and stuff really gets to you it just really gets to you and it gets very inflated in your mind and it's very easy to distort and think that something that's terribly wrong has some rationale with why it's really your fault or why somehow you can fix it or you know all these thoughts come in and I hear it all going on with you and you

keep saying do you see my confusion and should I go no contact and I'm like yeah um you're worried that you've that no contact is like I don't know I don't I can't even read your thoughts cuz CU they're so muddled so I'm I'm just telling you very clearly this is a situation to get out of find another job ASAP if it has to be an interim job for you to get out there quickly take the interim job and um you said what's the difference between silent treatment and no contact it's not relevant here um

you're in a toxic soup and you're part of it right now and you would help it would help everybody involved if you would be gone but most of all it will help you and your child you could call this limerance sure um and you're holding on to the fight I think you know if I look at this intuitively I would just say what I feel from you is a terrible fear of abandonment of just feeling like you can't make it you know that you you need this horrible situation cuz without it there's nothing and nothing

sounds like it's a horrible silence and there won't be anything there for you but trust me if you get into a healing Community such as sex and love addicts anonymous membership at crappy childhood fery um a Therapy Group something that helps women who are trying to get their lives together you would benefit so greatly from being with other people who are walking that path and who you can be honest with people you can you know text you know a woman friend that you text and you go I'm I'm so sad right now or I had

something really frightening happened and I just so bad want to call this guy and your friend says you want me to come over I'll come over come on we're going to have some tea let's um you know do something together take a walk bake something just do something together to help you pass through that moment where the old urge to self-destruct comes back to get you and who helps keep you on the shores of sanity and how happiness and possibility and love and goodness where you belong Renee one in three people actually much more than

that if we're talking about young people feel so much stress that they say most days they're completely overwhelmed and I used to be one of those people every day of my life and a lot of what they tell you to do about that you know breathe talk to someone about it it wasn't even close to helping fix it so just about everyone has lost at least some of their power to focus during the last decade and especially during the pandemic it can feel much harder to feel alert and peaceful inside and to get things done

if you have this you know how demoralizing it is when you're trying and trying but all your intentions for the day just keep getting squishy and they evaporate and it feels bad right you're full of potential and you'd love to connect with good friends or find a partner or enjoy the partner you already have and you want to be working towards things that matter but you just keep filling up with overwhelm too many things are going on too many demands on your attention too many hardships and hurtful experiences keep coming at you and what can

happen is you just shut down it's too much you can't solve problems and so they pile up and pretty soon you can't help but feel depressed and exhausted and hopeless that anything can change don't worry though that is the overwhelm talking and I know a lot of you are dealing with some very hard things right now and you're trying your best to Soldier on Shake It Off like other people do but this is what's important to know when you get stressed it triggers something that other people don't have we have a stress response that's this

big a lot of people whose blogs you're reading and podcasts you're hearing their stress response is like this and so they're telling you it's simple just be kind to yourself breathe take a bath talk to people about it it'll go away and though those are all good things I don't think you should not do those things but for us for that level of stress that we're carrying it's not enough so there's an extra element that we need to heal that most people don't know about and it's neurolog ological disregulation and that's when your nervous system

which governs everything in your body and shapes your thoughts and your feelings it can't quite keep up with all this input of stimuli you hear a big noise and your nervous system goes slightly out of whack that's disregulation and when it's happening you might space out or feel numb or emotionally overreact to people or maybe your thoughts are just flying through your mind at 90 m a minute and you go into full flight or fight response right just because you heard a noise or just because you're hurrying to get to work on time hurrying can

be a big trigger for traumatized people in fact talk about overwhelm trauma can predispose you to get neurologically disregulated when something anything stressful happens someone raises their voice at you or you lose your job and it's like a switch gets flipped you can almost feel it running through you like a wave it's disregulation and it causes overwhelm your powers of perception get very cluttered and you can't tell if someone has harmed you or if maybe you're just overreacting or your emotions are going into overdrive and you say things that you don't mean or you just

go blank have you ever done that when you're in this state it's almost certain that you're going to make mistakes you're going to lose track of your boundaries you're going to lose your focus your physical energy drops way down right when you need energy and boundaries and focus to deal with the problem at hand but what happens all this hectic input right here drains you right here that's overwhelmed you go you go high with it you go low with it and with productivity you get frantic then you crash with emotions you blow up at people

and then you fill with Despair and then in your body your stress response is just going and going and going and running you into the ground and this is why a history of trauma is closely correlated with just about every health problem there is chronic back pain migraines diabetes obesity high blood pressure heart disease cancer autoimmune disorders your body and your thoughts and your feelings are just overwhelmed and they can't do what what they're meant to do so I'm guessing you probably didn't know disregulation is a thing and you thought that you struggled because somehow

you just failed to handle life like everyone else well you didn't fail we're not like everyone else we get disregulated easily those of us who had childhood trauma you can't even feel all the ways that it's happening when it does some things yes but a lot you can't feel so no wonder there's so much going on so much info coming and it makes you feel overwhelmed now the people who tried to help me back when I was younger were showing me what worked for them and assuming if it didn't help me I was being difficult

or dense or maybe I just didn't want to heal or they thought I was crazy maybe what they didn't know because nobody knew until fairly recently that what's going on in a lot of people especially people with past trauma is nervous system disregulation even when life is easy we get overwhelmed right and then you're overwhelmed all the time and that causes life to get harder and you end up with a lot of problems around relationships and health and family and work and money and then these problems start compounding the overwhelm that you already have in

your nervous system and it gets even worse but don't worry just knowing the signs that you're disregulated can help you you can say to yourself oops I'm feeling overwhelmed this must be disregulation just naming it can take I don't know half of the pressure off you when it's happening half is a lot like you can probably manage that much overwhelm right and you can then notice how overwhelm shows up in you so you can work on a plan to bring that level of overwhelm down so what are the signs that you're overwhelmed okay here are

some racing thoughts difficulty solving problems completing tasks excessive anger um from snapping at people to actually raging at them feeling a sense of urgency even when there isn't any um having ADHD type symptoms you can't focus you can't complete tasks uh always putting out fires with a loss of ability to see the big big picture you're just running from emergency to emergency to emergency and that leads to another one another sign that you're overwhelmed which is you're chronically amped up you're feeling the adrenaline you're you're maybe even getting addicted to it alternatively you can't get

off the couch right you're just down and depressed and unmotivated procrastinating and avoidance are signs of overwhelm feeling chronically exhausted the feeling of being defeated and hopeless that's often part of it digestive distress like both ends not going well headaches chronic pain with little known origin getting sick easily uh attempting to escape you know just like going into fantasy or running away with without telling anybody where you're going uh not ghosting people that's escaping through and and or you could be also escaping through unhealthy self- soothing behaviors eating drugs drinking um that kind of thing

surrendering boundaries easily that that's a really dangerous one that's there's High consequences to that one withdrawing from social interactions having dark thoughts and pessimism um losing your interest in things you used to enjoy and a growing sense of Shame about your overwhelmed Behavior now before I understood overwhelm and disregulation and cptsd I was carrying a lot of shame because I couldn't understand why I was always so frantic and always seemed to have so much drama in my life and I get it now and I totally forgive myself because the fact is I was carrying a

lot of Trauma from abuse and neglect in my childhood and then from living my life in a dis regulated way for a lot of years I didn't know the information I got from my doctor and therapist was off base and if I hadn't figured out on my own how to heal disregulation I I might not even be here right now so here's my first secret for healing overwhelm if there is not a genuine crisis demanding frantic action from you right now your overwhelm is probably probably because you have trouble processing all the inputs the noises

the bright lights the bad fears the worries about money a bunch of people talking to you at the same time I have that I get very overwhelmed by that these are what I call inputs and they can add up so that they are just too much for your easily overstimulated nervous system now when you're not disregulated you're probably pretty good at dealing with noises and stressful experiences you see them you feel them and then they move Downstream into the memory but bucket you remember that they happen but you're not at the effect of these experiences

but trauma in your past can leave you prone to getting disregulated it happens more easily to us and it can last longer and be harder to come back out of which can block that Downstream movement of our thoughts and experiences you know just if you know you're thinking about them that day and then they they go down the emotions and the thoughts from yesterday and the day before they're banging around they can't get down stream and it just becomes too much and this produces a feeling of overwhelm now again not all overwhelm is because you're

disregulated life gets genuinely overwhelming sometimes we lose our job there's a natural disaster a relationship ends we find out we're seriously ill but think about it even in those situations you're going to need to seek help and deal with your other responsibilities and take care of yourself and put One Foot In Front Of of the other and all that is very hard to do when you're disregulated and in a state of overwhelm so it's a vicious circle stress makes you overwhelmed overwhelm keeps you from solving the problems that are causing stress the inputs are jamming

up in your nervous system and your nervous system just gives up it tips over into disregulation I do sometimes still get disregulated and I notice that it kind of spreads like a blob of ink in water I can feel it running through my body sort of like a migraine starting it does feel like that and you can't stop it like once once you're aware that it's begun you can't really stop it but here's the good news you can learn to re-regulate and when you do this you can quickly recover some of your cognitive powers and

your emotional equilibrium so you don't lash out you don't like destroy relationships while you're having a you know a feeling you can just be normal and have a normal amount of you we'll call it welmed you're just welmed but not overwhelmed the Silver Lining here is that because disregulation can overwhelm virtually every part of you the solution can also begin in any part of you anywhere wherever you see the opportunity you don't have to solve things in the right order you don't have to solve all your problems at once you don't have to love yourself

first you don't have to lose weight first or have a job first or feel better first you don't even have to see a therapist first you can start coming out of overwhelm today and from where you are just start feeling better here are some things you can try think about all the inputs the stimuli that sometimes feel like too much for your senses is it going to parties is it loud noises is it multiple people talking at once you don't have to avoid these triggers to control them just acknowledging them can help you detach a

little bit when you start to feel overwhelmed and you can remind yourself yeah there's a lot of noise in here in this room and it's making me feel a bit overwhelmed and sometimes just doing that it's enough noticing it that the overwhelm begins to subside also when you're overstimulated you can take a short break from sensory input wearing comfortable clothes you can dim the lights or turn them out you can turn off your phone or put it in another room you can extend this little break into a full hour or a full day when you

need a fast from your full load of inputs you just want to give your nervous system a rest if you're driving try not listening to music or podcasts or talking of any kind just focus on driving and see if that doesn't help you stay calmer inside when you're walking try not using headphones or airpods to stay stimulated the walk is stimulation enough and you'll find that the world lights up for you when you don't have a lot of competing stimulation coming in here walking is also very re-regulating just a positive thing to do all around

especially outside when you meditate if you do try just resting you could focus on breath you could use a mantra but I recommend while you're trying to bring your inputs down don't use recorded music or guided meditations where someone's talking you don't really need to like push yourself along there sometimes when you're overwhelmed what you just need is rest you can also try not speaking your agitated thoughts talking about trauma and things that make you angry or sad or worried can actually be triggering sometimes what you need more than talking about it is just to

feel supported and connected that's often what we're reaching for when we talk and being supported and connected doesn't depend on you voicing the distress in detail you know when I talk about bad things while I'm overwhelmed I can get very negative I mean I can really like sort of lose my bearings and just think this world is it's just so terrible everything's so bad almost like I'm hypnotized and it works against what I'm trying to do which is to come back to present time where I can feel myself I see my options and I take

good actions that are in you know my best interest now if you haven't tried my daily practice techniques it is a structured way to express and releas the distress that you have in here and then give your nervous system some rest and recovery and meditation that's that's totally what it's for and a lot of people with trauma find meditation really hard right because our minds are so chattery so with my techniques you write and ask to release these fearful resentful thoughts before you meditate and this releases a lot of the chatter so that you get

a little more peace when you do meditate writing helps the meditation and then when you meditate and rest your mind it helps you sustain your Writing Practice because if you're facing all that fear and resentment it it might feel good while you're doing it but if you're not getting that mental rest afterwards I've just seen it over and over again people get overwhelmed it's just too much is moving through you and so you take a rest afterwards you're healing up all those rough spots that you were releasing when you were doing the writing now if

you want to try the daily practice it's linked Down Below in the description section and on my website at crappy childhood fairy.com staying regulated and reducing overwhelm is more of a way of life than a quick fix but there are benefits that you can start feeling today from even putting your toe in and taking some small actions you'll start feeling better and the little changes you make add up and they become big changes over time it may seem like your problems are so big that it doesn't matter what little things you do people say that

all the time I've been in that place but remember this when your nervous system is regulated more of the time there are fewer problems that can even get into your life you'll just start being able to see the red flags in people before you let them in and you're not putting out fires because you're not letting fire start anymore so every day life gets a little gentler a little easier there's a little more space you're able to go even further in your healing solving your problems taking your next right action growing your Capac capacity to

feel connected with other people and then finding that power inside you to be yourself and bring to the world what only you can when you grew up poor and I did people sometimes give you this great advice like you should go to college and you want to do that but nobody tells you how having the life you want isn't just a destination it's a series of decisions and steps you take and things you learn things that happen and you're weighing one choice against the other and for a lot of people who grew up emotionally neglected

or materially uh neglected really have getting that wisdom that you need can be almost impossible it leaves you with no choice but to figure things out for yourself luckily this is possible my letter today is from a woman I'll call Samantha and she writes dear Anna despite an array of childhood issues I'd like to focus on the one that affects my inability to achieve my financial goals I grew up poor she said got the fairy pencil I'm going to circle things I want to come back to on a second reading but let's go through Samantha's

letter and see what's happening here she says I grew up poor at times without electricity or water for months at a time so I was grateful to have a few family members that took me in as much as possible during the school week I stayed with my grandparents who were already retired and and humbly secure financially they provided security and took care of my basic financial needs on the other side of my family I had a hardworking ant with a farm I spent as much time as possible there as it was the most joyous part

of my childhood I learned the value of hard work had my own horse and even took riding lessons for a short period this life was short lived when my aunt was hurt at work and and she was prescribed pain pills within a year the farm was gone due to addiction oh boy my family was full of promises my Dad tried to patent inventions that he promised would make us rich and I remember something about a lawsuit with workers comp that failed lottery tickets were purchased among many other Big Empty dreams throughout middle and high school

my mom supported our family on a measly secretary's income because my dad claimed to have a debilitating back injury although he stayed up all night playing video games and often did war reenactments standing for hours a day I recently realized I had no guidance on life goals and how to achieve them yeah our generation was taught to go to college if you want to be anything but I didn't know what to be since my parents said I could never be a veterinarian due to my poor grades I entered into psychology changed Majors a few times

ultimately failing my first year and losing all financial aid because I had no motivation I then worked worked retail had a few kids got married and decided to go back to be a teacher only because many people told me how good I would be no one said go ask teachers how much they make if it's worth it and if it is what they imagined I worked my tail off in college getting um president's permission to take more courses than allowed each semester to finish early and I raised my GPA from A7 woo to a 3.6

amazing when I graduated my husband was supposed to go to college then our lives would be in order well he changed his mind and rarely made more than my teaching salary himself we divorced after 9 years partly due to how content he was with being stagnant because we agreed on 50-50 custody I didn't ask for child support I started bartending along with teaching to pay the bills but was never making enough to save or stay caught up I tried real estate it was too expensive to keep up with and I couldn't gain enough security to

quit teaching in my 10 years of teaching I tried five different grades at three different schools it was all the same I love teaching the kids but the politics were not for me I guess you mean internal politics it did not pay the bills or the loans I still ow and I had to get out in my last few years of teaching I had another child and married her dad a few years ago we bought a house with a backyard where I happily got chickens and began gardening we then had the opportunity to to start

a low-risk business that was my all-in just go for it move I quit teaching and before we made profit our business failed we lost what little savings we had and are still paying for it my husband now has a new career which he loves and will advance at a gradual Pace I've not gone back to teaching but with but it's been a big sacrifice I'm a male carrier and the first two years of this career required a 60-hour work week 80 hours during Peak seasons which drastically limits time with family and almost cancels all free

time working out gardening chickens art I'm about a year away from becoming a regular employee and can opt in for the overtime or take a pay cut for a 40-hour work week being away from home so much is not worth the overtime my husband understands my farm goals and with his help I Now understand the reality that we are still up to 10 years away from getting there I'm almost 40 and I'm aware myun functional years on a farm may be shortlived which I would still be grateful for but I cannot help but to believe

that some opportunity may still save me Publisher's Clearing House the occasional lottery ticket or even some freak natural disaster in which no one gets hurt how can I know these things will not happen yet still believe they might is this hope or Insanity how did I get this far visualizing a life that I had no direction for how did I move from one beginning to another I've always been resilient but has this become a way of life how have I always seen myself where I want to be but have never seen the path signed from

Samantha Samantha I read your letter and I thought about it and thought about it and it's just haunted me and it really touches me I I really appreciate your life journey and I want to talk about this okay I think it's so it's very common it's very common you're so not alone with this so you had childhood issues you want to focus on this inability to achieve your financial goals and I heard there was even more to it really what you want is you want to do the kind of work you love and not being

able to achieve your financial goals is so much more common than you may realize I'm guessing you know a lot of people who have been in this situation and it hits particularly hard when people didn't have parents who knew how to hand handle this at all when I hear the way that you grew up with the addiction your your aunt losing the farm your dad having the back injury and staying up all night playing video games and War reenactments like a child basically I mean it really does sound like a teenager your mom having a

meager salary I heard this thing that um the motivational coach Brian Tracy calls the E factor and it's where it's expedience where uh it's sort of like the get-rich quick mental ality and we all have a little of it and if we don't watch out and especially if we're not parented this way we can think about like what's the fastest way that I can get my needs met right now what's the easiest way that I can get money and we don't end up planting the seeds I guess I'm going to use a farming metaphor here

but growing slowly you know the flowers of the work that we really love to do now don't get I'm not on a high horse here I I just did expedience all my life I sort of did some things that you're I did go to college couldn't get a job in what I studied then I got a master's degree couldn't get a job in what I studied I ended up sort of creating my own opportunities and only later in my 50s has it been a comfortable life you know I quite like being crappy childhood fairy and

it's the best job I ever had and it's very free and it really uses my skills so I want to put that hope in front of you that you you've had a glimpse of what you love to do and it's farming now from what I hear about farming like whatever your financial goals are I guess to have enough cash to buy some land to farm right but there's so much more to farming so I'm going to talk about that but let me just go through your story I'm going to bring your attention attention to some

areas of how a person moves forward in life I think you can do it I think you can um your family was full of promises your Dad tried to patent inventions promised they would make you rich something about lawsuits with workers comp lottery tickets Big Empty Dreams yeah this is a thing there's like mental Health diagnosis about what this is it's sort of a grandiosity and a being completely out of touch with reality like a big gap between what a person is doing with their time and where they Envision it's going and then always promising

people it's going to be so great and any child can't help but believe a parent right so I don't blame you but you got programmed that this was the way well it's not the way every now and then somebody gets lucky and or or invent something really useful which is more than luck but if you're not like in the business of inventing it's really unlikely so I think you know that intellectually but they didn't teach you just the day-to-day you know seed planting watering Sunshine process of developing skills that help you both make a living

and do something more in line with who you really are I am so not surprised to hear that you had to live on your mom's salary it was Meer and that your dad the back injury you know that's really common the back injury it also brings pills into people's lives and video games are definitely an addiction I'm sorry but they are some people can handle it but when people are playing video games all night they kind of might as well be at a casino or doing cocaine or it's a it's a terrible addiction it sucks

the life out of people and ruins seems to hit men harder than women even then you realize that you didn't have guidance on life goals no you didn't I understand yeah and you were your generation you were taught to go to college like oh go to college it's just these empty words go to college like college will put you on a path to success but that wasn't my experience either I'm glad I went but because I didn't know you know I didn't know the game like it turns out you're supposed to do internships I studied

video production and you're supposed to do internships so I was a great student I did amazing things but then I got out I moved to LA I couldn't get a job in production for the life of me not for 2 and A2 years I finally gave up on the whole thing then later I created my own company and that did well if I had had to wait for other people to hire me which is often the case when you're young and you're trying to learn the ropes I just wouldn't have gotten picked whatever it was

about me I was rough at the edges a little bit feral you know I just I didn't know the um social graces that you were supposed to have to work at certain levels but here's what I did I figured it out and I want to encourage you to do that for you to get into farming I haven't done farming so I don't really know the I don't know the the scene I don't know the social life of farmers and how you get to know them but I want to encourage you Samantha go make friends with

some Farmers there's this beautiful thing that people will often do for for anyone who asks not everybody will do it but hardly anyone asks it's called an informational interview and um had had a party the other night we had a family party and my one of my sons wanted to ask for an internship with somebody who was there who has a very impressive thing going on and we were another friend and I were coaching him on how to approach that guy uh to ask and so I had been thinking just go ask for an internship

well somebody much more seasoned in the world of business um had a better idea and told my son try an informational interview don't go straight for asking for hey can you help me out just say hey if you were a person like me you know a kid who's trying to get into this line of work what would you do and so my son did it and he got this really good answer of something he had never thought of and a sort of not a promise but like if you would learn that thing we'd certainly talk

to you about hiring you and I was so excited to hear that and I I wouldn't have thought of it the whole informational interview thing I wasn't raised to know that and you'd think I'd know by now and I've actually you know people contact me for informational interviews a lot and the bigger crappy childhood fairy is the more I get contacted to the point that I can't even do it all you know I I kind of can't wait to to be old when and have more time it's like this fantasy I have that I can

just help more people with that I love watching people succeed at earning a living and doing something that gives them joy I love supporting that I love watching it so with you and me right now we get to do that so I'm really encouraging you don't try to guess how to farm don't make it a leap from your postal carrier job to farming without that huge step of research and education farming is super you need knowledge to do it it wouldn't be the end of the world maybe if your plan was to um work on

a farm that somebody else owns but that you you know play a major role in running or you become a junior partner in a farm a lot of work is needed and a there's often very little money in farming I think that's true almost everywhere and it's sad and uh everything that I hear about it like unless it's a very giant operation it's very hard to make a living I'm not knocking it I'm just saying to be prepared for that I can kind of see why uh you need a financial buffer I love that you

love teaching and that you're good at it that is really cool you can do a lot with that skill other than work in a school system I think I would go nuts too my mother was a teacher and she was a good teacher and the politics of the school district like ruined her life basically and I grew up watching that and I was not drawn to it even though I like to teach YouTube is a school YouTube is a school that doesn't pay at first first and it takes time but it teaches you how to

teach you get feedback from your viewers about how you're doing and if you keep going if you make at least one video a week you don't even have to you know you don't have to prepare it so much you can just teach what you know and people really enjoy it I I I I mean everyone here who's watching this video likes YouTube when it first came out I remember just being blown away like I wish this had been here all my life I would have been all over it it suits me nobody's going to hire

me to be a teacher or a leader or anything like that I made myself into that thanks to a free platform where I could put my own ideas out there and get feedback and I remember Samantha I remember having jobs and like kind of like not really getting anywhere on them and feeling like there was some sort of limit to how much they were going to advance me and not knowing why and directly asking why and still not knowing why and all of that love working for myself now some people it's totally they their their

gifts flourish when they're working in a team and I do have a team but I I flourish without a boss limiting what I can think about and what I can make into a priority all my life people told me oh you're getting too creative you're thinking too much no we're not going to go there so now I can have my creative thoughts and sometimes they are failur but I fail in style and sometimes I hit the mark and all in all this has turned into a wonderful Enterprise so don't give up 40 is a good

age to you know now you've got some wisdom as your kids get a little older you'll have some freedom and you have you you're going to have energy for years to do this I want you to have that farm life and I think there's a lot of ways to do it and the way you're going to learn about that is by talking to Farmers and doing your research doing your due diligence not hopping in not thinking cuz you know what nobody nobody's coming along to tell you how to do this you have to go ask

I'll tell you that my family for one we watch um farming documentaries you know sheep farming in northern England and uh the the guy with the Clarkson's Farm we've watched both seasons of that like we just have this little hobby we love watching farming videos and that's all I know about farming is from that really it's not very good information so I'm not your informational interview but I'm your informational interview to just tell you you have to be very curious and brave and go find out if you go talk I promise you if you go

talk to 10 people who farm for a living you will find out you you know it'll be like having a bachelor's degree in how to how to develop um your own ability to create a farm but you're going to have to stay with it and keep learning learning has to be your joy when you're poor and it sounds like you've been poor all your life and you you have kids to support I'm so glad your husband has good stable employment right now that's that's awesome I know how much it limits your time and energy you're

40 don't even think of that as old at all I didn't start crappy childhood fairy till I was 53 so so much can happen what's interesting is my whole life I thought that my career was all over the place that I had never succeeded in putting anything together when I started doing this almost every skill that I've ever used on a job came in handy and it's good you know it's good to be a generalist and to have a lot of practical skills so that you can be resourceful one of my heroes is Laura angles

Wilder resourceful you know she just figured out how to scratch a living out of the ground when when everything was terrible they'd have their land taken away her husband had dthera and couldn't could barely walk you know they had problems and she figured it out and uh those are my kind of Heroes and if you haven't read lur Engles Wilder everybody do don't even wait till you have kids beautiful literature the Little House series but I also read about the history of her life and um I find these stories very inspiring what I don't find

inspiring is stories of people who win the lottery and I think we know people like that they always want to get into a get-rich quick scheme and you'll often see them at the edges of real estate work or things like that where you know they don't want to be good at anything or learn anything they just want to make a ton of money well I don't blame them I like that too I would love that it just hasn't worked out that way and honestly my satisfaction comes from feeling like I did a good job each

day and I don't do a good job every day but some days I do do a good job and it's I feel that good feeling when I go to bed at night and when I just waste my time and I I used to feel this way all the time when I was doing work that wasn't meaningful to me I would just feel like wow the days of my life are ticking by and one day it will end and is this really what I want but you know what Samantha I was trying to hang on to

a place to live I was a single mom with two kids you know I was trying to get enough work to get through the day and pick up the kids and I had a lot of medical stuff at the time it was was it was a really hard time I persevered though and I want you to persevere too and just remember you're like in the club of strong people who get through hard times now Samantha I regard a job as a postal carrier as a pretty darn good job it's prettyy stable it has good benefits

it has a pension now you might not be thinking pension right now but right about where I'm sitting like I never had a job with a pension so my work now has to support me today and for the up to 30 years after I sto working so it's like so much pressure imagine if there were a pension so I I mean I have social security like everybody who works but it's not enough as we know so the Postal job at 40 hours sounds like a really good decision to me you have little kids and I

know I know it's really hard to work full-time with kids I've I had to do that too and sometimes I wish I could get back some of those days when they were just in like after care after school until 6:00 p.m. and just hang out with them a little more and help them a little more with what they do but you know what I was able to do when I was older than you when I was 50 and I was working from home I was able to be a work from home mom when they were

able to walk to school they were old enough to walk themselves home from school and in a way I think it's a great gift to be present for the kids when they're teenagers there's a lot of trouble they can get into then too so yeah if I if I had had my choice I wouldn't have had to work so very much um in their life but I'm so grateful to have been able to make a living and to have given them a decent life materially and to model for them what a person looks like when

they're you know balancing their need for money and their need to express who they really are and be creative and have friends and have eventually I remarried and and we I would say we have a very good life so you show the kids how a person does that your kids are probably going to have to work too like almost everybody does it's very rare that people don't have to [Music] [Music]