How to Heal Without Pretending You're Okay | Dr. Cristi Bundukamara EP357

You're listening to the It's Her Time Podcast with Cody Sanders. [MUSIC] Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the It's Her Time Podcast. My name is Cody Sanders, and I'm a holistic health practitioner and functional nutritionist. And I'm excited for today's conversation because I do think it's one that every woman needs to hear. Because at some point, every one of us experiences something that absolutely changes us. Maybe it's losing someone we love, or maybe we've gone through a divorce, or we receive a really frightening diagnosis. Maybe it's our children leaving home, or we just are overwhelmed and burned out, or we have a health challenge, or just simply waking up one day and realizing that you don't recognize yourself anymore. And I know that we often hear people say, just be strong. But no one ever really teaches us what that actually means. And so today's guest, she has lived through unimaginable tragedy. And she's turned that experience into helping thousands of people build genuine mental resilience. Dr. Christi Bunda-Kamara, she's also known as Dr. B. She's a Navy veteran. She's a psychiatric nurse practitioner. She's the author of Pain and Purpose, and the creator of the mentally strong method. And she's helped more than 7,000 people navigate grief, burnout, and major life transitions with practical tools that create actual real change, not just understanding of what's going on. So today we're going to talk about what it truly means to become mentally strong and how to move through grief instead of getting stuck in it, and then how to rebuild your life when it doesn't go according to plan. I'm really excited for this conversation. I do think it's going to help so many of us today. So if you're ready, go grab yourself a cup of her time, get comfortable, and let's get into it. Hi there. Alright, real quick, before we go on, if you've been listening to this podcast thinking, "Why do I feel like I've tried everything and my body still isn't responding? I want you to know that you're not crazy and you're not alone and you're not doing anything wrong. Just most women have never been taught how to actually work with their bodies. That's why I created this podcast, and it's why I have recently created my calm program. I created it so that I can go even deeper with the women who are feeling like they just need to be shown the way. Calm is built around four things your body needs to feel safe and responsive again. Capacity, adaptation, load, and modulation. We look at how much stress your body can handle, how well it adapts, what it's carrying, and how to help it regulate. So we're not guessing anymore. And then we personalize it just for you. Your labs, your symptoms, your life, your season, all of it matters. This isn't a one size fits all plan. It's actually a roadmap for your body and I walk with you through it. If you've been waiting for something that finally makes sense, well, this is it. I've got you. Just DM me the word calm on Instagram and I'll send you the details personally. Alright, let's get back into the episode. Okay, I am so excited to have you on, Kristy. I think this is a topic that is going to be something that is very important. Very helpful for many of us and it's a little different than some of the things we talk about. But it will all come together. It will all make sense of why. Yeah, why it's so important to have this kind of conversation? Because first of all, your story is very powerful and I want you to share that story. I want you to say hi and introduce yourself. But I'm so excited for you to share your story because I do think that your history and your background is going to lend so much to what it is that we're talking about today to help people understand that you truly are such an expert. And we're so lucky to be learning from you today. So would you say hello and introduce yourself and I can't wait to get into it. My name is Kristy Bundekmar. I go by Dr. B. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner with a doctorate and over 25 years of clinical experience. But that didn't help me in the worst times of my life. I do think it was a nice foundation. I knew that kind of professional treatment might not be enough for me. But the journey, so I was already a psychiatric nurse practitioner when I lost my first son in a drowning accident. I had just adopted five children, two biological, this beautiful, happy family. I really thought that if I did good, I would receive good blessings, these kinds of things. And just really thought I had it all together. And I had this degree that told me I knew how to take care of the mental health of even adopted children. And then my son, Johnny, died in a drowning accident. And that was the first hit, right? So anybody listening who has ever gone through any kind of unexpected trauma where you think you're safe, you think things are good, everything is going well. And then your life has literally turned upside down. And I went into survival mode, which every mother does, every mother that I talk to that's lost a child. It's literally tunnel vision, especially if they still have young children at home. It's like, oh my god, I have six kids. I have to take care of. And Johnny was a biological sibling of two of my other adopted children. And so I'm like, just pouring into them. And I'm like, I just have to stay focused. I have to be a mom. I also worked full time. So I've always been that working, multitasking, overwhelmed mom, right? But that's not where the story, that was just the beginning of the story. Within a year, my biological son Reggie started having catastrophic epilepsy. And the only reason I identify biological versus adopted is just because it is a rare neurodegenerative condition that my daughter and my husband also have. I didn't know that at the time. So the first five years of going through this like medical trauma with my son, not having time to grieve Johnny's death, his two biological sisters began running away and manifesting their previous trauma in every mother's worst nightmare. So here I was just overwhelmed. And I know there's people listening who are completely overwhelmed in the life that they have right now, their reality. So many times when we talk about mental health and mental strength, we are like talking about like, oh, just think positive. And if you can just do this, everything will be fine. And that's not how it works. Nope. Not in real life, right? When reality is not plain nice. And so here I was working full time, taking care of a very sick son. My son, Reggie had catastrophic epilepsy. He would have 12 grandmoss seizures in a day. He spent many nights in the ICU, many times doctors would just tell me that there's nothing else we can do. He needs to go on hospice, these kinds of things. And then my daughter started to run away. And I remember sitting in this overwhelm and going, I must, I can't turn her, I can't turn her. I help people every day work through trauma. But when you're living it and you're in the midst of it, past trauma is one thing and there are, you know, we work through that. But when you're actually going through it, being able to organize your thoughts is foreign. Like it just feels overwhelming. You are just surviving. And I know you work a lot in kind of the hormones and the cortisol and all of the things that are driving that. And then, you know, we get adrenal fatigue. We, you know, poop out our natural adrenaline systems. And that's where I was. And you know, I've always been into kind of alternative medicine, functional medicine. And I do a lot of the things that you teach here on this podcast. I'm 100% in support of these things. But mentally, I felt like I can't. And I don't know, you know, if there's somebody listening right now that is in that, I can't. You just can't. You just need tools and systems and don't give up. And I definitely have like a gift of perseverance. I knew I wasn't going to give up, but I couldn't find help. You know, I mean, I had services for my son. I, you know, we had doctors, we had all these things. I was physically taking care of my body. But even though I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner, the tools that I had just weren't working. And I remember calling my mom one day. And just in that place of saying very negative things that you would only say to your closest friends or your mom, right? And her not knowing what to do. We've had conversation since and she's like, what am I supposed to do when my daughter is calling me at the end of her rope and I have nothing to provide? And she's like, oh, you should journal. And I thought to myself at the moment, and I apologize to her for this, but like that's stupid. Of course, I know about journaling. I know it was about journaling. This is definitely a nice coping skill. But that's my brain is not in full sentences. I'm not functioning. And but I hung up that call and it came to me. We now call the thought map. And in this thought map, you do it like bubbles, instead of like writing. And if you start with "Oh, for Well," and at this time I was actually depressed. I was like, "I'm depressed. What's making me depressed right now? What's made me depressed in the past? When did I first feel this sadness or depression even in my childhood?" And how does this impact my relationship with, I say, "God, but when I'm working with people, I'll say like spiritual relationship." And on one piece of paper, you get out like 20 years of journaling. And it creates this space that you can then start to organize because we all are living in patterns. We are all living in the things that we've dealt with and the our story continues to show up in our life. And so that was like a really aha moment and I began developing what I now call the mentally strong method. And it's this think organized choose. And it's like a flywheel. Like if you just keep the momentum going of organizing what's going on in your mind and doing different things for those pieces. For example, almost all self-development books talk about positive thinking, which is great. And we should all be trying really hard to positive think. That is not going to take care of your grief. It is not going to take care of your trauma. It's not going to take care of your spiritual conflict. Like there's different things that you need to do for these organizational pieces. And so the mentally strong method got me through some of the most overwhelming difficult times in my life. And then my son died in 2016. And I knew I have to share this with the world. Like if I can do it, you know, I've struggled with depression in anxiety since I was a teenager, right? Like this is not just oh, I'm strong. This is I have figured out like a system. And so I began teaching on grief and trauma and using the mentally strong method and then my daughter died in her sleep completely unexpected. She was not sick, although I told you she had the same neurological disorder. She'd never spent the night in a hospital. She, her seizures were well controlled. She like she was externally very healthy. Although there was this neurological thing going on in her brain. And that could have broke me. And there were times in the aftermath of that grief that I got to the point of, you know, I just want to be with my children, right? Both of my biological children are gone. And the mentally strong method became my safety net. And you know, if there's anyone listening that is at that point right now in their life where you are thinking about hurting yourself, find support, find a system that will be that safety net. And for me, the mentally strong method is the safety net that I then can raise the floor, right? Like, so I didn't drop as deep as I would have had I not had some sort of system. Five years later, my husband passed away from the same disorder. And I think it was a very different experience. He did choose to go into hospice. We had mentally given up that this disease could be fought, right? So it was a very different experience. It was almost spiritual and loving and a very different experience. But, you know, I miss him and I'm in my 50s alone. Yeah. Like a whole new life. Like starting, just starting over at this age and I bet there's tons of women listening that feel like they are starting over at, you know, whatever age maybe it's from a divorce. Maybe their kids are grown and gone. Like, I don't want people to take on my trauma of like, oh, that's for her, right? We don't teach mental strength anywhere. And so true. The one poster child we have for mental strength, I don't think is mentally strong, which is David Goggins. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of him, but he's like this, you know, he's had trauma and he is vulnerable and talks about his trauma, but it's all about physically pushing through and creating like, calluses for that. And when we, especially as women, see that as mental strength, we think we have to suppress it all. And that is not how we work. And I can tell you from working with tons of men, that's not how they work either. They think they do. Yeah. They have a condition to think that's how they work. Yeah. Yeah, they have been conditioned to think that and they do compartmentalize better than we do, right? But when those compartments get overwhelmed, they lose it in that the function versus non-function is significantly a bigger gap. You know, so the men that I work with at PTSD, like, you know, they're on it 100% or they're going to kill themselves, right? Like, there's, you know, no in between. And so none of us should be trying to callous through our grief and our trauma and those kinds of things and learning how to think and organize those things so that we can make choices in line with what we want with insight and vulnerability is true mental strength. And that is what we're here for today, that's what I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you for sharing. Wow, the journey I get what you're saying, we don't all need to compare our traumas with your trauma. It's so much, Christy, you've gone through so much. But what a beautiful gift you're giving to the world that you're taking these traumas and you're helping others to be able to handle life changes, life's unexpected events that can happen to each and every single one of us. They don't have to look the same, but oftentimes they can affect us very similarly. You know, I hear a lot of from women, especially like you said in midlife, I don't know if that's the time of life that all of a sudden things like this tend to happen, right? I don't know why that is, but not always, but you get what it's more common. But I hear women saying that they know what they should do. They hear, they know it. Like your mom telling you you should journal, right? You're like, yes, this is a good, or I should positive thinker my way through this. You know what you should do, but you just can't seem to do it. And that's the hard part. That's where we tend to get stuck. That's where how we can stay stuck. And so that's why I want to have this conversation because your framework is going to help us to know how to, to just even make sense of it in a way, if that's even possible, but you know, I mean, like you're able to look at it. Yeah. And then try to have these tools that can help you work your way through it. I just wonder to even before we dive into all of that, just because I, as I'm hearing your story, and I'm just so impressed with your strength and your resilience and everything. And I know that that didn't just come easy. That was something that you really had to work through. I wonder, did you ever feel the pressure, you know, especially with the type of career, you know, the your profession and everything else. From others or even from yourself, did you ever feel the pressure to just move on, though, before you were ready, before you felt ready? I think that there has been stages of, like feeling like I needed to have answers before I had answers. But I knew I needed answers for myself. It creating the mentally strong method was my survival, right? Because I have had many professionals, and I'm talking people with 20 plus years experience and really good therapist and psychiatrist. Tell me, I don't know how you're still standing. And I'm like, if you don't know how I'm still standing, how can you help me, right? And many times I think this happens in the space of like seeking mental health treatment. There is definitely a time and place for seeking mental health treatment. But we are not empowering each other that we are our own self advocates. We have agency over ourselves. But we get the feedback from a very masculine point of view of well, just think positive. And we're like, okay, I can do that until I can't. (laughing) Yeah. And so in the mentally strong method, there's 10 categories. And negative thoughts or positive thinking is one of those 10 categories, right? So yes, we need to be replacing those things. Like, when my children die and I think, I'm a horrible mother, I should have done this. I need to stop doing that, right? And that is true. That is my power and I can choose to continue to try to replace those thoughts. But what happens is people think that that's going to answer the trauma in the grief piece and it is not. And I know you've had some episodes around like, somatic work and releasing trauma. Trauma needs to be released and moved out of the body. body. There's a famous book, you know, the body keeps the score. And when we are having some of these hormonal imbalances and physical symptoms, you know, it could be trauma. You know, trauma could be like contributing. I'm not, still, you know, go through the medical process, get the hormones, get the treatment, right? But also be working on, why did my body decide to show up like this? Where, you know, I mean, if you look at the female hormones and the chakras, like the sacro chakra, you know, do you need to do somatic release in this area? Is there sexual trauma? Is there, you know, what, what in your life, what trauma in your life could be helping manifest this? Right. What's what's playing in the background? You know, that's the part that we, we, it kind of goes back to what I say, we know what to do and we end up trying to fix our bodies because we think that our bodies are working against us. But truly, our hormones and everything else is just responding to what's playing in the background. So that's what you're meaning. There's usually a trauma, whether we even are aware of it or not, there's usually something that's contributing to the way that our body is responding. Right. And I can tell you just, just recently, and I try not to take antibiotics. I try not to do traditional medicine, but there's times in my life that I have to and I struggle with a SIBO infection, which is a small intestinal bowel infection. And I've been trying to, you know, cleanse it naturally and those kinds of things and had to get on antibiotics. But as I was doing my meditation last night, I was reminded like, okay, what does the gut do? Right? Why do I keep having this issue? With my gut. And the the gut in kind of these Eastern medicine talks about like it is the process of consuming and then separating what is needed and what is toxin and releasing what is toxic. We don't do that process. I, you know, even with all the work that I've done, right, I'm still learning myself. And I went through this, you know, practice of, okay, what what toxins, you know, emotional toxins, am I still holding on to? Right? And, you know, separating those things. And that's what the mentally strong method does as well, like this thing organized, choose like where is, you know, and this, this is super important, grief and trauma. Everyone who's lost a child or husband or someone really close to you, is likely traumatic grief, not just grief, right? And traumatic grief needs to be separated because trauma needs to be released from the body. We know that there's all the science behind that. Grief is your story. You are allowed to be sad and cry over this 20 years from now. That is okay. That is grief. This whole concept of grief is, you know, these five stages and somehow in a year you get to acceptance is, is not true. And not just not true in my life, it's actually clinically not true. That formula was research on hospice patients, not hospice family members, not the, the people left behind. It was the process that someone goes through when they know that they're going to die. Right. That's a very different, that's so different grief. Yeah. So different. But then somehow we've been taught that that's how we process grief. And so I teach that grief is your story. You are allowed to hold on to the pain of grief. But if it is a meshed with your trauma and you're holding on to the trauma of that, it's way at your body. Yeah. Wow. And that's a lot. That's a lot to carry. So grief is something that we probably never truly finish. And that's something we've just been fed to think that's what you should do. But it's no wonder that, you know, we can have tears that come up 20 years after I love one passes or, you know, something else that we're grieving. You know, I just think maybe is it that our relationship with grief just changes over time or yeah. Yeah. And then what, sorry. I think if you can do it in a healthy way, if you can isolate the grief and take away the trauma, the negative thoughts, right? Because and this is in the method, we separate those things. Your grief, you are allowed to feel that sadness and pain. But if you start going, oh, I'm a bad mom, I should have done this. You're going into negative self talk. And that is not healthy. Right? That is, that is not feeling the pain of grief. That is beating yourself up. Very different. So, and this is what can happen. And this is what gets us in that overwhelm is that everything is amashed. It's not separated. And you're not taught how to do it differently. That these things need to be processed differently. Everyone says, oh, you have to process your trauma. Wow. Right. And then if you're processing your trauma, I love the somatic work that you've talked about. There's lots of, you know, traditional therapies that work on trauma. But if it's amashed with your grief, if someone told me, let's do EMDR or some sort of, you know, trauma work to get rid of the pain of losing your children. I would like to be like, no, thanks. Right? The, but reframed as the, the traumatic pieces of that loss. So for my son, the traumatic pieces were 10 years of medical trauma. Right? His actual death, although horribly heartbreaking was not traumatic. And I would even the second he died, I would not have prayed for him to come back because he was so uncomfortable and so much in pain. Right? I get that. So the, so the trauma piece of my son's death was the hospital stays. The, you know, all of these things that happened over 10 years. My daughter's, it was the morning that I found her. Right? Like the actual death was traumatic. And so being able to separate what's trauma and what's grief, then you can release the trauma. And this happens even in divorce. You know, there's grief of divorce, right? I have this relationship that I have lost at some point in your, even if you wanted this, this divorce, like there was some point in your life that you also wanted this marriage, right? And you, you are grieving the, the loss of that relationship, but there could be trauma in there. There could have been betrayal. It could have, you know, gotten really ugly. There could have been lots of hurt that happened in, in that process, right? But being able to separate that and say, okay, here's the trauma. I'm going to, you know, do activities to release the trauma. And this is where the choice comes in, right? Think, organize, choose. You, you organize, okay, this is trauma. This is grief. I'm going to, you know, do such and such to release this trauma. I'm going to honor my grief. I'm going to stop talking negative to myself, right? And being able to put these things into bite-sized pieces so that you have structure to what you're going through. Because otherwise, it feels overwhelming and amished. Yeah, I can see that. I think even just the step of just trying to separate the two of the grief and the trauma and recognizing where there's the emotion and then there's also just the, the stored emotion that can be presenting itself in so many different ways, physically, mentally, you know, all of that as well. And so I think that right there can be a huge key for everybody that's listening. But yeah, and then obviously going through the rest of your, your method as well. I just think that a lot of times we go through these traumatic events, like you said, it could be anything death, divorce, any big traumatic change that can happen. And then we try to just push our way through it. And I think especially as women, I feel like this is something that we tend to be really good because I feel like we kind of have been trained to push through uncomfortable and or discomfort and pain and things like that through our monthly cycle and whatnot. So whenever something feels uncomfortable, we just kind of get going. And I think that sometimes we use some very unhealthy coping mechanisms, you know, that just sometimes for me, I see this a lot. People pleasing, just getting busier, working harder, trying to be more perfect. Food, alcohol, anything that can numb. Yeah. You know, overexercising even, or just withdrawing isolation, things like that. So how do we recognize when we're just surviving instead of actually healing? Yeah. So taking a step back and making sure there's insight. So some of those things can be helpful, right? Exercise, for example, right? We know that exercise is literally the the most powerful antidepressant. It is more powerful than the pro-zaccharlexa pro-resole off that you are on, right? But that motivation to do it, right? But then the person who is doing it to suppress the pain versus release the pain. So sometimes it could be just a slight shift in your intention. So, you know, example, a runner who is like, you know, I I run for my mental health and I zone out and I don't think about anything. Are they moving that trauma out of their body or are they pounding it in? It could be the exact same activity with a different intention. Somebody else says, "I run and is the only thing that feels like release." I start crying sometimes in the middle of running and I don't run. But I do this in yoga. I'll stop in the middle of yoga. Thank God they say you can just lay down and do it. Shabasana, we let the tears come. It has a lot to do with the intention behind it. One of the things that I say in my documentary is after my daughter Maya died, I was like, alcohol does feel good. It does help relax this overactive nervous system. But I said to myself, "I commit to not drinking alone." I don't have a problem with alcohol but I could see how this pain was so deep. If I started with one glass of wine a night, it would just spiral because it actually does work. It does from the nervous system. Not the healthiest way to do it, but this is the problem. It actually works. Same with carbohydrates and things like that. We actually know that it increases serotonin in the brain. You don't want to do it but you're doing it because it's working. Bringing that insight into, when I work with people, we teach the mental strength method of how do I make choices? Instead of like, "Oh, I need to go on a diet. I need to stop eating so much." If you just went through something traumatic and you have to gain 10 pounds because of it, you also have to give yourself grace. It's not so much of you have to do things perfect. This is what we've been taught. We didn't have a process to actually release. Many of us have been doing some of these maladaptive coping since we were teens. Then we're trying to be on a diet and discipline and willpower is not the answer. Insight and vulnerability and really understanding how you got to where you are. Some of it could be genetic. Maybe we're trying to be skinnier than we're supposed to be. There's so many factors and that's what we need to organize. Instead of just trying to show up how we think we're supposed to show up and you had talked about being like a people, please, or showing up how others need me to show up. Many of us are impassant and we know what people need from us. Are we showing up for ourselves? The first time I got on an airplane with my son and they said they did the whole thing that normally I'm not listening to. If the oxygen mask comes down, make sure you put it on yourself first before you put it on your child. My first thought was, of course I'm going to put on my child first. Then when you think about it, what if you pass out and that either one of you have the mask. The same thing is happening to us women. We are giving, giving, pouring out and we're not pouring into ourselves and really knowing what fills our cup. Do you know what fills your cup? When you do this activity, you leave feeling better and refreshed. More full. Yeah, absolutely. It makes so much sense because you're right. All of these not great coping mechanisms that we turn to are like the quick fixes. We talk a lot on this show about how we are about root cause and not just about quick fixes and really understanding what's going on underneath the surface. I get it too. I'm with you. I understand why we turn to that. We've been trained really well to just push through and whatnot. But then what I see and what you see also is women who then become absolutely burned out because they keep pushing through. Instead of looking at this as energy exchange and recognizing that doing something like a drinking alcohol or more people pleasing or more perfection or whatever is actually draining energy, it might be helping you feel more numb for the time being, but it's draining you. It's depleting you even more. So it's just almost, it's making this whole process, the healing process have to take that much longer and be that much harder. And so I think that's something that you need to look at is this energy exchange. And so like you said, what are the things that actually give us the oxygen, fill our cups, that kind of thing because I think that's so important. And especially when we're going through trying to heal from trauma and grief, I just think that's something that this is helpful. And listen to your intuition and your body. There's so many influencers or things that are like, you've got to do this, you've got to do this. And I'm a victim of it too. I scroll and I'm like, oh, that's the whole thing. But what actually fills your cup? I mean, I remember for years and I was in the military, so you had to know how to run and stuff. And everybody was like, that is the only way to lose weight. You have to run and I would run because I was told that that's what was best for me. That was for my mental health. And I got to a point in my life and I absolutely hate running. And no, I'm not going to reframe that. Like, you're like, oh, just reframe it. You have to say that you're running. Big more punny than about it. But then I have found other things that actually when I do them, they fill my cup. So making sure that when we do the alone time, the self-care time, that you're actually filling your cup, nails and hair is another one. They're like, oh, you know, go get your nails and hair done. For me, that's another chore. Like, you want me to look a certain way. The world wants me to look a certain way. So I have to spend two hours doing something I could care less about, right? For some women, that might actually fill their cup. And that's why it's important. Insight is important. Like, are you doing it for other people? Or are you doing it for yourself? And if you really do feel better and you like it and you come back from that appointment, feeling rejuvenated, please keep doing it. But if that's not how you feel after, that's not your self-care. That's just another thing you have to do. You have to get to know yourself and energy is our biggest clue. And it's just something that we can look to. So, you know, running might not be your thing, but you love yoga. And it still has the same benefit. You're physically taking care of your body and making yourself more stronger and more flexible and all of that. But it's also, it's filling your cup. It's re-turning your battery. It's making you feel like you took care of your physical body, but now you're able to, you know, take care of everything else as well. So I do think that that's so important and I love that. So I love your mentally strong method. And I want you to have a chance while we're in, you know, having this conversation and we have you today to really just walk us through, you have someone already, but really walk us through the framework and, you know, are you willing to do it yourself? Oh, I need to do it myself. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah. So in your willing to be vulnerable? Absolutely. Okay. Oh, book. Let's do it. So tell me about a thought or a feeling that you kind of, we call it your default mode network. You go there when you're not in a good place. Like, is it anxiety, depression, overwhelm? What's that word for you? Probably overwhelm. Mm-hmm. Okay. What's going on in your life right now that feels overwhelming? Yeah. You know, I feel like I have a lot of balls up in the air. You know, I, yeah, I own a company. I'm helping to run that, dealing with that. I'm also opened up my private practice again. I do this podcast. I have adult children, which you wouldn't think they don't need me in the same way, but they need you in a whole other way, right? And so that's, that's something my husband and I have been married for 34 years and, you know, life's changing for us. And so there's, you know, there's just a lot. And then just with, you know, social expectations, family, my mom is getting older. She needs a lot more attention. You know, there's just a lot of that. So it's all good things. It's all good things, but I just feel kind of the weight of it right now. And sometimes I literally just want to shut everything off and just hide and just be like, okay, I don't want to do it and be a grown up today. I just want to like, yeah, I just, I don't want to have to be responsible for everything anymore. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So if I were next to you and we would be doing this on what we call a thought map, and we would put overwhelm in a bubble in the middle, and then we would be putting all the different things in bubbles and the factors around that so that when we're done, you actually see everything on, on one piece of paper. So the next question is when is a time in your life where you have felt like the most overwhelmed as an adult? [BLANK_AUDIO] last year. Last year was really rough. Tell us a little bit about that, what was going on? Well, everything that I just mentioned, that was all going on. And then there was a lot of shifts financially and things like that. And so there was a lot of big transitions that had to be made as far as my company and the way that things were being run. All of that had a shift. And so that meant just me taking on even more responsibility as we found the right people to come in and help out and whatnot and get rid of people. There was a lot of some outside kind of drama that was happening within my family as well. My son was dealing with some PTSD as well. So we were trying to navigate all of that. So last year was like if I could, if I could have had, you know, like that was the year that I wanted to just find my little safe spot and get in the fetal position and just rock myself, you know, to sleep. But yeah. So yeah, that was. And what do you think you were hiding from? Just not feeling like I had the answer in the solution to everything. And that I had all the answers, you know, to fix everything. That was something that felt so overwhelming to me. Now I want you to think back to the first time you felt overwhelmed probably as a child. Yeah, I don't even know when that would have been. I kind of grew up in a family youngest daughter. And so in a way, I'm the youngest, but I have a younger brother. And so I had a lot of older sisters that took care of me and my parents did a good job of taking care of me. So I didn't really feel I just was kind of free and fancy, you know, fancy free, I should say, and just played and just didn't have a care in the world. But probably around, maybe around like maybe when I was like 10 or 11, my mom started working again. And so I had the responsibility of taking care of my little brother. And getting him, yeah, getting him to school and to all the things he needed to do as well as myself and just spend a lot of time kind of alone and like figuring out like how to figure stuff out on my own. Yeah, okay. And how do you think that overwhelm impacts your spiritual relationship? Well, at that time, at that age, there wasn't much of a spiritual relationship happening at that time. But as I was like 15, I ended up because of some, you know, decisions I was making as a child, my parents sent me off to a survival program. So I was out surviving. There's a whole documentary on Netflix about it. I was one of those kids. And when I was there, that's when I, you know, that, I guess that could be probably the time that I felt the most overwhelm because literally I was surviving. But that was when I really turned to God. And that's where I started really building a relationship and understanding the power of prayer and just turning to prayer and turning everything over to him and feeling that that protection and peace that he can provide and helping me to find the answers and find the resources that I need. So if we were looking at all of those bubbles on one sheet of paper, I would have you spend some time maybe overnight, like, you know, looking at it, meditating in on it and trying to see patterns. But the patterns I see is this, when I have to, like, make decisions, be responsible, have a solution. Right. And so it started, you know, at age 10, but then the survival program actually kind of solidified it and you found a relationship with God there. But the survival piece didn't actually, like the pattern of survival probably didn't change it. God became a coping, like a way to understand yourself spiritually, understand mentally, probably started your whole self-development journey. Right. Right. But the pattern of solution decisions and responsibility still create overwhelm. In you. So you have a clear pattern that you've been doing since you were 10. That means. And being able to, and if we had more time, we would go deeper into, is there some trauma there from the survival program because I'm sure you weren't like a little angel to be sent there. Yeah. But, you know, but, you know, we would we would dig a little deeper and then we would take that and we would put it into the 10 categories and we would say, okay, here's your trauma. Do you think there's any grief in there, like making the wrong decision? Do you have some grief around maybe some wrong decisions? Because decisions is a big overwhelm for you. Yeah. No, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I would have to really think through that way. Because I don't know that nothing comes to mind. I actually, when I look back, there's things that I go, oh, well, that's what led me to where I am today. So I don't really regret past decisions, necessarily, because I really recognize that we all are going to make mistakes. None of us are going to be perfect. But, but yeah, I mean, there's definitely trauma. There's a lot of trauma that happened during the survival program. That yeah, that so I do, I have recognized that and that was one of the big things from last year that I all of a sudden recognized that I've been in a survival mode since I was 15 or maybe even 10, like you're saying, but like really significantly since 15. And so that pattern started and then that program kind of solidified it that this is how you deal with life. You have to learn to survive, right? Push there. And so when you are in a decision making mode, you have to make a decision, let's say an employee that you have to fire, you know, or you have to make that decision on whether you're going to let them go or what goes on in your head. Yeah, I don't love those moments. And so I know that it's my responsibility to have to make those things happen. But if I had the choice, I would somehow avoid it. I have to show up. But like I know my little personality, my little girl and me is like, no, go do something fun. Like, this is not fun. Like go do something else fun. So yeah, so I mean, I take care of it just because that's what you have to do. But yeah, the top is negative dialogue that comes up when you're trying to make decisions. Well, more just that I don't want to do this. But I actually have learned over time and experience that I can and that I can get through it and that it's not as always as bad as I wait, maybe would imagine it in my head before things like that happen. And that you can handle conversations and do so with even if you're letting somebody go, I mean, I still have employees. I've had to let go that I'm still friends with. And I don't know that that's my biggest priority. But it's like, I have learned how to have a conversation without tearing somebody completely down and still being able to communicate what needs to be communicated with. And so, you know, it's not that I look forward to it. I do dread it. But I have learned it, unfortunately, through lots of experience that I can do it in a way that I feel better about and other people, you know, tend to feel better about as well. Right. Right. I love it. Yeah. So that would be the thought map. And then we would, you know, kind of organize those things. Yeah. And make sure that the the choices that you're making, you know, are actually in line with who you want to be. And many people in survival mode don't even know who they want to be or where they're trying to go. So there's, you know, they're just surviving. They're just whatever's happening to them that day, they're making the decisions they're getting through it and they're crashing at the end of the day. And then they're just on repeat. Right. And so we work on personal vision of who do you actually want to be and not just your career, like, you know, what kind of mother of adult children do you want to be? What, you know, how do you want to show up for your friends? How, you know, how do you want to show up in your business? And, you know, so with so that we make sure that the choices that we're making are actually in line with that. Rather than, you know, when I read a business book or a leadership book and they should do this. And then I have to like reframe it. Well, my personal vision is this and that doesn't really align with my personal vision, right? So making sure that when we do this think organized shoes, we're doing it from a place of insight and not just surviving. Yeah, so important. Yeah. Because I think too, what can often happen is that you'll go through a traumatic event and then you're grieving the loss of a loved one or a life that you had built or whatever it may be. But I think what adds to that often times, if we don't do this work that you're talking about is that we can often lose ourselves. And then we have to go through the grieving process of losing ourselves. And so this is so important. I think that's a huge step in something we need to be definitely taking into consideration and implementing. Yeah. Yeah. And if you don't mind, I have an exclusive offer that I had just for your online. That's the women that that are listening, I know that the story resonates. There's people who have been through so much. And maybe they're close family and friends know, but their colleagues at work probably don't know or their employees probably don't know. The ability to be vulnerable is my gift to the world. I don't expect people to be able to do that. But everybody needs a system for their mental strength, not just grasping at straws. And so the exclusive is the actual thought map activity, which I normally don't do because it's more of an advanced skill. You know, only mature women can actually figure this out by themselves. And so it is the step-by-step instructions on how to do a thought map because it is really a personal meditative process. And you know, you'll go through that process and then be able to have a clarity call on, you know, and one of my coaches will sit down and kind of help you see even more inside that thought map. So that is available at hertime.mentallystrong.com. Oh my goodness. Hertime.mentallystrong.com.Vance tool for really being able to do 20 years of journaling in just 20 minutes and get that insight of the patterns that you are repeating. My goodness. Well, how generous of you. Thank you. And something you're right that we all could use. So thank you for that. I know that there's so much that we can continue learning from you, you know, and I want to make sure that everyone that's listening today goes and takes advantage of this really amazing gift that you're offering and connect with Dr. Bee or Christy. And keep learning from her, you know, thank you so much for being here today. And just also for showing us how to be vulnerable, I think that's something we need to remember that all of us, we all need to be able to have places and ways that we can do that if we really want to be able to tap into true healing. And I think it's just part of it's part of our life process. It's part of the way that we learn and grow as we go through life's challenges. And so I think one of the biggest takeaways from this conversation is that mental strength isn't just about pretending that you're okay or forcing yourself to just get over it, you know, which you tend to be really good at. But it's more about learning how to stay grounded and be very honest with yourself and stay hopeful even in the middle of all of the hard seasons of our life. And I just know so many of you that are listening today are carrying something heavy, maybe even right now or have in the past. And maybe it's the loss of, you know, of something that no one else can even see, you know, maybe you're grieving a person or a relationship or your health or even the version of yourself that you thought you'd be by now. I think that's a big one for a lot of us. And so if that's you, I hope that today's conversation reminds you that healing isn't about erasing your pain. It's about learning to carry it in a way that no longer carries you. And so yeah, you don't have to have all the answers today or even tomorrow, but you and you don't have to know exactly what the next year even will look like. But sometimes healing begins with the smallest next step. And so using this kind of method and asking for help and taking a deep breath and going for a walk and calling your friend or sharing this episode with a friend or simply choosing just to believe that this chapter isn't the end of your story. I think is so important. So thank you so much. Thank you. So I really, your professional expertise and your personal journey and your honesty and compassion and all of that is such a strength. And we appreciate that. So go to the show notes. Ladies, I want you to go and continue to learn from Dr. B. Her mentally strong method, her book, pain and purpose. You can connect with her work in the show notes. I'll have all the links there for you. We've included all of her information and all of it. So that's where you go. That's where all the good stuff is. And this has been such a fascinating and really helpful. I mean, personally, I just felt like I had therapy session. And thanks for coming along the journey with me. Everybody that's listening. You know, I'm an open book and we're such an incredible community. I really appreciate it that you guys are involved in this as well. And you participate in these conversations. I love hearing from you. I love getting the messages from you. So if you have any thoughts or feelings about today's episode that you want to share, you can go again to the show notes. There's a place for you to leave me a message. If you have something you want me to share with Dr. B, please do so. I will make sure she gets the information as well. And we will, you know, answer that in an upcoming episode or privately, possibly. I get ideas of what you want to learn about through a lot of these messages. Also when you leave ratings and reviews, it gives me an idea of what it is that we care to be here for. All right. You guys, thanks for spending the time with us. Until next time, just remember to take care of your body and be kind to your mind and give yourself the same grace that you so freely offer everybody else. And we will see you again next week on the It's Her Time Podcast. Until then, have a very happy and healthy weekend. We'll talk soon. Bye bye. [Music]